The East African Revival

Abstract

The East African Revival was a Christian conversion movement that began in northern Rwanda and southern Uganda in the mid-1930s and spread throughout eastern Africa during the 1940s and 1950s. Learning from Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress—which was foundational literature in Anglican mission stations—converts engaged in radical acts of self-editing. They disavowed kin relationships, disposed of their possessions, and confessed their sins without regard to propriety. Other Christians thought them a menace to the whole social order. This chapter studies the contentious process by which the Revival was domesticated. Through the reconfiguration of legal codes, by the operation of church discipline, heedless converts were, over time, made members of civil society. There was a great amount of disciplinary work that had to occur before the Revival could safely become a source of inspiration in the field of World Christianity.