Simon Kimbangu & Kimbanguism

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Simon Kimbangu & Kimbanguism

ƒglise de JŽsus Christ sur la terre par le prophetŽ Simon Kimbangu (EJCSK)

Church of Jesus Christ of the prophet Simon Kimbangu

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Simon Kimbangu was a Kongo, living in the southwest of what was then the Belgian Congo. Shortly after his birth a Baptist missionary, G.R. Cameron was attacked by a group of villager and found refuge in the house of a woman, who sheltered him and gave him some water. Cameron blessed the woman and her baby son, Simon Kimbangu.

Kimbangu and his wife, Mivilu Marie, were baptised in 1915. He hoped to become a teacher and evangelist but he didnÕt read well enough. He was probably a marginal figure both in the traditional world (he may have been descended from slaves) and in the modern one.

In 1918, the year of the great worldwide influenza pandemic, Kimbangu began to have visions calling him to be a healer and apostle. Like the biblical Jonah, he fled his calling, to Kinshasa, where he was miserable and where the visions continued. He returned home, hoping to be appointed evangelist to his home town NÕkamba, but his hopes were once again frustrated.

Kimbangu began a ministry of faith healing in 1921, drawing great crowds to NÕkamba, overflowing the mission churches as far away as Kinshasha, and alarming the Belgian authorities, who feared that he might become a focus for nationalistic rebellion. They attempted to arrest him in the summer of 1921, but he escaped with some of his followers, only to give himself up to the authorities three months later. He was tried, sentenced to 120 lashes and death. Protestant missionaries protested at this travesty of justice, since Kimbangu neither partipated in nor advocated any rebellion against the colonial powers, but had consistently preached obedience to authority. His sentence was commuted and he spent the next thirty years as a model prisoner. The prison warder and the governor of the province of Shaba both appealed for him to be released, but to no avail. He died, still in prison, in 1951.

Simon Kimbangu was entirely orthodox in his teaching, down to a strong advocacy of monogamy, which the Kimbanguist church still maintains. He attacked traditional religion, demanding that his followers burn their fetishes, and refrain from traditional dancing, ceremonies, and the consumption of alcohol -- especially traditional palm-wine. "To make palm-wine" he declared " is to create sin -- to sell it or offer it is to spread sin." [quoted by Lamin Sanneh p 206] Lamin Sanneh goes on to describe Simon KimbanguÕs religious teachings in the following words:

"Kimbangu summed up in his own person the destiny of his peaople and their age. In his prayers he pleaded for their weakness, their hardship, their poverty and suffering their powerlessness and apathy, and above all their capacity of evil and their need for deliverance. In the attempt to minister to a condition he had himself diagnosed with such authoritative comprehensiveness, Kimbangu called on the ancestors to share in the work of awakening and renewal. Having first proceeded to dismantle the cults which had offered themselves as effective vehicles of spiritual contact, he reintroduced the ancestors by the new route of the Christian faith and discipline...." [207]

The Kimbanguist church calendar is dominated by three main dates April 6 marks the date the ministry of healing began, October 12 was the day he died in prison, and Christmas day, the birth day of Christ. These are the only three days that the LordÕs supper is celebrated, and even that only began in 1966. The Kimbanguist church is not very sacramental. Worship is a joyful time of fellowship often lasting several hours, with the leader acting as a master of ceremonies, announcing the various parts of the worship, but not controlling them. The service opens with a procession into the sanctuary, waving palm branches. Congregational participation is encouraged through singing, which is often accompanied by waving palm branches, through prayers offered from the congregation by both men and women, though there is little of the spirit filled enthusiasm and dancing often associated with independent churches. The services are in fact relatively calm and sedate Members of the congregation often raise questions, which the pastor answers in the course of the sermon. Offerings play a central role in the service, and Kimbanguists give generously and fervently.

The Belgian authorities clamped down on the Kimbanguists, subjecting many of them to floggings, which they took on as a form of the imitation of Christ. The authorities also sacked NÕKamba, which had become the KimbanguistsÕ New Jerusalem, exiling the faithful to various provinces of the Belgian Congo. The exiling had the unintended consequence of spreading the Kimbanguist message and creating a multi-ethnic rather than Kongo based movement. The persecution continued into the 1950s. In 1957 600 leading Kimbanguists signed a letter that ran:

Wherever we meet for prayer, we are arrested by your soldiers. In order not to burden the police with added work, we shall all gather, unarmed, in the Stadium, where you can arrest us all at once, or massacre us.

Two years later they were officially recognized by the government and made the transition from underground movement to church. KimbanguÕs youngest son, Joseph Diangienda led the new church into the era of independence, joining the World Council of Churches in 1970. The modern church has tamed some of the enthusiasm of the underground church, discouraging ecstatic trembling ,and even spiritual healing.

On the other hand a number of other groups have regarded Simon Kimbangu as an African saviour, with some prophets (bangunza) have even claimed to be Kimbangu reincarnate.

This page was based on the following sources, which you can consult for more detailed information:

Marie-Louise Martin, Kimbangu: An African Prophet and his Church. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1975. Her bias is to defend the orthodoxy of the Kimbanguists.

Adrian Hastings, The Church in Africa: 1450-1950. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994, pp 508-13

Elizabeth Isichei, i . London: SPCK, 1995, pp 199-201.

Lamin Sanneh, i. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1983, pp 206-9.

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