From medical missions to church health services

In this chapter, I discuss Christian health care in Africa from medical missions to church health service. First, I discuss the brief history of medical missions and follow it with a discussion of the goals of medical missions, and in the third section, I will discuss the history and work of church health services in Africa in their denominational and ecumenical context. My discussion reflects the Protestant missionary tradition with which I am familiar, but some of the ideas I sketch apply to the Catholic missionary tradition also. In an address to the International Student Missionary Conference held in

London, January 2-6, 1900, Dr. Herbert Lankester, one of the first medical missionaries, called medical missions “the heavy artillery of the missionary army.”2 The metaphor of artillery conjured the warlike nature in which evangelization was understood and sold to Christians. Missions in its contexts also carried with it ideas similar to the colonial enterprise since both missions and colonials claimed that they worked for the “transformation … [and] restoration of health in a sick universe, the establishment of order in a world of disorder, madness, corruption, and diabolical illusions.”3 The Comaroffs have argued that missionary activity among the Tswana also promoted temporal benefits as one of the strategies in overcoming the carnal.4