Nyasaland David Livingstone reached the lake he named Lake Nyasa, now
Lake Malawi in 1859. Livingstone's famous appeal, made at a great meeting in the Senate House at Cambridge on December 4, 1857 led to the founding of the
Universities' Mission to Central Africa (
UMCA), and the first missionary expedition of the Universities' Mission to Central Africa arrived in Malawi in 1861. Missionaries included Bishop
Edward Steere,
William Tozer,
Charles Alan Smythies,
Chauncy Maples who drowned on Lake Nyasa, and
W. Percival Johnson, a graduate of University College, Oxford, who was to remain in Malawi for 40 years and to translate the Bible into
Chichewa language. The
Dutch Reformed Church (DRC) established a base at Nkhoma then expanded to other parts of central Malawi, including
Mlanda and
Mchinji, and into Mozambique, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. The history of
Roman Catholicism in Malawi begins with the entry of French
White Fathers in 1899.
Independence Malawi's first president, the Presbyterian
Hastings Kamuzu Banda, favored Christianity during his long rule. Under Banda many breakaway independent churches flourished, including
Elliot Kenan Kamwana's breakaway
Jehovah's Witnesses movement. ==Christianity in Malawi today==