God, missionaries and race in colonial Malawi

Visions for Racial Equality is a biography of David Clement Scott, who worked for the Blantyre Mission in 19th-century Malawi. By combing through mission records, Harri Englund has painted a picture of David Scott as a colonial-era activist for racial equality. It is general knowledge among researchers who read colonial and mission documents that Europeans made derogatory comments about African traditions, cultures and practices. Scholars have proved that missionaries wrote favourably about their host community to show satisfactory progress in their missionary work and justify further financing. This book offers new perspectives on the colonial categorisation of the races and the relations it engendered between Europeans and Africans. Englund examines Scott’s theology of reversals to demonstrate that Scott advocated for the equality of people of different races based on their shared humanity. The organisation of the book and the topics that are covered in this book are both reflective of Englund’s previous work in Africa and specifically in Malawi, where he has conducted research on a variety of topics and themes, including human rights, democracy, identities, vernacular languages and literature, and the public role of Christianity. Visions for Racial Equality integrates theology with discussions of identities, equality and human rights. The book describes the socio-political environment of 19th-century Malawi, the establishment of missions, the prejudice that Europeans held towards Africans and the controversies that ensued due to inter and intra-ethnic warfare. It describes the Blantyre Affair to show the breadth and depth of racial discrimination instigated by missionaries in 19th-century Malawi (Chapter 2): this arose when a travelogue published in 1880 by Andrew Chirnside, The Blantyre Missionaries: Discreditable Disclosures, exposed a criminal and social justice system adopted by the Blantyre Mission whereby Africans were punished with lashings, and at least one African was flogged to death. Meanwhile, others were imprisoned, where they would spend days without food. Against this background, Englund unravels the unique position adopted by Scott, one that resisted conformity to established practices and procedures. Of course, this caused friction among missionaries in the Protectorate and members of the Foreign Committee in his home church in Scotland. Englund does an excellent job of demonstrating the diverse ways in which Scott participated in African culture, to help us understand the 19th-century socio-political context of the missionary’s work. Scott’s identification of Christ with the Africans and his view of the missionary as a student and learner in Africa are both products of his ‘theology of reversal’ (pp. 1 and 112). Unlike missionaries who had come before him, Scott assumed the