ABSTRACT
Southern Africa is characterized, in religious terms, by the dominance of Christianity among its black population as much as among its white. In no area of the world has the missionary movement of the nineteenth century, and its aftermath, proved more effective. The presence of Islam is quite limited until one reaches the northern parts of Mozambique and nowhere in the region is it politically significant. While the spirit mediums of traditional religion remain influential in Zimbabwe and some use was made of them by both sides during the war of the 1970s, there is even here no really coherent or systemic interaction of religion and politics requiring analysis in an assessment of this length. The relationship of Church and state in southern Africa has been a fascinating one, an almost classical case of both mutual support and conflict, but it is the Christian Church (or rather the Christian Churches) which is in question. This indeed has been the case ever since the beginning of the modern period in southern Africa. If the support which the Churches have provided colonial states in the region has been very considerable, there has also been a long tradition-ever since Vanderkemp and John Philip in the early nineteenth century-of Church-state tension.2
