You could view it as the opening scene of a movie: Long shot. Night. Deep dark jungle. A growl issues from somewhere in the bush, the screech of a bird. Now a figure in white appears, alone, running swiftly along a narrow path. It's a child, surely. No, it's a woman, a small woman. She is barefoot, we see now, and she is wearing—. Wait a minute! Goodness gracious, what is she wearing? It looks like a petticoat, or a chemise—some Victorian women's undergarment, maybe, whatever it is called. But as she emerges into a spot of moonlight, we note that her hairdo is very un-Victorian: carroty red, cropped short like a boy's. This is no proper lady. In fact, she is shouting, addressing the jungle with a rough Scots burr. Now she seems to be praying, though it sounds more like an order than a plea. Then suddenly she begins to sing, belting out a hymn at the top of her voice, as she runs and runs and runs.

Who is this peculiar person? Mary Mitchell Slessor, of course, Scottish Presbyterian missionary to southeastern Nigeria, and we are not the first to wonder if she has lost her mind.

The scene above is caricatured, but only a little. It represents a reality that has intrigued mission biographers for almost a century, as well as the temptation to hyperbolize that same reality. It is safe to conclude that aside from David Livingstone, no Protestant missionary has been more celebrated, more romanticized, more critiqued and mythologized than Mary Slessor, in print (over three dozen biographies and scholarly studies in a quick count, though there are more), in film, in music, and on stage. With a term of service that began in 1876, she was honored in the British Isles long before her death in 1915, while in the "field" her ministry was sought, even begged for, a privilege few missionaries have enjoyed the world over. In Scotland, her face adorns the ten-pound note, and in a Dundee museum her adventures are pictured in a stained glass window. In Nigeria, where she was trusted with the role of Vice Consul, a local judge for Pax Britannica, her name is everywhere—on a hospital, a chapel, a women's shelter, a school, a road. In 1956, Queen Elizabeth II placed a wreath on her grave.

In spite of this, historian Andrew Walls has been claiming for years that no complete and fully responsible record of her life has been produced. Now veteran journalist Jeanette Hardage has confronted that gap, and Walls, in his foreword to the book, claims it to be "the best biography so far produced." Hardage declares her intention early on, to avoid "unwarranted assumptions," and to guarantee documentation. Anyone familiar with the many retellings of Slessor's story knows what a tricky self-assignment that must have been, but Hardage has given us not only an admirably complete and researched document but a palpable world to live in as we read.

She might have added that she has opted not to wrap up a significant life within an imposed premise. The danger in that choice, of course, is that without a thesis readers can become lost in chronology. Hardage seems well aware of this. There is no posturing in her claims. She was "drawn to Mary Slessor," she states in her introduction, "because of her faith, her certainty that she was where God wanted her to be, her desire to … be a witness of the good news," and because of "her love for the people among whom she lived." If that sounds too facile, we need to keep in mind that to Slessor herself it would sound exactly right. To give her a prophetic vision, or make her a sounding board for the political and theological future of Africa, would be to turn her into something she was not.

Slessor's story takes place in Calabar, tucked into the corner of Nigeria where (as it appears on a map of the African continent) the ice cream is starting to tumble off the cone. But no ice cream was offered there in the 19th century, and little other dependable comfort aside from the ubiquitous cup of British tea. For travelers from Europe in those days, tropical West Africa was one of the least hospitable places on earth. At Calabar, where the Scottish mission opened in 1846, intense and unrelenting heat sapped one's energy, and malaria—its cause unknown at the time—was almost inevitable, along with other fevers. Some of those who died were buried in the coffins they had actually brought with them from their home countries. Not a few who survived were "invalided home," their health never the same again. Those who stayed—missionaries, traders (many of whom were there long before missionaries), and officers representing British control—were a rugged breed.

Calabar, a port at the head of the Cross River with its tributaries and mangrove swamps, offered not only a hostile climate but also an ancient culture of violence that had been abetted by more than a century of European slave trade. Indigenous society was divided into kingships, or "houses," with villages spread along the waterways—extended families mostly, under the ownership of chiefs. These were commonly controlled by a patriarchal secret society, with "jungle justice" that could chill the heart of even a seasoned missionary.

The area, like much of Africa, was in the throes of change. Though palm oil was substituted for human cargo as a commercial commodity, trade rivalry was often bloody. British administration, begun in 1861, seemed to inspire a reactionary hold on ancient customs, rather than reform them. Witchcraft, trial by ordeal, the murder of twins (one must surely be the offspring of a demon), and kidnapping for internal slavery continued untouched by colonial rule. And all this was frequently awash in the booze introduced years before by Europeans themselves.

This is the world Mary Slessor entered at age twenty-eight. When she arrived, the mission was well established, with mentors who had prepared the way for her, as she often acknowledged. Yet those who preceded her—dozens of them—remain much less recognized by history. Mary Slessor was the one who got attention. It was hardly because of an imposing presence. A wispy five feet tall, her only special feature was her red hair, which was known to make Afirican children scream in fright. Her manner was anything but well-bred feminine. She was honest about who she was, a lower-class native of Aberdeen and Dundee, a mill worker from childhood with a partial education, one of seven children with an alcoholic father and a long-suffering mother. From a young age Mary was the strong member of the family, and she expected that strength from herself throughout her life. "Never show fear," was the advice of a senior missionary, but Slessor already knew how to assume a brave front. It may be apocryphal that she knocked threatening men to the ground, but quite likely true that she boxed their ears if she found it necessary.

But this was the woman quickly called "Ma Akimba" by villagers, a designation of deep respect, and in her case one that transcended the contradiction common to misogynous societies, simultaneous love and hate, honor and control. Hardage makes the guess that part of Slessor's success in dealing with African men was that she constantly surprised them by speaking and acting like a man. Or perhaps it was the bossiness of a tough-love mother that intrigued them instead—or what became apparent in time, her innate respect for them and their customs. An African perspective is better articulated today by scholars like the late Ogbu Kalu, who once described Slessor as a "new kind of person," one who "ceased being a missionary" in the conventional sense and "became African," who lived as an African, "not as one apart."[1]

From the beginning, apparently, that style felt much more natural to her than life in the mission complex. Co-workers were apt to be petty about her minor eccentricities: her excessive zeal, her sometimes raucous sense of humor, her bare feet, bare head, her habits of drinking unfiltered water and eating African food. Probably she smelled, as well, but then, so did everyone else. Other characteristics were more understandable as serious problems. She spoke her mind often and without tact, made impulsive decisions, ignored advice, and recklessly exposed herself and others to danger. Ironically, the difficulties of living with her were probably part of what allowed her to go deeper into the bush, up the river where no one had yet been able to penetrate. The decision to "give her a sphere of her own" was, according to some testimony, because life was easier without her around.

So what did she do? Why did she run? To save lives, over and over—the lives of newborn twins, the lives of women slated for ritual murder at the funerals of chiefs, the lives of those whose innocence was being tested by boiling oil or poison. Her little mud houses were often filled with small children she was protecting from abuse or abandonment. She adopted nine as her own.

Some of her adventures just make good Sunday school stories, like smacking a hippo over the head with her umbrella—while she stood, if you please, in a rocking canoe in the middle of the river. That story, at least, was reported by her adopted son, Daniel, who witnessed it. In other eyewitness reports she took on more dangerous emergencies, even to mediating feuds, in one case by placing her own body between the warring parties.

Meanwhile, writes Hardage, "the world was changing in a way that would impact … the lives of countless Africans." Empire was dividing up the continent, along with much of the rest of the world. Did Mary Slessor understand this? How savvy was she about the political circumstances developing right under her nose? Was she an "Imperialist Mother" or a "Liberating Sister"? Hardage quotes missiologist Carrie Pemberton's question and gives a no-nonsense answer: "Both, to some degree." For sure she was a loyal subject to the Queen, and Livingstone's famous "three C's," Christianity, civilization and commerce, played off each other nicely—no need to rock that boat.

"Mary Slessor was not free from the cultural attitudes of her colleagues," writes Hardage. She "advocated what she considered best in British culture … . On the other hand, she was critical of the arrogance, cruelty or ignorance exhibited at times by colonial officers. In her position as a judge, she showed greater understanding of local laws and customs than her British counterparts in government. She considered herself—and was—a go-between during the difficult years of social and economic upheaval that came with western imperialism."

Slessor, of course, would not have used those terms. At any rate, there wasn't a whole lot of time to ponder such "heigh" matters. Like any good mother, she had all she could handle with the pressing work of every day. Any meaning for us beyond that is in the subtext of the story: that time, that place in history, that geographical location, and the flash of hundreds of faces, individual Africans whose lives she touched—and those who transformed hers, as she would be the first to say.

Nigeria won independence from Britain in 1960 and became a democracy in 1999. Calabar today is a small modern city. In its center, high above a traffic roundabout, a life-sized statue of Mary Slessor stands with a baby in each arm. Every local person knows those babies are twins. Look around and you'll see a church, then another and another, one on almost every block, it seems. Today, missionaries from Nigeria are preaching a fiery gospel in Europe and North America. In spite of that, society in Nigeria runs on the oil of corruption, as it does in Somalia and Yemen, in Haiti and the Philippines, and in much of the Western hemisphere. Oppression and violence rule in Zimbabwe, Myanmar, North Korea, and Guatemala. Those are the short lists. Our natural impulse is to call out loudly for a mother. Where are you, Ma Akimba, when we need you more than ever? But that's illusory. She was right for that moment, our Mary, but not likely for this one. Her story is important in the history of missions, but for most practical purposes that's just what we should allow it to remain, a remarkable story, refreshing and instructive, and well worth the read. The rest is up to us.

1. Unpublished interview with Ogbu Kalu by Rudy and Shirley Nelson, May 13, 1998.

Shirley Nelson scripted—years ago—a treatment of an unproduceable TV series on the life of Mary Slessor.

Copyright © 2009 by the author or Christianity Today/Books & Culture magazine.
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