The Establishment of the Church in East Africa

Kenya

The history of Christianity in Kenya dates back from 500 years ago upon the arrival of

European missionaries in the late 15th century that marked the beginning of evangelism on the

Kenyan soil. Moreover, Christianity experienced a lot of resistance from the traditional African

religion leaders who saw it as a threat to their cultural beliefs and practices but all in all they

were still attracted to the message of the foreign preachers and missionaries. One of the first

missionaries to visit East Africa was Vasco da Gama and his companions including the Roman

Catholic Missionaries in the year 1498 The first Christians to visit East Africa were Vasco da

Gama and in his voyage were the Roman Catholic missionaries, in 1498 and arrived in the

coastal Kenya . He did not, however, leave any of these in East Africa. Consequently , we hear of

another missionary by name Francis Xavier a Jesuit and the pioneer missionary, on his way to

India, who had talks with Muslim leaders in Malindi in 1542. In 1564 the Portuguese Viceroy of

India ordered that the gospel be preached around Mombasa and three years later an Augustinian

monastery was established there.

One of the significant places with a Christian name Fort Jesus was begun in 1592 by the

Portuguese. They occupied the town for a century and a half . In 1597 the Augustinian friars at

Mombasa claimed that they had converted 600 Africans, including slaves, Swahilis, and Bantu

people from the interior and among them the exiled King of Pemba. This is hard to believe, but

the following year three Augustinian priests were stationed on the islands of Lamu, Pate and

Faza. The Muslim governor of Faza also helped to build a chapel, resulting in a flourishing

Christian community, and the Portuguese also built a chapel at Shela, on Lamu.
 In 1607 the brethren of Mercy arrived in Mombasa to care for the converts from Islam.

The main buildings in Mombasa’s Ndia Kuu were the Convent of the Augustinians, the parish

church, and the church of the Misericordia. These were mentioned by a French visitor in 1846,

but they have now all disappeared. In 1846 part of the Augustinian Convent become the kadhi’s

house, the small Misericordia church was the home of Suleiman bin Ali, and the parish church

was being used as a cowshed.

There was a challenge for the Christians in 1626 when the Swahili Sultan of Mombasa

Yusuf bin Hasan returned to a place called Goa while converted as Christian with the name

Dom Jeronimo Chingulia but he later renounced Christianity. Five years later he brutally killed

two priests and 280 other lay people because they refused to renounce their Christian faith. These

are known as ‘Martyrs of Mombasa.’ In 1636 the mission in Faza was left and the Arabs from

Muscat took over. Furthermore, the Arabs captured Fort Jesus from the Portuguese and they later

came back in 1740. The presence of Arabs meant that Christianity was suppressed until the

coming of Johann Ludwig Krapf who is the pioneer of the Church Missionary Society

missionary at Mombasa.

He was joined two years later by Johann Rebmann and a CMS(Christian Missionary

Society) station was established at Rabai. Krapf was a skilled linguist – in 1847 he translated

Genesis 1-3 into Swahili. A year later appeared his translation of St Luke’s gospel into what he

called ‘Nyika,’ and in 1850 he translated St Mark’s gospel into Kamba. He did not, however,

have the same success with converting local people to Christianity. It is until 1851 that he

announced that he had baptized his first convert. Krapf journeyed to England, returning to East

Africa in 1862 with four missionaries of the United Methodist Mission to establish a mission in

inland Africa. This was a failure because by the end of the year there was only one survivor,
Thomas Wakefield, at Ribe near Mombasa. Charles New joined Wakefield at Ribe the following

year and they achieved their first baptisms in 1870. New died in 1873 while attempting to

establish an inland station. Meanwhile the British were interested in suppressing the slave trade

on the East African Coast, negotiating with the Sultan of Zanzibar to this effect. This meant that

the freed slaves had to be cared for and in 1875 Freetown, near Mombasa, was established by the

CMS as a colony for freed slaves, many of whom were baptized. In 1883 the CMS finally

penetrated the interior, establishing a mission at Sigala, a mountain near present day Voi.

From this time on, with the establishment of an Anglican Diocese of Eastern Equatorial

Africa formed in 1884, which had Bishop Hannington as the first Bishop, missions proliferated.

There were disasters – United Methodist Mission missionaries John and Annie Houghton were

killed at Golbanti on the Tana River, Bishop Hannington was murdered at Mumias on the way to

Buganda, and the Holy Ghost Fathers had to abandon their mission at Kosi on the Tana after only

a year. But this did not deter the missions.

The coming of the Imperial British East Africa Company in 1889, and the subsequent

British rule brought the flourishing of missionary activities. The East Africa Scottish Mission

was opened at Kibwezi then moved to Kikuyu in 1898, the independent Stuart Watt established

himself at Ukambani, the Mill Hill missionaries settled among the Pokomo, and the Africa Inland

Mission also settled in Ukambani. The coming of the railway made life much easier and missions

flooded into the Nairobi area including the Gospel Missionary Society (1897), Church of

Scotland Mission (1898), Holy Ghost Mission (1899) who settled in the present day St Austin

Parish Msongari which is the first Catholic church in Kenya, Church Missionary Society (1901)

and Africa Inland Mission (1901). However, this growth created a lot of rivalries in the twentieth
century. The Spiritans commonly known as Holy Ghost fathers were the first Catholic

missionaries to evangelize in Kenya coming through Mombasa in 1889.

Tanzania

Tanzania marks and celebrates a milestone of evangelization since the year 1868 to date.

This started when the pioneer missionaries Antonio Horner, Edward Baur, Celestine Consol,

Felician Gruncien and others who arrived in Zanzibar and stepped in the land of Tanganyika. In

the 19th century Tanganyika had the busiest slave trade market in the world. This counts up to

60000 slaves and Sahlberg records that between 1862 and 1867 there were 97,203 slaves from

East Africa who were transported overseas. This situation explains how the first Christian

community had to begin with ransomed slaves.

Bagamoyo was located in the coastal port where the slaves were loaded on dhows and

shipped to Zanzibar for sale. The name Bagamoyo according Baur expressed how the captives

felt at the moment of the journey meaning “ the place to leave one’s heart behind” and the

coming of missionaries gave them new hope. Therefore, the mission’s strategic positioning was

not by mere chance but, rather, carried a goal of evangelization.

The Missionaries of Africa (White Fathers)

The Missionaries of Africa founded by Cardinal Lavigerie who was very keen interest

was in the social issues of his time and he asked the Pope of France to help them participate in

the suppression of slave trade in East and Central through evangelization by Catholic

organization. By early June of 1878, the missionaries were in Bagamoyo from where the long

journey to the interior started. Hence the mission to the Great Lakes had begun. They arrived in

Tabora on 1 October 1878 and stationed at Kwihara and these enabled them to spread and
evangelize even on the surroundings of the Buganda Kingdom. The Missionaries of Africa

adopted the strategy of establishing a mission center from where they could move and go to

evangelize the people within their particular localities

The Benedictines

Led by the spirit of St. benedict , Father Andreas Amrhein believed that monastic life

should be incorporated with active and pastoral life and therefore with the permission of

Congregatio de Propaganda Fidei (13th November 1877) and the Imperial Government of

Germany sent 15missionaries to Tanzania who arrived in Dar es Salaam on 28 January 1888.

They were entrusted with the Apostolic Prefecture of Southern Zanzibar, i.e., the area that covers

the southern part of modern Tanzania up to Lake Nyasa. Pugu which was to be destroyed.

situated 10 miles from Dar es Salaam, became their first mission. As mentioned by Abbot

Lambert Doerr, OSB( Order of St Benedict), the primary intention of the Benedictines was not to

establish missions but rather monasteries and through their daily life of prayer, manual work and

farming would help spread Christianity in their monasteries for both spiritual and physical

growth.

The Holy Ghost Fathers

The Holy Ghost Fathers had a different strategy of the establishment of ‘Christian

communities’ where they taught and transmitted faith. Furthermore, from these communities’

people were sent in other settlements to evangelize. As mentioned earlier, by the time the

pioneering missionaries came, the Cssp (Congregatio Santu Spiritus) also arrived and Zanzibar

was already a center of international commercial town for “black gold” that is buying and selling

human beings. Bearing in mind of the situation the Holy Ghost Fathers and Brothers considered
laboring into many slaves as they could afford and took the ex-slaves and settled in a Christian

village away. It is from among these ex-slaves that the nucleus of a Christian community came

into existence and at the end of three years of evangelizing according to Carl Erik Sahlberg that

the Holy Ghost Fathers in Zanzibar were taking care of 110 orphans. These children were

converted to Christianity. When the Holy Ghost missionaries moved to Bagamoyo in 1868

almost 324 ex-slaves accompanied them. This evangelizing mission was taken seriously to such

an extent that, as Carl-Erik Sahlberg’s 1914 statistics indicate, the numbers of the baptized grew

much faster than expected of a young Church. He recorded that the total number was 61,000

baptized Catholics and 23000 protestants. These statistics present a zealous picture of the

missionaries’ commitment to the Great Commission. In 2018, Tanzania celebrated a great

milestone to mark 150 years evangelization. Today Tanzania continues to enjoy a continues

growth in numbers.
 References

How did Christianity come to Kenya? | Old Africa Magazine

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