Rebel Baptist, Political Pastor: The Story of John Chilembwe & its Relevance Today

Happy John Chilembwe Day!

Today (January 15, 2015) is national John Chilembwe Day in Malawi. A national hero since its genesis as a nation in 1964, Chilembwe is celebrated as an early anti-colonial figure who opposed mistreatment of African workers on European-owned plantations and the lack of social, political, and economic promotion of Africans.

On January 23, 1915, Chilembwe, an American trained Baptist minister and educator, led what was to be an unsuccessful uprising against the colonial rulers of Nyasaland (Malawi). Now, he is honored as a hero of African independence and 100 years after his failed armed rebellion he is remembered as a paragon of anti-hegemonic struggle.

But Chilembwe’s story begs a few questions: 1) how could an evangelical pastor be led to organize an armed uprising? 2) what can be learned from his example in this way? 3) what does his sentiment, action, and death have to teach us today?

First, a little more about Chilembwe. He was born in Nyasaland around 1871 to a Yao father and a Mang’anja slave. In the economic system of the day the Yao (originally from Mozambique) were middlemen between the enslaving Arab traders and the Mang’anja slaves (the local tribal ethnicity). In 1891 the British colonized Nyasaland and took over where the Arab traders began, institutionalizing the system of indigenous control and establishing a system of governance and missions through which to do so.

As a young man Chilembwe met the missionary John Booth. By all accounts Booth was an outcast in colonial circles, described as “an eccentric, apocalyptic British fundamentalist missionary in Baptist persuasion” by historian Robert Rotberg. Booth advanced criticisms of the established Scottish Presbyterian mission and in launching the Zambezi Industrial Mission he formalized a system that promoted more egalitarian formulations for British, Yao, and Mang’anja alike. This message of equality, self-denial, and freedom caught the attention of colonial authorities and riled other missionaries.

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