Samuel Ajayi Crowtherthe LighthouseINFJ

In 1890, at Onitsha on the River Niger, Bishop Samuel Ajayi Crowther got to his feet at a meeting he was supposed to be chairing. He was about 81, and he was trembling.

It was the finance committee of the Niger Mission, the church he had spent most of his life building along the river. On one side sat young Europeans newly sent out by the Church Missionary Society, led by its secretary for the mission, F. N. Eden. On the other sat African clergy who had worked beside Crowther for decades. One of them, the Reverend Charles Paul, had given the mission 35 years.

Eden overruled the bishop as chairman and declared African pastors suspended. Two white clergymen and a white layman had just removed three African priests, in front of the African bishop who had ordained them.

Then they turned to his son. Archdeacon Dandeson Crowther had defended the accused men. The committee found that he had made inconsistent statements in their defense, declared him unworthy of his holy office, and suspended him on the spot.

The old man in the chair had once been a boy with no say over anything. Named Ajayi (often spelled Adjai), he was born around 1809 at Osogun, in Yorubaland. In 1821, at about 12, raiders seized him and sold him to Portuguese slave traders. In April 1822 a British warship, HMS Myrmidon, stopped the slave ship, and he was set free in Sierra Leone.

He made his life out of language, teaching and faith. He was the first student at Fourah Bay College in Freetown, wrote a grammar of Yoruba, and went up the Niger on the mission's expeditions. On 29 June 1864, at about 55, he was consecrated in Canterbury Cathedral, the first African bishop of the Anglican Church. Henry Venn, who led the Society, urged the missionaries to work with him like brothers.

For a quarter of a century he led the mission with endless patience. Critics called him too gentle with his clergy. He gave good faith to almost everyone, including people who had quietly stopped giving it back.

Lighthouses know that long middle well: the loyal years, the understanding offered freely, the reluctance to fight for themselves.

The newcomers called their work reform. It ended with an African-led church being taken apart by men who doubted that Africans should lead it.

He left the committee he was meant to preside over. He made no speech and did not try to win the argument. He simply made sure that no one could ever say the bishop had agreed.

He was never deposed. He remained bishop, though the committee was gone from his hands. In 1891 he suffered a stroke, and he died in Lagos on 31 December 1891, at about 82. The church along the river went on without him.

For half a century his calm had held the mission together. At Onitsha, staying calm in his chair would have counted as consent. So the most patient man in the room stood up.