Why was the American Baptist Church Aiding the Savage Henry Morton Stanley?

The Livingstone Inland Mission (LIM) was an evangelical missionary society that operated in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo between 1878 and 1884. Although this mission was initially funded by Henry Grattan Guinness and his wife Fanny, it was later supported by the American Baptist Missionary Union which is now called the American Baptist International Ministries. The Mission was named after David Livingstone, the famous British explorer who viewed Africa as the ideal place for white men to settle – bringing Christianity, commerce and civilization to Africa.

In 1884, Guiness offered the Congo Mission to the American Baptist Missionary Union which was headed by A.J. Gordon. After Gordon attended the International Centenary Conference on Foreign Missions in London in 1888 he decided to open a mission school in Boston where missionaries would be prepared for the work in the Congo. It is interesting to note that Gordon was impressed by the work of the British missionaries in Africa but one wonders what he was truly impressed by, as most missionaries were aiding in African colonization.

British missionaries such as the Anglican Church Missionary Society, London Missionary Society and Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society also conducted missionary work in Africa. However, the type of Christianity spread by British missionaries during this time was tied to European cultural norms. Emphasis was placed on European dressing, and culture as a form of civilization. Missionaries believed they would channel the three Cs into Africa: Commerce, Christianity and Civilization. Missionaries and thereafter quickly became agents of British imperialism whose mission in Africa was to modernize Africa by combating godlessness, superstition and backwardness.

The American Baptist Missionary Union under the leadership of AJ Gordon took over support for Livingstone Inland Mission. The American Baptist International Ministries (formerly known as the American Baptist Missionary Union and the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society) is an international Protestant Christian missionary society founded in 1814 in the United States. It is a constituent board affiliated with the American Baptist Churches USA. The organization is the oldest Baptist missionary organization based in North America.

Fanny Guinness recorded a cautionary note concerning funding in the constitution of the society in her 1890 book:

“That as it is the aim of this mission to introduce into the vast Congo Valley as many Christian evangelists as possible, and as it is believed that land and native labour can be secured at small cost, the agents of the mission shall be men willing to avail themselves of these advantages, and resolved to be as little burdensome as possible to the funds of the mission. No salaries are guaranteed, but the committee as far as the means of doing so are placed in their hands, will supply the missionaries with such needful things as cannot be produced in the country”

Livingstone Inland Mission and Henry Morton Stanley

Henry Morton Stanley was an explorer who was most famous for his enabling the plundering of the Congo region by King Leopold II of Belgium. He is also famous for finding Livingstone on 10 November 1871 in Ujiji, near Lake Tanganyika in present-day Tanzania. In 1874, the New York Herald and Britain’s Daily Telegraph financed Stanley on another expedition to Africa. Some of his expeditions were aided by the Livingstone Inland Mission which provided him use of one of their boats, the Henry Reed. The Livingstone Inland Mission was being supported by the American Baptist Missionary Union. This despite the fact that it was widely known that Stanley abused Africans on his journeys.

• In Through the Dark Continent, Stanley wrote that “the savage only respects force, power, boldness, and decision”
• In one of his books, Stanley said about mixed African-Arab people: “For the half-castes I have great contempt. They are neither black nor white, neither good nor bad, neither to be admired nor hated. They are all things, at all times…. If I saw a miserable, half-starved negro, I was always sure to be told, he belonged to a half-caste. Cringing and hypocritical, cowardly and debased, treacherous and mean… this syphilitic, blear-eyed, pallid-skinned, abortion of an Africanized Arab”
• When Stanley first met a group of his Wangwana assistants, he was surprised: “They were an exceedingly fine looking body of men, far more intelligent in appearance than I could ever have believed African barbarians could be”
• Richard Francis Burton, however, wrote that Stanley “shoots negroes as if they were monkeys”.
• Immediately after one of Stanley’s expeditions in 1877, Reverend J. P. Farler met with African porters who had been part of the expedition and wrote, “Stanley’s followers give dreadful accounts to their friends of the killing of inoffensive natives, stealing their ivory and goods, selling their captives, and so on. I do think a commission ought to inquire into these charges, because if they are true, it will do untold harm to the great cause of emancipating Africa…. I cannot understand all the killing that Stanley has found necessary”.
• Not surprisingly, The Baptist missionary Thomas J. Comber wrote about Stanley saying that “by constant daily exercise of his tact and influence over the people…. Stanley has succeeded in planting his station at Stanley Pool without a fight”, despite being faced by Africans “who are very fond of fighting and can muster 3000 guns”
• Stanley himself wrote that he had “destroyed 28 large towns” in the Congo. Once he allegedly cut off his dog’s tail, cooked it and fed it back to the dog.

Henry Morton Stanley paved the way for Leopold to later plunder the Congo in his quest to extract rubber. There is no literature that shows that any of the missionaries in this region ever tried to stop the atrocities that were committed by explorers like Henry Morton Stanley.