Missionaries go home?

This book is a study in cross-cultural encounter between Africa and the West in the context of Western Christian Missionary enterprise in Africa. This encounter has for a long time been analysed and evaluated largely in theological terms. The present work attempts an alternative analysis, a sociological evaluation. It examines the socioeconomic and political context of the encounter which produced a dominant-dependent relationship between the West and Africa. The study argues that the reaction of calling for the withdrawal of the missionaries by the dominated and deprived Africans was partly a consequence of their material condition compared with that of the West. The study applies the principles in Karl Mannheim's «Sociology of Knowledge» which offers a method for a systematic investigation and analysis of the socio-historical context out of which ideas and beliefs emerge. By this interpretation, the study emphasises socioeconomic and political issues which can no longer be ignored in Euro-African-Missionary endeavour of Africans. In conclusion, the study underlines the dissatisfaction with the existing injustices and inequities in the socioeconomic and missionary world order.