Religion and Politics in East Africa: The Period since Independence, and: Development and the Church of Uganda: Mission, Myths, and Metaphors, and: African Christianity: Its Public Role (review)

Holger Bernt Hansen and Michael Twaddle, Editors: Religion and Politics in East Africa: The Period since Independence. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1995. 278 pages. $44.95.

Canon Kodwo E. Ankrah: Development and the Church of Uganda: Mission, Myths, and Metaphors. Nairobi: Action Publishers, 1998. 197 pages. Price unavailable at press time.

Paul Gifford: African Christianity: Its Public Role. Bloomington/Indianapolis, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1998. 368 pages. $22.95 paper. $39.95 cloth.

The role of religion in postcolonial sub-Saharan Africa has been one of the most contentious issues in the contemporary era in light of such pertinent concerns as political stability, dictatorship, human rights, democracy, civil society, social justice, economic development, corruption, and public health. Three recent books examine how religion has tried to come to terms with these issues.

In Holger Bernt Hansen and Michael Twaddle's Religion and Politics in East Africa, most articles discuss the interplay between religion and politics in East Africa, notably in Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, Somalia, and Sudan, by looking at Catholicism, Protestantism, and Islam as well as the emergence of so-called independent churches. The book begins by looking at the challenge of Islam, the oldest "foreign" religion to have existed in East Africa. It arrived in this region shortly after its establishment in Arabia, but François Constantin argues that few scholars have taken an interest in the development of Islam in postcolonial East Africa. In light of the economic crisis that has afflicted the region, there has been a resurgence of Islamic fundamentalist activity on the coastal strip of East Africa, and Constantin argues that most of its adherents work in low-paying jobs such as taxidriver, butcher, or retail shopkeeper.

R. S. O'Fahey discusses the controversial sharia, or Islamic, law in Sudan, a country engulfed in a horrendous civil war between the predominantly Islamic north and the predominantly Christian and animist south. One of the forces fueling this war has been the reaction of the south to the north's "paternalistic" attitude in trying to Islamize the whole of Sudan, including the introduction of sharia. The late Omari H. Kokole contributed a chapter that looks at the development of Islam in Uganda during the era of Idi Amin. Under Amin's rule, Uganda became staunchly pro-Arab in its foreign policy, and being a Muslem was a passport to many privileges.

The second part of the book looks at "Christianity, Sectarianism, and Politics in Uganda." Heike Behrend examines the emergence of the Holy Spirit Movement, an organization formed by the "eccentric" Acholi woman Alice Auma (who went by the nickname Lakwena) in 1986 on the premise that God had instructed her to fight the government and establish the rule of the Ten Commandments in the country. She led a rebellion that was later defeated by the government in 1987. However, a splinter group of her movement, the Lord's Resistance Army, led by her cousin, Joseph Kony, is still engaging in guerilla activity against the state in the north of the country.

Kevin Ward looks at the relationship between church and politics in Uganda since 1962 (when it attained its independence) with an emphasis on the Anglican Church of Uganda. At the beginning of his essay, he gives a brief overview of the preeminence of the Roman Catholic and the Anglican churches, still the two most influential religious organizations in the country (despite, of course, recent developments as we shall later see). Despite its established presence, however, the Anglican Church has always had a rather ambiguous relationship with the state, beginning in the late colonial era when Uganda's largest ethnic group, the Baganda, saw the church as an extended arm of colonial oppression. In 1965, the Baganda were...