A Marriage of Convenience: Church and State in the Late Colonial Period, 1940–1956

Abstract

The Church developed a less combative relationship with the state after WWII. Roelens died in 1947 and the idea of Church largely run as separate from the state died with him. Older missionaries such as Van Acker were also replaced with new ones, such as Joseph De Jaeger, who had no memory of the proto-colonial period. Many Africans came to the missions in search of social mobility and a literate middle class developed that contributed to the growth of an agro-industrial state complex in Kongolo. Outside of the middle classes, farmers on the right bank satirized the colonial state but did not launch proto-nationalist movements. All this meant that militant nationalists—mainly from outside the territory—strongly identified many people in Kongolo with Belgian colonialism and, latterly, the Katangese secession during decolonization.