Afrikaner missionary to the Zulu people of South Africa.

Born in the Wellington district of South Africa, Le Roux initially trained and worked as a teacher but later felt called to the Dutch Reformed Church (DRC) mission and was ordained in 1893. That year he married Adriana Josina van Rooyen, a devout and competent missionary who was responsible with him for the impact of their seven-year Zulu ministry in Wakkerstroom, about 175 miles northeast of Johannesburg. Le Roux rejected pedobaptism and emphasized faith healing; he resigned from the DRC in 1903, after contact with the Christian Catholic Church (based in Zion City, Illinois), through its publication Leaves of Healing. In 1904 he was ordained elder and his wife an evangelist in the church. As many as 400 DRC Zulu converts followed them. The hallmark of their work was the education of outstanding African evangelists and leaders such as Daniel Nkonyane, Muneli Ngobese, and Elias Mahlangu. Their influence on the Zion Church movement in southern Africa was decisive because of the quality of such African leadership. (Today approximately 80 percent of the African Independent church movement in southern Africa is Zionist.) Le Roux joined the Apostolic Faith Mission at its founding in 1908, serving as its president (1913-1942) and developing it substantially.

Gerhardus C. Oosthuizen

Bibliography

I. S. Burger, History of Faith of the Apostolic Faith Mission (1987); Leaves of Healing, publication of the Christian Catholic Church (1897-1914); G. C. Oosthuizen, The Birth of Christian Zionism is South Africa (1987); B. G. M. Sundkler, Zulu Zion and Some Swazi Zionists (1976).

This article is reproduced, with permission, from Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions, copyright © 1998, by Gerald H. Anderson, W. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, Michigan. All rights reserved.

External link

Encyclopaedia Britannica (complete article): Zionist Church