Anglicans in Postcolonial Africa

Based on 319 face-to-face interviews with 319 Kenyans across the Anglican Church of Kenya (ACK) between 2005 and 2010, this is the most up to date and comprehensive account currently available on Kenyan Anglicanism in the post-colonial era. This book charts the ACK’s colonial past and its changing response to Kenyan politics and public life. It then turns inward to explore the internal state of the ACK, its efforts to reach out to the poor and needy, its internal dynamics in local parish life, and how it has dealt with its pre-Christian African heritage.  The book concludes by identifying the five major challenges the ACK confronts today that will determine whether it can overcome its current course of genteel decline. These challenges include: the unconstrained, autocratic power of its bishops; its inadequate level of financial giving that goes back to the colonial era: its insistence on a church marriage for full participation in church life that marginalises so many, most notably females who are a majority of active attenders; the decline of the East African Revival that once provided the major impetus for committed lay leadership; and the rise of Pentecostalism that has led to so many defections  and internal struggles over what it means to be a Kenyan Anglican today. How Kenyan Anglicans resolve these dilemmas will define the future of the ACK and what it means to be an Anglican in Kenya.