Bishop Samuel Ajayi Crowther (Apostle of Transformation And African Missionary)

"About the third year of my liberation from slavery of man, I was convinced of another worse state of slavery, namely;that of sin and Satan: it pleased the Lord to to open my heart... I was admitted into the visible church of Christ here on earth as a soldier to fight manfully under His banner against our spiritual enemies. The Lord has me a special mission to bring about a spirit of unity and love among my people of Africa." ~ Bishop Samuel Ajayi Crowther

Bishop Samuel Ajayi Crowther

Few in this our generation today know of the fascinating and dramatic ministry of Samuel Ajayi Crowther. He was an incredible man of vision and spiritual strength. He brought to the forefront of our societies, the visible church of the living God, in the area of transformation and repentance.

The legacy of knowledge is the greatest heritage to bequeath to every age. The ignorance of the lessons of  history is often responsible for the prevalence of decadence in the society, because we have failed to learn the lessons of life from the tragic mistakes of the past.

I doubt if you and I would have been in this place, if Samuel Ajayi Crowther had not been kidnapped by Muslim Fulani space hunters at the age of 12 in 1821. If Ajayi Crowther had not been exchanged for a horse in a slave trade by barter and later sold to the Portuguese slave graders, providence would not have rescued him from the Portuguese slave-ship.

Samuel Ajayi Crowther translated the Holy Bible into the Yoruba Language and compiled a Yoruba dictionary with a grammar book between 1843 and 1850. A man who wrote the first book in Igbo, "Isoama-Ibo", a primer, in 1857. This same man wrote a primer in the Nupe Language in 1860, and a full grammar book with vocabulary of the Nupe in 1864.

This was the  same man who bought indigenous Christianity to most of the African Countries. It was through to him that Christianity gain more access into the shores of Africa. He campaigned for the abolition of slave trade in Africa as a continent.

He was one of the first indigenous Bishop in Africa. He hazarded his life for Christianity to take part in Africa. Samuel Ajayi Crowther planted the seed of education in Africa.

Samuel Ajayi Crowther was probably the most widely known African Christian of the nineteenth century. His life spanned the greater part of it. He was born in its first decade and died in the last decade. He lived through a tranformation of relations between Africa and the rest of the world and a parellel transformation in the Christian situation in Africa. By the time of his death, the bright confidence in and African church led by Africans, a reality that he seemed to embody in himself had dimmed. Bishop Samuel Ajayi Crowther lived through between 1809 and 1891.