The East African Revival emerged as a movement within African Protestantism in the late 1920s and 1930s, influential throughout the whole East African region to this day. It originated with the Ruanda Mission, operating as an autonomous branch of the Church Missionary Society (CMS) in South West Uganda and Ruanda-Urundi. Though not exactly its originators, prominent initiating figures were the pioneer Ruanda medical missionary Joe Church, and Simeoni Nsibambi, of the Buganda chiefly class, who met in 1929. It emphasized the classic traits of Evangelical revivals – repentance for sin, the cross, baptism of the Spirit, sanctification, and the quest for holiness – but from the beginning it was distinctively African. It caused considerable alarm among church leaders with its insistence that church leaders and missionaries confess their sins – indeed it grew out of dissatisfaction with the state of the Anglican Church of Uganda. It was nevertheless eventually accepted within the Church and by the CMS not least because it resisted militant anti-colonialism and nationalism, and because its profound sense of unity among all the saved in fact provided a strong counterbalance to racial and ethnic divisions. Nor were the Balokole (‘the Saved’ in Luganda) interested in leaving their churches, despite their sometimes severe criticism and considerable tension with other elements of these churches.

This book grew out of a 2008 seminar on the occasion of the opening of the Joe Church Archive in the Henry Martyn Centre for the study of Mission and World Christianity in Cambridge. The book was originally published in Uganda, and this Ashgate edition contains two additional concluding chapters. The book is structured into five parts. In the first, Kevin Ward gives an historical overview. The second part contains testimonies and personal perspectives. Here John Gatu, a prominent Kenyan ecumenical Presbyterian gives his own testimony of personal transformation in the era of militant nationalism in Kenya. John Church, son of Joe Church, gives his personal experience of growing up in the eye of the storm, offers sketches of many leading Revival figures, and describes the dilemmas of Revival Christians in Rwanda's nationalist struggle. Simon Barrington-Ward, former General Secretary of the CMS, explains the real tensions between the EAR and the CMS, for himself and his two famous predecessors, Max Warren and John V. Taylor. Amos Kasibante describes, in ‘Revival and Pentecostalism in my Life’, the two different but interlinked movements that influenced but no longer define him. The third part provides historical and cultural perspectives. Cynthia Hoehler-Fatton gives an account of religious movements (one Muslim) in Western Kenya some years before the EAR, suggesting cultural patterns that paved the way for the EAR. Ken Farrimond writes of the tensions caused, particularly around the Mokono crisis of 1941 when 30 Balokole were dismissed from ministerial training. Derek Peterson discusses what the EAR teaches about political dissent, seeing the Revivalists as subversive because they defined themselves over against the identities nationalist leaders were devising for them. Birgitta Larsson shifts to Tanzania to trace the ‘Haya Women's Response to Revival’. Emma Wild-Wood argues that the revivalist confrontations in the Northern Congo-Uganda Border region concerned the acceptability of social change.

Part four is entitled ‘Socio-theological Perspectives’. John Karanja shows how the Revivalists’ almost defining practice of public confession created a synthesis of old and new. Esther Mombo presents the fascinating revival testimony of three women who chose to leave polygamous marriage on becoming saved, showing the complex interconnection of status and marital norms. Nick Godfrey moves to Rwanda and comes right up to date by giving ‘Revivalists’ Narratives of Genocide Survival’, showing the influences shaping these testimonies and their functions.

The fifth part is labeled ‘Sources and Scholarship’. Terry Barringer outlines the material of the Joe Church collection, and the research opportunities it offers. Emma Wild-Wood outlines the historiography of the EAR and places it within the study of African Christianity generally. And Kevin Ward, supplementing his earlier historical overview, gives a magisterial survey of revivals in Africa. Here he deals with general evangelical revivals, notes the similarities to and differences from other revivals in Africa (movements like those of Harris, Kimbangu or Shembe), and, in a very significant few pages, notes the differences from and similarities to Pentecostalism (touched on earlier especially by Kasibante), which enables him to attempt an assessment of which features of East African Christianity today can be strictly described as legacies of the EAR. He acknowledges that in different areas the influence differs, but ‘at present, Pentecostalism seems to be in the ascendant’.

This volume provides a remarkably rich coverage, for beginner and proficient alike, of the many facets of the EAR – its nature, personalities, distinguishing features, wider context, driving forces, and effects.