The holiness movement in Africa: A historiographical study of the quest for sanctification as a theological framework for understanding the emergence of Christianity in Africa

This study employs, as an integrated interpretive framework, the often academically-dismissed doctrine of holiness, in order to unravel the inner dynamics and manifestation of Christianity in Africa. It seeks to demonstrate the historiographical significance of the quest for sanctification as a theological framework for understanding the emergence of Christianity in Africa, by establishing that there is a theme of holiness that is chronologically and ecumenically identifiable throughout the formative stages of Christianity in Africa. The research, thus, considers the viability of a case that holiness, as historically expressed within the mainline churches, derived from revivalism within “classical Protestant missions”; evangelical churches associated with “faith missions” and “Wesleyan holiness missions”; and a number of African initiated churches formed as a result of “African renewal revivalism,” though with contextually determined expressions, had historically left an indelible imprint and thus furnishes a theological structure that is most descriptive of the emergence of Christianity on this continent, in essence a “holiness movement in Africa.” The explorative process is formulated to delve into those structures within holiness revivalism that connect to the life-blood of missionary thought and praxis. The study commences with the pre-colonial classical missions, particularly the axiomatic William Taylor revivals of 1866 in South Africa, relates the famous East African Revival of the 1930s with other revivalistic networks throughout the continent, and ends with the currents that shaped the phenomenon of African initiated churches, during post-colonial period of the 1960s. With Africa in view, the writer has identified the following themes in the holiness movement and used them as means of organizing the dissertation: (1) an emerging “holiness world vision” as a significant force within the American and the European holiness movement which led to (2) an attempt to expand the movement beyond the American frontiers by “spreading holiness in foreign lands” with (3) a view of establishing “a sanctified native ministry.”...