ing claims on the same Christian resources. But they also suggested that the
advertising agencies that designed these campaigns were confident that a
Christian vocabulary would be familiar to the majority of South Africans. As a
recent survey of the history of Christianity in sub-Saharan Africa notes, "South
Africa is a nation of black Christians" ( Isichei, 1995: 299-322). While South
Africa is certainly not an exclusively Christian country, Christian discourse,
practices, and social formations have come to predominate in public and per-
sonal religious life. Notoriously unreliable census data can only hint at the
magnitude of Christian affiliation. Although declining from 77 percent in 1980,
Christianity still accounted for the religious affiliation of 66 percent of the
South African population in 1991. By any reckoning, Christianity provides the
basic religious frame of reference for the majority of South Africans.

The emergence of this Christian majority, however, is a recent phe-
nomenon. During the nineteenth century, in spite of the fact that South Africa
was the most missionized region of the world, conversions were rare. For the
most part, African converts turned to the Christian mission as refugees from
colonial warfare or as outcasts from African polities. By the end of the 1870s,
only a small number of Africans, estimated at 180,000, had embraced Christi-
anity. Certainly, there were prominent African converts, often celebrated in
missionary propaganda, who worked to develop new forms of African Christi-
anity. African Christian innovators--Vehettge Tikkuie and Cupido Kakkerlak
among the Khoisan; Ntsikana and Tiyo Soga among the Xhosa; William Ngidi
and Mpengula Mbande among the Zulu; and Dinwanyane and Khama among
the Sotho-Tswana--promoted the new religion. However, large-"scale conver-
sion did not occur until the twentieth century. Again, census data can only hint
at this process of cultural change. Approximately one-third of the African
population in South Africa identified with Christianity in 1921, one-half in
1946, and three-quarters in 1980. As historian Richard Elphick has observed,
this expansion of Christian affiliation in South Africa must be regarded as "one
of the most dramatic cultural transformations in human history" ( Elphick,
1995: 19).

In this volume, we will be considering this remarkable religious trans-
formation in South Africa under three general headings--Christian missions,
Christian denominations, and African initiated Christian churches. From the
intercultural relations of the missions, through the establishment of organized
Christian denominations, to the proliferation of innovative indigenous churches,
this volume documents resources for exploring the rich and complex fabric of
Christianity in South Africa.

European and North American missions in Africa have often been de-
picted in theological and missiological literature as a triumph of the Christian
gospel. Retelling the heroic adventures of foreign missionaries, this literature
has generally presumed that the story of Christianity in South Africa has been a

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