History of Christianity
Nigeria is Africa’s most populous country, and its Christians are approximately three quarters Protestant, and one quarter Roman Catholic. The north of the country remains predominantly Muslim, but the Christian minority is considerable. For example, the northern eastern state of Borno is 30% Christian. Inevitably Christianity arrived in the country when traders from the Portuguese first arrived in the fifteenth century to find slaves, although Catholic priests later tried to outlaw the trade when they arrived in greater numbers in the seventeenth century.
Remarkably, when slavery was abolished in the British Empire in 1833, many freed slaves became Christians and returned to Nigeria to preach the Gospel. Samuel Ajayi Crowther was the first African to be ordained Bishop by the Protestant Christian Missionary society and went to translate much of the Bible into the Yoruba language in the mid 1880’s. Christianity doubled in size to form move than half the population in the latter half of the 20th century and is projected to continue to grow – mainly due to demographic reasons – and become in 2050 the country with the third largest Christian population in the world, with 211 million believers.
