God's Feet: Namibia's Evangelists

PRELUDE

For decades mission history in Namibia has been written from a missionary perspective mainly emphasizing the Europeans’ missionary activities and their role alone. However, we have noticed that most of the ground works have been done by the local indigenous people. For European missionaries to reach their local targets, such as local leaders to consents to operate, they always had to go through the medium of local people as interpreters or even as local missionaries and carriers of the missionaries’ message to the local people in a language or languages understood to them. European missionaries stayed mostly at mission centers while local missionaries travelled cress crossing the villages and local terrains spreading the Good News.

Unfortunately, cognizance has been taken that there has been a prevailing gap that the actual role of local missionaries was left unaddressed. It is therefore vital that such a gap need to be filled. Hans-Martin Milk is one of those who are trying to fill this historic gap. In 2004 he traced the fascinating way, how Christianity came to Kavango – mostly through the activity of local missionaries – and published it in the book For the Power and Glory: Makaranga. In 2016 he wrote a book about a debatable if not controversial contemporary topic on The Role of the Rhenish Mission Society during the Erection of Concentration Camps in Namibia 1905 to 1908 (including the actual role of local missionaries). His writings on these two topics are most enlightening.

In this book Milk ventured on the very important and much needed topic of Evangelists of the Rhenish Mission Society. This is a collection of individuals’ life stories of Namibian evangelists, analyzing their day-to-day strategies and describing how they influenced the various historical phases of Namibia church and society between 1820 and 1990. The aim of this book is, amongst others, to help to differentiate the view of the history of Namibia.

I believe this book adds value to the historical annals of the church in Namibia. It is a book worth reading because it entails also other general historical information of the country. This book is strongly recommended to the lovers of history, especially Namibian church historians and theological students and institutions – and last not least the Namibian Christians. This book also invites scholars to discover a wide range of venues for further research.

Bishop Dr S V V Nambala. Okanenge, 14 March 2022

PREFACE

This book is dedicated to the Evangelists of Namibia – the Namibian co-workers of the Rhenish missionaries of the 19th and 20th centuries. The Evangelists were a special breed of people who actively shaped the history of Namibia over the last 200 years. They were previously shrouded in the darkness of history, because their contemporary companions, namely the German missionaries who themselves liked to be in the spotlight, had kept them hidden in their reports. But it is also the result of the low level of interest that scientific research has shown in them so far.

This book collects the individual life stories of Namibian Evangelists, analyses their day-to-day strategies and describes how they influenced the various historical phases of Namibia between 1820 and 1990. The aim of this book is to give the Evangelists of Namibia a profile, to trace their exciting life stories and thus to help to differentiate the view of the history of Namibia.

Certainly, the Evangelists were not hazy figures with no long-term significance as they often appear in the literature. According to that view, they were shown to be in the shadow of the missionaries whom they accompanied or worked with. Many people whom they met may have regarded them as contradictory figures. Were they still part of the African community, were they brothers? Or were they different, had they become European, were they foreign? At the same time, however, this ambiguity opened up to them that social or liminal space in which traditional life and culture met Christian conviction and practice. Many biographies from the most diverse periods show that they had to move skilfully in this space – albeit often with dogmatic irreconcilability – in order to be heard at all. For this reason, their contribution as cultural brokers is unmistakable, despite great differences between individuals. In this role, they have also become important links in Namibian–German history.

Many of the Evangelists presented here were leading figures in the consciousness and life of the Namibian population and were addressed as omuhona or leeraar – both expressions of respect that were otherwise used only for the missionaries. This was common practice long before the missionaries even thought of giving the Evangelists positions of equal stature. They were intellectuals before the German missionaries had given them the right to a sound education, and they saw themselves as advocates of their congregations, even if the idea of the missionaries to form Evangelists into one professional group was never implemented.

Evangelists saw themselves as Christians. By making the Evangelists the protagonists in this book, and by trying to describe events from their perspective, Christianity gains its own momentum. But it is a dynamism that developed under Namibian conditions and was shaped by Namibian protagonists. This book wishes to provide a different perspective: a new view of the emergence of a Lutheran church, not from the point of view of the missionaries, but from that of the Namibian Evangelists.

The stories that have been compiled here cannot speak on behalf of the Evangelists, but they represent actions and words of Evangelists that have been absent from most scholarly studies. The resulting narrative may seem peculiar and a provocation to scholars in search of European imperialism and colonialism, but it wishes to make sense of the ideas and words of Namibian Evangelists.

As a child and young boy, I got to know Evangelists who had come for their training from all parts of Namibia to the mission station where I grew up. They belonged to the last generation of Evangelists. Some of them specifically impressed me when I listened to them, when I observed how they interacted with one another and others in the wider community, and when I got to know them better – when I became friends with some of them. This was an extraordinary experience for a white boy under apartheid. The Evangelists sharpened my senses to what it means to be a Christian born in Africa. However, they also made me aware of the evil of apartheid, which we experienced from different sides. That is why some names in this book mean more to me than just written life stories. When, a few years ago, I began collecting the details of the generations of Evangelists before them from the archives, it soon became apparent that they were already part of a tradition of important personalities. Researching and composing biographical details thus became a continuation of my personal experiences.

Where possible, I have tried to document the stories of former Evangelists, their families, and descendants, through life history interviews. I would like to thank those who made themselves available for their patience and effort – the long list of them forms part of the appendix. Pastor Tylvas Haitula helped me with translations from Oshikwanyama. I would like to thank him and the late Pastor Jesaja Nashongo (1944–2021), who facilitated some of the interviews.

I owe the impetus for this research not only to my personal background but also to the many narratives of RMS missionaries and their wives, whose encounters with Evangelists left a deep and lasting impression on them. My systematic research on the role of the Evangelists in Namibian history was furthermore triggered through a text by Jan-Bart Gewald (2007), in which he described with great empathy the work of the Evangelists during the collection work of the RMS. At the end of this contribution, he encouraged the scientific community to turn to the subject of the Evangelists, but his plea did not get the expected response, even years later.

I received practical help for this book from Dag Henrichsen (Basler Afrika Bibliographien) who generously made his research collection available to me and who enriched my insight into the Evangelists of the 19th century. After reading the first results of my research, Prof Theo Sundermeier encouraged me to publish the text in German; without his encouragement, I might not have gone ahead with having it published.

I am grateful to the staff of the archives in Wuppertal and Windhoek, where I spent a lot of time, for their support, especially Mr Apelt from the Archives and Museum Foundation of the UEM. I would like to thank Mrs Brigitte Jahn-Lennig and the publisher’s reader, Mrs Bettina von Clausewitz, for undertaking the difficult task of proofreading the original text in German. I also thank the many private donors, among them the MAKSA members, who have helped me to cover the considerable printing costs of the German book with their financial support.

This book is a translation of my German text published in 2019 by Rüdiger Köppe Verlag "… der im Sturm steht wie ein Kameldornbaum (… he who stands in the storm like a Camelthorn tree"). The German title is based on the statements of Namibian Evangelists, who compared themselves and their work to the Camel-thorn tree, which is not blown back and forth by every gust of wind like a reed but remains firm and stable, from whichever direction the storm may come. The gnarled and expressive appearance of the Camel-thorn tree (Acacia erioloba) is typical of many areas of Namibia. The fact that the quote is a reference to biblical texts is indicative of the way of thinking of the Evangelists. For them, the words from Jeremiah 17, verse 8, He is like a tree planted by the waters, which spreads out its roots by the river, was a direct reference to the Camel-thorn tree.

The German version of the book was aimed at a German-speaking readership. As can be seen from the list of sources, most of the primary sources are in German. The sources, as well as the archives where most of the sources are kept, indicate that this book covers an inherently German historical topic as it reveals the deep entanglement of Germany in Namibian mission and colonial history.

However, the book also covers an obviously Namibian topic. As the protagonists of the text are all Namibian, a likely interest group of readers would be Namibians. It was therefore undisputable from the beginning that an English translation was needed. As all the quotations from the original sources were printed in the German version of the book, it was decided not to reprint them in the footnotes of the English version. Readers are therefore referred to the German version should they wish to verify the original text. I have chosen another title for the English version and not a direct translation from the German title. However, the English title is also based on the statements of Namibian Evangelists. They saw themselves as the messengers of Gods Word and faithfully carried the burden, the mission had loaded on them.

I would like to thank Prof Rolf Annas for his constructive cooperation and his goal-driven approach in translating the text into English. I would also like to thank Fran Denton and Ruth Coetzee for their many linguistic hints and for painstakingly proofreading the English text.

The chapters of the book are based, in chronological order, on the biographies of Evangelists. These are subdivided by themes describing the living environment of the Evangelists. These include the women and children of the Evangelists, the political and social conditions, labour migration, and the confessional development in Namibia. The co-workers referred to by the missionaries as Evangelists were only men. That is why this history of the emerging Lutheran Church is a male-only story. Where women took on similar roles as Evangelists, I have described their stories, because the people of the church consisted, and to this day still consist, mostly of women.

As the Evangelists in the original documents were mostly only referred to with their first name, I made it a rule in this text that their full name is always mentioned, and if available also their African name. Unfortunately for eight per cent of the total number of Evangelists who were traced and documented, it was impossible to find a surname. In these cases, the place where these Evangelists worked was used as the second name. To further emphasise the appreciation of the work of the heroes of this book, I have chosen to write Evangelist with a capital letter, against all generally valid and accepted spelling norms. It is worth noting here that the word Evangelist is used within the context of the German-speaking environment of the RMS. In German mission societies, the missionaries never referred to themselves as Evangelists, as was the practice in Anglophone nonconformist missionary societies.

The complex language regime of historical terms in connection with Namibia requires some explanation. This is already the case with the word Namibia because the Republic of Namibia has only been in existence since independence in 1990. Nevertheless, for purely practical reasons, I use the term Namibia to refer to the area in which the Evangelists of this book worked in the 19th and 20th centuries. Of course, the historical names of the respective areas would more accurately reflect the events, since the idea of a common Namibia would, for example, have been completely foreign to an Evangelist in the Great Namaqualand in the middle of the 19th century. Nevertheless, I opted for a pragmatic form of the language regime in this book. Further explanations can be found in the glossary.

The choice of language for institutions, groupings, and functions also had to be regulated for this book, for example, when referring to the three different Evangelical Lutheran churches in Namibia, and their names before independence and the names of their predecessors. They are described in detail in the glossary. In the text, the simplest form is used, preferably the English form, or in the language in which the acronym is used.

The language regime for the events in Namibia between 1904 and 1908 is another issue and a topic of controversial discussions. The various current terms such as Herero War, Herero Uprising, German–Herero War, German Namibian War, or more generally genocide or genocidal phase are used in literature for the different phases of this period. Each of the terms contains a particular historical interpretation. No Evangelist family was spared the annihilation caused by the actions of the colonial military and the European settlers during this period. The focus on the biographical narratives in this book is less about the correct term for this historical phase than about the biographies of those affected.

All terms used in other languages, or special terms which are important for understanding the text, are explained in detail in the glossary.

1 INTRODUCTION

THE CHURCH

This is the historical narrative of the Evangelists, who have shaped the emergence of one of the most important protestant churches in Namibia in a most exceptional way. The history of this church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Republic of Namibia (ELCRN), is the history of the Evangelists. Their biographies are intended to open up a new perspective on the history of the origins of the church.

In the broadest sense, the ELCRN did not originate from when the first missionaries of the Rhenish Mission Society (RMS) crossed the Orange River as it is always assumed. It began with the Evangelists who laid the foundation for Protestant congregations in Namibia in the 1820s, along with missionaries from the London Missionary Society (LMS) and the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society (WMMS). When their patrons – first Germans and then the English and Scottish – had already left the country, LMS and WMMS Evangelists continued on their own to lead the Christians who had gathered around them. When the first RMS missionaries came to Namibia in 1842 with their own Evangelists, some of these local Evangelists joined them.

The first years of the presence of RMS missionaries and their Evangelists were characterised by their dependence on the infrastructure at the Cape. RMS mission stations had existed there for decades. This was where the missionaries lived who ensured the supply of vital necessities and maintained their connection to Germany while the new missionaries made their way to Namibia. The Evangelists who accompanied them from the Cape brought along their own understanding of the Bible as well as their own cultural heritage.

In Namibia, the typical pattern of 19th century missionary work repeated itself when new territories were explored. In most cases, Evangelists advanced into unknown areas as harbingers, settling in a new place to gather their first converts through meetings and baptismal instruction before missionaries followed. Already at the beginning of the 19th century, Namibians must have been confronted with Christianity. Not only because of the Evangelists’ connection to Europeans but also because of their personality, persuasiveness, and appearance, the Evangelists were able to convey the message of Christianity in a form that seemed coherent and credible under local conditions.

The apparent dependence of European missionaries on African Evangelists shaped their relationship with one another. Therefore, it is not surprising that in the middle of the 19th century, individual Evangelists were called brothers (the name by which the RMS missionaries addressed each other) and participated in the conferences of missionaries as equal partners. It was not until the end of the 19th century that Eurocentric and racist thinking gained more and more ground and changed the basis of the Evangelists’ work and their cooperation with the missionaries. German colonialism, with its aggressive policy of settlement, inevitably led to the wars of 1904 to 1907, which the German colonial rulers used to destroy entire sections of the population. There were hardly any Evangelists who were not directly affected by these events.

After this catastrophic period instigated by the colonists, mission congregations were able to gather again with the help of the Evangelists. The latter found themselves in a special role, in that the people abducted to camps and farms saw them as mediators who were bringing new hope and a comforting message. With the end of the German colonial period after World War I, Evangelists also had expectations of a better future, but the structural inequalities of land division and wage conditions did not change under the new colonial rulers. From now on Evangelists finally became Itinerant Evangelists who worked among farm workers dependent on the Europeans for their wages, or else they became itinerant preachers among the scattered, impoverished reserve inhabitants.

Evangelists fell victim to the drought and the Great Depression of the 1930s because they did not own cattle, and the Missionary Society could not even continue to pay them their low salaries. With World War II, new conditions were created under which Evangelists in the missionary congregations once again came to have particular importance. This had to do with the fact that most RMS missionaries were either interned in South Africa or had been prevented by ordinances from travelling in their congregations.

Therefore in many places, Evangelists took over the complete work of missionaries and were able to work without the dominant presence of their superiors. After the war, the RMS praeses, Heinrich Vedder, entered into negotiations with the Nederduits Gereformeerde Kerk (NGK) because of the precarious financial situation of the RMS. He intended to hand over the RMS mission congregations to the NGK, but when this became known, growing dissatisfaction made itself heard and the Nama Evangelists in the south of Namibia became the driving force in striving for separation from the RMS. Together with a significant part of the Nama congregations, these Evangelists joined the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AMEC).

This incisive event forced the leadership of the RMS missionaries to rethink their position on Evangelists. In July 1949, for the first time, a Head Evangelist was ordained as a pastor. This decision was indirectly forced on the RMS by the Evangelists who had since turned their backs on the RMS. For decades, RMS missionaries had discussed the ordination of Evangelists (which had already taken place in the 19th century in two instances) but had repeatedly postponed it. When discussions started between the RMS missionaries and their German mission leadership about a congregation/church order¹ and the independence of the mission church, the Evangelists were only marginally involved in some cases or not at all. These discussions had already commenced in the 1920s; however, it was only after the previously separate conference circuits of the Nama and Herero missionaries were merged in 1928, that a church order was adopted by the RMS missionaries in 1934. In 1950, a commission was established to develop a new church order, which, only from 1953, included four pastors and thus former Evangelists.

Fig. 1: The earliest photos of Namibian Evangelists date back to the late 19th century. This photo shows Evangelists and elders from Otjosazu and its branches. They are (from left to right): Gottlieb Makono, Paul Mbenovandu, Elifas Kukuri, Elia Kandirikirira, Zachäus of Katumba and Assa Kauami

While Evangelists were instrumental in the secession of 1949, they played a different role in the second secession. When large numbers of Ovaherero congregation members separated from the RMS, Ovaherero Evangelists/pastors tried to prevent this. Only one of the Ovaherero pastors and one Evangelist separated from the RMS and joined Oruuano. Here, too, dissatisfaction within the RMS mission congregations existed, dating back to the 1920s.

When the Evangeliese Lutherse Kerk in Suidwes-Afrika (Rynse Sendingkerk) (ELK) was constituted in October 1957 as an independent church from the former mission congregations, the majority of the paid church employees consisted of Evangelists. In addition to the four missionaries, five former Evangelists, now ordained as pastors, were elected to the leadership of the ELK.² However, despite their numerical strength and historical significance, Evangelists were not provided for, according to the church order, and were therefore not represented within the church leadership.

The founding of the ELK also became the occasion for a further secession. The reason this time was exclusively ethnic and the secession remained limited to the congregation in Rehoboth. Four local Evangelists worked in Rehoboth and on the outskirts during the establishment of a Rynse Kerk in Suidwes-Afrika.³ One of them⁴ joined the new church and was ordained as a pastor in this church in February 1963.

In the early 1960s, the South African government extended its apartheid policy to Namibia with the implementation of the Odendaal Plan. This posed a huge challenge for the ELK. The church and its co-workers, who had tried hard to overcome the various ethnic and linguistic boundaries of the country, were now to be divided into ethnic groups according to a South African concept and were to receive a new tribal profile in the planned homelands. This led to the beginning of the armed liberation struggle in Ovamboland, and also laid seeds of resistance throughout the rest of Namibia.

In the revised version of the church order of 1967 (the church council now consisted of eight pastors, one layperson, and two missionaries), the Evangelists were given a role in the ministry but without a position in the church council. RMS missionaries, who had up to then occupied leadership positions, only reluctantly stepped back from these positions and gave way to Namibian pastors. The famous Open Letter of the Lutheran Churches against the occupation of South Africa in 1971 was signed on behalf of the ELK by a former Evangelist, who had since been ordained as a pastor. Although his missionary teachers preached and practised political abstinence, he and his peers, together with young theology students, took the step towards liberation theology. As a courageous political demonstration, the Open Letter became part of this theology.

Until 1972, an RMS missionary remained the leader of the church. At the 5th Ordinary Synod of the ELK in 1972, his successor was elected. For the first time, a local pastor (the former Evangelist Lukas de Vries) became praeses. After his theological training as an Evangelist, he too worked for a year in his congregation of origin, Rehoboth, before he was subsequently trained as a pastor in the Paulinum and ordained on 15 April 1962. Three more of his successors in their position as praeses had been Evangelists before their ordination, and thus knew the work of the church from this perspective. They were Hendrik Frederick (1979–1993), James Gottfried Ngapurue (1993–1995) and Petrus Diergaardt (1995–2001).

If the period of the armed liberation struggle after 1966 is taken into account, Namibia experienced warlike conditions for about 84 years – from 1820 until independence in 1990 – almost half of the time considered. This situation has been used in the past as an argument to explain the conflicts in the development of the mission church.⁵ In this book, a connection is to be established between the violent conflicts and the situation of the Evangelists, elders, and teachers who, as leaders, suffered personally or commiserated in a special way with the population.

With the independence of Namibia, the ELK changed its name to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Republic of Namibia (ELCRN) and thus formally adapted to its role as church in an independent state. Today there are no more Evangelists in this church. The last one was ordained shortly before independence. The position of the Evangelist was abolished in the congregations, as the church leaders felt that there was no more need for them under the new circumstances.

The last Evangelist in a long series, which started with the 13-year-old wackere Gehülfe (valiant helper) Daniel Cloete in June 1842 – was the Evangelist Joel Toage Hanadoub, who was ordained as pastor in Outjo in October 1988. He was almost 40 years old at the time. With him, two young theologians, who were solemnly ordained and installed as pastors by Bishop Zephania Kameeta, stood in front of the altar of the Evangelical Lutheran congregation. For the two of them, after their theological studies, this was the beginning of their professional life. However, for Hanadoub, it was the culmination of an arduous journey to be recognised as pastor of his church and the end of his activity as an Evangelist, the running boy and pack donkey, as he figuratively characterises the Evangelist’s activity.⁶

Fig. 2: A typical scene of a church service of an Evangelist. A small congregation, consisting mainly of women, a few children and still fewer men in the extreme poverty of their living surroundings. This photo shows the Evangelist Wilhelm Fischer during a church service in Armstraat (poor road) along the Kuiseb river in the 1970s

South-western Africa between 1842 and 1988 is roughly the geographical and historical framework in which the story of the Evangelists is to be told. Their activities were, however, not limited by the current national borders of Namibia. Daniel Cloete is one such example of how the history of the Evangelists is connected to the situation in the area south of the Orange River (then known as Little Namaqualand). The same applies to later Evangelists who worked in the south of present-day Angola, a border region with Namibia, where the national borders were not clearly defined until the 1920s.

Since Namibian Evangelists through exile and migration were also active in present-day Botswana and in the north-eastern part of South Africa, these areas will also come into focus. The work of the Evangelists also cannot be strictly limited to the period after 1842, as Daniel Cloete, for example, had used communication structures that had been there before his time and Evangelists had already been at work since the 1820s. As mentioned previously, the very first Evangelists were active in the LMS or the WMMS, whereas in the 20th century, Evangelists associated with the Finnish Missionary Society (FMS) also play a role.

THE ACTORS

The Missionaries

The Evangelists were financially dependent on the missionaries; their relationships were interdependent and characterised by mutual influence. It is therefore necessary to make some remarks on the missionaries in this introduction. This book does not deal with missionaries and their work! However, they cannot be ignored, because the Evangelists and their contributions would not have been possible without the work of the missionaries. Although in many cases, Evangelists were quite autonomous in their activities, their work within the RMS was very much determined by the missionaries. Missionaries, their self-image, their families, and their theology, as well as their superiors at the headquarters in Barmen, are only referred to in this book in some detail if relevant for the understanding of the situation of the Evangelists.

For decades, it seemed fashionable among German historians to refer to the negative and stereotypical images which missionaries would have had of African people, and how they treated non-European cultures. However, a more complex view of the attitudes of the missionaries is obtained if we look at how they treated the Evangelists. In daily interaction with the missionaries, Evangelists experienced the full spectrum of personal relationships, from close friendship to paternalism and racist rejection.

Mission literature shows how often the Evangelists were praised by the missionaries for their loyalty and sincerity when demonstrating the power of the Gospel in processes of individual and social change. The Lebensbilder (confessions) published by the RMS in the 19th and 20th centuries highlight the Evangelists’ contribution to the spread of the Gospel as a heroic narrative of piety and fidelity, not only towards God but also towards their solemn fathers in Barmen.

The perceptions of missionaries, however, are not the focus of this book but rather an attempt is made to present various phases of Namibian mission history and church history from a different perspective. The focus is on the question: how can the history of Namibia be told if it revolves around the lives of the Evangelists? This depiction is based on an approach that historians have developed in recent years.⁷ The non-Western world was not less capable of action, nor pre-modernist when compared to the West. In the process, the Evangelists became agents and thus collaborators of mission work, who created new ideological structures.

Even if this book revolves around individual Evangelists, its aim is not making the Evangelists speak or giving them a voice, since there are hardly any autobiographical sources that would allow us to know what they said. All information and statements about them are second-hand and tainted by the interpretation of the respective informant. However, data about more than 700 Namibian Evangelists has been collected in this study, and with the fascinating details based on their CVs, many an aspiring author could write exciting biographical novels with the information.⁸ So how do we deal with the exciting individual stories that we uncover when studying the files without succumbing to the temptation to write yet another master narrative? In this context, Kriel rightly asks:

How visible can one make a figure which contemporaneous documentation as well as subsequent historiographical and other memory-making processes have not written into the spotlight?⁹

In this book, Kriel’s question will refer to the Evangelists, and the information provided should encourage readers to attempt their own imaginative interpretation in a responsible and transparent manner. There is not always enough information available to make the Evangelists visible, so readers can perform this process of interpretation on their own and will hopefully use their imagination to make a historical figure come to life and through their actions become a plausible personality.

Another question arises: how must the biographies of the Evangelists be selected and compiled in order to do justice to their history and importance in Namibia? Gewald’s advice to seek a just balance between individual agency and structural determinants¹⁰ can be regarded as a guideline. In that sense, the biographies which have been selected for this book should do justice to the Evangelists and make their actions comprehensible within their historical context.

The Evangelists

The use of the term Evangelist in this book also requires an explanation, because it has a different connotation in the European context as opposed to the historical context described here. The term for the group of people to be described here changed over the course of the mission history of Namibia. It is noteworthy that the RMS missionaries never referred to themselves as Evangelists – unlike, for example, the Anglophone LMS or WMMS missionaries who did refer to themselves as Evangelists.

The word Evangelist has the same linguistic roots as the old English word evangel – the Gospel – and the Greek word euangelion, which refers to the reward given to the deliverers of the Good News, or the Good News itself. In Protestant understanding of the New Testament, evangel/ euangelion means the proclamation of Christ and the redemption that he brings. The Evangelist would therefore, be the one who comes to proclaim this redemption, that is, the itinerant preacher.¹¹ It was not until the 3rd century that the term Evangelist prevailed for the supposed scribes of the Gospels in the New Testament.¹² In Luther’s translation of the Bible, which was used by the RMS missionaries, the term appears only twice, the first of which is in Acts 21:8: And the next day we that were of Paul’s company departed, and came unto Caesara: and we entered into the house of Philip the Evangelist, which was one of the seven; and we abode with him.

According to the mission theology which was established later, the text refers to a position or job of a man who – like others – were [...] trained and sent out to be ministers of the gospel in places which he (Paul) was unable himself to visit.¹³ In Luther’s translation, the second biblical passage which uses the word Evangelist, is Ephesians 4, to which Luther gave the heading Mahnung zur Einigkeit (Admonition to Unite) and refers to one body and one spirit [...], one baptism and one God and Father. In verse 11, the Evangelist is mentioned: And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, Evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers.

How these two verses of the New Testament became the foundation for the missionary practice will be explained later in this book.

Kümmel takes the view that the term Evangelist, other than in this biblical context, was no longer used after the founding of the first Christian church, and only acquired another meaning centuries later during the time of late European Pietism. Then, the term was used for outstanding Christian personalities who, through their preaching of the Gospel, reached large numbers of people and so shaped the spirituality of the established church in the long term. In the course of the European mission movement, which developed at the same time as colonialism, the term Evangelist acquired the meaning as it is used in this book.

A more detailed definition seems useful in order to describe the concept of the Evangelist as it is used here: he was the local co-worker, usually with rudimentary training, who was the agent of the European missionaries who, for financial reward (in various forms, when in cash, then mostly from local sources), worked among Christians and non-Christians, under conditions or in areas where the long-term presence of a missionary seemed unreasonable or impossible. This definition includes Christians who were entrusted with the spiritual guidance and supervision of a Christian congregation. This role of an Evangelist was formed by European missionaries and their supervisory bodies and leaves the Evangelist in the role of the subordinate who anticipates and executes the concepts shaped by the missionaries’ ideas. The Evangelists’ abilities, knowledge and authority are thereby purely based on cooperation with the European missionaries. In this book, the term is therefore used according to most of the sources which have been consulted.

In Namibia, the term was only applied towards the end of the 19th century. Before that, the terms Gehülfen/Gehilfen (helper), Missionsgehülfen (missionary helper) or Nationalgehülfen/Nationalgehilfen (local helper), were commonly used. By that time these designations had no negative connotations, as the following remark, dated 1844, demonstrates: If the missionary is considered to be the main flow, then the local helper is the tributary. Unfortunately this [cooperative concept] will not be understood in the hierarchical institutional church structures. But they can learn it from the Mission and will, hopefully, learn it more and more.¹⁴

The term National-Katechet (local catechist) was only used for Johann Friedrich Hein and Jan Bam, perhaps because they remained the only Evangelists ordained with certain limitations in the 19th century. The term Katechet (catechist) had its origin in the Tranquebar Mission and was later also used by the Moravian Mission in South Africa. However, it described the same group of co-workers who were referred to as the Evangelists of the RMS. In the RMS the term Katechet was used for German co-workers who joined the Mission as artisans and then started training as missionaries on the job during the 19th century, for example, former mission colonist Johann Baumann. The Catholic mission used the term catechist for their Evangelists. During later years, the term was associated with negative attributes in the Anglophone mission societies of the non-conformists.¹⁵

Schulgehülfen (school helpers),¹⁶ Monitore (observers),¹⁷ Prediger (preachers), Reiseprediger (itinerant preachers),¹⁸ Vorleser (readers),¹⁹ Reise-Älteste (itinerant elders),²⁰ Inländische Gehülfen (local helpers),²¹ Stationshelfer (station helpers),²² Vorleute (supervisors),²³Hauptgehilfe, Unterhelfer or Oberhelfer (main helpers, junior or senior helpers) ²⁴ are all names that have been used by different missionaries for shorter or longer periods, describing the group of helpers all to be called Evangelists in this book. What they all have in common is that they worked under similar conditions, determined by the demands of mission work. It was only when the conditions became more varied, that the terms Wanderevangelist (Itinerant Evangelist) and Hauptevangelist (Head Evangelist) were introduced into RMS missionary work in order to create a hierarchical structure among the Evangelists in the mission congregation. The Evangelist who was to reach the Christian farm workers on extensive journeys to the farms, was now subordinate to the Evangelist who did the congregational work within the local congregation. As early as the 1930s these concepts, as well as the activities, became blurred, just as the powers of the Head Evangelists, ordained pastors and missionaries became increasingly similar.

When the term Namibian Evangelists is used below, it broadly describes their origin. The fact that Namibia does not always refer to the country with its current borders of 1990 has already been mentioned. Namibian Evangelists spoke the following languages as their mother tongues: Nama, Otjiherero, Cape Dutch/Afrikaans, Tswana, as well as the various dialects of Oshivambo, Ombandja and Nkumbi. This partly describes their ethnic origin if this criterion, (which is burdened by apartheid), is to be taken into account. For the RMS missionaries of the 19th and part of the early 20th century, the Nama, Ovaherero, Damara and RehobothBaster were regarded as nations, from whose midst they wanted to form a social class of Evangelists.

Fig. 3: Andreas Kukuri preaching

After the German colonial wars of extermination, the subsequent massive land acquisition by German settlers and the expulsion of the Ovaherero and Nama from their ancestral lands, new population groups were formed in various parts of Namibia. These population groups could no longer be clearly divided along ethnic lines, and this tendency can also be seen in the lives of the Evangelists. While they had mostly already grown up speaking more than one language, they often came from different population groups through the origins of their parents. Their ability to cross linguistic and cultural borders can therefore be traced back to this aspect of their origin. Therefore, when the term Namibian Evangelists is used in this book, it refers back to this diversity and an Evangelist will only be categorised according to his mother tongue if it was of prime importance for his work.

The Pastors

A drastic change in the life of an Evangelist occurred when he was ordained and became a pastor. It was not customary in the RMS Mission Church until after World War II, and initially only applied to a small number of Evangelists. As this book is limited to the history of Evangelists, their lives after ordination are described only in broad outline, even if the focus of their life’s work was only after ordination. Evangelists who joined other denominations or churches or who founded new ones themselves are included, until the start of their association with the other church. Both restrictions were necessary for reasons of space in this book and should not be seen as lessening the importance of this part of their work. The same goes for the many pastors who have shaped the ELCRN since 1988 without ever having worked as Evangelists. They are either not covered here or their lives have not been documented. Their stories must still be written.

The Interpreters

The interpreters who played an important role in the work of the missionaries during the first decades of the 19th century will also be included in this book and will also be referred to as Evangelists. The first generation of RMS missionaries was particularly reliant on interpreters before they were able to communicate in Nama, Otjiherero or Kwanyama. Most of the interpreters of this time were very close to the first missionaries. Through personal conversion experiences, they demonstrated their closeness to the Christian message brought to them by the missionaries. They became language teachers, indispensable companions, mediators, pioneers and protectors of the missionaries, and some remained in their service, even when their task as interpreter was no longer necessary. The extent to which the description of hired foreign experts²⁵ applies to them will be analysed on a case-by-case basis. Evangelists who did not put themselves under the authoritarian–patriarchal leadership of a missionary, but who, by their own initiative, provided spiritual guidance to a congregation without breaking off contact with the RMS Mission Church, will also be included.

The Teachers

Only those teachers who were active during the first 60 years of the RMS’s presence in Namibia will be considered. Until that time, in the understanding of the people, the church was regarded as the school and the school was seen as the church, because church services and school classes took place in the same location, and the Namibian teacher was also the preacher. This means that, at this time, the role of the Evangelist and the teacher could not always be clearly distinguished. Often, in the early days, the Evangelist’s baptism classes also became a reading and writing lesson, because the Protestant approach was that every Christian should also be able to read the biblical texts themselves. This made the preparatory lessons for baptism more than just religious instruction. On remote farms, the farm workers had no opportunities to send their children to school. Up until World War II, only Evangelists taught them at irregular intervals whenever they came to visit on one of their farm trips.²⁶

As early as 1880, tension between the training of teachers and the training of Evangelists became apparent within the RMS. Many students preferred to leave the training centre, after the shorter period of training required to become a teacher, in order to take up a coveted position as teacher. Many preferred this, as opposed to having to endure the hard work required for the training of Evangelists, as was expected of them. Or, as the students of the Augustineum put it to their principal: We rather want to become schoolteachers, then we can marry soon. Otherwise we have to learn much longer, for which we have no desire.²⁷ From early on, teachers enjoyed great recognition and social status in the congregation, which became apparent in Nama congregations. For example, the title Meester was used not only as a job description but also as a sign of respect. The title Leeraar, an Afrikaans word previously reserved solely for missionaries and used for pastors after the ordination of the first Evangelists, also gives an indication of the importance of the teaching profession.

Teachers were never subjected to the moral requirements of missionaries to the same degree as the Evangelists. For Evangelists, to give but one example, the arrangement was that they should be summarily dismissed without the chance of re-employment in case of moral falls (a term mostly used in connection with adultery). With teachers the practice was much more lenient as the final decision was made on a case-by-case basis and re-employment was possible, if sufficient signs of remorse were evident.²⁸ Therefore, despite strict control, teachers were able to command more personal freedom and so were able to distance themselves more clearly from the missionary. Even though the missionaries tried to involve the teachers in the mission congregation through duties within the church service and congregation leadership, they were less dependent on the goodwill of the missionary. Furthermore, members of the congregation were much more willing to pay a teacher’s salary than that of an Evangelist.²⁹

By the advent of German colonialism, schools became a domain where religion and politics interacted. After the establishment of the German colonial administration in Namibia in the late 1890s, the rulers, who until then had shown little interest in the events in the mission congregations, began to exert their influence on the school work of the RMS. The need for a sufficient number of workers who were able to communicate in a rudimentary German, and the need to have sufficient interpreters in the administration, in the courts and in the military, prompted the colonial administration to communicate their expectations to the RMS. On the one hand, there was a demand for education to work, as precisely described by the Secretary of State, Bernhard Dernburg: The mission societies can also be part in teaching the natives how to work if they shift their emphasis from hours-long praying to working.³⁰ On the other hand, there was a need to introduce German as the language of instruction or to teach German as a European language to the pupils of the RMS schools. From the end of the 19th century, mission schools who responded positively to these requests received small amounts of financial support from the colonial administration without the RMS having any right to claim payment. In Windhoek, missionary Carl Friedrich Wandres had already in the early 1900s managed to obtain payment for RMS teachers from the colonial administration owing to his closeness to the rulers.

The introduction of German caused some controversy among the RMS missionaries so that their support for the introduction of German as the language of instruction was somewhat reluctant. The key argument in favour of teaching the language was that it would give access to funding. But with the financial grant, the colonial administration claimed control over teachers and the teaching of German. Although true for only a few schools and teachers, the station missionary under these circumstances lost unrestricted authority in this field of his work, even if this did not necessarily have a positive effect on the African teacher. But, unlike the Evangelist, from the 1890s onwards, the teacher was no longer solely under the control of the mission.³¹

A few years after South Africa took control of Namibia, state control of education through the Education Department was introduced with the Union of South Africa Proclamation, the so-called Education Proclamation No. 52 of 1921 (17 December 1921). For the first time, rules and regulations for so-called Non-European Education were introduced. From now on the conditions of employment and the individual selection of Namibian teachers, their classification and pay, as well as the content of the curricula were only determined by the Education Department. Teachers’ salaries were paid by the administration. Director Hermann Heinrich Gerhard Kreft, the son of an RMS missionary from the Cape, was appointed as head of the Education Department.³² An inspector³³ regularly visited and inspected the mission schools, held examinations, decided on transfers of teachers and submitted a report. The mission remained head of the schools (at least until the 1950s) and trained teachers with the government’s financial support (until the Augustineum was handed over to state authority in 1943).

These general remarks should justify the exclusion of teachers after around 1900 from this study, since they do not belong to the group of Evangelists in a narrow sense. An exclusive view of the group of Evangelists, as they were defined above, will not limit the description of this group, but will ensure a better focus.

The Congregation Elders

The elders of the congregations will also not be the focus of this study. The RMS had a United Protestant background which combined Lutheran and Reformed traditions. Because the RMS felt connected to both the Lutheran and the Reformed confession, it always found synodal participation in its mission congregations important, even if in practice the participatory leadership was often restricted by the authoritarian top-down approach. Once a mission congregation had been established – and it was usually considered to be founded when an RMS missionary settled in the area – the missionary approached elders to help him lead the congregation without receiving remuneration for their work (only in rare cases were they called presbyters in Namibia). According to a later church order, the missionaries were required to have the elders elected by the congregation every four years. This church/congregation order laid the foundation for a democratic structure in the mission congregations. However, examples show that missionaries undermined this democratic structure, particularly if they found it necessary to prevent the election of elders who did not comply with the expectations of the missionaries. Regardless of whether an elder enjoyed the sympathy of the missionaries or not, the primary literature shows that they were all self-confident leaders of their communities.³⁴

Missionary Wandres, who would later become Nama praeses, for example, in 1892 described the expectations of an elder and his duties as follows: he had to be able to read in order to read the Bible independently and thus understand it correctly. In order to achieve this, regular meetings with the missionary and other elders were necessary. The elder would have to visit the poor and sick in the mission congregation, and be able to pray and speak before the entire congregation (for example, it was customary for elders to lead the service in the absence of the missionary). He would also have to regularly visit congregation members in his own district to play the role of opziener (overseer).

This made the elder the most important link between the congregation and the missionary, enabling him to always be informed about developments in the congregation. In addition to these duties, which belonged to the ecclesiastical duty of all the congregation elders, elders were also used for sermon journeys. They had to accompany a missionary on a journey at least once to be introduced to the congregants. When an elder was appointed Reiseouderling (travel elder), he had to prepare the sermons for his journey, record events during the journey, and, upon his return, present a report to the congregation.³⁵

This shows how blurred the differences between the activities of the Evangelists and the elders often were. For example, the annual reports of the Keetmanshoop congregation from around 1913 show that elders were asked or urged by the missionary to go on farm journeys, either alone or accompanying the missionary. Only a few elders felt called to do so. But if, in the eyes of the missionary, they did so with the expected devotion and visible success which reflected in the numbers of the baptismal candidates for the missionary, then they could be appointed as Evangelists and their unpaid work became an underpaid remunerated employment. From then on they were regarded as Evangelists. Through this form of financial compensation, which was funded by the amounts collected from the congregation members, the missionary had a much more direct influence on the Evangelist than was the case with the voluntary, unpaid elders.

In order not to obscure the view of the working and living conditions of the Evangelists, this book deliberately does not include the elders, although, similar to the situation of the RMS teachers, there is an obvious desideratum for further research. For example, case studies based on primary sources that examine the development of mission congregations beyond the colonial period, are lacking. As there have always been many more elders than Evangelists, there is sufficient source material available for research on these elders in the congregations.

THE SOURCES

Archive Material

Two problems seem particularly significant in terms of the primary sources of the history of the Evangelists. On the one hand, research such as this depends on sources written or authorised almost exclusively by European missionaries and other Europeans. On the other hand, the volume of available sources has increased exponentially during the many years of the missionaries’ work, because each missionary was encouraged to report regularly on his work, and correspondence with the mission headquarters in Barmen had become more detailed. When using the sources, it is important to avoid two possible approaches: either to unintentionally adopt the perspective of the missionaries on the Evangelists, or to completely ignore the significance of the missionaries’ accounts only because of their obviously biased view of the Evangelists.

Since the vast majority of the sources were written by the RMS missionaries themselves, particular attention must be paid to their heritage, their families, their education, their theological understanding, and their relationship with the solemn fathers in Barmen, as well as their working conditions in Namibia. Extensive and detailed research results are available in all these areas.³⁶ Although the focus of this existing detailed research is on the German colonial period, the profile of the missionaries can already be seen, as can the working conditions of the Evangelists described in this study.

The sources must be evaluated not only according to who wrote them, but also for whom they were written. In addition to the missionaries, the target group of readers and donors for whom the missionaries wrote their reports needs to be kept in mind while reading the sources. They were the numerous mission supporters in Germany who wanted to be enriched in their religious lives and in their piety, by reading the reports of the missionaries. These resulting limitations of the sources have been taken into account, as the missionaries were obviously inclined to satisfy the expectations of the readers of their reports. Generally, it is considered that the more distant a report is from Barmen, and the more certain the missionary was that it would not be published in Barmen, the more valuable the text of an RMS missionary is. As Miettinen put it, the more references to God a letter had, the more likely it was meant for publication.³⁷ With regard to the reporting about Evangelists, there is much to suggest that some RMS missionaries were unwilling to present the work of the Evangelists in a very positive way. They were afraid it might become clear that the support of the Evangelists was indispensable or that the work of the missionary might seem superfluous. At least since the 1880s, it has been part of the theoretical concept of the RMS missionaries to gradually make themselves superfluous so that they can then move on.³⁸ However, it is often not clear that the missionaries conveyed this idea when describing the work of the Evangelists.

It seems helpful to analyse two aspects of the sources related to the Evangelists.³⁹

The first aspect asks what is the validity of a text about an Evangelist, in other words, what is the true value of a text which a missionary wrote about an Evangelist? To what extent have the Evangelists actually given the missionaries a comprehensive insight into their motives, work, and influence? This is a question that goes to the core of the relationship between missionary and Evangelist, pointing to simulation, pretence, distortion, and ambivalence on the side of the Evangelist, an important strategy that recognises, but also undermines the power of missionaries.⁴⁰ To some extent, missionaries have recognised this situation and formulated it in their own words. Johann Georg Krönlein, for example, wrote the following to his superiors in Barmen in January 1852: I can assure you, they [the African colleagues] wants to make us Europeans to think they are dull-witted, because they know we think they are and because behind this perceived stupidity they can hide all their clever intrigues.⁴¹

The second aspect questions the reliability of a text on an Evangelist, in other words, how much can we rely on and trust the missionary that things really happened the way he reported them to Germany? How truthful are the stories about Evangelists when the factors under which the texts of the missionaries originated are taken into account?

In the reports of