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206 Isabel Hofmeyr

One response to The Pilgrim’s Progress was conditioned by African
appropriations of Protestantism more generally. One tenet of Protestant
theology that never proved portable was the idea of original sin. Concepts
of social sin certainly existed, but the idea that, whether one liked it or
did not, one was sinful never caught on among African readers, translators,
or missionaries. Those aspects of the text that discussed these ideas were
generally edited out, a feature that depended on the material practices of
mission translation. Translation was generally pursued in teams made up of
second-language missionaries and first-language converts. Missionaries were
also inveterate experimenters having to try out bits and pieces with their
new audiences to see what would work. Between the African translators
and the pressure of popular taste, the sections of the text expounding ideas
of original sin were edited out. Where these could not be removed, the
meaning of original sin was changed. The most famous image of Bunyan’s
story, namely, the burden on Christian’s back, stood for original sin. In
many Africa editions, this meaning was erased, and instead the burden came
to stand for colonial rule itself (Hofmeyr 2004: 76–97).
One further theme that African translations highlighted pertained to
themes of orality and literacy. In the paraliterate world in which Bunyan’s
story unfolds, documents are not everyday objects, and they tend to stand out
either as items of great religious significance or as agents of state oppression,
like the pass that Christian, a masterless man, must carry. This ambivalence
around documents resonated with the experience of many African Christians
seeking religious advancement but kept back on the one hand by the colonial
state with its network of documentary control and on the other, by the
white-controlled structures of the mission churches. In the final scene of
Part I of the book, Christian arrives at the gates of heaven but first has to
produce his certificate to get in. Ignorance, who is next in the queue, has
no certificate and is unceremoniously pitched down into hell. This scene
of difficult and select entry into the portals of power proved popular with
African Christians and made its way into illustrations, novels, hymns and
songs (Hofmeyr 2004: 137–50).
Important is that African Christians used The Pilgrim’s Progress to project
their concerns into a broader international arena. By using the internationally
recognized story of The Pilgrim’s Progress, which came to acquire African
illustrations and hence African characters, African Christians could project
themselves into an international arena, often seeking to go over the heads
of their various oppressors—the colonial state, white settlers or royal chiefly
lineages who persecuted commoner converts—to appeal to an international
public.
However, what were the limits of the text’s circulation? When did
the text cease to be itself? In some cases, the text disappeared as part of