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From Christian brother to native: Claiming and rejecting Christianity, commerce, and civilization in early twentieth-century Natal

ABSTRACT This article argues that, by the late nineteenth century, the growing population of African Christians created a difficult conundrum for colonial officials. For almost a century, justification for the colonial project rested in part on the premise that Christianization benefited local populations. However, as African evangelists and preachers experienced greater success, colonial states sought to undermine a growing Christian community whose existence threatened administrations that increasingly relied upon systemic violence. The egalitarian expectations of African Christians, in particular, were inimical to colonialism and created dissonance in its undergirding intellectual architecture. As this strain increased, many colonialists turned against the missions and their converts and embraced the pseudo-scientific racism gaining favor in European metropoles. In Natal, South Africa, this shift led the colony to reassert the “nativeness” of African Christians by taking away the privileges their faith had previously earned them and even, on several occasions, razing the churches in which they worshipped. Race, in early twentieth-century colonies, trumped religion.