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The African United Baptist Church is a denomination of Baptists in the Republic of Malawi. It is one of two schisms from the Providence Industrial Mission of the National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc. The formation of the African United Baptist Church occurred in 1946.
John Chilembwe was a Baptist pastor, educator and revolutionary who trained as a minister in the United States, returning to Nyasaland in 1901. He was an early figure in the resistance to colonialism in Nyasaland (Malawi), opposing both the treatment of Africans working in agriculture on European-owned plantations and the colonial government's failure to promote the social and political advancement of Africans. Soon after the outbreak of the First World War, Chilembwe organised an unsuccessful armed uprising against colonial rule. Today, Chilembwe is celebrated as a hero of independence in some African countries, and John Chilembwe Day is observed annually on 15 January in Malawi.
The Chilembwe uprising was a rebellion against British colonial rule in Nyasaland which took place in January 1915. It was led by John Chilembwe, an American-educated Baptist minister. Based around his church in the village of Mbombwe in the south-east of the colony, the leaders of the revolt were mainly from an emerging black middle class. They were motivated by grievances against the British colonial system, which included forced labour, racial discrimination and new demands imposed on the African population following the outbreak of World War I.
Joseph Booth was an English missionary working in British Central Africa and South Africa. In his 30s, Booth abandoned his career as a businessman and, for the rest of his life, he undertook missionary work for several Christian denominations including Baptist, Seventh Day Baptist and Seventh-day Adventist churches, and he was appointed a missionary by the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania. Throughout his successive ministries, his defining beliefs were a radical egalitarianism, including a scheme of "Africa for the Africans"’ and, from 1898, Seventh-Day Sabbath (Sabbatarian) observance.
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The Zambesi Industrial Mission was an independent Baptist mission founded in British Central Africa, now Malawi, in 1892 by Joseph Booth, an independent and radical clergyman whose aim was to create a self-supporting mission providing African converts with the educational, technical and economic skills to lead the development of their country towards independence. After disagreements with his colleagues, Booth left the mission in 1897, but it continued as a largely self-supporting Industrial mission until the coffee blight in 1929. After this, it continued as a conventional mission church with growing numbers of congregations and members. After Malawi became independent, the work of the mission church was split into a locally led and funded Zambezi Evangelical Church, partnered by a UK headquartered Zambesi Mission with a local Blantyre office. In 2010, for the first time, a Malawian was appointed to the post of Blantyre-based ZM Field Director. In 2012, the church had about 150 clergy serving over 500 congregations with 100,000 members in Malawi, and was governed by a national Synod meeting bi-annually.
Charles Vincente Domingo was born in Mozambique but spent most of his life in northern Nyasaland, where he was educated at the Free Church of Scotland (1843-1900) mission at Livingstonia. He later became a teacher and licensed preacher there, but left the Free Church in 1908 over delays to his ordination and he later established an independent Seventh Day Baptist church and school in the Mzimba district. Domingo was one of three Africans sponsored by Joseph Booth who created independent churches in Nyasaland in the early 20th century, the others being John Chilembwe and Elliot Kamwana. Domingo did not favour armed revolt, as Chilembwe did, nor was he a charismatic preacher seeking rapid social change like Kamwana. He was a moderate social reformer who strongly criticised the inequalities of colonial rule, and a teacher who believed that Africans should run their own churches free of external supervision and use these churches to promote a high standard of education to create a cultured African elite, which would undertake its own social and political advancement. He failed because of inadequate resources in the poverty-stricken north of Nyasaland and through government suspicion of his motives, but he remains one of the pioneers of Malawi’s independence.
Landon Napoleon Cheek was an African-American Baptist missionary who served in the British Central Africa Protectorate, later renamed Nyasaland, between 1901 and 1906. There, he assisted John Chilembwe, the founder of the Providence Industrial Mission during the church's formative period. After returning to the United States, he became a Baptist pastor for almost 50 years. Cheek died in Chicago in 1964.
The ideas, people and events that contributed to John Chilembwe's motivation and influenced him to undertake the uprising in 1915 were considered by the Commission of Inquiry shortly after the rising was defeated, and have exercised historians of Malawi during much of the period since his death. Whether the dominant ideas were political, social, economic or religious and how these combined is unclear, because Chilembwe did not leave a detailed record of the reasons for his armed revolt. As he was an ordained Baptist minister, much attention has focussed on his religious ideas, whether these were orthodox or related to millennialism, the extent to which such potentially conflicting religious ideas existed, particularly in the period shortly before the rising, and the part that such beliefs played in the decision to revolt and the course of the uprising.
The Bahamas National Baptist Missionary and Educational Convention is a Baptist Christian denomination in Bahamas. It is affiliated with the Baptist World Alliance. The headquarters is in Nassau.
The Baptist Convention of Malawi is a Baptist Christian denomination in Malawi. It is affiliated with the Baptist World Alliance. The headquarters is in Lilongwe.
The Baptist Convention of Mozambique is a Baptist Christian denomination in Mozambique. It is affiliated with the Baptist World Alliance. The headquarters is in Maputo.
Daniel Sharpe Malekebu was a doctor, Baptist missionary, and anti-colonial activist native to Nyasaland. Malekebu was one of the first students of the Providence Industrial Mission founded by anti-colonial activist John Chilembwe. At the young age of fifteen, Malekebu ran away from home to seek higher education in the United States. He graduated from Meharry Medical College in 1917, becoming the first Malawian person to receive a medical degree.
References
- ↑ Owen J. M. Kalinga, Historical Dictionary of Malawi, Rowman & Littlefield, USA, 2012, p. 485
- ↑ Robert E. Johnson, A Global Introduction to Baptist Churches, Cambridge University Press, UK, 2010, p. 250
- ↑ William H. Brackney, Historical Dictionary of the Baptists, Scarecrow Press, USA, 2009, p. 362
- ↑ Baptist World Alliance, Members, baptistworld.org, USA, retrieved May 5, 2023