Beginnings, contacts, and encounters: Christianity and traditional religions in Egypt and Yorubaland

Since its inception, Christianity has been propagated from place to place by its adherents. In Egypt during the third through the fifth centuries, and in Yorubaland during the nineteenth to the twentieth centuries, Christianity encountered the traditional religions of the two locations and tried to displace them. Violent means were employed in Egypt to achieve this through the iconoclastic efforts of leading bishops such as Abbot Shenoute of Atripe; in Yorubaland it was done mainly through the efforts of missionaries. Christianity took root in Egypt and assimilated into the culture as Egyptians who became Christians contextualized it, making it their own so much that Christianity in Egypt developed a unique identity and became known as the Coptic Church. Partly due to the factor of foreign missionaries who were absent from Egypt but present in Yorubaland, Christianity in the latter place had a more difficult task at assimilating into the culture. Contextualization of Christianity by the Yoruba was severely restricted in the Western Initiated Churches of Yorubaland since missionaries rejected Yoruba Traditional Religion as paganism from which no identifiable practice could be brought into Christianity. Contextualization occurred in Yorubaland when Yoruba Christians began to establish their own churches, the African Initiated Churches, apart from the Western Initiated Churches controlled by missionaries. After the Western colonial power, Britain, withdrew, the power of the missionaries over the Western Initiated Churches diminished. The Yoruba Christian leaders, to whom direction of the churches then devolved, gained freedom to contextualize Christianity. Their actions have since begun to evolve a unique identity for Yoruba Christianity with all the attendant risks of syncretism that this involves.