After the arrival of Diogo Cão in Mbanza Kongo (Kongo) in 1483, Christianity was subsequently established as a religion of the Kingdom during the reign of Afonso I (1509-1542) and it became the seat of Bishopric for Central West Africa. However, after the battle of Mbwila in 1665, for political reason, the Portuguese wanted to move it to Luanda. The paper explores this seventeenth century debate looking at how Manuel de Sa, a deacon and native of Angola, in 1686 challenged the Pope to retain the Bishopric in São Salvador and to allow for a brand of Christianity that resonated with Central West Africans cultural and political realities.
The paper engages with Kongo royal critique of Western Christendom, drawing on Sa’s religious contestation against moving the Bishopric from Kongo to Luanda. It examines how Sa saw the change of Bishopric to Luanda as a political move garnished by the Portuguese religious authority to silence the Kongolese African Christianity. The contention of the paper is that Sa’s discourse was an attempt to rescue African religious freedom from the Curia in Rome that is in line with Africans’ cultural and political landscape, hence Christianity in African’s image.