Throughout church history, women have played no small part in the growth of the church worldwide. According to research today, “the future of the world’s largest religion [Christianity] is both female and African.”[1] In celebration of Women’s History Month, it seems appropriate to examine the phenomenal leadership of women being used by the Holy Spirit to anchor and grow Christianity in East Africa. If you’ve been fortunate enough to travel to this region, it’s hard to miss the centrality of women’s leadership in the church. This is particularly true of the lovely, elderly women leaders in the East African Revival Movement (EARM).[2]
When the evangelical movement was first developing in Britain, Christians there stressed the significance of Galatians 2:20.[3] Their high Christology forged an egalitarian worldview that welcomed a new humanity formed by Christ on Calvary: one in which Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female are both made one in Christ and are equally gifted and called to service in the church (Galatians 3:28) according to God’s pleasure, regardless of human bias. Their “crucicentrism”—meaning a cross-centered theology—gave biblical teeth to their egalitarian (suffragist and abolitionist) worldview, which challenged spiritual and social barriers to slaves and women.
Sharing the theological super-powers of these early evangelicals, women of the EARM pioneered the centrality of Scripture and of the cross within the collectivist culture of East Africa. Unlike revivals in the West that were based on charismatic personalities, the Balokole, meaning “saved ones” in Luganda,[4] became evangelists through one-on-one engagements. This meant housewives, railroad workers, farmers, and anyone else touched by the revival were empowered and called to share the victories of Calvary within their community through personal relationships. Here, women showed themselves to be extraordinary leaders. Women Balokole advanced the gospel in tandem with upending patriarchal practices (like forced marriages, widowhood rites, widow inheritance, and polygamy) that, too often, tethered women to abusive spouses.[5]
Women affiliated with the EARM received power from the Spirit to call out immorality within their families and communities. Demanding repentance and change, women shaved their heads, removed their amulets, and ate foods traditionally reserved for men.[6] These women became healers, prophets, exorcists, and leaders,[7] normalizing the gifts of the Spirit in women to bring justice and holiness. Women were the Spirit’s hands and feet, doing the work of cleaning house in the church and in Christian homes. Giving public testimony to the Spirit’s power in the church and the public square, they were a voice for voiceless and powerless women, especially the widows. Demanding men give up alcohol, prostitutes, dominance, polygamy, and disordered lives and urging men to be involved in church life, their efforts led to greater mutuality in relationships and human flourishing in communities.[8]
They include women like Truphena Odin, who, under the influence of the EARM, left the husband to whom she had been a second wife, convinced that polygamy was ungodly. She eventually became a midwife and through her work led many to Christ. After retiring, she became a noted preacher, even going door to door.[9]
Like Odin, Janet Oranga was a second wife, but in 1952 she was born again through the EARM. She ended her marriage, believing she had snatched the rightful husband of another woman. A hard worker, she purchased land and built rental units used for revival members; other women followed her example.[10]
Born in 1946, Tabitha Apiyo came to faith and also ended her polygamous marriage. Her father refused to receive her in his home, and he could not afford to give back the bride price of cows her husband had paid for her, so he had her arrested. Apiyo refused to deny her faith and moved in with other revivalists. She eventually married a widower, and together they had a powerful ministry.[11]
Once Western women-led movements were institutionalized in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, mission organizations, Bible institutes, and denominations moved women into supporting roles,[12] but this has not necessarily been true in East Africa. Instead, the generation nurtured on the EARM has produced a number of powerful women leaders, and their numbers are growing. Consider the Right Reverend Dr. Emily Onyango—a dear friend of CBE, whose papers on the EARM have been cited multiple times in this article. Onyango has worked among the EARM women in Bondo, Kenya, a rural community outside Kisumu on Lake Victoria, where she has served faithfully as an Anglican priest. She has also been a theological educator at Saint Paul’s University in Limuru. In 2020, Emily Onyango became the first woman ordained as a bishop in the Anglican Church in Kenya.[13] Like the women of the EARM, Onyango serves families, women, and also the academy. Her leadership images well the face of Christianity worldwide—one that is gloriously female and African.
As we wrap up Women’s History Month this year, will you join me in praying for the women who are leading the church, as they always have, faithfully and with enormous humility, in solidarity with the women and families in their communities?
Thanks be to God.
Photo by Andy Soloman.
[1] Gina Zurlo, “Why the Future of the World’s Largest Religion is Female—and African,” The Jerusalem Post, March 27, 2022, https://www.jpost.com/christianworld/article-702461.
[2] For more information on women in this movement, see Emily Onyango, “Gender Equality in the East African Revival Movement,” African Multidisciplinary Journal of Research 4, no. 1 (2019). For more information on the East African Revival Movement in general, see Kevin Ward, The East African Revival: History and Legacies (Surrey, England: Ashgate Publishing, 2012).
[3] David Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, (London: Routledge, 1989), 13.”
[4] Kevin Ward, “‘Tukutendereza Yesu’: The Balokole Revival in Uganda,” in Dictionary of African Christian Biography, ed. Rev. Dr. Esther Acolatse et al. (published online), https://dacb.org/histories/uganda-tukutendereza-yesu/.
[5] Onyango, “Gender Equality,” 31.
[6] Loreen Maseno and B. Moses Owojaiye, “African Women and Revival: The Case of the East African Revival,” European Journal of Research in Social Sciences 3, No. 3 (2015): 32.
[7] Maseno and Owojaiye, “African Women and Revival,” 32.
[8] Maseno and Owojaiye, “African Women and Revival,” 32–33.
[9] Onyango, “Gender Equality,” 25. See also Esther Mombo, “The Revival Testimony of Second Wives,” in The East African Revival: History and Legacies, ed. Kevin Ward (Surrey, England: Ashgate Publishing, 2012), 155–56.
[10] Mombo, “Revival Testimony,” 156–57.
[11] Mombo, “Revival Testimony,” 157–58.
[12] Stanley J. Grenz and Denise Muir Kjsebo, Women in the Church: A Biblical Theology of Women in Ministry (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1995), 37ff.
[13] “Canon Emily Awino Onyango Becomes First Female Anglican Bishop in East and Central Africa,” Anglican Communion News Service, January 18, 2021, https://www.anglicannews.org/news/2021/01/canon-emily-awino-onyango-becomes-first-female-anglican-bishop-in-east-and-central-africa.aspx.
Related Resources
Global Impact: The Work of Service not Power in the Anglican Church of Kenya with Rt. Rev. Dr. Emily Onyango
Working Towards Mutuality as a Mark of Christian Identity: A Case of the Work of the African Church for Biblical Equality
Hope and Joy in Uganda: African Men and Women Embrace Biblical Equality
Global Impact: Partnering in East Africa to Bring Human Flourishing with Deborah Asio
The Challenge of the Resurgence of Negative Aspects of African Cultural Practices Among Christians in Kenya
Challenges Faced in Preaching Biblical Equality in Africa
Global Impact: Partnering with SheLearns in Uganda to Empower Girls with Fred Sebaggala