A Christian experiment: the early Sierra Leone colony

In the course of the past century the centre of gravity of the Christian world has shifted completely. Europe, once the centre, is now at best an outpost on the fringe of the Christian world, some would say an outpost likely to be overwhelmed. The great majority of Christians, and the overwhelming majority of practising Christians are, and are clearly going to be, Africans, Americans or Asians. And of these, the most startling expansion—the greatest Christian expansion since what were for Europe the Middle Ages—has been in Africa, where Christians have been increasing in geometrical progression, doubling their numbers every twelve years or so, for over a century. The greater part of African Church history, however, has still to be written. Hagiography we have in abundance, and hagiography, like mythology, is a valid literary genre; but (again like mythology) it is a poetic, not a scholarly category. Of missionary history we have a little, though very little in proportion to the vast resources which the missionary society archives supply; but missionary history is only one specialized part of African Church history; by far the greater part of African Christian life and African Christian expansion goes on, and has long gone on, without the presence, let alone the superintendence, of the European missionary.