The Kenyan Alliance of Protestant Missions 1919–1963: Ecumenism Adrift in a Colonial Society

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Chapter 12 The Kenyan Alliance of Protestant Missions 1919–1963: Ecumenism Adrift in a Colonial Society

Kevin Ward

1 Overview

The 1913 Kikuyu Controversy had given the Protestant missions in East Africa an unexpected, and largely unwelcome, international notoriety.1 When the missionaries met again at the end of the war, their desire to create a united African church remained strong. But they were now careful to move more cautiously. They suggested the creation of an ‘Alliance’ of Protestant missions rather than a ‘Federation’. In so far as this looser union did not envisage imme- diate changes to the ecclesiastical structures of any church (in particular, the episcopal ordering of the Anglican church) the missionaries hoped to avoid incurring Anglo-Catholic objections. This chapter will explore the optimism with which the Alliance was inaugurated and why it failed comprehensively to achieve what it set out to do: the gradual creation of a unified African Church. The Alliance was built on the assumption that there already existed a compre- hensive theological unity, based on the Evangelical character of all the Alliance participants. It also assumed that African Christians would gladly abandon competitive denominationalism in favour of a united Christian front. In the event both these assumptions ran into difficulties. In 1922 the theological unity was called into question by the split within the Anglican Church Missionary Society (in Britain) over the authority and complete trustworthiness of the Scriptures. While the CMS in Kenya did not split, these controversies caused deep anguish, particularly within the Africa Inland Mission, a largely American non-denominational conservative evangelical body with extensive work throughout Kenya. AIM effectively withdrew from active participation in the

1 This chapter relies extensively on archive material. The following are the chief sources: Kenya National Archives (Nairobi) KNA . Anglican Church of Kenya Archives (housed in the KNA) ACK. National Council of Churches of Kenya Archives (Nairobi) NCCK . International Missionary Council Archives (Geneva) IMC . AIM Archives: Kenya (Wheaton, Illinois) AIM. Arthur Papers (University of Edinburgh) AP.

Alliance, and indicated their unwillingness to participate in any moves towards a united church until such theological controversies had been satisfactorily re- solved. The other blow to the Alliance came in 1929 with the heated African Christian responses to the controversy over female circumcision (now gener- ally known as female genital mutilation). The chief opponent of this tradition- al Kikuyu practice was Dr John Arthur of the Church of Scotland Mission. In attempting to impose an oath on members of the Presbyterian Church which eschewed female circumcision, Dr Arthur unintentionally provoked an outcry among the Kikuyu people, and deeply divided the Christian community. Some Christians left the mission churches to found independent churches. Dr Arthur was felt particularly aggrieved that the Anglican CMS did not fully support his stand. In contrast, the more flexible and gradualist approach of CMS to the abolition of female circumcision was attractive to the Christian dissidents. A series of negotiations was opened in the 1930s, with a view either to the rebels joining the Anglican church or to receiving help from the Anglicans to foster their own churches. Meanwhile Anglicans who had moved into the spheres of other Alliance missions, which had a stricter policy on female initiation and on other ethical issues, were adamant that they wished to remain Anglican. These controversies severely limited the ecumenical progress of the Alliance. Its one substantial achievement was the creation of the Alliance High School, which was to play an important role in the educational development of Kenya. It was only with the spread of the East African Revival in the 1940s that co-operation between Christians of different denominations was re-established on a new basis, one propelled by African Christians rather than missionaries, and with little interest in ecclesiastical ecumenical schemes.

2 The Establishment of the Alliance

The outbreak of the First World War constituted something of an ecclesio- logical watershed for much of global Christianity, and East Africa proved no exception. In Kenya, early twentieth-century missionary attempts to create a united African Church in Kenya had foundered in 1913, but the recruit- ment of mission-educated young men to fight as a separate unit in the British ‘Carrier Corps’ gave it a new lease of life, and in 1918 missionary leaders gath- ered again at the Church of Scotland mission station of Kikuyu.2 Conscious

2 Ironically, its Kikuyu name is Thogoto, meaning Scotland. To avoid confusion between the Kikuyu people and the Scottish Mission station, I will, in the rest of this chapter, normally refer to what the Scots called their ‘Kikuyu’ mission as ‘Thogoto’.