Kingdoms of the earth: Coloured identity, African initiated churches, and the politics of black nationalism in South Africa, 1892 to 1948

Kingdoms of the Earth: Coloured Identity, African Initiated Churches, and the Politics of Black Nationalism in South Africa, 1892 to 1948 traces the history of the noncanonical African Orthodox Church in Kimberly, South Africa. Founded by African Americans, the Kimberly congregation comprised a multiracial group of South Africans and English-speaking foreign blacks from the Caribbean, West Africa, and the US. Classified as Coloured by the state, the church\u27s members enjoyed certain political and economic privileges, such as voting rights and access to land, typically conferred on Coloureds and denied to African residents. Despite their privileged racial status, they promoted a radical black nationalism, engaging in vibrant religious, political, and cultural exchange with churches in Nova Scotia, Cuba, Uganda, Kenya, and New York. I argue that South Africans embraced the Garveyite tenets of the African Orthodox Church because they fostered a sense of racial, political, and religious belonging for Coloureds that mirrored their own Ethiopian movement, a nineteenth-century Christian secessionist movement of black and Coloured clergy. Under the leadership of Coloured churchmen, the church flourished in South Africa, even extending to Uganda and Kenya. I focus on Coloured clergymen to reexamine the racial contours of black nationalism and reimagine the nascent rumblings of Pan-Africanism.