What Has Glasgow to Do with Nairobi? The Churches and Rapid Urban Growth in Twentieth-Century Nairobi: A Comparison with Nineteenth-Century Glasgow

Abstract

This is a study of the rapid urban growth of twentieth-century Nairobi and its influence on patterns of church attendance and Christian practice. The experience of Glasgow in the nineteenth century is used as a historical comparator to highlight and evaluate particular trends in Nairobi's more recent experience. Although the rapid urbanisation of the two cities was separated by over a century and occurred in very different national and historical contexts, both shared similar pathologies of environmental problems, urban deprivation and poverty. Simple correlations between types of urban environment and certain patterns of Christian practice are not easily drawn in the two cities, but such complexity is common to the two cities. This study suggests that the process of rapid urbanisation did shape religious practice in Nairobi, if not always in predictable or negative ways. It brought openness to new ideas and flexibility to modes of Christian expression, as was also observed in Glasgow a century before. The responses of churches to the very major challenges caused by large-scale movements of population and consequent social dislocation also betray similarities across geographical and historical contexts. Despite claims as to the secularising influence of the city, Christian practice may prove to have been at its most robust and authentically African in a city like Nairobi.