L'Armée du Salut et la naissance de la 'Mission des Noirs' au Congo Belge, 1934 – 1940

Abstract

On the eve of the Second World War, a new kimbanguist spirit pervaded Léopoldville and the Lower Congo. The arrival of the first Salvation Army missionaries in 1934 was not strange to this awakening. The natives were impressed by the uniforms and the insignia but also by the militancy of this association in its struggle against evil and the sins. The Salvation Army was considered to be the work of the Kongo prophet Simon Kimbangu and the head of this association passed for the reincarnation of Kimbangu. At the time, the Congolese considered the action of the Salvation Army as a struggle against witchcraft. And it is in the bosom of this association that around July 1939 the "Black Mission” was born. Simon Mpadi, the founder of this African Church, was a former fellow-worker of the American Baptist Missionary Society and a former sergeant of the Salvation Army. In September 1939, about 150 villages in the Territories of Madimba and Kibambi sent a letter to governor-general Pierre Ryckmans to ask him for an official permission to found a separate African Church. They did not obtain the permission. On the contrary, the “Black Mission” was dissolved and Mpadi arrested and sent first to Befale in the Equator Province and then to Élisabethville in the Katanga Province. In the present study, which is based on a great number of unpublished documents, we analyse the attitudes which the colonial government and the European missions adopted vis-à-vis this new Kongo prophetic awakening from 1934 to 1940. Keywords: Salvation Army, Mission of the Blacks, Khaki Church, Simon Mpadi & Mpadism, Kimbanguism, Léopoldville & Lower Congo Annales Aequatoria Vol. 26, 2005: 67-164