Mary Slessor and Her Social Crusade in Calabar 1817 1915
Chapter One
Purpose of the Study
The purpose of the study is to investigate Mary Slessor And Her Social Crusade In Calabar between the period of 1817-1915.
CHAPTER TWO
LITERATURE REVIEW
Women missionaries working alone in Africa was an unheard-of concept when Mary Slessor arrived in Africa to serve. It was not that it was impossible, but that it was deemed too dangerous. Yet at five feet tall and with bright red hair ensuring she would stand out in an African setting, this twenty-eight year old Scottish woman set out to do just that in 1876, starting at the Calabar River of modern-day Nigeria and pushing further and further into the African interior to tribes deemed too dangerous to interact with, even by the indigenous people Slessor encountered. Showing uncommon bravery and challenging tribal traditions propelled Mary Slessor to a legendary status even during her lifetime. Her approach to missions shows that hands-on, fearless love of those deemed unapproachable can bear Kingdom results and in turn serves as a model to a new generation of missionaries who face the threat of death from other sources than cannibals.
MARY SLESSOR
Born in Aberdeen, Scotland, in 1848 as the daughter of a shoemaker and the second of seven children[1], Mary Slessor would counter her upbringing through the transforming love of Christ in her life, and she would bring the peace of God to the people of Nigeria in West Africa. Born into a family with a father who would turn each paycheck into a Saturday spent drinking, thereby leaving the family destitute and impacting her childhood significantly, Slessor would learn from early youth what hard work looked like.
At the age of eleven, Slessor moved with her family to Dundee, where there would be more ample work opportunities for her father, who was unable to continue working as a shoemaker. Rather he found work as a mill laborer. Her father’s drinking continued even in this new setting. Her mother was a skilled weaver, and she augmented the family’s income.
Slessor began working at the age of eleven as a “half timer” in Baxter Brothers’ Mill in Dundee. At first, she would go to school for half a day at a school provided by the owners of the mill, then work half a day at the mill. By age fourteen, she had become a skilled worker like her mother and began working shifts as a weaver in the mill, working from six am to six pm, up at 5 am to do homework with an hour for breakfast and lunch.[2] Hiding her meager earnings from her father angered him, but ensured the family’s survival. Money was running out from selling the furniture from their house in Aberdeen, but Slessor’s mother was determined to teach the children the Bible, the stories of Jesus and with it the power of His redemption. While they might be poor in earthly good, they were blessed beyond measure in the treasures found in the pages of the family Bible. [3]
When not working, Slessor spent time with books, teaching herself to read, and even managed to read while working by propping her book on the loom in front of her. It was in her world of reading that she first learned of Calabar in British Colonial Africa (modern-day Nigeria) in the Missionary Journal, a magazine “eagerly read” by hundreds of Scottish Presbyerians to learn about “missionary comings and goings, progress, problems and needs”.[4] Nigeria was then deemed an “unhealthy, mysterious, terrible land ruled by witchcraft and secret societies.”[5] Just two years prior a Presbyterian mission had been founded in Calabar in this part of West Africa.[6] Learning about this strange and foreign world convinced Slessor that the Lord had directed her to go to the people of Calabar and take the good news of Jesus Christ to them.
The family’s life was hard indeed, and Slessor knew hunger growing up in the slums of Dundee. Her father and both brothers died, leaving Slessor, her mother and two sisters. Two other siblings had died before already. Out of seven children, only four survived childhood.[7]
Slessor made the decision then and there, and she “never looked back.” [8] Her faith provided an escape to this young girl. Mary Rosetta Parkman, writing three years after Slessor’s death in Africa, observed about the young Mary, “Heaven was very near to Mary Slessor, and the stars seemed more real than the street lamps of the town. She had come to feel that the troubles and trials of her days were just steps on the path that she would travel.”[9]
CHAPTER THREE
COLONIALISM AND MISSION
The colonial government played a large role in Mary Slessor’s world. During her service in the Calabar region, there were both positive and negative relationships formed with the colonial administrators. She would accept assistance from the colonial administration when she needed help, such as when fighting the barbarism encountered in the tribes. Likewise, she would give back in an informal partnership manner. Many times, the officials at the colonial headquarters would attempt to make her life more pleasant by providing her with luxuries such as items not typically available to her, but rather brought on the ships reaching Calabar. On one occasion, District Commissioner Charles Partridge, to whom she had a very warm relationship, brought her a phonograph, capable of producing and recording sound on which she recorded the story of the Prodigal Son in Efik, allowing him to take the recording with him on official trips and playing it to the tribal people.[1]
Her unusual report with and insights into the local tribal people led the British Consul General, Major Claude MacDonald, to appoint Slessor vice consul of the Okoyong territory. Much of this was based on Slessor’s insistence that the Okoyong were not ready for British administration, and so it was a natural fit for her to engage in such a role, where she would make decisions in tribal affairs. Serving several years in the role, she resigned after a strong disagreement with a district commissioner to whom she had a strained relationship. After clarification of the situation a few years later, she resumed her role, this time as vice president of the native court, in 1905. She was known for her highly practical and fair – albeit sometimes legally questionable – decision-making.[2]
CHAPTER FOUR
MARY MITCHELL SLESSOR AMONG THE OKOYONG AND EFIK
In Augustine 1888, Slessor travelled north to Okoyong, an area where previous male missionaries had been killed. She thought that her teachings, and the fact that she was a woman, would be less threatening to unreached tribes. For fifteen years, Slessor lived with Okoyong and Efik people. She learned to speak Efik, the language of the people, and made close personal friendships whenever she went, becoming known for her pragmatism and humour. Slessor lived a simple life in a traditional house with Efiks. Her insistence on lone stations, often lead Slessor into conflict with the authorities and gained her a reputation for eccentricity.
In 1902, among the Okoyong people, eleven youngsters threatened her with weapon but Mary never budged. She thus gained respect of the leader of the gang and Mary invited them all to join in with the other kids to attend Sunday school. They were baptized including seven of her adopted children.
CHAPTER FIVE
CONCLUSION
Sixty-six-year-old Mary Mitchell Slessor died in Use Ikot Oku, Nigeria. A petite redhead everybody’s mother from the slums of Dundee, Scotland, becomes a role model for others, even today. She has wielded such influence in the land known to her compatriots as the white man’s grave. She perfectly fits into the British Empire’s plan to “civilize” Nigeria. Our foregoing discussion and other studies on Mary Slessor’s life reveal certain factors leading to missionary fervour, combined with a large measure of down-to-earth common sense. Through the trying circumstances of her youth, she learned to face and overcome difficult situations in ways that often challenges the mission methods and attitudes of her era. Mary Slessor’s stubborn drive to open new territory to education and the presentation of the gospel message stands as a prime example of what Ogbu U. Kalu, Nigerian Church historian and professor of World Christianity and Mission at McCormick.
Theological Seminary, Chicago, refers to as “a broader view of the style and vision of the missionary enterprise” (Kalu, 2002). Mary Slessor’s vision was much broader and more activist than her compatriots could imagine (Walls, 1996:172).
Mary Slessor demonstrated her social activism in a number of ways: her persistent rescue of twins and orphans, in some cases adopting and raising the children as her own; her determination to make life better for women in general, especially in setting up vocational training schools for them; her use of the “each one teach one” principle later espoused by Frank Laubach and other modern literacy, proponents (she would send a couple of boys who had learned to read into a village that had invited her to come, and there she would teach them not only reading but also what they knew of the Bible); and her participation in settling disputes, whether as an agent of the British government or cannot be denied. She is remembered – by some, venerated – in both Scotland and South-Eastern Nigeria. In 2000 she was chosen as one of the millennium persons of Calabar, the place she began her witness for Christ. She is honoured in the area with statues, each a likeness of Mary Slessor holding twin babies. A hospital and schools are named for her. In Scotland a ten- pound note bears her picture. Queen Elizabeth laid a wreath at her grave in Calabar in 1956. The museum in Dundee displays stained glass windows that depict events from her life. Mary Slessor herself would have shunned such goings- on. Regardless, she left a trail of churches and schools, a host of people who admired her deeply and many who still do. She is the harbinger of Women Liberation and Child Rights Law. Today, serving in missions is still an area of service for single younger and older women. The lessons of those who have gone before embolden women to face the unknown and go. While modern conveniences have made it easier to communicate with the world back home and to come home on furlough, going into the mission field still requires the type of fearlessness that Mary Slessor displayed. One cannot help but notice the “training course” God set her on to prepare for the level of boldness required to be successful in her ministry in Africa. From feeling hunger to working hard to having to face bullies, Slessor could have not had a more applicable training ground in her childhood and youth. Like Joseph, she experienced that what others may have intended to cause her harm, God intended for good “to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.” (Genesis 50:20, NIV) Mary Slessor’s challenge still stands to take the Gospel “to the low as well as the high, the poor as well as the rich, the ignorant as well as the learned, the degraded as well as the refined, to those who will mock as well as to those who will receive us, to those who will hate as well as to those who will love us.”[1]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
- Benge, Janet, and Geoff Benge. Mary Slessor: Forward Into Calabar. Seattle, WA: YWAM Publishing, 1999.
- Bueltman, A. J. White Queen of the Cannibals: The Story of Mary Slessor. Charleston, SC: CreateSpace, 2012.
- Enock, E. E., and J. Chappell. “Ma”, the Missionary Heroine of Calabar: A Brief Biography of Mary Slessor. London: Pickering & Inglis, 1930. http://www.wholesomewords.org/missions/bioslessor5.pdf (accessed May 6, 2012).
- Hardage, Jeanette. “The Legacy of Mary Slessor.” In International Bulletin of Missionary Research 26. no. 4 (October 1, 2002): 178-181, http://www.proquest.com/ (accessed April 20, 2012).
- Mary Slessor – Everybody’s Mother: The Era and Impact of a Victorian Missionary. Cambridge: Lutterworth Press, 2010.
- HyperHistory.net. Mary Slessor: The White Ma of Africa. http://www.hyperhistory.net/apwh/bios/b1Slessorslessor.htm (accessed May 5, 2012).
- Livingstone, William Pringle. Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary. New York, NY: Hodder and Stoughton, 1916.
- Local History Centre, Dundee City, UK. Mary Slessor 1848 – 1915: Early Life. http://www.dundeecity.gov.uk/library/slessor/index.htm (accessed May 5, 2012).
- ———, Dundee City, UK. Mary Slessor 1848-1915: Books and Letters. http://www.dundeecity.gov.uk/library/slessor/books.htm (accessed May 6, 2012).
- McEvoy, Cuthbert. Mary Slessor. Glasgow: Publications Offices, United Free Church of Scotland, 1922.
- Miller, Basil. Women of Faith: Mary Slessor. Ada, MI: Bethany House Publishers, 1985.
- Morgan, Robert J. On This Day: 365 Amazing and Inspiring Stories about Saints, Martyrs & Heroes. Electronic ed. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2000.
- Parkman, Mary Rosetta. Heroines of Service. New York, NY: Century, 1918.
- Proctor, J. H. “Serving God and the Empire: Mary Slessor in South-Eastern Nigeria, 1876-1915.” Journal of Religion in Africa 30, no. 1 (January 2000): 45-61.
- [1] Hardage, International Bulletin of Missionary Research 26, 178.
