Witness and Effort

Sprach: Englisch Around the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, the Berlin Mission Society (BMS) started activities in the Morogoro area. Weitnauer's work explores how the first missionaries lived on the mission stations and understood their "witness and effort", their different roles as pastors, landlords and often also landowners. In Tanganyika, the missionaries were confronted with the German colonial power which brought them into confusion about their role. Many missionaries ignored their entanglement with the colonial powers. Only a few resisted. And yet the local church grew mainly through the increasing activity of local Christians, especially after 1945. The missionaries had to give up responsibility and to allow the local population to go ahead independently and to develop their own "witness and effort".