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The American Civil War of 1861-1865: a major challenge to the survival of early Baptists ventures in Nigeria.

Article Excerpt
The foundation for Baptist work in Nigeria was laid in 1850 and owed its origin to the efforts made by the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC).

Organized in 1845 when the question of slavery became a dividing wall, the SBC's principal aim was to promote foreign and domestic missions. Immediately, the SBC created the Foreign Mission Board (FMB), now known as the International Mission Board, to plan a missions program in foreign countries. Southern Baptists took their first steps beyond the American shores to China in 1846. Less than five years after its establishment, the FMB sent its first missionary to Nigeria, in West Africa, with Thomas Jefferson Bowen of Jackson County, Georgia, pioneering the venture. (1)

Following his appointment in February 1849, Bowen set off in December of that year and arrived in Nigeria in 1850 to commence Baptist work. His mission field was Yorubaland in southwestern Nigeria, where he labored from 1850 to 1856. Like all early missionaries, Bowen, during his six-year stay and after his departure from the Nigerian field in 1856, encountered several difficulties and suffered enormous hazards and agonies in his ventures. One of the most inhibitive of the challenges for the Baptist faith in Nigeria was the American Civil War of 1861-1865, which threatened the survival of the Southern Baptists' missionary efforts in Nigeria. A brief description of Nigeria is first necessary in order to provide a background picture of the land and peoples among whom the Baptists were to operate.

The Land and Peoples of Nigeria

Nigeria is located in the tropics, just north of the equator and east of the Greenwich Meridian. It is one of the largest in countries in Africa, occupying a total land area of approximately 923,768 square kilometers. Modern-day Nigeria is a federation of thirty-six states and a federal capital territory. With a current population of over 140 million people, Nigeria ranked in the 1990s as the seventh most populous country in the world. Its people are diverse and varied in cultures, customs, and traditions. (2) According to linguists and anthropologists, the country has more than three hundred language and ethnic groups. (3) The larger and dominant ones are the Hausa and Fulani in the North, Yoruba in the southwest, and the Igbo in the southeast.

Nigeria has numerous big towns and cities in which about half of the country's population live. Lagos, in the southwestern part of the country, is an important city, both for its historical significance and commercial relevance. About a tenth of the country's population live in Lagos. At the time of the arrival of Christian missionary groups in the mid-nineteenth century, Lagos was a major seaport and entry point of Europeans and Americans into Nigeria. The country's political headquarters was sited in Lagos until 1991 when it relocated to Abuja, the current federal capital. Other major towns include Ibadan, Abeokuta Ogbomoso, and Oyo, all of which, like Lagos, are located in Yorubaland in southwestern Nigeria, where the early Southern Baptist missionaries operated for the greater part of the second half of the nineteenth century before extending to other parts of the country. Each of these towns became quite relevant in the early history of Baptist enterprise in Nigeria.

The Foundation Years and Early Challenges

For the first ten years of Baptist enterprise in Nigeria, the attention of the first Southern Baptist missionaries seemed focused on exploring the mission field, but they experienced a rather slow rate of planting churches despite the frantic efforts made in that direction. By 1861, when the Civil War erupted in faraway America, only five Baptist churches had been established in Nigeria, and they were all located in...