The end of 1995 marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of one of Scotland's greatest missionaries, Robert Moffat. Although less famous than his son-in-law, David Livingstone, Moffat was also a remarkable man.
His story has all the ingredients of the classic Victorian missionary saga: wild animals and even wilder tribes, exotic customs and bizarre costumes, daring expeditions into the interior, and above all, an indomitable missionary sustained by his trust in an Almighty God.
Gardener
This was all far removed from the simple realities of Moffat's early life. Born in Ormiston, near Edinburgh, he trained as a gardener and in 1813 secured a job in Cheshire. Alone and far from home, he joined a local Methodist Society and devoted his spare time to reading the Scriptures. Lacking assurance of salvation, it finally came to him 'while poring over the Epistle to the Romans...I felt that, being justified by faith, I had peace with God through the Lord Jesus Christ.' This conversion experience produced in Moffat an intense desire to share the Gospel with those who had never heard. Although he had little formal education, he was accepted by the London Missionary Society, and in late 1816 he set sail for South Africa.
Young missionary
Moffat was just 21 years old when he arrived in the Cape. He was soon joined by his Cheshire sweetheart, Mary Smith, and they were married in December 1819. For the next 50 years she was to be his faithful partner in mission. Their honeymoon was somewhat unconventional - eight weeks on a wagon towed by twelve humped oxen! They were taking the 800 mile journey to Kuruman, beyond the border of the British colony and close to the Kalahari Desert. Here they were to build a mission station which would be their home for the next half century.
At first things were far from easy. The Tswana peoples among whom the Moffats were working seemed less than receptive. During services some snored, others scattered insects among the congregation, and a few even ransacked the missionaries' home. Slowly but surely, however, Moffat began to gain their respect. In the mid-1920's, he demonstrated extraordinary resourcefulness and courage in organising Tswana resistance to the ferocious Mantatee tribe, which was migrating in search of a new homeland. The Mantatee were eventually defeated in battle, Kuruman was secured against marauding tribes, and Moffat's prestige rose dramatically.
Evangelist and handyman
Before long the missionaries began to see their first converts. From 1829, a growing number of Tswanas began to attend the mission's meeting house and visit Moffat to enquire about faith. A Christian community was being formed. But Moffat did more than preach and evangelise. The former gardener was a man of great versatility who supervised the digging of a three-mile irrigation ditch, the construction of houses, the planting of crops, and the laying out of gardens. By 1834 Kuruman had become something of an oasis in the wilderness, with 700 people living on 500 acres of irrigated land.
Translator
But Moffat's greatest contribution to the spread of Christianity in southern Africa lay elsewhere, in his translation of the Scriptures into the local language, Setswana. For his first few years as a missionary he had contented himself with communicating in Dutch, but he soon realised that he must learn the native tongue. Given that no grammar book or dictionary existed, this was a far from straightforward task, but with characteristic resolve Moffat left Kuruman for a time in 1827 in order to immerse himself in language study. His determination paid off and in 1830 he completed his translation of the Gospel of Luke, riding 400 miles to Cape Town with the manuscript to get it printed. This was followed by the publication of the New Testament and Psalms in 1840, the entire Bible in 1857, a Setswana hymn book and dictionary, and a translation of the Pilgrim's Progress. It was a remarkable feat, earning Moffat a place with the great Bible translators Tyndale, Luther and Carey in the memorial window of the Bible Society's library in London.
Elder statesman
Besides translating the Scriptures, Moffat was involved in much else during his years in Africa. He travelled widely, opening up routes hitherto unexplored by Europeans, and forged a series of friendships with African chiefs, which did much to prepare the way for other missionaries. Although his final years at Kuruman were marred by the tragic deaths of his son and daughter, he persevered with his work, and only returned to Britain in 1870, at the age of 75.
Back home, Moffat did almost as much for the work of missions as he had done in Africa. He had previously used a furlough from 1839-43 to publish memoirs and missionary addresses which sold in vast numbers and considerably raised the profile of foreign missions. On that visit he had also persuaded Livingstone to join him in Africa, telling the young man that 'he had sometimes seen, in the morning sun, the smoke of a thousand villages, where no missionary had ever been'. During his 'retirement', Moffat once again took on the role of missionary publicist, speaking at countless gatherings, and inspiring a new generation to take up the challenge of world evangelism. When he died in 1883, he had devoted a lifetime of relentless energy to spreading the Gospel to the ends of the earth.
Western civiliser
Yet Moffat's missionary methods were not without their faults. In contrast to his colleague and fellow Scot, John Philip, who lobbied constantly against the unjust treatment of the native peoples of southern Africa, Moffat preferred to stay out of politics - a pietistic stance which revealed his failure to grasp the full social implications of the Gospel. Moreover, despite his noble efforts to master the Setswana language, Moffat had little imaginative appreciation of Tswana culture. He was too quick to assume that it was all 'heathen darkness', and that the West was a 'superior civilisation' because of its Christianity. African dress he judged 'disgusting', and he saw the trend towards wearing European clothes as a sure sign of the progress of the Gospel. His LMS predecessor in southern Africa, the Dutchman Johannes van der Kemp, may have scandalised his fellow Europeans by washing his clothes in the river and marrying a former slave girl, but Moffat was resolutely determined not to go native.
The problem was that Moffat had too weak a doctrine of common grace, too little sense of the remaining traces of the image of God in fallen people. African religion, he was convinced, provided no point of contact whatsoever for the Christian gospel. Satan had erased 'every vestige of religious impression' from African minds. The Xhosas were 'a nation of atheists', and the Tswanas had no notion of a Supreme being. Yet as later missionaries pointed out, the Tswanas did indeed have a concept of God, one which Moffat could have exploited, if only he had recognised it.
Friend of Africa
But we must be careful not to take out critique of Moffat too far. For all his limitations, he was an extraordinary individual and a saintly Christian. Tribal life in southern Africa in the early 19th century was no rustic idyll: it was often nasty, brutish and short. Yet in the midst of the turmoil, Moffat established a peaceful and prosperous Christian community. Although he had a low view of African culture, his affection for the people among whom he lived was genuinely deep. His remarkable friendships with various African chiefs illustrate this well, and they also demonstrate that Moffat was admired and trusted by the indigenous people. Scrupulously maintaining his independent status as a messenger of the gospel, Moffat never allowed himself to become an agent of the colonial government. And for all his pietism, he was a passionate opponent of slavery and a firm believer in racial equality.
Furthermore, in his determination to give the Bechuanas the Word of God in their mother tongue, Moffat paid their culture the ultimate compliment. As the African scholar, Lamin Sanneh, has eloquently argued, those who accuse missionaries of cultural imperialism have failed to consider the immense impact of Bible translation. By translating their message, missionaries have repeatedly preserved languages which might otherwise have perished, dignified the vernacular by using it to convey religious truth, and provided the indigenous peoples with the tools they would later use to renew and sustain their own cultures. For all his shortcomings, therefore, Moffat's contribution to Bechuana culture was very great. And my guess is, that for the millions in Africa today who worship Jesus, the very real flaws of pioneer missionaries are far outweighed by the glory of the Gospel which they passed on.
Further reading
R. Moffat, Missionary Labours and Scenes in Southern Africa (1842); C. Northcott, Robert Moffat (1961); A.C. Ross, John Philip (1986); L. Sanneh, Translating the Message (1989) and Encountering the West (1993).
John Coffey is a member of Eden Baptist Church and Research Fellow in History at Churchill College, Cambridge.
