LA PLUIE ESCHATOLOGIQUE LE PENTECÔTISME ET SON INSERTION DANS LA MISSION PROTESTANTE AU KENYA

Abstract

Summary Part of a larger historical and anthropological study of a recent religious movement among the Kikuyu in the southern region of Central Kenya, this article traces its Pentecostalist roots back to the evangelical revivalism of the Holiness Movement, and more specifically to the foundation, by C. Parham, of a Biblical School at Topeka, Kansas (1900), and to the great Welsh Revival (1904). In the meantime, the Christian Catholic Apostolic Church, founded by John Alexander Dowie in 1896 at Zion City, Illinois, had been exported to South Africa, and joined by Pierre-Louis Le Roux, formerly of the Dutch Reformed Church, and his friend J. Buchler, son of Swiss immigrants. After founding the “Christian Catholic Church in Zion”, both became independently founders of Pentecostalist Churches, affiliated with the Apostolic Faith movement of Florence Crawford, who was present at the ‘Latter Rain’ experience of Azusa Street Church at Los Angeles, California (1906). Le Roux's “Apostolic Faith Mission of South Af...