Isaiah Shembe

Isaiah Mloyiswa Mdliwamafa Shembe (c.1870[1]– 2 May 1935), was the founder of the Nazareth Baptist Church, which is the largest African Initiated Church in Africa during his lifetime. A self-styled prophet who claimed to have been sent directly by God to the Zulu people, Shembe started his religious career as an itinerant evangelist and faith healer in 1911. Within ten years he had built up a large following in Natal with dozens of congregations across the province. Although the Nazarites were eventually eclipsed in size by several other Zionist churches, the Nazarite church eventually had well over a million members before it began to splinter into competing groups in the 1980s.

Birth and Early Life

Shembe's early life is the subject of intense hagiography and is difficult to piece together. He was born at Ntabamhlophe (Estcourt district) in the Drakensberg region of Natal. Although some questioned his Zulu credentials, he insisted that he was of pure Zulu breed and that his family had fled from Shaka during the Mfecane period. His father, Mayekisa, traced his lineage four generations back among members of the Ntungwa tribe.[2] His mother was Sitheya, the daughter of Malindi Hadebe, was born at Mtimkulu.[3]

Shembe's family left Natal for the adjacent Harrismith district of Orange Free State in the 1870s, ending up there as tenants for an Afrikaner family named the Graabes.[4] The young Shembe appears to have labored for this Boer family as well, and spent considerable time working with the farm's horses. In his early years Shembe attended Wesleyan churches and seems to have been religious for his whole life. There is a considerable lore of hagiographic tradition concerned with the young Shembe. He is alleged, for instance, to have died young before being resurrected after his relatives sacrificed a bull prior to his burial. He was also allegedly visited by God on many occasions in these years.[5]

By the time of the South African War, Shembe was married and was working for the Graabes as a tenant in his own right. However, the war disrupted his situation. After abandoning his wives, he spent some time on the Rand as a migrant.[6] During this time, he seems to have attended the African Native Baptist Church, led by William Leshega, in Boksburg.

Early Years As an Evangelist

Between 1906 and 1910 was a minor evangelist in Leshega's church. The latter visited him in Harrismith in 1906 and baptized him there. For the following two years he worked as an itinerant evangelist, and was then given an official preacher's certificate by Leshega in 1908. It would appear that Shembe then led a congregation for Leshega in Witzieshoek until 1910, when Leshega affiliated with John G Lake's Apostolic Faith Mission.[7]

Shembe served as a member of the White-led Apostolic Faith Mission for a year. During this time he seems to have taken Lake on two evangelizing tours of the area, one of which went as far as Basutoland.[8] On these trips he listened to Lake's preaching and saw him perform a number of faith healings.

Having imbibed the rhetoric and faith healing prowess of Lake, Shembe was inspired to strike out on his own,and he left for Natal in March 1911.[9] Messengers preceded his arrival into various parts of Natal, proclaiming that "A Man of Heaven" had been sent by God to preach to the Zulu people. Shembe typically followed these messengers by a day or two, following which he would preach and perform faith healings similar to those typically performed by John G Lake. He also crafted a message of his calling as a prophet. Shembe maintained that he had been struck by lightning after ascending a mountaintop, following which he received his divine mission to preach to the Zulu nation.[10]

Leader of the Nazareth Baptist Church 1910-1935

By all accounts, Shembe had an electric effect and was able to rapidly build congregations in a number of areas. He formed the Nazareth Baptist Church in 1910, with his converts consisting primarily of poverty-stricken migrants living at the margins of Natal's urban areas. Soon after he purchased a freehold farm and established a holy city at ekuPhakameni that sought in part to keep his people on the land free of white control. He also established a yearly pilgrimage to the Holy Mountain of Nhlangakazi, an event that was central to the Nazarites.[11] As his following grew and he could not provide land for everyone, Shembe began training his followers to be exemplary workers. His exhortation and strict religious regimens turned his followers into a distinctive group known for their honesty, punctuality, and work ethic.

In addition to his preaching and healing, Shembe was known for composing numerous 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, pork and other unclean foods as found in the Old Testament of the Bible.[12] He advocated worship of the biblical Sabbath rather than Sunday. Associating Sunday worship with the Jesus of the white missionaries, he chose to identify instead with the Sabbath of God, Jehovah. He saw the Sabbath as essential to the wholeness and well-being of Africans.

In the 1930s Shembe (who was an autodidact in terms of literacy and theology) commissioned his neighbor, John Dube, to write his biography. This book, U-Shembe, appeared shortly after its subject's death.[13] This biography contains much of the essential Shembe lore and hagiography. Because Dube was an ordained minister and not a Nazarite, he does not always present Shembe in flattering terms. His bona fides as a prophet are questioned, while his ability to extract financial contributions from his membership is highlighted.[14] Shembe's followers, though, wrote down many of his teachings. As a result, the Nazarite church has an extensive written theological corpus, perhaps the largest of any African Initiated Church.

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 younger son 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.[9]

References

  1. ↑ J. Dube, U-Shembe (Pietermaritzburg: Shooter & Shuter, 1936), 1.A. Vilikazi, Shembe: The Revitalization of African Society (Johannesburg: Skotaville, 1986), 23. isbn 9780947009083
  2. ↑ I. Hexham and G. Oosthuizen, eds. The Story of Isaiah Shembe, Vol. 1: History and Traditions Centered on Ekuphakameni and Mount Nhlangankazi (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen, 1996), 2-3.
  3. ↑ Dube, U-Shembe, 1.
  4. ↑ L. Gunner, The Man of Heaven and the Beautiful Ones of God (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 17. isbn 9004125426
  5. ↑ Dube, U-Shembe, 2-7; Hexham and Oosthuizen, The Story of Isaiah Shembe, Vol. 1, 7-22.
  6. ↑ Gunner, Man of Heaven, 18.
  7. ↑ B. Morton, "Shembe and the Early Zionists: A Reappraisal," New Contree 69 (2014): 77-8. https://www.academia.edu/7946640/Shembe_and_the_Early_Zionists_A_Reappraisal
  8. ↑ B. Morton, "Shembe and the Early Zionists: A Reappraisal," New Contree 69 (2014): 79-85. https://www.academia.edu/7946640/Shembe_and_the_Early_Zionists_A_Reappraisal
  9. ↑ I. Hexham, ed., The Story of Isaiah Shembe Volume II: The Scriptures of the amaNazaretha of EKuphakameni. Trans by L. Shembe and H-J. Becken. (Calgary, University of Calgary Press, 1994), 82.
  10. ↑ Morton, "Shembe and the Early Zionists," 81-2.
  11. ↑ J. Cabrita, Text and Authority in the South African Nazaretha Church (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014).
  12. ↑ Irving Hexham, "The amaNazaretha", in Encyclopedia of African and African-American Religions, ed. Stephen D. Glazier.
  13. ↑ Dube, U-Shembe.
  14. ↑ Dube, U-Shembe, 39, 89-92.