The Canon · No. 122
African Initiated Churches
AICs; African Independent Churches; Zionist and Aladura churches
c.1890s CE – present · Abrahamic · Living · South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, DR Congo, Zimbabwe, Ghana
VIII. POSTWAR & CONTEMPORARY — 1945 – PRESENT
How many
Roughly 100 million across tens of thousands of denominations. The Zion Christian Church in South Africa alone draws several million pilgrims to Moria each Easter.
Who began it
No single founder. Key figures: William Wadé Harris (Liberia, from 1913), Simon Kimbangu (Congo, 1921), Isaiah Shembe (South Africa, 1910), Josiah Oshitelu (Nigeria, 1930), Engenas Lekganyane (South Africa, 1924).
What it is for
To be Christian without being European. AICs formed where mission churches refused African leadership, condemned African custom wholesale, or preached a gospel that did not address the things Africans actually brought to religion — illness, witchcraft, infertility, misfortune.
What it worships
The Trinity, with strong emphasis on the Holy Spirit as the active power.
What it holds
Orthodox Christian doctrine, generally, combined with a frank acceptance that the spirit world described in the Bible is the same one African traditional religion describes. Where mission Christianity treated ancestors, witchcraft and spirit affliction as superstition to be dismissed, AICs treat them as real and address them directly. Prophecy and healing are central. Many churches permit polygamy, on the grounds that the Old Testament does and that mission churches' insistence on divorce destroyed families.
What it does
Healing by prayer, blessed water, ash and holy staffs. Prophets who diagnose spiritual causes of misfortune. White or coloured uniforms and robes. All-night vigils. Drumming, dance and ululation in worship. Baptism by immersion in rivers. Food and dress taboos drawn from Leviticus. Annual mass pilgrimage — the ZCC's Easter gathering at Moria is one of the largest religious assemblies in Africa.
After death
Standard Christian resurrection and judgment, held alongside a live sense of the ancestors as present and consequential — a combination mission churches called syncretism and AICs regard simply as reading the Bible in their own world rather than in Europe's.
Its texts
The Bible, often in translation into local languages that the churches themselves helped standardise. Some churches have their own hymnals and scriptures, notably Shembe's hymns and the Kimbanguist liturgy.
Its branches
Ethiopian-type (separatist, doctrinally mission-like); Zionist and Apostolic (healing, prophecy, Spirit); Aladura (Nigerian praying churches); Kimbanguist; Nazareth Baptist (Shembe); Zion Christian Church.
Of note
African Christianity is now larger than European Christianity, and a substantial share of it belongs to churches Europeans never founded, never controlled and, for most of the twentieth century, actively suppressed.
Its timeline
- 1880s–1900s CE Ethiopian movement in South Africa: African clergy leave mission churches over racial exclusion.
- 1913–15 CE William Wadé Harris walks through the Ivory Coast and Gold Coast baptising an estimated 100,000–200,000 people in eighteen months, one of the fastest mass conversions in Christian history.
- 1910 CE Isaiah Shembe founds the Nazareth Baptist Church in Natal.
- 1921 CE Simon Kimbangu begins healing in the Belgian Congo; within months the colonial authorities arrest him. He is imprisoned for thirty years and dies in 1951 without release.
- 1924 CE Engenas Lekganyane founds the Zion Christian Church.
- 1930 CE Oshitelu founds the Church of the Lord (Aladura) in Nigeria.
- 1959 CE The Kimbanguist Church is legalised; it joins the World Council of Churches in 1969, the first AIC to do so.
- 1960s–90s CE Enormous growth across the continent; by the 1990s AICs are a large share of African Christianity.
- 1990s–present Overlap and competition with neo-Pentecostal churches, which are growing faster and are more urban, prosperity-oriented and media-driven.
Sources
Not yet checked against named sources. This entry is the house's reading; until it is checked, treat each claim as unverified. Correct it, with a source.