Litnet

Summary

JW Colenso was born in St Austell in 1814 and showed incredible academic giftedness from a young age. He took the cloth and subsequently became the Bishop of Natal, where he and his family came to live (1853-1883). His mission was to Christianise the Zulu people for the sake of British imperialism and the English Church. He found that his work among the Zulu people required a certain interpretation of parts of the Old Testament which caused him to conflict with the canons of the church authorities, leading to his excommunication. This was followed by his next saga, when due to a strong religious and social conscience he defended the rights of the Zulu people. The Anglo-Zulu War of 1879 saw Colenso defend the Zulu people to his detriment, and he died soon after in a rather sad state. Some say he was a heretic due to his stance on Scripture; others say that he was far-sighted in the way he stood up for human rights. With historical hindsight, one can see Colenso as far-sighted, but for then, he was up against British imperial policies, which were to be his nemesis. Today, his re-interpretation of the Scriptures would be largely accepted.

John William Colenso (1814-1883) was born into a Cornish family in South England. Different biographers bring different angles, views and conclusions to his life and work, especially from the time he came to South Africa as a missionary bishop (1853-1883). These views are found in the works of historians such as Jeff Guy (1940-2014), a well-known and published South African academic historian whose main interest was the history of Natal and the Zulu nation, and who published the definitive book on Colenso, The heretic: A study of the life of John William Colenso (University of KwaZulu-Natal Press: 1983); Peter Hinchliff (1929-1995), a South African priest and academic and subsequently Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Oxford University from 1992 to 1995, who wrote on Colenso’s theology in John William Colenso: Bishop of Natal (London: Nelson, 1964); and Sir George William Cox (1827-1902), an English divine and scholar who wrote a biography of Colenso published in 1888, five years after the bishop’s death: The life of John Colenso, Bishop of Natal, in two volumes (London: W Ridgway, 1888). What makes a study of Colenso difficult in determining whether he was just a heretic with divergent views from the mainstream thinking in Anglican ecclesiastical circles, or someone who showed extraordinary wisdom for a way forward to reach his congregants and students based on his study and knowledge of the Scriptures, is the crosscurrents of race, science and religion in mid-Victorian England. This was the time that Darwin and Lyell, whom Colenso knew, were propagating their theories that centred on new ways of evolutionary thinking. These new views challenged the church and the stories of creation. Furthermore, Colenso had no direct theological training for his work in the church, other than his experience, including writing sermons, and his work as a contributor to overseas evangelical publications by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. His great talent lay in writing school texts on arithmetic published by Longman; his formal studies were at St John’s College, Cambridge, specifically in mathematics, in which he excelled, walking away with most of the prizes in his final year (1836). He was Second Wrangler in the Mathematical Tripos in 1836; he was Second Smith’s Prizeman; he won a Hare’s Exhibition (three times); he was a Dr Dowman Sizar; he won a Litherland Exhibition; he won a Dr Rayner’s Exhibition; he received the Naden Divinity Studentship in 1834; and in 1835, he was elected Scholar. He completed his BA in 1836, and in 1837 he was elected a Fellow of St John’s College.

The various rooms where Colenso resided at St John's College Cambridge in the 1830/40s. This was also where the philosophers Thomas Hobbes lived; and the poet William Wordsworth. I also lived there for the six months as the visiting Colenso fellow (Oct 2022 - March 2023). Photographs: Paul Murray

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In appraising Colenso, some have portrayed him as a heretic, an ambiguous figure and an enigma. As a bishop, he never really fitted in with the work he was meant to do, because of his divergent views from the mainstream canons of the English Church.

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The Colensos were considered quite well-off, as their father had an interest in a tin mine. The family was not a religious one at all. However, as the children were growing up, the parents decided to send them to the local Church of England in the town of St Austell in Cornwall. Someone such as John William Colenso, one of the four children, was probably asking religious questions. Academically very gifted, he attended the local school until 1829 at age 15, when disaster struck when his father’s mine got flooded. Colenso was forced to take on a job as an usher at a school in Dartmouth, a seaside English town further up the coast from St Austell. He served here under a certain Mr Glubb, the head of the school and incumbent of St Petrox, the local parish church. The young Colenso’s burning desire was to attend Cambridge University, and so one can only speculate that the likes of his teachers and vicars enlightened him on this prospect. Colenso writes:

My object is to enter as a sizar at St John’s. … Mr Glubb … assure(s) me there will be no difficulty in supporting myself by private pupils, and a thousand other aids which a studious man cannot help receiving, provided I can at once establish my entrance there.^[i]

At the age of 15 already, Colenso had expressed an interest in taking the cloth. Turning to the subject of the ministry, he expresses his longing:

To be engaged in this awfully pleasing work. There is a most awful grandeur in this solemn work. We are not meddling with the things of time, with this world’s trifles. Eternity! Eternity is ours; for it is by the means of the ministry that the Holy Spirit is most generally pleased to give His blessing. At all events, it is the members of that sacred body who are to minister unto hungry souls their daily bread, to fill the thirsty with the nectar of heaven, to heal the sick, to establish the wavering. And who is sufficient for these things.^[ii]

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Colenso engaged with thoughts on the universality of man in religion that were derived from a combination of different sources, such as his genes, the mode of operation of his soul, the expansiveness of his study of mathematics, as well as his classical and linguistic education at St John’s, where the influences of religious and humanist thinkers such as William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge prevailed.

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Colenso subsequently made his childhood dream come true when he proceeded to St John’s College, Cambridge, in 1832 as a sizar.^[iii] As mentioned, he graduated as the Second Wrangler in the Mathematical Tripos in 1836, as well as being the Smith’s Prizeman. While he was at St John’s College, there was the quiet yet strong influence of the spiritual mood that prevailed in student life, particularly from the much-loved Master, Dr James “Jemmy” Wood, who, like Colenso, came from a financially challenged family. The spiritual and religious zeitgeist at Cambridge cannot be discounted as an important factor in Colenso’s formative years with regard to his being someone interested in furthering the Christian Gospel. Added to this point is the climate at Cambridge, which was against theological dogmatism, preserving “a nucleus of genuine ancient philosophical tradition [to pass] on uncontaminated to the centuries to come”.^[iv] It can be further argued that Colenso engaged with thoughts on the universality of man in religion that were derived from a combination of different sources, such as his genes, the mode of operation of his soul, the expansiveness of his study of mathematics, as well as his classical and linguistic education at St John’s, where the influences of religious and humanist thinkers such as William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge prevailed.^[v] Colenso was elected a Fellow of the College in 1837, an extraordinary accomplishment for a person 23 years old. Through a personal contact, he took up a post as a tutor of mathematics at Harrow School in London in 1837, where he was made a deacon in 1838. Such a move did not require any attendance at a theological seminary, and neither did he at any other stage formally study theology. However, by now his childhood dreams were fulfilled: to be a deacon in the church and to study at St John’s College. The salary he received at Harrow was not very much, which meant that he needed to find other ways to earn money, hence the purchase of a small boarding house. Tragedy struck when a conflagration destroyed the boarding house, which was uninsured, leaving him with an astronomical debt. With little prospect of success, he returned to St John’s College to teach mathematics, algebra and arithmetic, subjects on which he subsequently wrote school textbooks, which were published and which brought in a considerable income. In this way, he managed to eliminate his debt, which now left him free to consider other options.

St John's College, Cambridge. Photograph: Paul Murray

Before he had left for Harrow, he had met Frances Sarah Bunyon, whose father was financially well positioned and whose grandfather was Thomas Bignold, one of the founders of the insurance company called Norwich Union. Marrying into this family would give Colenso access to the upper echelons of English society; at the same time, he had this evangelical drive to work among the less fortunate and fulfilling the maxim he held onto: noblesse oblige. Frances Sarah often visited her brother, Charles, at St John’s College, from which came a relationship between her and Colenso, with the two of them eventually getting married. It was through her that Colenso was introduced to the “Broad Church” and renowned theologian Frederick Denison Maurice. This was at the time Maurice was defending the ideas of the poet and Unitarian Samuel Taylor Coleridge, of whom Frances Sarah was a great admirer. One of the ecclesiastical tenets of Maurice’s views was that the church is a united body which transcends the diversity and partiality of individual people, factions and sects. Such beliefs influenced Colenso, and this would later bring him into conflict with the Church of England’s articles. While today these beliefs are hailed for inaugurating the ecumenical movement, they were then thought of as too liberal. Maurice also denounced the concept of the eternity of hell, a view that Colenso latched onto and which was to influence his later work among the Zulu people. Colenso professed his love for Maurice: “How truly do I love Maurice! Daily more and more of truth appears to me in his book.”^[vi] The reference is to Maurice’s work Kingdom of Christ, which Colenso read “day by day”. Frances Sarah also knew Mary Horner Lyell, wife of the geologist Sir Charles Lyell, whose family were academically inclined; and she personally knew Charles Darwin, the English naturalist who developed an understanding of evolutionary biology. These and other influences would have a profound impact on John William Colenso in his work and be one of the precursors for his freer interpretation of the Scriptures, which would cause him to be seen as a so-called heretic in the English Church. Two strands from Maurice influenced Colenso: firstly, the idea that God is the fatherhood over the human family, and secondly, the importance of missionary activity.^[vii] These views were fertile ground for someone such as Colenso to prepare to enter the mission field and go out into the world to Christianise people. Such a venture, however, was in the name of the English Church and British imperialism, which suited Colenso and his moral evangelicalism, except that he might not have seen this as a limitation.

St John's College, Cambridge. Photograph: Paul Murray

Colenso had to vacate his position at St John’s College when he got married to Frances Sarah Bunyon, a custom for any Fellow in that situation. Maurice married the couple in the Holy Trinity Church in Bloomsbury. From Cambridge, Colenso and his new wife moved to Forncett St Mary, Norfolk, where he was to become vicar (1846 to 1853). Their family soon grew, with the couple having four children (a fifth was born in Natal). While at Forncett St Mary, in addition to vicar duties, Colenso edited several missionary publications, such as The church in the colonies, the official publication of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, as well as The monthly record of church missions. While Colenso was working at Forncett St Mary as a vicar, Bishop Robert Gray from the episcopal see in Cape Town was in England scouting for two bishops for his work in South Africa, one for Natal and the other for the Eastern Cape. Colenso had become noticed from his assiduous work writing for the church’s missionary publications, and one could argue that this is probably why he received the appointment as the Bishop of Natal in 1853 (he had some knowledge of the landscape), even though his credentials as a member of the “Broad Church”, an evangelical and a Unitarian might not have fitted the mould that Gray, as a member of the “High Church”, would have hoped for. First, he would go to Natal to see what was required and to learn something of the area in a ten-week mission in 1854, and then his family would follow. Colenso arrived in Natal, not holding any specific racial beliefs, but with ethnocentric views and class attitudes much along the lines of the predominant beliefs in Britain at the time.^[viii] His sermon in the Norwich Cathedral on Sunday, 13 August 1854, somewhat explains Colenso’s belief that God’s love is not confined to a few, but given in some measure to all, which Nicholas Wellington interprets as Colenso having “a nineteenth century liberal, ethnocentric attitude towards black people”.^[ix] Colenso’s own words in The Natal Mercury of 25 December 1856 confirm his attitude that God was for everyone, including the nonbelieving Zulu people, who were part of the British Empire, whose colonies encircled the globe. Nicholas Wellington interprets this approach as one incorporating a degree of “British imperialism and European ethnocentrism into Christianity, his purpose … not simply to convert, but also civilize – which included education, industry, trade, general social improvement and racial justice”. One of the issues that would cause Colenso to be viewed as a heretic was his tolerance of the practice of polygamy. He took on this view more out of practical considerations, hoping that there would be a gradual move away from such indigenous practices, but at the same time hoping for his flock to continue their road to being Christianised rather than remaining as infidels (defecting). According to the historian Norman Etherington, Colenso (rather than condemning the Africans) expected that with the passing of time, Africans would reach “that advanced Christianity, to which we in England have been brought through centuries of cultivation”.^[x] He returned to England in April 1854 to raise funds for his mission work in Natal.^[xi]

Colenso and his family went to Natal to settle there in May 1855. In addition to the rectory named Bishopstowe, the Colensos built Ekukhanyeni (The Place of Light), the mission station not just for teaching Zulu people theology, but for teaching it in a Western way. It was at this time that Colenso’s own works on the interpretation of the Scriptures started to appear: First lessons in science (1861) and, in the same year, The Pentateuch and the Book of Joshua critically examined, in which he questioned the literal truth of aspects of the Bible. The approach of teaching for work and industry adopted by Colenso in his work in Natal, reflected the belief of FD Maurice that one of the functions of the church was social concern and to educate.^[xii] However, Colenso’s educational schemes faced several challenges, not least being hostility from white colonists, lack of funds, and difficulties in procuring the right teachers. Throughout this time, as BB Burnett argues, one needs to see Colenso as a field missionary, always attempting to establish contact with his people and see in them the work of God.^[xiii] Peter Hinchliff, however, sees Colenso’s contributions as somewhat unique when he writes that his theology can be seen “as a necessary corrective to the teaching of a great many other missionaries”.^[xiv] This view is borne out by Colenso’s own liberal and universalist views on the sacraments, and the fact that he was not prepared to accept some parts of the Old Testament literally. This move led to what was to become one of the Church of England’s major ecclesiastical controversies in mid-Victorian times.

It started in 1862 when Colenso was translating the story of the flood to one of his Zulu students at Ekukhanyeni, and he was asked whether he believed that only some of the Old Testament stories are true. Unable to deny it, Colenso then began writing prolifically on the Old Testament, leading to several publications from his pen.^[xv] The controversy grew so big that eventually Colenso had to return to England in 1862 to defend his theological position and explain the context of his missionary work, his evolutionary thought and his views on race, among other matters. When Colenso arrived in England to defend his theological stance on the universality of God, polygamy and other matters which were doctrinal and liturgical, there was “an atmosphere of intellectual and popular debate about race …”.^[xvi] Wellington argues that black people, as slaves, were incorporated into an existing class structure; the growth of scientific racism, political events, the work of missionaries and stereotyping all contributed to these changed attitudes.^[xvii] Further factors such as manliness, athleticism, the growth of public schools and anti-intellectualism contributed to a changing attitude towards race in Britain at that time, which led to a move from ethnocentricity to racialism. Anthropology as a field of study was growing, which in turn promoted the polygenesis-monogenesis debate. Colenso had himself been exposed to the lives of the San in South Africa, whose language his friend Dr Willem Bleek had studied, and of whom Colenso wrote: “These diminutive people cannot be educated because they do not associate with other people.”^[xviii] However, as explained by Nicholas Wellington, this did not mean that Colenso would place black people in the working class category, as he was aware that the Zulu nation had its own distinct social stratification: the king, chieftains, heads of the different tribes, age regiments and the division of labour. It is therefore argued that Colenso’s response to the changing attitudes of British people towards black people, seemed to be mostly unaltered in him. Today, one would consider this stance as liberal for then, and attest to Colenso’s far-sightedness (being a savant). Then, his stance was very liberal, too liberal for his white colonist congregants.

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Returning to Natal after his visit to England was to be a difficult period for the rest of Colenso’s life. Because he had opposed the doctrine of eternal punishment for sinners, and because of his toleration of the practice of polygamy among Zulu people, Colenso was summoned by the head of the Anglican Church, Bishop Gray, in 1863. 

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Returning to Natal after his visit to England was to be a difficult period for the rest of Colenso’s life. Because he had opposed the doctrine of eternal punishment for sinners, and because of his toleration of the practice of polygamy among Zulu people, Colenso was summoned by the head of the Anglican Church, Bishop Gray, in 1863. He was summarily excommunicated, although he was acquitted by the judicial committee of the Privy Council in England, because it argued that the royal courts could not uphold the legality of Gray’s authority when he had established the Anglican Church on its own in South Africa. The English bishops deposed Colenso in 1869, and he was left mostly powerless as a bishop, conducting basic ceremonies, and marrying and burying members of his church. Bishop Macrorie was appointed in the same see, giving Natal two bishops, an act that undermined Colenso’s position and work. While Colenso continued to receive his episcopal income, any victories in England were merely technical. After the church controversies had ended, leaving Colenso quite marginalised, there came a new wave of trouble for him. These issues surfaced in 1873 when Colenso stood up for the Zulu people against injustice on the part of the British colonial office. One related event was the so-called Langalibalele affair, when members of the Hlubi nation refused to hand in their rifles to be registered, leading to skirmishes and deaths on the sides of both the colonials and the indigenous people. This incident had a profound effect on Colenso, who was constrained to end his long-standing friendship with Sir Theophilus Shepstone, the British commissioner. Colenso was disturbed because the incident was a setback to his work, and the name of the English Church and government had been tarnished. In retrospect, he now saw Shepstone as a wolf.^[xix]

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In appraising Colenso, some have portrayed him as a heretic, an ambiguous figure and an enigma. As a bishop, he never really fitted in with the work he was meant to do, because of his divergent views from the mainstream canons of the English Church.

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In appraising Colenso, some have portrayed him as a heretic, an ambiguous figure and an enigma. As a bishop, he never really fitted in with the work he was meant to do, because of his divergent views from the mainstream canons of the English Church. This is not to deny his work as a missionary and a teacher, which, in retrospect, might have been the correct designation for his role (sans being a bishop). It is Jeff Guy, out of all the scholars, who best looks at Colenso from a more modern perspective.^[xx] J Grump, reviewing Guy’s work, explains that he saw him as no saint and rejects the liberal view that treats Colenso as “a great tribute of African freedom” and “a twentieth-century liberal who somehow wandered into the wrong century”. In this way, one can argue he was neither a heretic nor one who showed extraordinary wisdom in the work he set out to do. Had he been so, he would have seen that to act one-sidedly would exclude some of his constituency. This is what happened in the end; he and his family became isolated because of their support for the Zulu people. He would also have seen the constraints of being an Englishman in the Empire. An interesting angle for understanding Colenso as constricted in his outlook, is the view of the English botanist Marianne North.^[xxi] On her peregrinations in Natal in 1883, she visited Bishopstowe in the same year that Colenso died. North explains how she was told that “the whole family had isolated themselves by their Zuluism”. When she arrived at the homestead, Colenso was there to receive her, giving her his arm with as much courtesy as if she had been a princess. She explains:

It seemed quite a dream of old days to meet such a thorough gentleman again, and difficult to understand how one so genial and gentle could have made himself so hated by the majority of the country. His conversation was delightful, but the strained atmosphere of Zuluism which pervaded the house was painful to me, and difficult to understand. Cetewayo’s portrait was everywhere, and he was talked of as a hero and martyr.

The reference to the Zulu king is contextualised by the way Colenso defended Zululand and the right for the Zulus to control their own land. The land of Zululand gradually diminished as historical developments escalated with the British and Afrikaners’ quest for land ownership and securing a trade route through Zululand to Delagoa Bay (Maputo). Soon after Marianne North’s visit to Bishopstowe, Bishop Colenso died (20 June 1883). This was followed by the homestead’s being destroyed in a conflagration. After his death, his wife and daughters were inspired to follow his ideals and work for the rights of the Zulu people. Bishopstowe has been restored in recent years from a derelict wreck to a research and teaching centre in Colenso’s memory.^[xxii] There is some tragic irony in that the grand vision of Bishop Colenso, particularly his ideas for the mission station and teaching Zulu people, were never fully realised. Neither were the ideas of the project committee fully realised. There is, at least, some consolation:

Nevertheless, the modest house built by Colenso’s daughters has been rescued and returned to something like its former state. The significance of this is that the building embodies fragments, such as walls and floors, which date back to the earliest Bishopstowe.^[xxiii]

The above is highly metaphorical of the bishop, with his projects and finances being cut short by his biblical controversies, and his life made difficult because of the support for the Zulu people and a neglect of the white residents in his bishopric. In retrospect, it is a harsh statement to call Bishop Colenso a heretic, as he adjusted his teaching to fit the requirements of his work, teaching and ministering to the Zulu people with their own specific knowledge and customs, to fulfil his work as a missionary. Similarly, it is not true that he was a savant; he worked assiduously for a cause he believed in, under the cross of the English Church and the flag of the English state, but he should have seen this limitation. Perhaps the wrong move in his life was that he became a bishop.^[xxiv] He would equally have campaigned for the rights of the Zulu people had he been a missionary, and would have avoided the controversy from his unique way of interpreting the Scriptures to reach the very people he had come so gallantly to serve, the Zulu nation.

^[i] George William Cox, The life of John Colenso, Bishop of Natal (London: W Ridgway 1888), 5.
^[ii] Ibid, p 2.
^[iii] The term sizar was attributed to a student who had to do duties in return for tuition.
^[iv] Ernest Cassirer, The Platonic Renaissance in England, translated by James P Pettegrove (Austin: University of Texas, 1953), 201-202.
^[v] The eagle, December 1893, No LXXII, Col XIII, 35-37; the annual publication of St John’s College, Cambridge, UK.
^[vi] George William Cox, The life of John Colenso, Bishop of Natal (London: W Ridgway 1888), 31.
^[vii] Peter Hinchliff, John William Colenso, Bishop of Natal (London: Nelson, 1964), 36.
^[viii] Nicholas M Wellington, “John William Colenso and early Mid-Victorian attitudes to race, 1840-1875”, BA Honours thesis, University of Natal, 1980, 8.
^[ix] Ibid, p 12.
^[x] Norman Etherington, Preachers, peasants and politics in Southeast Africa, 1835-1880; African Christian communities in Natal, Pondoland and Zululand (London: Royal Historical Society, 1978), 41-42.
^[xi] John William Colenso, Ten weeks in Natal: First tour of visitation among the colonists and Zulu people of Natal (Cambridge: Macmillan, 1855).
^[xii] Ronald Luke Steele, “The contribution of FD Maurice to the Christian Socialist Movement of 1848-1854”, thesis presented to the Faculty of Divinity, Rhodes University, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Divinity, January 1971, 34-55.
^[xiii] BB Burnett, “The missionary work of the First Anglican Bishop of Natal, the Rt Reverend John William Colenso, DD, between the years 1852-1873”, MA thesis, 1947, 41. In NM Wellington, “John William Colenso and early mid-Victorian attitudes to race, 1840-1875”, BA Honours thesis, University of Natal, 1980, 25. ? [Do both page numbers apply? Also below]
^[xiv] Peter Hinchliff, John William Colenso, Bishop of Natal (London: Nelson, 1964), 81.
^[xv] John William Colenso, The Pentateuch and Book of Joshua critically examined (Longman, 1862).
^[xvi] Nicholas M Wellington, “John William Colenso and early mid-Victorian attitudes to race, 1840-1875”, BA Honours thesis, University of Natal, 1980, 32.
^[xvii] Ibid.
^[xviii] JW Colenso, “Affairs of Natal” (48), quoted in Fuze, “The black people and whence they came”, 87. In NM Wellington, “John William Colenso and early mid-Victorian attitudes to race, 1840-1875”, BA Honours thesis, University of Natal, 1980, 27.
^[xix] Hariette Colenso’s comments to Sir George Cox in the proofs to his biography, The life of John Colenso, Bishop of Natal (London: W Ridgway, 1888), Folio P 16. In NM Wellington, “John William Colenso and early mid-Victorian attitudes to race, 1840-1875”, BA Honours thesis, University of Natal, 1980, 65.
^[xx] Jeff Guy, The heretic: A study of the life of John William Colenso (University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 1983).
^[xxi] Marianne North, Recollections of a happy life (London: Macmillan, 1893), 278 et seq.
^[xxii] https://www.forncetthistory.net/rev-john-william-colenso/.
^[xxiii] http://natalia.org.za/Files/39/Natalia%2039%20pp9-27%20C.pdf.
^[xxiv] Michael Bester, email to Paul Murray dated 05/06/2023.