<i>Memorializing the Unsung: Slaves of the Church and the Making of Kongo Catholicism</i>, by Elochukwu E. Uzukwu

The history of Christian missions in western Africa typically describes the intertwining of several forces—religious, political, and economic—of Christianity, colonialism, and capitalism. The narrative typically begins with the transatlantic slave trade, outlawed by the British in 1807 and French in 1817, with a significant lobbying from Christian abolitionists. Soon thereafter, Christian (i.e., mostly Protestant) missions such as the British Church Missionary Society or the Swiss Basel Mission, entered the West African mission field to spread the Gospel of Christ as well as to “legitimate” trade, both thought to combat the horrors of slavery. Formal colonialism began with the Berlin Conference in 1884–85, although major cities such as Lagos (1861) or Accra (1874) were occupied by the British or Dakar (1857) by the French, beforehand.For most of western Africa, this narrative holds true. However, in west central Africa—in the Kingdom of Kongo—this narrative gets turned on its head, particularly by Elochukwu E. Uzukwu’s impressive monograph Memorializing the Unsung: Slaves of the Church and the Making of Kongo Catholicism. In the Kingdom of Kongo, Catholic missions did not follow the slave trade, but the two coexisted with one another where Slaves of the Church helped to make Kongolese Catholicism a lay-driven form of Christian expression, what Uzukwu calls “Church Becoming.”The short introduction of this intriguing new book sets the stage of the four body chapters and conclusion that comprise this monograph. The book’s main focus are the “Slaves of the Church,” those enslaved Kongolese Catholics, controlled by Capuchin and Spiritan missionaries, from the mid-seventeenth century to the end of the nineteenth century in the Kongo-Angola region. At times, however, a comparative approach to eastern Africa takes place.The first two chapters contextualize the examination of slavery in the Kongolese Catholic mission. In Chapter 1, Uzukwu uses the concept of representation established by Andrew Curran to show how new-world slavery shaped the conception of Kongo Catholicism as illegitimate and syncretistic by the nineteenth century. Chapter 2 explores the history of Kongo Catholicism in greater detail from the establishment of the faith as a national religion in 1491. Because of the shortage of ordained clergy, Catholicism evolved to be lay driven in the Kongo—a process undertaken significantly by the Slaves of the Church. Chapter 2 ends with a really interesting discussion of Christianity particularly in the Kongo, as well as more broadly, being syncretic, which can be viewed as a major strength of the Faith.Chapters 3 and 4 dive directly into the issue of slavery in the Kongolese Church. Slaves in the Kongo were the lowest rung of the social ladder, persons without traceable kinship connections. Chapter 3 describes the Capuchins setting up an administrative capital in Luanda (a Portuguese settlement), which led to a tense relationship between the Kingdom of Kongo and the Portuguese, resulting in conflict and insecurity, which in the seventeenth and eighteenth century called for the Slaves of the Church to aid the Catholic Church as ministerial helpers and security guards. Chapter 4 fast forwards in time to the era of the Spiritan missionaries in the late nineteenth-century Kongo, where the Spiritans bought and sold children as well as adult slaves called Slaves of the Mission, which formed the cell of their Christian villages. Here, in chapter 4, Uzukwu examines the slave response to their condition via rejection through claiming and redefining freedom through their Catholic performance (i.e., flight from Spiritan supervision by proclaiming the Gospel as freedom). Forcefully and convincingly, Uzukwu argues that the Capuchins and Spiritans committed errors and crimes that contradicted the guiding principles of the Gospel.In terms of source material, Uzukwu relies primarily on secondary sources. Originally, I was a bit disappointed as I thought he might have discovered some new primary source material to reflect upon. However, I quickly realized that this monograph was more political theology and social theory—relying on the theorizing of W. E. B. Dubois, Franz Fannon, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Kwame Bediako, Frederick Douglass, and Henry Louis Gates—than historical in the vein of John Thornton or Wyatt MacGaffey. Like the genealogical method of Michel Foucault, Uzukwu focuses on how power mechanisms operate and how a system of thought came to be through contingent turns of history, rather than inevitable trends. Uzukwu, following Foucault, asks of Capuchins and Spiritans, “What sort of missionaries would enslave Africans, other Christians, or any human whatsoever?” This excellent and inventive monograph is a must read for theologians, African Christianity scholars, historians of west and west central Africa, as well as Black Atlantic scholars more generally.