Paper short abstract:

This study analyses the strategies of evangelism adopted by Church Missionary Society (CMS) agents in Yorubaland in the 19th century. It argues that even though material objects were not used to represent the divine, they were used to advertise the benefits of Western culture that would accrue to Christians.

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines the strategies adopted by both foreign and native agents of the Church Missionary Society (CMS) in evangelizing Yorubaland in the nineteenth century. These missionaries denounced traditional idols and the various sacred symbols of the local populace without providing other material alternatives. Even when the people repeatedly demanded for charms and other physical symbols from the new faith, the missionaries did not oblige them. Instead, they insisted on faith in an invisible God. To press home their message of faith, they carried out impressive acts of sacrificial love and flaunted some material artifacts of Western culture in the local communities. Although, this caught the eyes of the local population, it did not produce too many converts. The spatial practices of the missionaries as well as their interaction with other religions in the local environment are also examined in this study. A central argument of this essay is that though material objects were not used to represent the divine, they were always at hand to advertise the benefits which adherence to Christianity could bring. This created a delicate situation in which Christian claims were often misunderstood. The onus was thus on missionaries to clear the air and show that the material objects did not represent the divine. The sources used for this study include nineteenth-century journals and correspondence of CMS agents as well as the accounts of foreign travelers passing through Yorubaland in the same period.