Summary: | In 1977 the Unevangelized Fields Mission (UFM) broke relations with their daughter church in Zaire, where they had been working since 1931, and left the country. There had been no government ban on missions nor any apparent external reason for their doing so. The reasons for the schism lay within the history of the mission in Zaire and in their relationship with their daughter church, the Communaute Episcopale Evangelique au Zaire (CEEZ). The purpose of this research, therefore, is to try and establish what effect politics and economics had on this relationship. The location of the dispute, in North-Eastern Zaire, is also interesting in that this area has been one of the lest economically developed parts of the country and has had a history of political extremism both during the colonial and in independent eras. In attempting to make a case study of this schism within the ranks of the Unevangelized Fields Mission it is necessary to analyse the history of the mission in the context of the political and economic developments of the country at large. It is to be noted also that the mission began as a result of an earlier schism within the heart of Africa Mission in 1931 and that a history of one cannot be made without a history of the other. A Case study of both can be made which conveniently spans the two main eras in Zairian history---the colonial period and the period since independence. This history of both missions is confined to their Congo/Zaire fields.
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