The Rise and Development of the African Israeil Church Nineveth (AICN)

Abstract

Christian churches, both local and foreign-led, have played an important part in African social and political life before and after independence. The colonial powers encouraged missionary - run churches to establish themselves among the local population and to help them in what they saw as their "civilising mission" in Africa. At first there was little opportunity for the establishment of churches run by Africans with the missionaries assuming a "superior" role as though they had a monopoly of the truth. However, as Africans became educated they began to challenge the norms preached by the European missionaries and this gave rise to Church Independency which thereafter became an important feature of the last years of British colonial rule, and which have continued into the post independence period. This study is about Independent Church movements in Kenya, with particular reference to those churches which broke off from European-led missions in Western Kenya, and which have survived and prospered in the post-independence period. It was decided to concentrate on one particular church, namely the African Israel Church Nineveh (AICN), which had its headquarters a few kilometres from Kisuinu but was actually located in the Nyang'ori area of Kakainega District, to analyse its development chronologically, to investigate and discuss what it had in coinnon with other independent churches in the region and in Kenya as a whole, to find cut what were the official attitudes towards its development, and to analyse the roles played by its African founders and leaders. Earlier authors such as F.B. Welbourn and B.A. Qgot (1966) had enphasised that cultural and social alienation had been the primary factors leading to independent Church Movements with the new African "church rebels" and their followers looking for "a place to feel at home." In this study it was decided that it might 1x2 too simpListic to attribute the rise and growth of Church Independency, such as was observed in the A1CN, to colonialism and racialism, mainly because the phenomenon has continued to grow even in the post-independence period. In later years, for example, It was found tint new factors came to play a dominant role in Church Independency. These included personality cults, personal rivalries, administrative weaknesses, and economic exploitation of the church followers by the church leadership. The objectives of the case study of the AICN included attempts to explain the question of schism within this church before and after independence and to derive some general observations and principles explaining Church Independency in Kenya and in Africa. It was hypothesised that the emergence of the AICN was not a unique phenomenon but just another case of Church Independency among protestant churches in Kenya, that colonial conditions did have an influence on the make-up of the independent churches and that within these new independent institutions the crisis of succession would be an important internal factor explaining the dynamics of Church Independency. The history of the AICN was dominated by two personalities and long- tune personal friends, namely, David Zakayo Kivuli and .Jackson Filemona Orwa, and the inherent rivalries amongst their followers who came from the Luhyia of Kakamega District and Luo of Kisumu District in Western