Reforming the Congo Free State: Religion and Human Rights
In 1998, journalist and popular author Adam Hochschild published King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa. The book sold well and introduced the Congo Reform Movement to a broad audience. Hochschild outlined the story of King Leopold II of Belgium and his brutal colonization of the Congo River Basin in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. over the course of Leopold reign from 1885-1908, millions of Congolese men, women, and children, were tortured, kidnapped, and massacred in pursuit of the region's precious commodities, ivory and rubber. He also introduced some of the players who discovered, protested, and sought to reform the administration of what Leopold II ironically named the Congo Free State. The reform movement involved an international organization based in Great Britain and the United States, the Congo Reform Association, that sought to alleviate the suffering of the Congolese under stifling European rule. Despite Hochschild’s insistence that “Europe has long forgotten the victims of Leopold’s Congo” scholarly research has been conducted on the Congo and the movement to reform it for decades.[i]
In many instances, the Congo Reform Movement is characterized as an important moment in the construction of international human rights. Sharon Sliwinski has called the movement the “childhood of human rights.” For Sliwinski, modern human rights organizations such as Amnesty International find their origins in the Congo Reform Movement.[ii] At the same time, scholars have also illustrated that religion functioned as the driving force in reforming the Congo, showing that American Protestants played a much larger role in forming the international human rights movement than is often assumed.
Missionaries in the Congo
Sydney Alhstrom, the great historian of American religion, once wrote that the “closing two decades of the nineteenth century witnessed the climatic phase of the foreign missions movement in American Protestantism.”[iii]This growth in missionary work was accompanied by a greater drive to reform and perfect society. Accordingly, two Presbyterian missionaries in the Congo, William H. Sheppard and William M. Morrison, took the lead in revealing Leopold’s crimes to the world.
William H. Sheppard, who worked to as a missionary for the American Presbyterian Congo Mission (APCM) since 1890, played a key role in exposing Leopold’s cruel reign. At the turn of the twentieth century he reported on a massacre of a Congolese village orchestrated by Belgian officials. While Sheppard uncovered the massacre itself, Morrison took the “courageous action when other missionaries were afraid to speak out” and in the early twentieth century reported the atrocities to European officials and published Sheppard’s report in international papers.[iv]
Scholars have noted that while “William Morrison's contribution to the movement against the Congo atrocities is unquestionable. His correspondence with diplomatic circles and with officials of the State Department prove his dedicated work. But most of his reports were based on information collected by William Sheppard, who, unlike Morrison, received little attention in the international media.”[v] Though Sheppard is often overlooked, probably because of his position as a black man, the two worked together in exposing to the world a cruel regime they felt prevented the spread of Christ’s kingdom.
While “The APCM, like other missions, was instructed to stay away from politics as much as possible to avoid confrontation with the colonial power,” Morrison and Sheppard directly confronted Leopold’s abuses.[vi] Along with bringing souls to Jesus, these missionaries obviously felt that their influence should extend beyond the spiritual sphere. Their actions showed both a concern with spiritual and temporal salvation characteristic of the turn of the century missionary labor.
Reformers in the United States
Along with missionaries working in the Congo, American Protestants in the United States actively worked for Congo Reform as well. The integral involvement of religious figures in the Congo Reform Movement is suggested by the attention given to it by Walter Rauschenbusch’s classic Social Gospel book Christianity and the Social Crisis. Throughout this volume, Rauschenbusch referred to the “horrors of the Congo Free State” and rhetorically asked his readers, “Will the atrocities on the Congo cease if we merely radiated goodness from our regenerate souls?” The answer he expected from his audience was a resounding no, Christians had to actively work to regenerate the world according to God’s will. And many Christians did.
In 1904, British activist E.D. Morel traveled to the U.S. hoping to raise awareness of the Congo at the behest of Americans Protestant “concerned with the Congo.” One of these concerned Protestants was Thomas S. Barbour, a Northern Baptist clergymen and missionary official.[vii] Before Morel even arrived in the U.S., missionaries such as Morrison and Barbour organized a “Conference of Missionary Societies” to discuss abuses in the Congo. Together, they crafted a petition asking for U.S. intervention. When Congress refused to act, Barbour asked Morel to come to the United States.[viii] While Morel did a great deal to popularize the Congo reform movement in the United States, religious individuals continued to lead the reform movement after Morel returned home. For instance, prominent Congregationalist minister and social reformer Lyman Abbott who actively supported the Congo Reform Movement with his liberal Protestant magazine Outlook.[ix]
Barbour did a great deal to organize the reform effort in the United States, including recruiting celebrities to the cause. Recruiting individuals such as Booker T. Washing and Mark Twain, Barbour successfully publicized the reform movement across the country through these prominent men. Barbour and other clergymen likewise chaired the American Congo Reform Association, a Branch of Morel’s international Congo Reform Association. These clergymen organized conference and fundraising, frequently lobbying congress to intervene. They also organized a speaking tour for “two veteran Baptists missionaries John and Alice Harris, who...addressed more than two hundred public meetings in forty-nine cities.”[x] The Harrises had preached Christianity in the Congo for years and took graphic pictures of Leopold’s exploitation, which they freely shared with Americans. More than anything else, these meetings introduced Americans to Leopold’s cruelty. In the end, the campaign proved successful and American missionary and clergymen pushing the U.S. government to intervene. Feeling this international pressure, Leopold relinquished his hold on the Congo in 1908
Historians conclude that Barbour is “the person chiefly responsible for introducing [the] Congo Reform campaign into the United States.”[xi] Although Washington, Twain, and Morel did a great deal to expose Leopold’s abuses, Protestants clergymen and missionaries played a fundamental role in the success of this first international human rights campaign.
In his influential book Why I am not a Christian, Bertrand Russell, who had been personally involved in the Congo Reform Movement, argued, “The abominations of King Leopold’s government in the Congo were concealed or minimized by the church and were ended only by agitation conducted mainly by freethinkers.”[xii] Russell clearly believed religion prevented reform in the Congo, while secularists or “freethinkers” like himself sought to enact it. Russel could not have been more wrong.
Many more contemporary authors, public figures, and scholars have more recently separated human rights from religion. Philosopher Louis Henken for instance, characterizes religion “as an alternative, ideology, indeed, as a competing ideology, and a source of resistance to the idea of human rights.”[xiii] Yet, a closer look at the Congo Reform Movement in America illustrates a more creative way to think about religion and human rights.
About the author: Randal Powell is a PhD student studying with Dr. Matt Sutton. He holds a bachelor’s degree in history from Brigham Young University-Idaho and a master’s degree in religious studies from Claremont Graduate University. His research interests include American religious history, Mormonism, and Evangelicalism.
Notes
[i] Adam Hochschild, King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1998), 4.
[ii] Sharon Sliwinski, “The Childhood of Human Rights: The Kodak on the Congo,” Journal of Visual Culture 5, no. 3 (2006), http://www.torontophotographyseminar.org/sites/default/files/ uploads /Sliwinski_Kodak_Congo.pdf.
[iii] Sydney E. Ahlstrom, A Religious History of the American People (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972), 864.
[iv] Robert Benedetto, ed., Presbyterian Reformers in Central Africa: A Documentary Account of the American Presbyterian Congo Mission and the Human Rights Struggle in the Congo, 1890-1918 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1997), 8, 10, 11, 16.
[v] Katja Fullberg-Stollberg, “African Americans in Africa: Black Missionaries and the ‘Congo Atrocities,’ 1890–1910,” in Black Imagination and the Middle Passage, edited by Maria Diedrich, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Carl T. Pedersen (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 221, 223.
[vi] Ibid., 220.
[vii] Ibid., 184.
[viii] Hunt Hawkins, “Mark Twain’s Involvement with the Congo Reform Movement: ‘A Fury of Generous Indignation,’” The New England Quarterly 51, no. 2 (June 1978): 147, 154.
[ix] Steven Cassidy, Connected: How Trains, Genes, Pineapples, Piano Keys, and a Few Disasters Transformed Americans at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014), 189.
[x] Hochschild, 185, 241, 242.
[xi] Andrew N. Porter, The Imperial Horizons of the British Protestants Missions, 1880-1914 (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2003), 63.
[xii] Bertrand Russel, Why I am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1957), 202.
[xiii] Louis Henken, “Religion, Religions, and Human Rights,” The Journal of Religious Ethics 26, no. 2 (Fall 1998): 232.
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| King Leopold. Click any image to go to its source. |
In many instances, the Congo Reform Movement is characterized as an important moment in the construction of international human rights. Sharon Sliwinski has called the movement the “childhood of human rights.” For Sliwinski, modern human rights organizations such as Amnesty International find their origins in the Congo Reform Movement.[ii] At the same time, scholars have also illustrated that religion functioned as the driving force in reforming the Congo, showing that American Protestants played a much larger role in forming the international human rights movement than is often assumed.
Missionaries in the Congo
Sydney Alhstrom, the great historian of American religion, once wrote that the “closing two decades of the nineteenth century witnessed the climatic phase of the foreign missions movement in American Protestantism.”[iii]This growth in missionary work was accompanied by a greater drive to reform and perfect society. Accordingly, two Presbyterian missionaries in the Congo, William H. Sheppard and William M. Morrison, took the lead in revealing Leopold’s crimes to the world.
William H. Sheppard, who worked to as a missionary for the American Presbyterian Congo Mission (APCM) since 1890, played a key role in exposing Leopold’s cruel reign. At the turn of the twentieth century he reported on a massacre of a Congolese village orchestrated by Belgian officials. While Sheppard uncovered the massacre itself, Morrison took the “courageous action when other missionaries were afraid to speak out” and in the early twentieth century reported the atrocities to European officials and published Sheppard’s report in international papers.[iv]
Scholars have noted that while “William Morrison's contribution to the movement against the Congo atrocities is unquestionable. His correspondence with diplomatic circles and with officials of the State Department prove his dedicated work. But most of his reports were based on information collected by William Sheppard, who, unlike Morrison, received little attention in the international media.”[v] Though Sheppard is often overlooked, probably because of his position as a black man, the two worked together in exposing to the world a cruel regime they felt prevented the spread of Christ’s kingdom.
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| William Henry Sheppard |
While “The APCM, like other missions, was instructed to stay away from politics as much as possible to avoid confrontation with the colonial power,” Morrison and Sheppard directly confronted Leopold’s abuses.[vi] Along with bringing souls to Jesus, these missionaries obviously felt that their influence should extend beyond the spiritual sphere. Their actions showed both a concern with spiritual and temporal salvation characteristic of the turn of the century missionary labor.
Reformers in the United States
Along with missionaries working in the Congo, American Protestants in the United States actively worked for Congo Reform as well. The integral involvement of religious figures in the Congo Reform Movement is suggested by the attention given to it by Walter Rauschenbusch’s classic Social Gospel book Christianity and the Social Crisis. Throughout this volume, Rauschenbusch referred to the “horrors of the Congo Free State” and rhetorically asked his readers, “Will the atrocities on the Congo cease if we merely radiated goodness from our regenerate souls?” The answer he expected from his audience was a resounding no, Christians had to actively work to regenerate the world according to God’s will. And many Christians did.
In 1904, British activist E.D. Morel traveled to the U.S. hoping to raise awareness of the Congo at the behest of Americans Protestant “concerned with the Congo.” One of these concerned Protestants was Thomas S. Barbour, a Northern Baptist clergymen and missionary official.[vii] Before Morel even arrived in the U.S., missionaries such as Morrison and Barbour organized a “Conference of Missionary Societies” to discuss abuses in the Congo. Together, they crafted a petition asking for U.S. intervention. When Congress refused to act, Barbour asked Morel to come to the United States.[viii] While Morel did a great deal to popularize the Congo reform movement in the United States, religious individuals continued to lead the reform movement after Morel returned home. For instance, prominent Congregationalist minister and social reformer Lyman Abbott who actively supported the Congo Reform Movement with his liberal Protestant magazine Outlook.[ix]
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| Dr. Lynman Abbott |
Barbour did a great deal to organize the reform effort in the United States, including recruiting celebrities to the cause. Recruiting individuals such as Booker T. Washing and Mark Twain, Barbour successfully publicized the reform movement across the country through these prominent men. Barbour and other clergymen likewise chaired the American Congo Reform Association, a Branch of Morel’s international Congo Reform Association. These clergymen organized conference and fundraising, frequently lobbying congress to intervene. They also organized a speaking tour for “two veteran Baptists missionaries John and Alice Harris, who...addressed more than two hundred public meetings in forty-nine cities.”[x] The Harrises had preached Christianity in the Congo for years and took graphic pictures of Leopold’s exploitation, which they freely shared with Americans. More than anything else, these meetings introduced Americans to Leopold’s cruelty. In the end, the campaign proved successful and American missionary and clergymen pushing the U.S. government to intervene. Feeling this international pressure, Leopold relinquished his hold on the Congo in 1908
Historians conclude that Barbour is “the person chiefly responsible for introducing [the] Congo Reform campaign into the United States.”[xi] Although Washington, Twain, and Morel did a great deal to expose Leopold’s abuses, Protestants clergymen and missionaries played a fundamental role in the success of this first international human rights campaign.
In his influential book Why I am not a Christian, Bertrand Russell, who had been personally involved in the Congo Reform Movement, argued, “The abominations of King Leopold’s government in the Congo were concealed or minimized by the church and were ended only by agitation conducted mainly by freethinkers.”[xii] Russell clearly believed religion prevented reform in the Congo, while secularists or “freethinkers” like himself sought to enact it. Russel could not have been more wrong.
Many more contemporary authors, public figures, and scholars have more recently separated human rights from religion. Philosopher Louis Henken for instance, characterizes religion “as an alternative, ideology, indeed, as a competing ideology, and a source of resistance to the idea of human rights.”[xiii] Yet, a closer look at the Congo Reform Movement in America illustrates a more creative way to think about religion and human rights.
About the author: Randal Powell is a PhD student studying with Dr. Matt Sutton. He holds a bachelor’s degree in history from Brigham Young University-Idaho and a master’s degree in religious studies from Claremont Graduate University. His research interests include American religious history, Mormonism, and Evangelicalism.
Notes
[i] Adam Hochschild, King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1998), 4.
[ii] Sharon Sliwinski, “The Childhood of Human Rights: The Kodak on the Congo,” Journal of Visual Culture 5, no. 3 (2006), http://www.torontophotographyseminar.org/sites/default/files/ uploads /Sliwinski_Kodak_Congo.pdf.
[iii] Sydney E. Ahlstrom, A Religious History of the American People (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972), 864.
[iv] Robert Benedetto, ed., Presbyterian Reformers in Central Africa: A Documentary Account of the American Presbyterian Congo Mission and the Human Rights Struggle in the Congo, 1890-1918 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1997), 8, 10, 11, 16.
[v] Katja Fullberg-Stollberg, “African Americans in Africa: Black Missionaries and the ‘Congo Atrocities,’ 1890–1910,” in Black Imagination and the Middle Passage, edited by Maria Diedrich, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Carl T. Pedersen (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 221, 223.
[vi] Ibid., 220.
[vii] Ibid., 184.
[viii] Hunt Hawkins, “Mark Twain’s Involvement with the Congo Reform Movement: ‘A Fury of Generous Indignation,’” The New England Quarterly 51, no. 2 (June 1978): 147, 154.
[ix] Steven Cassidy, Connected: How Trains, Genes, Pineapples, Piano Keys, and a Few Disasters Transformed Americans at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014), 189.
[x] Hochschild, 185, 241, 242.
[xi] Andrew N. Porter, The Imperial Horizons of the British Protestants Missions, 1880-1914 (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2003), 63.
[xii] Bertrand Russel, Why I am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1957), 202.
[xiii] Louis Henken, “Religion, Religions, and Human Rights,” The Journal of Religious Ethics 26, no. 2 (Fall 1998): 232.
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