Isaiah Mloyiswa Mdliwamafa Shembe (1870– 2 May 1935), was the founder of the Zulu Nazareth Baptist Church and a figure in the African independent church movement in South Africa. His first names original spelling is "Isaya".
According to Shembe biographer Irving Hexham, not much is known about Shembe's youth, except that he was born into the Zulu families of Mayekisa and Mzazela near Estcourt, South Africa. After his baptism in 1906, he worked as an itinerant evangelist. In 1910, he began a ministry focused on healing and prophecy, and on 10 March 1910 he began the Nazareth Baptist Church or iBandla amaNazaretha, an indigenous church for the Zulu people. Later, he established a holy city at ekuPhakameni and a yearly pilgrimage to the Holy Mountain of Nhlangakazi. In addition to his preaching and healing, he was known for composing Zulu hymns and sacred dances, for creating sacred costumes that combined Zulu and European clothing styles, for developing a new liturgical calendar (that omitted Christmas), and for dietary laws that included a restriction against eating chicken.[1]
Shembe's legacy has created some controversy. In a 1967 book, G.C. Oosthuizen argued that the movement was "a new religion that sees Isaiah Shembe as 'the manifestation of God.'" Oosthuizen was attacked by Bengt Sundkler and Absolom Vilakazi as being too Westernized to understand Zulu culture, and claimed that the movement remained Christian. However, Oosthuizen's view has been embraced by two of Shembe's successors, his nephew Amos Shembe and his grandson Londa Shembe, who (although they fought with each other over who was the legitimate successor and eventually formed two separate branches of the church), both of whom believe that Shembe did indeed create something new.[1]
A sculpture of Shembe was created from Carara marble by the US artist David Lambert and placed at the headquarters of a splinter group of the church at Matabetule in 1983.
The Nazareth Baptist Church, often called Shembe, is associated with a small group of churches, often referred to as African "messianic" churches, where the leader or founder is ascribed by his followers with supernatural powers.
The large majority of the three thousand African independent churches are either "Ethiopian" or "Zionist". The Zionist churches, whose name implies an identification with the holy mountain of Zion in the Old Testament, are largely charismatic prophet-led healing groups. Worship in the Zionist churches is an African variant of Pentecostal spirituality.