Christianity in Malawi


According to 2012 statistics about 85% of Malawi's 11 million people are Christian, with over half of the population Protestant and another 20% Roman Catholic. Of the Protestant churches the Church of Central Africa, Presbyterian is one of the largest Christian groups, but here are also smaller numbers of Anglicans, Baptists, evangelicals, Seventh-day Adventists, Jehovah's Witnesses and African independent churches.

History

Nyasaland

reached the lake he named Lake Nyasa, now Lake Malawi in 1859. Livingstone's famous appeal, made at a great meeting in the Senate House at Cambridge on December 4, 1857 led to the founding of the Universities' Mission to Central Africa, and the first missionary expedition of the Universities' Mission to Central Africa arrived in Malawi in 1861. Missionaries included Bishop Edward Steere, William Tozer, Charles Alan Smythies, Chauncy Maples who drowned on Lake Nyasa, and W. Percival Johnson, a graduate of University College, Oxford, who was to remain in Malawi for 40 years and to translate the Bible into Chichewa language. The Dutch Reformed Church established a base at Nkhoma then expanded to other parts of central Malawi, including Mlanda and Mchinji, and into Mozambique, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. The history of Roman Catholicism in Malawi begins with the entry of French White Fathers in 1899.

Independence

Malawi's first president, the Presbyterian Hastings Kamuzu Banda, favored Christianity during his long rule. Under Banda many breakaway independent churches flourished, including Elliot Kenan Kamwana's breakaway Jehovah's Witnesses movement.

Christianity in Malawi today