Who are the Baptists?
Africa
Baptists were one of the first Protestant bodies to bring the gospel to Africa. The oldest Baptist congregation on the continent and still existing is the Regent Road Baptist Church of Freetown, Sierra Leone, established in 1792 by David George. Another early field in West Africa was Liberia, colonized by freed slaves from the USA. Lott Cary (or Carey) with six others, taking with them their church organization from Richmond, Virginia, and, after a stay in Sierra Leone, planted in 1822 the Providence Baptist Church in Monrovia.
In spite of these early beginnings, Baptist work in West Africa was slow. Only one other field was entered before the First World War--Nigeria which was entered by Southern Baptists from the USA. This work did not begin to grow significantly until the 1930s but today is one of the most productive Baptists fields in Africa with over one million adherents. Since the First World War, Baptists, except for Mauritania, have entered every West African nation.
With over one million adherents, Equatorial Africa has been a most productive field for Baptists with Baptists in each country but Gabon. The Baptist Missionary Society of London with Baptists from Jamaica established in 1843 a beachhead on the island of Fernando Po, which, however, the Spanish terminated in 1858. In 1845 one of the Jamaicans, Joseph Merrick, settled on the mainland in West Cameroon and began translation work. In the same year, Alfred Saker, one of the British missionaries, began to minister in East Cameroon and formed four years later the first Baptist church in Cameroon. Due to the occupation of the territory by Germany and later occupations by Great Britain and France, German Baptists from Germany and the USA and the Paris Evangelical Missionary Society assumed responsibility. Some native Baptists refused cooperation with any mission society and formed their own independent native churches. Today there are four Baptist conventions in Cameroon with 1,300 churches and over 110,000 members.
Baptists were among the first Protestants to enter the Democratic Republic of Congo (the former Zaire). The Livingstone Inland Mission established its first station in 1818 and by 1884 had established seven stations stretching over seven hundred miles up the Congo River when it turned its work over to the American Baptist Missionary Union. In 1818 the Baptist Missionary Society from London began exploring the territory, establishing its first station in 1880. From these mission efforts, two large Baptist conventions of over 250,000 members each have emerged. Numerous other Baptist missions, including Swedish and Norwegian and other American missions, have since entered the country. There are today thirteen Baptist communities with over 2,000 churches and around 800,000 members.
Baptist Mid-Missions, an independent Baptist mission from the USA, entered the Central African Republic in 1921, followed in 1923 by the Orebro Society of Sweden. Baptist Mid-Missions extended northward into Chad in 1925.
In comparison to other denominations, Baptists had a weak start in Southern Africa. In the colony of South Africa, William Miller established in 1823 in Grahamstown the first Baptist chapel among English settlers. German settlers formed Baptist churches later in the century. Work began among Blacks (1816), Coloured (1888) and Asiatic Indians (1903). South African Baptists formed in 1811 a Baptist Union. In 1966 Black Baptists formed a Baptist Convention of South Africa, which superseded the Bantu Church, which had been under white domination.
Another notable Baptist field in Southern Africa with over 100,000 in four conventions is Angola. It was first entered in 1818 by the Baptist Missionary Society from London, England, in its attempt to enter the Congo. Baptist work in Malawi, which today has around 200,000 Baptists, had rather eratic beginnings with Joseph Booth, an English Baptist, who, beginning in 1892 established a number of industrial missions and brought into the territory both National Baptists (Black Baptists from the USA) and Seventh Day Baptists. John Chilimbwe, a native African but National Baptist missionary, built a large church but in his uprising against British colonial rule in 1915 was killed. Today the country honors him as a national martyr.
A fruitful field for Baptists has been Mozambique. As a result of the work of the Free Baptist Union in Sweden, which entered in 1921, and the South Africa General Mission, which took over an earlier mission work in 1939, the United Baptist Church emerged in 1968 which today, numbering around 200,000 adherents, is the largest Protestant body in the nation. Baptists also have work in every other county in Southern Africa, including notable work in Zambia and Zimbabwe, as well as a small association on the island nation of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean.
In comparison to other missions, Baptists entered East Africa late. Danish Baptists were the first in Burundi (1928) and Rwanda (1939). After the Second World War in 1956 Southern Baptists entered Kenya and Tanzania, where they estabished strong works, and later into other neighboring countries. The Baptist General Conference from the USA was the first to enter Ethiopia in 1950. Numerous other Baptist missions have also entered the area, particularly in Kenya. Today Baptists in the region have an estimated membership of around 900,000 with 400,000 in Kenya.
Baptists have no work in the large country of Sudan and are
extremely weak in North Africa, where Islam dominates. In Egypt
there is a community of 500 members which was begun in 1931 by
Seddik W. Girgis, a native Egyptian.