Neighbors Recognizing and Redefining Identities in the Belgian Congo, 1916–1935

Chapter 4 explains how the ministerial priorities of Althea Brown and Alonzo Edmiston developed through coordination with African villagers, students, and church members in the Belgian Congo. The missionaries’ descriptions of local life are analyzed through comparison with historical context and anthropological studies of the region. African theology produced in the three decades following decolonization is introduced as an interpretive lens for analyzing the perspectives of African people experiencing the first decades of transition from Congo Free State policies to the Belgian Congo government. The chapter closes by identifying the Edmistons’ sense of kinship with the Kuba kingdom as their link to specific rituals in African traditional religion.