Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of maps
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- PART I THE FIRST FOURTEEN HUNDRED YEARS
- PART II THE MIDDLE AGES 1415 – 1787
- PART III THE LONG NINETEENTH CENTURY 1787 – 1919
- PART IV THE COLONIAL EXPERIENCE 1920 – 1959
- 11 Continental Panoramas
- 12 Local Perspectives
- 13 North and North-Eastern Africa
- 14 West Africa
- 15 Central Africa
- 16 Southern Africa
- 17 Eastern Africa
- PART V INDEPENDENT AFRICA 1960 – 92
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Name index
- Subject index
17 - Eastern Africa
from PART IV - THE COLONIAL EXPERIENCE 1920 – 1959
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of maps
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- PART I THE FIRST FOURTEEN HUNDRED YEARS
- PART II THE MIDDLE AGES 1415 – 1787
- PART III THE LONG NINETEENTH CENTURY 1787 – 1919
- PART IV THE COLONIAL EXPERIENCE 1920 – 1959
- 11 Continental Panoramas
- 12 Local Perspectives
- 13 North and North-Eastern Africa
- 14 West Africa
- 15 Central Africa
- 16 Southern Africa
- 17 Eastern Africa
- PART V INDEPENDENT AFRICA 1960 – 92
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Name index
- Subject index
Summary
INTRODUCTION
Looking at the continent from the imperial centres of power, East Africa in the 1920s seemed something of a backwater, fifty years behind West Africa. Mission statistics – such as they were at the time – show that in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, the Church had only just begun forming its local congregations around 1920. The number of Protestants in the whole area totalled 235,000; Uganda leading with 145,000 while Tanzania and Kenya together – 42,000 and 47,000 respectively – did not begin to approach that figure. On the Tanganyika coast during World War I, Islam increased rapidly and in the Kenya Highlands the arrival of land-grabbing European settlers inevitably made ‘the White man's religion’ less than attractive. Uganda, however, was a case of its own: Catholics and Protestants, encouraged by a dramatic Church history of preceding decades were assured of a decisive influence in the country, with opportunities for rapid outreach towards the east, the west and the north.
Forty years later, in 1960, the picture had changed altogether. The number of Christians in the region had increased: the Catholics from 600,000 to 5 million and the Protestants from 235,000 to 2,540,000. The increase had taken place primarily in inland communities, firmly making the Churches part of East Africa and its peoples.
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- A History of the Church in Africa , pp. 846 - 900Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2000