Missions and churches: the “figs from thistles”

Ogbu Kalu’s chapter “Gathering Figs from Thistles” argues that slavery-era networks and ex-slaves became unexpected conduits for Christianity. Routes once used to move captives carried missionaries; many Aro, who had embraced mission education, became teachers and evangelists after the First World War. A leading Aro convert, Mazi Nwafor Ogwuma, helped the Presbyterians and Archdeacon Dennis with the Igbo Bible translation.

Slavery shaped the church from its first years. Many early Christians were ohu (slaves), and conversion offered freedom. Igbo recaptives in Sierra Leone formed an Igbo Association and lobbied for a Niger mission. In the Niger crisis of the 1890s, missionaries criticized the harsh treatment of domestic slaves by some Sierra Leonean agents. Meanwhile Aro traders used market boycotts and the Ekpe society as tools of resistance against missions.

Resistance and conversion varied from region to region. Abakaliki and Ezza communities resisted missionaries until about 1937; in the south the trade routes of Ubani carried the churches. Kalu notes that the movement of Garrick Braide (1910–39) burned shrines in a “power encounter”. Many churches that once excluded polygamists now admit them.

Kalu’s argument is built on case studies and cameos from eight regional “theatres” and should be read as an interpretation, not as a complete history.