Portraits of Courage – Samuel Ajayi Crowther

It is a Christian biography of Samuel Ajayi Crowther (c. 1807–1891). It follows him from his Yoruba home at Osogun, through his capture in 1821 and rescue by HMS Myrmidon in 1822, his conversion and education in Sierra Leone, the Niger expeditions, the mission at Abeokuta and his reunion with his mother, to his consecration in 1864 as the first African Anglican bishop and his death at Lagos. It draws mainly on his own letters, journals and charges.

He was a Yoruba man, sold into slavery as a boy and freed by the Royal Navy, who became a teacher, explorer, linguist and missionary. He led the translation of the Bible into Yoruba, began written work in Igbo, Nupe and other languages, founded the Niger Mission with an all-African staff in 1857, and was consecrated Bishop of the Niger in Canterbury Cathedral in 1864.

He was the first African bishop of the Anglican Church, consecrated in 1864. He was not the first African bishop in history, since the ancient churches of North Africa and Ethiopia had African bishops for centuries, and he was not the first African Anglican priest, since Philip Quaque of Cape Coast was ordained in 1765.

After years of real problems in a thinly supervised mission, including a crime committed by two of its employees, a group of young English missionaries took control. At a committee meeting at Onitsha in August 1890, African agents and clergy were dismissed or suspended, among them his son, Archdeacon Dandeson Crowther. The bishop withdrew from the committee but remained bishop until his death. The missionary society’s own historian later called the young men ‘too severe,’ and in 2014 the Archbishop of Canterbury said of his treatment, ‘It was wrong.’

Not from the Anglican Church. The Delta churches, under Archdeacon Dandeson Crowther, stopped taking the missionary society’s money and became a self-supporting pastorate, inaugurated at Bonny in April 1892 with Crowther’s approval. They remained part of the Church of England, and in time came back into closer relations with the society.

Honestly. It shows the racial prejudice he faced from scientists, newspapers and some missionaries, and it notes where his own biographers used the language of racial superiority. It also looks at his deference to Europeans, including his 1884 letter beginning ‘I know my place as negro,’ and asks what it cost him.

Each chapter opens with a passage from the American Standard Version (1901) that carries its theme, from ‘Thou hast been the helper of the fatherless’ to ‘a great multitude … out of every nation and of all tribes and peoples and tongues’, and further passages are woven through the story, including verses Crowther himself quoted. Every quotation was checked against the ASV text.

At the beginning. The preface and introduction explain the sources and how the story has been told differently by his biographers; the chapters then follow his life in order. Appendix A gathers lessons from his life, Appendix B is a study guide for groups, Appendix C a chronology, and Appendix D a note on sources and on popular claims the book corrects.