African Initiative and Inspiration in the East African Revival, 1930-1950

Daewon Moon and his dissertation committee (L-R): Nimi Wariboko, Inus Daneel, Dana Robert, Jack Davis, Daryl Ireland, Bryan Stone

In the 1930s and 1940s, African revivalists in colonial Ugandan and Ruanda-Urundi appropriated Christian beliefs and practices to forge a distinctively African Christian spirituality that precipitated the moral and spiritual transformation of many people in East Africa. Daewon Moon, in his successfully defended dissertation, demonstrated that African revivalists had the support and sympathy of evangelical-minded missionaries, but it was African evangelists, teachers, and hospital workers who fueled the rapid expansion of the movement.