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Dossier

Vol. 26 No. 1 (2023): Viaggio e lotta politica in Italia e nel Mediterraneo

Un viaggio attraverso l’umanesimo: Il reverendo Colin Morris e lo sviluppo del nazionalismo in Zambia

  • Antonio Messina
Submitted
June 24, 2024
Published
2024-06-24

Abstract

This essay traces the stages of the Reverend Colin Morris’ long journey, when in his early twenties he arrived in Africa as a missionary, serving the Methodist church in Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) from 1956. Distinguished for his positions of open hostility to the racial inequalities fostered by the British colonial regime, he formed a long and lasting friendship with the leader of the independence movement Kenneth Kaunda, who described him as an “ideal priest”. Kaunda and Morris looked at humanism as the auspicious opportunity for the emancipation of Africans and the full development of the socialist idea, which for Morris represented the authentic spirit of Christianity.