From the 1930s the East African Revival influenced Christian expression in East Central Africa and around the globe. This book analyses influences upon the movement and changes wrought by it in Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Kenya, Tanzania and Congo, highlighting its impact on spirituality, political discourse and culture. A variety of scholarly approaches to a complex and changing phenomenon are juxtaposed with the narration of personal stories of testimony, vital to spirituality and expression of the revival, which give a sense of the dynamism of the movement. Those yet unacquainted with the revival will find a helpful introduction to its history. Those more familiar with the movement will discover new perspectives on its influence.

From the 1930s the East African Revival influenced Christian expression in East Central Africa and around the globe. This book analyses influences upon the movement and changes wrought by it in Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Kenya, Tanzania and Congo, highlighting its impact on spirituality, political discourse and culture. A variety of scholarly approaches to a complex and changing phenomenon are juxtaposed with the narration of personal stories of testimony, vital to spirituality and expression of the revival, which give a sense of the dynamism of the movement. Those yet unacquainted with the revival will find a helpful introduction to its history. Those more familiar with the movement will discover new perspectives on its influence.

A vivid portrayal of Kivebulaya's life that interrogates the role of indigenous agents as harbingers of change under colonization, and the influence of emerging polities in the practice of Christian faiths. Apolo Kivebulaya was a practitioner of indigenous religion and a Muslim before he became in 1895 a Christian missionary from Buganda to Toro and Ituri. He is still admired as a churchman and missionary in the Anglican churches ofUganda, Congo, Tanzania and Kenya, and is a significant civic figure in school curricula in Uganda. This book provides insight into religious encounter in the Great Lakes region of Africa, in which individuals like Kivebulaya remade themselves through conversion to Christianity and re-ordered social relations through preaching a transnational religion which brought technological advantage. In re-examining Apolo's life the author reveals the historic social processes and the cultural motivations which provoked religious and socio-political change in colonial east Africa. She explores the processes of his religious adherence, his travels and church planting, his commitment to Bible translation and its role in developing national sensibilities, and his engagement with missionaries, the Ganda political elite, and the peoples of the Ituri forest, as well as British and Belgian colonial polities. Kivebulayautilized Christian repertoires of memory-making - the Bible, hymns, prayers and fellowship - in creating communities of disciples, and was instrumental in creating new forms of Christian identity in the region, fashioned by levelsof acceptance and resistance. By focusing on the role of indigenous agents as harbingers of change, the author offers a new perspective on the history of the northern Great Lakes region of Africa. Emma Wild-Wood is Senior Lecturer of African Christianity and African Indigenous Religions and Co-director of the Centre for the Study of World Christianity at the University of Edinburgh. Her books include Migration and Christian Identity in Congo (Brill, 2008) and editing, with Joel Cabrita and David Maxwell, Relocating World Christianity: Interdisciplinary Studies in Universal and Local Expressions of the Christian Faith (Brill, 2017). Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi and South Sudan: Twaweza Communications

This source book of translated texts gives insight into the history of religious and social change in East Africa, from the 1890s until the 1930s, through the everyday concerns of African Christians. Originally in Luganda, the documents are written by, or about, an early Ugandan clergyman Apolo Kivebulaya who propagated a Protestant form of Christianity in Toro and Ituri (Congo). They show how a literate Christian identity was formed away from centres of power, and how African admirers responded to Kivebulaya and influenced their own societies. Kivebulaya was a forerunner of a piety propagated through the East African Revival that continues to infuse contemporary Christianity in the region and influences in the Great Lakes region.