The CMS had initially promoted Africans to…

The CMS had initially promoted Africans to responsible positions in the mission field, an outstanding example being the appointment of Samuel Adjai Crowther as the first Anglican bishop of the Niger.

Crowther, a liberated Yoruba slave, had been educated in Sierra Leone and in Britain, where he was ordained before returning to his homeland with the first group of missionaries sent there by the CMS.

This is part of a conscious ''native church" policy pursued by the Anglicans and others to create indigenous ecclesiastical institutions that eventually will be independent of European tutelage.

The effort will fail, however, in part because church authorities will come to think that religious discipline has grown too lax during Crowther's episcopate but especially because of the rise of prejudice.

Crowther will be succeeded as bishop by a British cleric.

Nevertheless, the acceptance of Christianity by large numbers of Nigerians depends finally on the various denominations coming to terms with local conditions and involves the participation of an increasingly high proportion of African clergy in the missions.