The ecumenical origins of pan-Africanism: Africa and the ‘Southern Negro’ in the International Missionary Council’s global vision of Christian indigenization in the 1920s

This article explores the attitudes and policies of the International Missionary Council (IMC) concerning Africa and African Americans. It aims to revise historical scholarship that views the ecumenical missionary movement as originating in white Western missions and guided by the goals of post-war internationalism. It argues that the IMC, founded in 1921 as the central institution for coordinating Protestant missions around the world, developed an ecumenical definition of pan-Africanism. This definition cast African Americans from the US south in the role of ‘native’ leaders in the formation of indigenous churches in Africa. With this racialized version of Christian indigenization, the IMC excluded African Christian groups that sought to form their own churches. It promoted, instead, European colonial projects and missionary societies that aimed to use African American missionaries to counter the incendiary ideas of pan-Africanism.