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Religious Affiliation in Freetown, Sierra Leone1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 August 2012

Arthur T. Porter
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Extract

An attempt will be made in this paper to examine religious affiliation in Freetown (the capital town of Sierra Leone) at the formation of the Colony, and its later developments, from an historical viewpoint, with a view to assessing its contribution to the social evolution of the community. Freetown is rich in missionary records and journals and these, though they deal mainly with the evangelistic aspect of church activity, provide sufficient data to justify some tentative generalizations on the relationship between religious affiliation and the social stratification and growth of the community.

Freetown is an assembly of African peoples of different ethnic origins who became integrated into a community around norms and patterns of behaviour which were not African but western. The main agents in this cultural transformation were the Negro Nova Scotian and Maroon settlers. But the transformation was aided by the patronage and favour which the settlers received from the European administration, and, more important, by the missionary and evangelical activities of the Protestant churches. The Christian religion in Freetown was thus from the outset a positive, cohesive influence rather than a disintegrating force as it has been in some other parts of Africa.

Résumé

LES AFFILIATIONS RELIGIEUSES A FREETOWN

Dans un bref résumé historique, l'auteur décrit la fondation de la colonie de Sierra Leone, dont l'initiative est attribuable autant à la philanthropic des personnes humanitaires qui vivaient en Angleterre au 19ème siècle qu'à la politique du libre-échange des entreprises commerciales, qui étaient à la recherche de matières premières et de débouchés pour les produits fabriqués résultant de la révolution industrielle. Les premiers immigrants provenaient des ‘noirs pauvres’, qui se trouvaient parmi la population de Londres, et aussi des nègres de la Nouvelle-Écosse. Des esclaves libérés, venant de nombreuses régions différentes de l'Afrique, sont venus s'ajouter à leur nombre.

Dans une telle population hétérogène où toute structure de tribu cohérente faisait défaut, le christianisme devint le seul facteur intégrant. Les premières missions chrétiennes furent la conséquence du renouveau de la religion protestante. Plus tard, la Société Missionnaire de l'Église d'Angleterre (Church Missionary Society) devint l'église officielle et fut reconnue et soutenue par le Gouvernement, bien que de nombreuses sociétés sectaires continuaient d'exister et se divisaient en d'autres sectes. Les églises s'occupaient de l'enseignement et des activités sociales; elles offraient des occasions d'exercer des qualités de chef et constituaient un remplacement pour la solidarité sociale, qui est pourvu par les systèmes de clan et de parenté parmi les sociétés tribales. Au cours des années, une stratification sociale s'est développée d'après les catégories confessionnelles.

Type
Research Article
Information
Africa , Volume 23 , Issue 1 , January 1953 , pp. 3 - 14
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 1953

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References

page 3 note 2 The term ‘settler’ is used, in this article, to refer to the immigrants from London and Nova Scotia (including the Maroons) and their descendants.

page 3 note 3 These were former slaves who had claimed their liberty following the decision of Lord Mansfield in 1772 that slavery was not ‘allowed or approved by the law of England’. Because they lacked the necessary skills, these former slaves found it difficult to obtain employment. ‘In 1786 the humanity of some gentlemen was excited towards the distressed blacks’, and a committee was formed, known as ‘The Committee for the Black Poor’, to assist them, (Wadstrom, , Essay on Colonisation, London, 1795, vol. ii, pp. 8 and 227 f.)Google Scholar

page 4 note 1 A tablet in Clapham Parish Church commemorates the ‘servants of Christ sometime called “The Clapham Sect” who in the latter part of the XVIIIth century and early part of the XlXth century laboured so abundantly for the increase of National Righteousness and the Conversion of the Heathen and rested not until the curse of slavery was swept away from all parts of the British Dominions’.

page 4 note 2 1st Annual Report of the Sierra Leone Company. In trying to sell shares in the S.L. Company, which was founded, among other things, for ‘the promotion of legitimate commerce with Africa’, Clarkson wrote: ‘I should not permit anyone to become a purchaser, who would not be better pleased with the good resulting to Africa than from great commercial profits to himself; not that the latter may not be expected, but in case of a disappointment, I should wish his mind to be made easy by the assurance that he has been instrumental in introducing light and happiness into a country where the mind was kept in darkness and the body nourished only for European chains.’ Here we see the Humanitarian and the Free-trader in close company!

page 5 note 1 ‘We must not abandon, we must not neglect, this settlement of Sierra Leone. It is a great door, through which hereafter, the knowledge of the arts of social life will be communicated back, through the medium of the Negroes themselves, and disseminated over the shores of Africa, from whence they sprang.’ (Missionary Register, Aug. 1843, p. 3561.)Google Scholar

page 5 note 2 See Kuczynski, R. R., Demographic Survey of British Colonial Empire, London, 1948Google Scholar, vol. i for critical analysis of Census Returns of the Colony. ‘It appears that from June 1819 to June 1845, 74,129 slaves were captured, 64,625 emancipated, and 56,935 registered.’ (p. 102.)

page 5 note 3 A Residence at Sierra Leone, by Mrs. Melville, , London, 1849.Google Scholar

page 5 note 4 Journal of W. A. B. Johnson; also in summary form in Pierson, A. T., Seven Years in Sierra Ltone: the story of the work of W. A. B. Johnson, London, 1897.Google Scholar

page 5 note 5 The term ‘acculturation’ is used here to describe the liberated African's acceptance of the behaviour patterns as well as the underlying values of the settler and European groups.

page 6 note 1 His duties were to visit the settlers and to conduct services on Sundays. Lieut. Clarkson, who accompanied the Nova Scotians in 1792, not only acted as Governor, but also discharged clerical duties, until the arrival a year later of the Rev. N. Gilbert, the first Colonial chaplain appointed by the Sierra Leone Company. Butt-Thompson, , Sierra Leone in History and Tradition, London, 1926Google Scholar; ‘of Clarkson’, Sierra Leone Studies, vol. viii.

page 6 note 2 They were from the London Missionary Society and the Glasgow and Edinburgh Missionary Societies. Lovett, , History of the London Missionary London, 1899, p. 479Google Scholar.

page 6 ote 3 For these early attempts see Groves, C. P., The Planting of Christianity in Africa, London, 1948, vol. i, pp. 208 ffGoogle Scholar.

page 6 note 4 Clarke, R., Sierra Leone Manners and Customs, London, 1843, p. 39Google Scholar; also, Church Missionary Intelligencer, December 1881Google Scholar.

page 6 note 5 Zachary Macaulay (Governor 1794–9) referred to David George's followers as ‘in general soberminded and temperate men’. Knutsford, , Life and Letters of Z. Macaulay, London, 1900, p. 137Google Scholar.

page 6 note 6 Cato Perkins was one of the two delegates sent in 1793 to lay the settlers' grievances before the Directors of the Sierra Leone Company.

page 7 note 1 Thompson, , An Account of the Missionary Labours of George Thompson in Western Africa, New York, 1852Google Scholar.

page 7 note 2 Rev. Walker, S. A., The Church of England Mission in Sierra Leone, pp. 147 f.Google Scholar

page 7 note 3 Clarke, R., op. cit.Google Scholar

page 8 note 1 ‘The Society has already four settlements on the coast of Africa, in which 200 native children receive Christian instruction. These settlements are subject to the caprice of the natives; but the institutions in question will be secure under the protection of the Colonial Government of Sierra Leone.’ (15th Annual Report of the C.M.S.)

page 8 note 2 In that year (1816) an auxiliary of the British and Foreign Bible Society was founded in Sierra Leone, and St. Matthew's Gospel was printed in Bullom, the first complete book of Scripture in a Sierra Leone language. Cooksey, and McLeish, , Religion and Civilisation in West Africa, London, 1931, p. 246Google Scholar.

page 8 note 3 ‘It is proposed to receive into this Institution the multitude of African children who are liberated from smuggling slave vessels. Any benevolent person who gives five pounds per annum may have the honour to support and educate one child, and may affix to the child any name he pleases.’ (The Missionary Register, June 1815.)Google Scholar

page 8 note 4 Sometimes, however, names were given without any such reference. Ellis, in his book History of the West India Regiment, wrote: ‘Some twenty recruits being thus obtained, they were given high-sounding names, such as Mark Antony, Scipio Africanus, &c, their own barbaric appellations being too unpronounceable, and then marched down in a body to the cathedral to be baptised. Some might be Mohammedans, and the majority certainly believers in fetish, but the form of requiring their assent to a change in their religion was never gone through; and the following Sunday they were marched into church as a matter of course, along with their Christian comrades.’ It would be of interest to know the views of these Africans on the pronunciation of their new names!

page 8 note 5 Journal of W. A. B. Johnson, p. 94.

page 9 note 1 The following list of villages, with corresponding parish names, is from Crooks, J. J., History of Sierra Leone, Dublin, 1903Google Scholar; Gloucester village—St Andrew's parish; Leopold—St. Peter's; Bathurst—St. James'; Charlotte—St. John's; Wellington—St. Arthur's; Waterloo—St. Michael's; Hastings—St. Thomas'; York—St. Henry's; Kent—St. Edward's.

page 9 note 2 See Pierson, , op. cit.Google Scholar

page 9 note 3 The rations consisted mainly of rice and some oil and salt. The liberated Africans were supported by the Government for six months; the men were generally employed for the first three months in labour upon the roads, and then were distributed among the different villages. Parl. Papers, vol. ix, 1842.Google Scholar

page 9 note 4 Seddal, , Missionary History of Sierra Leone, p. 193.Google Scholar

page 9 note 5 Rankin, , The White Man's Grave, vol. i, London, 1836.Google Scholar

page 10 note 1 In 1913 only 3,250 Roman Catholics were reported in a population of about 1½ million (Latourette, , A History of the Expansion of Christianity, London, 1947, vol. v, p. 456).Google Scholar

page 10 note 2 Butt-Thompson, , op. cit.Google Scholar

page 10 note 3 Cooksey, and McLeish, , op. cit.Google Scholar

page 10 note 4 Alexander, , Voyage of Observation among the Colonies of West Africa, London, 1837.Google Scholar

page 11 note 1 The meaning of the word ‘Creole’ has varied. In the early period it did not seem to have had a definite meaning. For instance, Mrs. Melville (Residence at S.L.) used it as meaning Colony-children of liberated Africans. Governor Macdonald (CO. 267/221, P.R.O.) applied it to ‘mulattoes’, presumably children of Nova Scotians and Europeans. By the 1860s the term had come to include the descendants of both the liberated Africans and the settlers (Census Reports of the Colony). By the 1930s it had taken on a definite sociological connotation: ‘There is a marked and growing tendency for the educated native to style himself “Creole”…. A large number have been to Christian schools and, becoming Christians, adopt Christian names and lose identity with their tribes …’ (Census Report, 1931, p. 46).Google Scholar

page 11 note 2 Cf. Seddal, , op. cit.Google Scholar

page 11 note 3 ‘In the present instance, Pokkaloo and his Maybooka had perpetuated the marriage vow at the church with due solemnity after having already lived as man and wife in “country fashion” for several years …’. Rankin, , op. cit., vol. i.Google Scholar

page 12 note 1 Forbes, , Six Month in the African Blockade, London, 1849, p. 12.Google Scholar

page 13 note 1 Pirenne, , Mohammed and Charlemagne, London, 1940, p. 269.Google Scholar

page 13 note 2 Wach, , Sociology of Religion, Kegan Paul, 1947, p. 262.Google Scholar

page 13 note 3 Cf. Weber, Max, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, London, 1930Google Scholar; Tawney, , Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, London, 1944Google Scholar.