Sipilingas: Intraregional African Initiatives and the United Methodist Church in Katanga and Zambia, 1910–1945

Abstract

While this chapter focuses on Africans, there are parallels to the black Sipilingas among the European and American labour migrants to the Copperbelt who connected with the Methodist Church in one way or another. The Methodist Church sent some of its best leadership candidates to Old Mutare for training which were higher than was available in Congo, particularly before the founding of the Ecole de Theologie at Mulungwishi in 1951. While American Methodists never maintained permanent mission work in Northern Rhodesia after 1910-11, the Katanga church was a partner of the United Christian Mission on the Copperbelt, later a founding body of the United Church of Zambia (UCZ). The United Methodist Church (re)appeared in Zambia in the 1980s through lay people moving back and forth across the border who were dissatisfied with the functioning of the UCZ. Keywords: Ecole de Theologie; Africans; black Sipilingas ; Katanga; United Church of Zambia (UCZ)