Christianity in Chad
Christianity in Chad arrived more recently than other religions, with the arrival of Europeans.[1] Its followers are divided into Roman Catholics and Protestants (including several denominations) and collectively represent 45% of the country's population.[1][2]
Protestantism[edit]
The Protestants came to southern Chad in the 1920s.[1] The American organization Baptist Mid-Missions was the first Protestant mission to settle in the country in 1925 in Sarh.[3] Missionaries of other denominations and nationalities soon followed.[1] Many of the American missions were northern offshoots of missionary networks founded farther south in the Ubangi-Chari colony (now Central African Republic) of French Equatorial Africa (Afrique Equatoriale Franchise — AEF).[1] The organizational ties between the missions in southern Chad and Ubangi-Chari were strengthened by France's decision in 1925 to transfer Logone Occidental, Tandjilé, Logone Oriental, and Moyen-Chari prefectures to Ubangi-Chari, where they remained until another administrative shuffle restored them to Chad in 1932.[1]
In 1964, the Chadian Association of Baptist Churches was officially founded.[3]
These early Protestant establishments looked to their own churches for material resources and to their own countries for diplomatic support.[1] Such independence allowed them to maintain a distance from the French colonial administration.[1] In addition, the missionaries arrived with their wives and children, and they often spent their entire lives in the region.[1] Some of the missionaries who arrived at that time had grown up with missionary parents in missions founded earlier in the French colonies to the south.[1] Many remained after independence, leaving only in the early and or mid-1970s when Tombalbaye's authenticité movement forced their departure.[1]
The missionaries set up schools, clinics, and hospitals long before the colonial administration did.[1] In fact, the mission schools produced the first Western-educated Chadians in the 1940s and 1950s.[1] In general, the Protestant missionary effort in southern Chad has enjoyed some success.[1] In 1980, after a half-century of evangelization, Protestants in southern Chad numbered about 80,000.[1]
From bases in the south, Protestants founded missions in other parts of Chad.[1] In the colonial capital of Fort-Lamy (present-day's N'Djamena), the missions attracted followers among resident southerners.[1] The missionaries also worked among the non-Muslim populations of Guéra, Ouaddaï, and Biltine prefectures.[1] There were estimated to be 18,000 Christians in N'Djamena in 1980.[1]