Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-mlc7c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T04:08:58.708Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Series on Church and State: Eating and Sharing: Church and State in Uganda

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

Kevin Ward
Kevin Ward
Affiliation:
[email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The article explores the complexities of church-state relations in Uganda, with particular reference to the two dominant churches: the Anglican Church of Uganda (the Protestants) and the Roman Catholic Church. Together the two churches include some 80 per cent of Ugandans. Since the beginnings of Christianity in the late nineteenth century, the rivalry between the two communions has had political implications, with the Anglican Church perceived as constituting a quasi-establishment and the Catholics as lacking political clout. In local discourse, ‘eating’ refers to the enjoyment of political power; ‘sharing’ to the expectation of inclusion. The article looks at the attempt to overcome sectarian politics, and the Christian witness of both churches in the face of state oppression and violence.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Anglican Studies , Volume 3 , Issue 1 , June 2005 , pp. 99 - 119
Copyright
Copyright © SAGE Publications (Los Angeles, London, New Delhi and Singapore) and The Journal of Anglican Studies Trust 2005

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. Buganda refers to the country, Baganda the people. Muganda refers to a single person. Luganda is the language. Kiganda or Ganda are adjectival usages. The Baganda are a Bantu speaking people, as are the majority of Ugandans. Other Bantu speaking areas include Bunyoro, Tooro, Busoga, Ankole, Kigezi, Bugishu. In the north of Uganda are people who speak non-Bantu languages: Acholi, Langi, Teso, Karamajong, Padhola, Alur, Lugbara and Kakkwa.

2. Nsimbi, M.S.M., Amanya Amaganda Ne Nonno Zaago (Nairobi: East African Literature Bureau, 1959).Google Scholar

3. The busuti (also known as gomes and bodini) is an elaborate and commodious dress, dating from the early years of missionary activity, adapting traditional attire to Victorian sensibilities, still favoured on numerous formal occasions. Kanzu is a long flowing white tunic, embroidered around the neck, introduced by Arab and Swahili traders in the mid-nineteenth century, now worn by Baganda men, especially in formal settings.

4. Catholics and Protestants in Buganda are divided by the same language, and have adopted slightly different terminology for several theological and ecclesial terms — a problem when it comes to agreeing on a common Bible translation. The Protestant word for church, Ekkanisa, is derived from the Arabic, via Swahili. The Catholic ekklesia is, of course, directly from the Greek.

5. ‘Twalya Buganda, twagilya, twagilya. Twagilira mukyama, naye twagilya’. ‘Mubaleke, Naffe tunagabana, naffe tunagabana’. Cf. Waliggo, John, ‘The Bugandan Christian Revolution: The Catholic Church in Buddu 1879–1896’, in Maxwell, David with Lawrie, Ingrid, Christianity and the African Imagination: Essays in Honour of Adrian Hastings (Leiden: Brill, 2002), pp. 63–92 (69).Google Scholar

6. Cf. Low, D.A. and Pratt, R.C., Buganda and British Overrule 1900–1955 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1960). The Buganda Agreement is printed in Appendix II, pp. 350–66.Google Scholar

7. Taylor, John V., The Growth of the Church in Buganda (London: SCM Press, 1958).Google Scholar

8. Faupel, J.F., African Holocaust: the Story of the Uganda Martyrs (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1962).Google Scholar

9. Kiwanuka, M.S.M., A History of Buganda from the Foundation of the Kingdom to 1900 (London: Longmans, 1971).Google Scholar

10. Hastings, Adrian, ‘Ganda Catholic Spirituality’, Journal of Religion in Africa, 8.2 (1976), pp. 81–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11. See the statistics of the 1958 government census, quoted in the Appendix of Welbourn, F.B., Religion and Politics in Uganda 1952–62 (Nairobi: East African Publishing House, 1963).Google Scholar

12. Waliggo, John, A History of African Priests (Masaka, Uganda: Marianum, 1988).Google Scholar

13. Ward, Kevin, Called to Serve: Bishop Tucker Theological College, Mukono — A History 1913–1989 (Kampala: Bishop Tucker College, 1989).Google Scholar

14. For an extensive discussion on education and its religious implications, cf. Tiberondwa, A.K., Missionary Teachers as Agents of Colonialism in Uganda (Kampala: Fountain, 2nd edn, 1998)Google Scholar; Ssekamwa, J.C., History and Development of Education in Uganda (Kampala: Fountain, 1997)Google Scholar; Mwesigwa, F.S., ‘Religious Pluralism and Conflict as Issues in Religious Education in Uganda’, PhD dissertation, University of Leeds, 2003.Google Scholar

15. The Census divided responses into three sections, Region, District and Religion, each of these being subdivided into males and females (The 1991 Population and Housing Census: ‘Table 11 Total Population by Region by District and Religion by Sex’).

16. For a discussion of modern Pentecostalism, see Gifford, P., African Christianity: Its Public Role (London: Hurst, 1998), pp. 152–80.Google Scholar

17. Barrett, D., Kurian, G.T. and Johnson, T.M., World Christian Encyclopaedia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2nd edn, 2001), Vol. 1, Uganda: Country Table 1, p. 762.Google Scholar

18. Muslims tend to be critical of Barrett's figures on African Islam. In what is explicitly called a ‘Christian’ Encyclopaedia, they suspect that the Muslim presence in Africa will be underplayed for confessional reasons.

19. Barrett estimates that 44.7 per cent of Britons are Anglican (i.e., are affiliated to the Church of England, the Church in Wales, the Church of Ireland or the Episcopal Church of Scotland). But there is a much stronger sense of identification with the Church of Uganda among nominal members than is the case with the attenuated forms of affiliation in Britain.

20. Cf. Ward, K., ‘The Church of Uganda and the Exile of Kabaka Muteesa II, 1953–55’, Journal of Religion in Africa, 18.4 (1998), pp. 411–49.Google Scholar

21. Kaggwa, Apolo, Ekitabo Kya Basekabaka be Buganda [The Kings of Buganda] (London: SPCK; Kampala: CMS Press, 1900)Google Scholar. Empisa za Baganda [The Customs of the Baganda] (London: SPCK; Kampala: CMS Press, 1905)Google ScholarEbika kya Buganda [The Clans of Buganda] (London: SPCK; Kampala: CMS Press, 1912).Google Scholar

22. Mukasa, Ham, Simudda Nyuma (London: SPCK, 1938).Google Scholar

23. Examples preserved in the CMS Archives for Uganda housed in the Archive Collections of Birmingham University.

24. Hastings, , ‘Ganda Catholic Spirituality’Google Scholar. Ward, K., ‘African Culture, Christianity and Conflict in the Creation of Ugandan Identities, 1877–1997’, in Koschorke, K. (ed.), Christen und Gewuerze (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1998), pp. 158–70.Google Scholar

25. Hansen, H.B., ‘European Ideas, Colonial Attitudes and African Realities: The Introduction of a Church Constitution in Uganda 1898–1908’, The International Journal of African Historical Studies 13.2 (1980), pp. 240–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

26. Ward, K., ‘Obedient Rebels: The Mukono Crisis 1941. The Relationship Between the Early Balokole and the Church of Uganda’, Journal of Religion in Africa 19.3 (1989) pp. 194–227.Google Scholar

27. The church in the Kavirondo part of Western Kenya had originally been evangelized from the Church of Uganda. They were distressed in the early 1920s when they were transferred to the Diocese of Mombasa with its much more regressive constitution.

28. There is considerable correspondence on Kabaka Muteesa's marital affairs, especially during his exile in London (when it was felt to have constitutional implications) in the correspondence between Archbishop Fisher and Bishop Brown, preserved in the Lambeth Archives.

29. Brown, L., Three Worlds, One World (London: Rex Collings, 1981).Google Scholar

30. Ward, K., ‘The Church of Uganda and the Exile’.Google Scholar

31. Waliggo, J.M., ‘The Catholic Church and the Root Cause of Instability in Uganda’, in Hansen, H.B. and Twaddle, M., Religion and Politics in East Africa (London: James Currey, 1995), pp. 106–19.Google Scholar

32. Mengo, the kibuga or ‘traditional’ part of Kamapala, was the seat of the Buganda government.

33. Apter, D., The Political Kingdom in Uganda (London: Frank Cass, 3rd edn, 1997).Google Scholar

34. Bade, Albert, Benedicto Kiwanuka: The Man and his Politics (Kampala: Fountain, 1996).Google Scholar

35. Welbourn, , Religion and Politics.Google Scholar

36. Ward, K., ‘The Church of Uganda amidst Conflict’Google Scholar, in Hansen, and Twaddle, , Religion and Politics in East Africa, pp. 199–224.Google Scholar

37. There is a large literature, much of it meant for spiritual edification. Cf. Church, J.C., Quest for the Highest (Exeter: Paternoster, 1981).Google Scholar

38. Ford, M., Janani: The Making of a Martyr (London: Marshall, Morgan & Scott, 1978)Google Scholar. Sentamu, John, ‘Tribalism, Religion and Despotism in Uganda: Archbishop Janani Luwum’, in Chandler, A., The Terrible Alternative: Christian Martyrdom in the 20th Century (London: Cassell, 1998)Google Scholar. Bishop Sentamu, a Ugandan lawyer who worked closely with Bishop Luwum in Gulu, Northern Uganda, is now Bishop of Birmingham in England.

39. ‘Archbishop Janani Luwum: The Dilemmas of Loyalty, Opposition and Witness in Amin's Uganda’, in Maxwell, , Christianity and the African Imagination.Google Scholar

40. Museveni, Yoweri, Sowing the Mustard Seed: The Struggle for Freedom and Democracy in Uganda (London: Macmillan, 1997).Google Scholar

41. Ward, K., ‘The Armies of the Lord: Rebels and the State in Northern Uganda 1986–1999’, Religion and War in the 1990s: The Journal of Religion in Africa 31.2 (2001), pp. 187–221.Google Scholar

42. The Leaders, Acholi Christian' Peace initiative has a website. Cf. The Refugee Law Project Working Paper no. 11: Behind the Violence: Causes, Consequences and the Search for Solutions to the War in Northern Uganda (Kampala: The Refugee Law Project, 2003)Google Scholar. Madit, Kacoke, The Quest for Peace in Northern Uganda (London: Kacoke Madit, 2000).Google Scholar

43. Byamugisha, Gideon, Am I my Brother's Keeper (Kampala: Self-published, 1998).Google Scholar

44. Ward, K., ‘Same-Sex Relations in Africa and the Debate on Homosexuality in East African Anglicanism’, African Theological Review 84.1 (2002), pp. 81–111.Google Scholar

45. Tripp, Aili Mari, Women and Politics in Uganda (Oxford: James Currey; Kampala: Fountain, 2000).Google Scholar

46. Low, D.A. and Pratt, R.C., Buganda and British Overule 1900–1955 (London: Oxford University Press, 1960), p. 3.Google Scholar

47. Cf. Doe, Norman, Canon Law in the Anglican Communion (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), pp. 303–304.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

48. http://www.Government.go.ug/constitution

49. This paragraph is based on my own recollection of living in Uganda during that time. I am grateful to Amos Kasibante, of Leicester University, for valuable discussions about these and other constitutional issues of church-state relations in Uganda.

50. The Uganda newspapers, New Vision and Monitor, report regularly on these events.