East African Revival

The East African Revival (Luganda: Okulokoka) was a movement of renewal in the Church in East Africa during the late 1920s and 1930s.[1] It began on a hill called Gahini in then Belgian Ruanda-Urundi in 1929, then spreading to the eastern mountains of Belgian Congo, Uganda Protectorate (British Uganda), Tanganyika Territory and Kenya Colony during the 1930s and 1940s.[1] The revival reshaped the Anglican Church already present in East Africa and contributed to its significant growth from the 1940s into the 1970s.

Christianity before the Revival

In the 19th century, East Africa was largely colonized by European forces: the Belgians in Rwanda and Burundi and Britain in Uganda and Kenya.[2] Christian missionaries first began their missionary work in Uganda, then named Buganda (home of the Baganda or Ganda people), in 1877.[3] The elites were quick to convert, and experienced high martyrdom in 1885, sparking the initial growth of Christianity in Buganda and the region.[3] Protestantism took root in this region faster than in many of the other colonial regions during this time, and the Church of Uganda was established around 1893.[3] The Church was established with equal participation of the European missionaries and African converts.[3] The early Church of Uganda and the Christians in the area were disproportionately rich and prosperous at the time, echoing the elitism in British and North American Protestant churches.[3] A branch of the Church Missionary Society, the Ruanda Mission, evangelized in Ruanda-Urundi, a Belgian territory that was under a League of Nations mandate.[1] This mission group was essential in the spread of the revival.[4]

During the early 20th century, some members of the Church of Uganda became dissatisfied with the ways in which sin was being handled and how modernity had affected its practices.[1][4] The initial fervor that led to the spread of Christianity in the region reached a lull as time progressed and corruption within the Church emerged.[3]

The Revival

Spread of the Revival

Corruption prompted some members to seek a method to renew the faith and the community. There is no event that marked the start of the revival movement in East Africa, but Simeon Nsibambi is seen as one of the key initiators of the movement.[5] Nsibambi learned and taught in the church in Kampala, Uganda for a time, though he was settled in Gahini, Ruanda.[3] Nsibambi brought his dissatisfaction with the sin of the church leadership and his search for revival from Uganda to Rwanda, and the revival movement began to take root in northern Rwanda.[3][2] Many argue that the relationship between Joe Church, the pioneer of the Ruanda Mission, and Nsibambi in 1929 in Gahini was the official spark of the revival movement.[1] The movement was largely grassroots, spread through the formation of small groups of people and through personal relationships.[1][3] Many accounts from individuals involved in the movement cite the power of the Holy Spirit as essential for the success seen by the revival.[4][3]

The movement, spearheaded in part by the Ruanda Mission, was able to cross borders into multiple countries because the church in the Kigezi district in southwest Uganda was placed under its jurisdiction.[4] This allowed the movement to spread further back into Uganda.Two additional places to which the revival spread were Kenya and Tanganyika. The revival moved into Kenya in 1937 as the Ruanda Mission sent a team to Kabete, outside of Nairobi.[3] The message of unity across racial divisions was especially important to the spread of revival throughout Kenya.[3] William Nagenda was sent with a team and Joe Church to Tanganyika to spread the mission in 1939.[3]

The continuation of the East African Revival was heavily dependent on the movements of individual people revitalizing the enthusiasm for the Anglican Church that had already been established in these former colonies.[1] All of these factors led to the increase in the growth of Christianity in the region following 1940.

Principles

The major characteristics of the new religious attitude and zeal in the East African Church was the practice of the public confession of sins.[3][5] This activity in response to the corruption and hidden sins of the clergy seen in the Church before revival brought together the community in a unique way that built greater community that reignited the Church.[1]

References
  1. Ward, Kevin (2012). The East African Revival: History and Legacies. Surrey, England: Ashgate Publishing.
  2. Peterson, Derek R. (2012-09-24). Ethnic Patriotism and the East African Revival: A History of Dissent, C.1935-1972. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-107-02116-7.
  3. MacMaster, Richard K. (2006). A Gentle Wind of God: The Influence of the East Africa Revival. Scottdale, PA: Herald Press.
  4. Gehman, Richard (1986). "The East African Revival". East Africa Journal of Evangelical Theology. 5 (1): 36–55.
  5. Shaw, Mark (2010). Global awakening : how 20th-century revivals triggered a Christian revolution. Downers Grove, Ill.: IVP Academic. ISBN 978-0-8308-3877-6. OCLC 460060948.

Further reading
  • Peterson, Derek R. (2012). Ethnic Patriotism and the East African Revival: A History of Dissent, c. 1935 to 1972. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781107021167.
  • Cantrell, P. A. (2014). “We Were a Chosen People”: The East African Revival and Its Return To Post-Genocide Rwanda. Church History, 83(2), 422–445. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24534327


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