A history of christianity in uganda assignment

Both offered a “ worldview,” a universal explanation of life with all Its opportunities and problems. Such systems seemed increasingly relevant to societies, like Began, which were prepared the way for Christianity in a number of ways. In fact, Christianity arrived al strategic time–when Islam had awakened among Baghdad certain needs and aspirations, but before Islam had become 50 entrenched in society that Christianity failed to find a foothold. Islam had, for example, created a thirst for literacy, especially among the young pages (bagatelle) at court.

Christianity was able to build on this interest, and with its printing presses and distribution of cheap books in the vernacular or Swahili, was able to satisfy that interest to a much greater extent than Islam was able to do. But Islam had prepared the way in other ways. The idea of a holy book, of a holy day, of a God above all gods who was interested in the affairs of this life and in the moral fife of the individual, the expectation of the resurrection of the body and of a judgment after death–these were concepts pioneered by Islam which received further emphasis from the Christian missionaries.

They criticized the Cabala (direction) of the court mosque and the fact that the uncircumcised king should lead the Friday prayers. They also encouraged Began Muslims strictly to observe Islamic food laws and to refuse to eat meat slaughtered by the Casaba’s butchers. The subsequent defiance of a number of young bagatelle (pages) led to the execution of some 100 Muslims at Amongst, one of the traditional execution sites of Began. For Mutates it was not simply a matter of insubordination, serious as that was, but a confirmation of fears that Islam was becoming a politically subversive creed.

It was about this time that Henry Morton Stanley visited Mutates. For the Kafka the advent of the Unsung (European) was a welcome opportunity to counteract the Egyptian threat, as well as to get in contact with the actual source of the technological innovations which the Muslims had introduced but did not originate. The arrival or Christian missionaries, 1877 [3] Stanley famous letter to the Daily Telegraph painted a much romanticizes picture of Mutates. He represented the Kafka as a great enlightened despot eager to hear the Gospel and speedily to propagate it throughout his kingdom.

Even more scandalous aspects of the rivalry emerged later, with the “ wars of religion” and the cut-throat scramble for political power in the sass. The first converts [4] Both Protestant and Catholic missionaries soon attracted a lively interest, especially room the young pages at court, many of whom began to frequent the missionaries’ compounds. These bassos (readers, as they were called) enquirers, catchments, and from about 1881, baptized began to form little groups of believers in different sections of the lubber.

The Protestants were especially numerous at the Awaking (the treasury/armory), under the patronage of Chief Kluge a consistent friend of the Protestants, though not a Christian himself. The Catholics developed a strong following in the private quarters of the Kafka. This was a measure of the greater favor the Catholics tended to enjoy. Both Mutates and later Magna came to regard the Protestants with some suspicion. This seems to have originated from the links which SMS had with General Gordon, acting as agent for the Egyptians in Sudan. The second group of SMS missionaries had arrived from the north). Since missionaries had been invited to Began expressly to counter the threat from the north, these links were detrimental to good relations with the Kafka. Moreover the Arabs at court increasingly denounced the missionaries as agents of European imperialism. In 1882 the British actually bombarded Alexandria in Egypt and this was the prelude to gradual takeover of Egypt. SMS missionaries protested that they had non connection with their government; but they could not at times resist pointing out the might of the British Empire.

The young protestant martyrs, Make Kumara, Nana Sergeant and Hussy Lugar, were all members of the mission household. The missionaries were being warned against becoming a focus of political power or political discontent against the young Kafka. The deaths of Bishop Huntington and the Uganda martyrs [6] Whatever may have been his personal attitudes to Christianity, Magna, like his father, was of necessity primarily concerned with the political implications of the new religions. By 1885 this was causing very grave anxieties.

The Muslim threat from the north had receded with the Maddest rebellion in the Sudan in 1881. But a new and greater threat to Bugaboo’s independence quite suddenly emerged from the East African coast with the intrusion of German imperialism early in 1885. It was fear of a European invasion which principally caused the death in Busboy on October 29, 1885 ignorant of, or chose to ignore, the precarious position of the Christian community within Began and the dangers, in the international climate, of approaching Began by the politically sensitive ‘ back-door’ of Busboy.

But naturally, secular historians have been cautious about accepting wholesale the simple pieties of hagiography. The deaths of these Christians must be put in the context of the traditional precariousness of life at court, and the deeply ingrained habits of obedience which made Baghdad generally face death holistically if the Kafka so wished. This would put the Christian martyrs firmly in the long tradition of the skinned, the ritual sacrifice of a number (skinned) of victims at the instigation of one of the valuable. Conversely, it has also been argued imperialism.

There is some truth in all these assessments, traditional and modern, religious and secular. Historical reality is complex and does not admit of simplistic explanation. The martyrs are part of that complex reality. The wars of Religion 1888-1892 [7] Whatever the original motivation of the missionaries, the traumatic events of 1885 ND 1886 convinced many of them that foreign intervention might be the only long- term solution to safeguard the future of Christianity in Began. Meanwhile, however, events in Began pursued an internal logic which at first had little 10 do with external affairs.

Magna was not baptized, nor did he lead a life morally acceptable to the Catholics. But he did believe that he had more chance of retaining Bugaboo’s independence if he sided with the Catholics. The Protestants, conscious of this fundamental weakness, clung all the more strongly to Lugar, who at first tried to remain aloof from these conflicts. But increasingly he was drawn into supporting the only group which supported him–the Protestants. When open warfare broke out in 1892, Lugar threw in his lot decisively with the Protestants. He directed his Maxim gun against the Catholics and routed them.

The Protestants, exulting in victory, were keen to divide the spoils (I. E. Political office) among themselves alone, on the basis of ‘ the winner takes all’. But Lugar, the real arbiter of the situation, insisted that both Catholics and Muslims be given some small hare in the political life of the country. This was how Buddy became a Catholic county, the strong base on which much of the subsequent success of Catholicism in Uganda was based. Nevertheless, the Catholics felt bitter against Lugar, the architect of their defeat. Lugar, for his part, always insisted that he was neutral as far as religion was concerned.

A “ Christian Revolution” [9] The events of this violent period in Bugaboo’s history are sometimes characterized as a “ Christian revolution”–by which is meant the fact that a fundamental change occurred in Began in which Christianity was the motivating force and the chief beneficiary. It was a revolution with several phases: a revolution of the ‘ new into’ (1888), a ‘ Muslim revolution’ (1888-9), a ‘ Christian counterrevolution’ (1889), a ‘ Protestant seizure of power’ (1892), and finally the consolidation of the revolutionary changes by the British take-over and loss of Bugaboo’s sovereignty (1894/1900).

Christianity came to dominate the political arena of Began; and Islam was relegated to an under-privileged minority. But the Christian chiefs have also been called ‘ conservative modernizes’. They had a strong sense of Bugaboo’s history and traditions. They wanted to graft Christianity onto these traditions, to use the literacy which Christianity had brought to preserve these traditions. Agway wrote a history of the Kings of Began in Luggage. He also wrote a history of his clan. The institutions of the Spaceship and the clans were the two fundamental pillars of Began. Christianity (in its two forms) was now added as a third pillar.

In 1901, when already in his ass, he set off on a remarkable evangelistic career, pioneering Catholicism in Bankruptcy and other parts of Ankle, in Size and Fumbler, before his death in 1939. Christianity in Western Uganda [1 1] From the sass the Western kingdoms of Uganda had come to terms in one way or another with British colonialism. The acceptance of Christianity was an important means of adjusting to this new situation. In Tort Christianity came as part of an attempt by Gammas to recreate the kingdom of his father; in Bonjour as a response to military defeat and devastation.