Shades

Unlike the Catholic missionaries who took a vow of chastity, the Anglicans were able to marry and have children. Their wives therefore tended to play an active role in the mission activity.

Although the children grew up in the religious atmosphere, there was not necessarily pressure on them to follow in their parents' footsteps by themselves taking the cloth.

The missionaries on the whole were not racists but they were certainly people of their time, and were therefore often colonialist by nature. As such, they believed in the superiority not only of their religion and their church, but also of the British culture.

As a result, English was the language which their children and acolytes were expected to use. Their schools taught English, together with the classical subjects like Latin and Greek. Xhosa was forbidden as a language of instruction.

To become a convert into the Anglican Church therefore meant that the amaXhosa were forced to forgo their own traditions.

A convert who had more than one wife was expected to keep only the first one while the others were repudiated, often with shameful consequences. (Consider, for example, how Kobus Pumani was allowed to put aside his second wife by becoming a Christian convert. - See Chapter 15)

Traditional initiation rituals were taboo. Circumcision initiates were not allowed to be seen in public.

The missionaries glorified hard work and despised laziness. Because of this, many of the mission stations established printing presses, carpentry and metal industries.

Traditional subsistence farming, on the other hand, was frowned upon because the work tended to devolve upon the females while the males were seen as loafing.