Kimbanguism: An African Initiated Church

Abstract

During the early 1920s in what was then known as the Belgian Congo, a Christian revival movement was initiated by an African, a Baptist catechist named Simon Kimbangu, who immediately challenged the colonial order by preaching to and healing the local population. The Kimbanguist Church, an African Independent Church born from this movement, considers itself as a tool of identity reconstruction, empowering the believers to express their suffering and challenge the racial inequalities still extant in the post-colonial context. A member of the World Council of Christian Churches since 1969, with an estimated membership of 17 million today, the Kimbanguist Church has evolved, as the American sociologist Susan Asch explained, with two parallel dimensions. The first is made up of the educated minority, which is struggling to bring about theological reform, while the second one, composed of the tradition-oriented majority, has imposed popular beliefs, throwing the church into a conflict with the World Council of Churches since the year 2000.