'All Things to All People to Save Some'

Over the years a great deal of scholarly attention has been paid to the 'civilising mission', the theme that came to dominate the work of many European and American missionaries during the Victorian period. Convinced that the gospel should be accompanied by the virtues of Western culture, the practitioners of this Christian model often sought to refashion the daily lives and customs of 'native' converts. While various studies have examined the impact of the civilising mission, especially on the indigenous inhabitants of South Africa, far less research has been devoted to the missionaries who rejected this approach in whole or in part. Historians of mission Christianity in South Africa have drawn attention to no more than a handful of those who identified with African culture, and typically their analyses have revolved around socio-economic variables. Consequently, accommodation to African life has been explained in terms of pragmatism (a missionary's response to economic hardship) or social status (a missionary's superior background, socially and educationally). Although this research remains valuable in many respects, it does not account for the Salvation Army's missionary work among the Zulus of late-Victorian Natal. In this particular instance, theology proved to be the unmistakable and overriding factor behind missionary accommodation to African culture. The Salvation Army's British missionaries possessed little social standing or formal training, but they were steeped in a tradition of transatlantic revivalism that encouraged cultural adaptation at home and abroad. Arriving in South Africa with explicit orders to become Zulus to the Zulus, they lived in circular mud huts, ate indigenous food, accepted polygyny, and altered their dress to some degree. Even though these adaptive efforts never extended to alcohol, and later fell victim to the Army's growing interest in social reform, they represented a remarkable chapter in the colonial encounter between Christianity and African culture.