ABSTRACT
The 'mass movement' label came from India, where it was used in both a political and religious context. The movement of tribal people to Christianity did not compare numerically with the massive support given to nationalist independence movements, but it gave a new shape and impetus to the Indian church. The village teacher was the crucial figure in the mass movements: any response had to be on a sustained, not a hit-and-run, basis. The conversion of the Hua Miao was the first mass movement in China. William Goudie, the ex-India missionary familiar with mass movements and now Africa Secretary, visited the region and saw for himself the great opportunity. A less widespread but still significant movement began in the Gold Coast in 1920, when Samson Oppong, or Opon, an Ashanti with reputation as a sorcerer and a criminal record for misappropriation received a vision. He was commanded to bum his magic apparatus and to proclaim God's wrath on all 'fetishism'.
