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Zaire Protestant Churches
Protestant missionaries have been active since 1878
when the
first Protestant mission was founded among the Kongo.
Early
relations with the state were not warm. During the
existence of the
Congo Free State (1885-1908), some Protestant missionaries
witnessed and publicized state and charter company abuses
against
the population during rubber- and ivory-gathering
operations. That
evidence helped lead to the international outcry that
forced King
Léopold II to cede control of the Congo Free State to the
Belgian
state
(see The
Leopoldian Legacy
, ch. 1). Situated outside
the
governing colonial trinity of state, Catholic church, and
companies, Protestant missions did not enjoy the same
degree of
official confidence as that accorded their Catholic
counterparts.
State subsidies for hospitals and schools, for example,
were (with
two individual exceptions) reserved exclusively for
Catholic
institutions until after World War II.
The colonial state divided up the colony into spiritual
franchises, giving each approved mission group its own
territory.
At independence in 1960, some forty-six Protestant
missionary
groups were at work, the majority of them North American,
British,
or Scandinavian in origin. The missions established a
committee to
maintain contact and minimize competition among them. This
body
evolved into a union called the Church of Christ in the
Congo, now
the Church of Christ in Zaire. The Church of Christ
developed rules
that permitted members of one evangelical congregation to
move to
and be accepted by another. It also established
institutions that
served common needs, such as bookstores and missionary
guest
houses.
Since independence, church leadership and control have
been
widely and successfully Africanized, though not without
conflict.
Most mission property has been transferred to autonomous
Zairian
churches, and many foreign missionaries now work directly
under the
supervision of a Zairian-run church. The new indigenous
leadership
has succeeded in expanding its churches in Africa's
largest
francophone Protestant community.
Protestant churches are valued, as are their Catholic
counterparts, not only for the medical and educational
services
they provide, but also for serving as islands of integrity
in a sea
of corruption. Explicit recognition of this role came in
1983 when
Mobutu sent emissaries to Europe and the United States to
encourage
increased involvement by foreign mission boards in Zairian
institution-building; a conference in Kinshasa with local
and
international Protestant officials followed. Not only was
a renewed
church involvement sought with struggling institutions,
such as the
formerly Protestant university in Kisangani (nationalized
in 1971),
but churches were asked if they would be willing to
station
representatives within the major government ministries in
order to
discourage and/or report acts of corruption by state
officials.
Sensing the threat of co-optation, the Protestants
respectfully
declined.
State solicitation of Protestant action was logical.
The state
sought a counterweight to its critics in the powerful
Catholic
church. Protestant churches, and particularly the Church
of Christ
leadership, have been consistently supportive of Mobutu,
making
them an attractive potential partner. And the Church of
Christ
served the state in areas where state-church interests
coincided.
Both church and state looked askance at the formation of
new
uncontrolled religious movements and splinter groups. The
government's requirement that religious groups register
with the
state and post a Z100,000 (for value of the
zaire--see
Glossary)
deposit in a bank in order to be legally recognized helped
limit
their development; so too did the lingering effects of the
colonial
franchise system. When, for example, a charismatic
preacher of the
officially recognized but noncharismatic Church of Christ
of the
Ubangi (Église du Christ de L'Oubangi) broke away in 1988
to ally
his own congregation with a charismatic but officially
recognized
church community in distant Kivu, the Church of Christ in
Zaire
stepped in to adjudicate. The governing body prevented the
Kivu
church from accepting the rebellious preacher and his
congregation,
leaving him with no outside allies or resources and
effectively
localizing his potential impact.
Data as of December 1993
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