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Christianity in Africa South of the Sahara
AICs
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African Initiated Churches (AICs, since the initials can stand equally well for African Independent Churches, African Instituted Churches or African Indigenous Churches) are African churches which were founded by Africans and function without referring to western missions or churches. They range from churches that are indistinguishable from Mission churches to those which are really African traditional religions using Christian vocabulary. AICs are strongest and most numerous in Kenya, Nigeria and Southern Africa, though there are hardly any in Tanzania, Uganda, or Sierra Leone.
Most AICs are protestant churches. As Adrian Hastings phrased it: "African Catholics were being good Catholics (putting the unity and authority of the Church first), African Protestants were being good Protestants, members of a tradition in which Church unity had always taken second place." [Hastings 528] Their protestant roots allowed the AICs to break away from the mission churches with few qualms. Most AICs share the protestant stress on the authority of the Bible, usually read literally. They differ from most mission churches in that they read the Bible with an African cultural background rather than a western cultural background, which made it easier to read some things literally than the missionaries.
Most often the AICs arose as a result of disagreements between African Christians and western missionaries over the extent to which traditional African practices were permissible. Many AICs permit polygamy following the the Old Testament cultural practices which the New Testament does not reject. Very few Mission churches tolerate polygamy. AICs often have a vividly spiritualistic view of reality as a cosmic spiritual battleground sprinkled with demons and witches, in which diseases have spiritual causes and cures and prayer can persuade God to bring rain. This view, which is much closer to the Biblical world than to the western world, led them to clash with the scientific western mission view which had little time for exorcism, faith healing or rainmaking through prayer. Where missionaries tolerated polygamy or fought traditional gods with their own spiritual powers Christians usually remained within the mission churches. Where missionaries introduced their converts to the Bible then insisted that they become more western than biblical, AICs flourished. As Elizabeth Isichei phrases it: "They found in the world of the Bible, a world of victory over sickness and death, of mastery over evil spirits .... The emphasis on healing and miracles was not wholly absent from the mission churches, but, typically, they interpreted disease in a rationalist-scientific way, and relied more on hospitals than prayer to solve health problems." (Isichei, p. 254)
The Shona prophet John of the Wilderness (Johane Masowe) expressed the same idea: "When we were in these synagogues [churches] we used to read bout the works of Jesus Christ... cripples were made to walk and the dead were brought to life... evil spirits driven out .... That was what was being done in Jerusalem. We Africans, however, who were being instructed by white people, never did anything like that.... We were taught to read the Bible, but we ourselves never did what the people of the Bible used to do." (Isichei, p 256)
While AICs share basic cultural assumptions with traditional African culture and particularly traditional African religion, most of them firmly reject the practices of traditional African religions as evil. They believe that witches have real powers and that the traditional gods and spirits exist, but they believe these are evil spirits and must be resisted in the name of Jesus. Many AICs prohibit traditional dancing and participating in traditional ceremonies, as engaging too closely with evil spirits.
This rejection of traditional culture and practices have led the AIC members to distinguish themselves as sharply as possible from the rest of society. Often they wear distinctive costume -- white robes with particular designs all of the same color embroidered on them and distinctive headgear. Often AICs observe the Sabbath as well as Sunday and have firm dietary laws to keep them apart. Often their dietary laws are based on Old Testament dietary law, but many prophetic groups expand the prohibitions to include abstention from beer and tobacco. Refraining from beer, which is often more like gruel, nutritious and low in alcoholic content, means that the adherents of the prophetic church cannot participate in the community work parties, where beer is the staple food.
This page was based on the following sources, which you can consult for more detailed information:
Adrian Hastings, The Church in Africa: 1450-1950. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994. Ch 11.
Elizabeth Isichei, A History of Christianity in Africa from Antiquity to the Present. London: SPCK, 1995, pp. 125-27, 179-82, 199-207, 247-63, 276-98, 313-7, 334-9.
John Bauer, 2000 Years of Christianity in Africa (Nairobi: Paulines, 1994) pp 125-33, 349-58
Hennie Pretorius and Lizo Jafta, "A Branch Springs Out: African Initiated Churches" in Christianity in South Africa, edited by Richard Elphick and Rodney Davenport. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1997
Allan A. Anderson and Gerald J. Pillay, "The Segregated Spirit: The Pentacostals" in Christianity in South Africa, edited by Richard Elphick and Rodney Davenport. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1997
and the sources for linked pages.
The AIC research homepage, has links to a number of people who are doing research on AICs, as well as a discussion forum for questions about AICs. It is ndispensable for anyone doing research on AICs.