Samuel Ajayi Crowther

West African cleric

• Born: c. 1806
• Birthplace: Osogun, Yorubaland (now in Nigeria)
• Died: December 31, 1891
• Place of death: Lagos (now in Nigeria)

The first African to be ordained an Anglican bishop, Crowther escaped from slave traders as a boy and used his educational opportunities to become the most prominent West African cleric of his time, as well as an important figure in the European exploration of West Africa.

Early Life

Samuel Ajayi Crowther (AH-jah-yee KROW-ther) was born in the Yoruba-speaking region of what is now southwestern Nigeria at a time when few written records were kept. The details of his youth are known primarily through his own accounts, which he published in 1837 at the request of the Church Missionary Society of London.

Crowther was born Ajayi, the second of four children of a Yoruba man named Aiyemi, whom he described as skilled in weaving a traditional type of cloth with elephant patterns. His mother, Afala, was descended from the rulers of the Oyo Kingdom of the Yoruba people and had served as a priestess of Obatala. Crowther’s later memoirs suggest that his father also had other wives, and children by them as well. Crowther grew up in Osogun in the Ibarapa district of the Yorubaland.

During Ajayi’s teenage years, his homeland was engulfed in civil warfare, in which prisoners were often taken to the coast to be sold as slaves. During the spring of 1821, Osogun was attacked and his family was sold into slavery. He described his captors as Muslims from Oyo. During his ensuing journey, he was resold several times and finally ended up on a Portuguese slave ship in April, 1822.

Great Britain had outlawed the slave trade in 1806, and ships of the Royal Navy patrolled the waters off the western coast of Africa. On Ajayi’s first day at sea, two British ships attacked the Portuguese slave ship. Nearly one hundred captive Africans were killed, but others, including Ajayi, were freed and taken ashore in Sierra Leone, a new colony that Britain had established for freed slaves. Thus, at the age of about sixteen, Ajayi found himself alone in the world. His father had been killed during the fighting in Yorubaland, and his mother and sisters had been separated from him after being taken captive. Twenty-five years later, however, he returned to Nigeria and was reunited with his mother, who had similarly been rescued.

Meanwhile, in Bathurst, Sierra Leone, Ajayi lived with a family named Davey and was taught to read and write. On December 11, 1825, he was baptized a Christian by missionaries of the Anglican Church Missionary Society (CMS) and took the name Samuel Crowther, after the vicar of Christ Church in London who was a member of the CMS. Having proven himself a good student, he was taken to London for a year of schooling and was then returned to Sierra Leone to become one of the first graduates of Fourah Bay College. In 1829, he married Susan Asano Thompson, another freed slave. While he was teaching school for several years, he and his wife had six children: Samuel, Jr., Abigail, Susan, Josiah, Julianah, and Dandeson.

Life’s Work

Samuel Ajayi Crowther’s full potential became known during the British exploration of the Niger River in 1841. At that time, in spite of British opposition, slavery was still a major problem. In England, Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton had written The African Slave Trade (1839) and its sequel, The Remedy (1840), two books that proposed a more aggressive approach to introducing “Christianity, Commerce, and Civilization” to Africa. A philanthropic London group then proposed establishing a farming settlement on the banks of the lower Niger River that would have a transforming effect and sent an expedition to West Africa to explore the river. A major obstacle to the expedition’s success was the fact that Europeans were not physically prepared for conditions in tropical West Africa. Nearly all the 145 European members of the expedition contracted malaria, and forty of them died. Only Crowther, working alongside a missionary named J. F. Schön, was able to thrive.

After the expedition, Henry Venn, who became the secretary of the CMS in 1841, recognized that strong African leaders would be the key to the success of the society’s missionary work in Africa. He invited Crowther to return to London for seminary education and to be ordained an Anglican priest on Trinity Sunday—the eighth Sunday after Easter—in 1843.

Over the next two decades, Crowther played a central role in the CMS’s Yorubaland mission. Despite Venn’s philosophy of involving Africans in mission work, Crowther still took a back seat to European leaders, including Henry Townsend, who led a major expedition to Abeokuta in Yorubaland. However, it was Crowther’s ability with the Yoruba language, his personal communication skills, and his daily preaching under a tree near the market that led to success. He gained the confidence of a Yoruba holy man among the local people and convinced local leaders that the British would support them against attacking armies from the north. He also worked on translating the Bible and liturgies into the Yoruba language.

In 1854, Crowther led a second expedition up the Niger River, and a third trip soon followed. Although these expeditions fared better with the health of their crews, they met misfortune when their ship was wrecked along the way. However, Crowther used the opportunity to begin mission work among the Nupe and Hausa peoples of the northern Nigerian region.

The confidence that Venn had placed in Crowther was clearly bearing fruit. His next step was to transfer leadership completely. On June 29, 1864, at England’s Canterbury Cathedral, Crowther was consecrated the first African bishop in the Church of England. This led to excitement in England with the church filled to capacity. However, Crowther’s advancement was not made without controversy, and European prejudices against Africans continued to show through.

As bishop, Crowther based his work in Lagos, on the southern coast of Nigeria. However, there was some ambiguity about the actual expanse of his overseeing activity. However, in 1868, when all European missionaries were expelled from Abeokuta, Crowther was still able to journey into the interior to supervise the ongoing work of the African church. Evidence of the success of his leadership can be seen from the town of Bonny on the Niger River, where local tribal chieftains invited him to educate their children. With his own son Dandeson leading the effort, the missionaries began with elementary schools and then established technical schools and eventually the first girls’ secondary school in Africa. In other locations, Crowther was well respected as he acted as a mediator with trade companies and development. A network of African pastors under his supervision continued to establish congregations throughout the interior regions.

The last part of Crowther’s life was a struggle. In London, CMS leaders began to retreat from the vision of Henry Venn, who served as secretary from 1841 to 1872. Venn’s replacement began making decisions about the Nigerian missions without consulting Crowther. Then he named a commission of inquiry to investigate alleged abuses of Crowther’s office, including charges that the evangelistic work of the mission was being neglected. A lay leader of Crowther’s mission was accused of beating a housemaid to death. The report was sent to London without even allowing Crowther to read it. The London-based mission society responded by reprimanding Crowther and firing twelve of fifteen African pastors. Crowther was forced to resign from the finance committee.

During Crowther’s many expeditions and travels, he had been forced to leave his wife for long periods of time. After fifty years of marriage, his wife died on October 19, 1880. During the following July, Crowther suffered a stroke. He died around midnight on the last day of 1881.

Significance

The life of Samuel Ajayi Crowther is significant for several reasons. First, it is a fascinating story of a young slave escaping his captors to rise to prominence in Africa. It is also the story of the first African bishop, a man ahead of his time when many of his European counterparts were holding on to the colonial past. Although Africans responded well to his leadership, both missionaries and missionary society members in England seemed to feel threatened by the presence of a strong African leader in the society. In 1882, after Crowther died, he was replaced by an English bishop. Africa’s Anglican Church would not see another African bishop until 1952.

One of Crowther’s biographers referred to him as the “Patriotic Bishop.” Crowther’s strengths went beyond his resistance to West African malaria and his mastery of the African languages and environment; he also had the indigenous vision, shared by Henry Venn, that he understood what was good for Africa. Crowther’s mission philosophy was holistic; he established schools and promoted economic development alongside his evangelical work. He also appreciated the need to preserve African cultures. In addition to translating European books, he was a prolific journalist, recording in detail information from his expeditions to the interior. During a time Europeans labeled traditional religions as “pagan” and African Islam as “false,” Crowther set an example of patient and humble dialogue. His views would later find wide acceptance. The mission philosophy of many twenty-first century mainline churches can be traced back to Samuel Ajayi Crowther.

Bibliography

Ade Ajayi, J. F. Christian Missions in Nigeria, 1841-1891: The Making of a New Elite. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1965. Analysis of early period of Nigerian mission work by the leading historian of Christianity in Nigeria.

‗‗‗‗‗. A Patriot to the Core: Bishop Samuel Ajaji Crowther. Lagos, Nigeria: Spectrum Books, 2001. Analyzes the power struggle between London missionaries and the African bishop and the significance of his contributions.

Apter, Andrew. Black Critics and Kings: The Hermeneutics of Power in Yoruba Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. Chapter 9 of this book analyzes Crowther’s diaries as a resource for information on Yoruba culture.

Milsome, J. R. Samuel Adjai Crowther: Bishop of Courage. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1968. Biography aimed at adolescent readers.

Olsen, Ted. “Bishop Before His Time.” Christian History 22, no. 3 (August, 2003): 10-15. Discussion of Crowther in an issue of the journal that focuses on the African “apostles”—indigenous leaders who contributed to Christianity in Africa.

Page, Jesse. The Black Bishop: Samuel Adjai Crowther. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1979. A reprint of the comprehensive, though uncritical, 1908 biography of Crowther.