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‘Walking in the light’: the Liturgy of Fellowship in the Early Years of the East African Revival

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Emma L. Weld
Emma L. Weld*
Affiliation:
Institut Supérieur Théologique Anglican, Bunia, Congo
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Extract

During a Christmas convention at Gahini mission station in Rwanda in 1933, a large number of people publicly confessed their sins, resolved to turn from their present beliefs and embraced the Christian Faith. From then on, missionaries of the Ruanda Mission wrote enthusiastically to their supporters in Britain of people flocking into churches in South-West Uganda and Rwanda, of ‘changed lives’, of emotional confessions followed by ‘tremendous joy’, and of the spontaneous forming of fellowship groups and mission teams. Ugandans working at Gahini saw an opportunity for ‘waking’ the sleeping Anglican Church in Buganda and elsewhere which had, they believed, lost its fervour. Following in the tradition of the evangelists of the 1880s and 1890s they travelled vast distances to share their message of repentance and forgiveness with others. This was the beginning of the East African Revival, long prayed for by Ruanda missionaries and the Ugandans who worked alongside them. Max Warren, General Secretary of the Church Missionary Society, writing in 1954 when the Revival was still pulsating through East Africa, perceived the revival phenomenon as ‘a reaffirmation of theology, a resuscitation of worship and a reviving of conscience … for the church’. All three were in evidence from the early years of the East African Revival, but perhaps the most dramatic change was the form taken by the ‘resuscitation of worship’.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 35: Continuity and Change in Christian Worship , 1999 , pp. 419 - 431
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1999

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References

1 The Ruanda Mission (CMS) worked in Rwanda and in South-West Uganda. It used the colonial spelling for Ruanda which has been retained when referring to it and its missionaries. For the country and its people the present spelling has been used.

2 Warren, M., What is Revival? An Enquiry (London, 1954), p. 20 Google Scholar.

3 Interview, Kampala, 12 May 1997.

4 ‘Balokole’ is the Luganda word most commonly used but each language group has its own term. ‘Balokole’ is the plural form, ‘mulokole’ being the singular.

5 Warren, What is Revival?, p. 118.

6 A. Kagumc, ‘Church and society in Ankolc, Uganda: an analysis of the impact of evangelical Anglican Christianity on ethnic and gender relations in Ankolc 1901-1961’ (University of Bristol Ph. D. thesis, 1993), p. 155.

7 H. H. Osborn, Revival - A Precious Heritage (Winchester, 1995), p. 84.

8 Ibid., p. 100.

9 J. E. Church, Quest for the Highest: A Diary of the East African Revival (Exeter, 1981), p. 136.

10 D.J. Stenning, ‘Salvation in Ankole’, in M. Fortes and G. Dietcrlen, eds, African Systems of Thought (Oxford, 1965), pp. 263-4.

11 B. Turyahilcayo-Kigycwa, Philosophy and Traditional Religion of the Bakiga (Nairobi, 1983), p. 40.

12 Y. K. Bamunoba and F. B. Welbourn, ‘Emandwa initiation in Ankole’, Uganda Journal, 29 (1965), p. 13.

13 O. Obotc, ‘Why the Revival Movement has failed in Teso’ (Makcrcrc University, Diploma in Theology dissertation, 1978), p. 5.

14 Unpublished hymn in C. E. Robins, ‘Tukutendereza: a study of social change and sectarian withdrawal in the Balokole Revival of Uganda’ (Columbia University Ph. D. thesis, 1975). p. 259.

15 Ebyeshongoro Eby’okujunwa [Hymns for Salvation] (London, 1951), no. 27: this is the Kigczi Hymn Book.

16 Ibid., no. 50.

17 J. H. Kwabcna Nkctia, The Musk of Africa (London, 1975), p. 244., 8 Ibid., p. 30.

19 Interview, Kampala, 26 April 1996.

20 The Balokole group of students eventually left the college because their early morning worship, missionary zeal, and literal understanding of the Bible came into conflict with the obedience demanded by the staff, particularly the CMS warden, John Jones.

21 For many years Nsibambi was the most important Balokole leader. His close relationship with Church, whom he met in 1929, was influential in the Revival. Kigozi was in charge of the Gahini Evangelists’ training and the primary schools before his untimely death in 1936. Barham was a clergyman from the Ruanda Mission who worked in Kigezi. Kinuka, a Muhima from Ankolc, was on the hospital staff at Gahini when the Revival began.

22 Church, J. E., Awake! An African Calling (London, 1937), p. 44 Google Scholar.

23 Interview, Kampala, 12 May 1997.

24 Robins, ‘Tukutendereza’, p. 269.