Abstract
Anglican missionaries arriving in Uganda’s Acholiland in 1903 saw the local peoples as in need not just of Christianisation but also of civilising. This last consisted primarily of inculcating western notions of gender identities for both men and women, with an emphasis on the wearing of gender-appropriate clothing and terminating the practices of polygyny and bride-price payment. The first missionaries considered the Acholi to have high levels of gender equality but they still believed conversion would improve women’s status through domesticating them and instilling the notion of male superiority, despite the fact that local customary rituals did not distinguish on grounds of gender. Over decades, the population gradually converted to various Christian denominations, mainly Anglicanism and Catholicism, but without abandoning their customary rituals, using them as and when required, to ward off evil or ask for rain, for instance. The most significant impact of the civilising process was arguably the institutionalisation of the notion of masculine superiority now legitimised by appeals to what happened in the Garden of Eden. The paper is based on historical documents, both published and from the missionary archives, as well as on ethnographic research into gender in the region today.
Highlights
When nineteenth- and early twentieth-century missionaries set out to ‘convert the heathen’, and the objects of their quest responded by joining the church, the meanings ascribed to these activities on either side were often very different, to the point of considerable mutual misunderstanding.One thing, is clear—by the early twentieth century, Christian missionaries were not trying to convince the populations among whom they worked of the truth of the message of the church; they were spending as much, if not more, time and energy on inculcating into them the everyday manifestations of Europeanised religious culture (Russell 1966).In Africa, British missionaries brought with them two important concepts that underpinned their understanding of the world
The British visitor left, returning the following year together with two other missionaries, one of whom was Albert Kitching. They started by establishing a school and providing medical treatment, something that greatly raised their standing with the population (Lloyd 1906). During their early days in Acholiland, the missionaries discovered the people believed their troubles were largely due to jogi that manifested themselves in various ways and locations
Russell took a similar line, considering the use of Acholi terms for ideas completely alien to its native speakers had been a factor in sustaining the customary practices alongside Christianity and insisting it would have been preferable to introduce completely new words to match the new notions in order to make it clear that religion existed on a completely different plane from anything previously known. He made the point that unlike polygyny, which was punishable by excommunication, the church largely took it for granted that converts had completely abandoned their customary rituals, taking no steps to discipline those who continued to participate in them
Summary
When nineteenth- and early twentieth-century missionaries set out to ‘convert the heathen’, and the objects of their quest responded by joining the church, the meanings ascribed to these activities on either side were often very different, to the point of considerable mutual misunderstanding. Capitalism and European notions of gender gave African missionary culture of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries much in common with that of the colonial state and its attempts to inculcate into local populations social, economic and political ideologies coherent with the British way of life. Lloyd first visited Acholiland along with Kitching in 1903 and the following year he helped found the first mission there He was ordained as a minister of the Anglican Church during World War I. I combine narrations of missionary efforts to ‘civilise’ the Acholi people with an attempt at providing an understanding of social relations in Acholiland prior to the influence of the church and colonialism before looking at the outcome in contemporary life there in terms of current gender norms
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