# African Initiated Churches ## Intro African Initiated Churches (AICs) are churches founded by Africans, in Africa, without a European or American mother church in control. Some broke away from missions in protest at racism, others grew from the ministry of an African prophet, and many stress prayer, healing, visions and the power of the Holy Spirit. They range from fully orthodox Protestant bodies to movements that have drifted from historic Christian teaching. Together they are one of the clearest signs that Africans made Christianity their own instead of simply receiving it. ![Zion City Moria in Limpopo, South Africa, with a large white star and the word Moria laid out on the hillside above the church grounds](/codex/assets/zion-christian-church-moria.jpg) *Zion City Moria, headquarters of the Zion Christian Church in Limpopo, South Africa, at dusk. Photo: JMK, CC BY-SA 4.0 ([Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Moria_ZCC_van_R71-roete_af,_Limpopo,_a.jpg)), resized.* ## In full The initials AIC are read in several ways: African Independent Churches (stressing freedom from foreign control and money), African Initiated or Instituted Churches (stressing who founded them), and African Indigenous Churches (stressing their cultural roots). The movement began in earnest in the 1890s and expanded rapidly through the twentieth century. Scholars have classified AICs in different ways. The Swedish missionary-scholar Bengt Sundkler, in *Bantu Prophets in South Africa* (1948), distinguished "Ethiopian" churches, which kept mission doctrine and worship but rejected white control, from "Zionist" churches, which centered on prophecy, healing and the Spirit. Later scholars such as Harold Turner and David Barrett (*Schism and Renewal in Africa*, 1968) widened the analysis across the continent, and West African "Aladura" (praying) churches became a third standard category. Allan Anderson and Ogbu Kalu have since traced the links between AICs and the later Pentecostal and charismatic explosion. Theologically, AICs force two questions that every account of [Africa and Christianity](/codex/africa-and-christianity/) has to face: how far African Christians may express the faith in African forms, and where contextualization becomes syncretism. AICs supply examples of both. ## Main types | Type | Emphasis | Examples | |---|---|---| | **Ethiopian** | Mission-style doctrine and liturgy, African leadership. Takes its name from Psalm 68:31, "Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hands unto God" (KJV), read as a promise of African Christianity. | The Ethiopian Church founded by Mangena Mokone in Pretoria in 1892; independent Baptist and Methodist bodies in Nigeria and South Africa | | **Zionist** | Healing, prophecy, purification rites, the Spirit. The name traces partly to the influence of John Alexander Dowie's Zion movement in Illinois. | The Zion Christian Church of Engenas Lekganyane, based at Moria in Limpopo, South Africa | | **Aladura** (Yoruba, "owners of prayer") | Prayer, healing, visions, fasting, Holy Spirit baptism | The Cherubim and Seraphim (from 1925, associated with Moses Orimolade); the Church of the Lord (Aladura) of Josiah Oshitelu; the Christ Apostolic Church, which grew from the 1930 revival under Joseph Ayo Babalola; the Celestial Church of Christ of Samuel Oschoffa, founded in Porto-Novo (now Benin) in 1947 | | **Prophet-centered or messianic** | A founding prophet whose authority becomes central to the church | The Kimbanguist Church in Congo ([Simon Kimbangu](/codex/simon-kimbangu/)); the Nazareth Baptist Church (amaNazaretha) of Isaiah Shembe in South Africa; the Harrist Church in Ivory Coast ([William Wade Harris](/codex/william-wade-harris/)) | ## Why AICs arose 1. **Racism and paternalism in missions.** Mission boards were slow to ordain Africans and quick to override them. The sidelining of Bishop [Samuel Ajayi Crowther](/codex/samuel-ajayi-crowther/) around 1890 drove Nigerian Christians toward independence. See [Christianity and Colonialism in Africa](/codex/christianity-and-colonialism-in-africa/). 2. **Reading the Bible for themselves.** Vernacular Scripture let Africans see that the Bible had much to say about healing, dreams, prophecy and spiritual powers, which many missions downplayed. Lamin Sanneh and Kwame Bediako treat AICs as a fruit of translation. See [Missionary Translation and African Languages](/codex/missionary-translation-and-african-languages/). 3. **Spiritual need.** Missions often answered questions about witchcraft, illness and evil spirits with Western medicine and skepticism. AICs met them with prayer and power encounter. 4. **Culture.** AICs used African music, dance, drumming, dress and leadership patterns in worship. 5. **Specific crises.** The 1918 influenza pandemic, for example, spurred prayer and healing groups in Nigeria that grew into Aladura churches. ## Assessing AICs theologically AICs cannot be judged as a single block. - **Much is biblical and fruitful.** Many AICs hold the historic creeds, read the Bible seriously, pray fervently and evangelize widely. Their emphasis on the Holy Spirit's power anticipated the global Pentecostal movement, and Pentecostal scholars such as Allan Anderson see them as part of the same family. See [Pentecostalization of Global Christianity](/codex/pentecostalization-of-global-christianity/). - **Some practices raise questions.** Critics point to rules of ritual purity borrowed from the Old Testament, the use of holy water, candles and objects, and heavy dependence on prophets' visions. Defenders reply that many of these have biblical precedents and function as signs, not magic. - **Some movements have left orthodoxy.** Where a founder comes to be treated as divine, or as the Holy Spirit, the church has crossed from contextualization into a different faith. The later Kimbanguist teaching is the most discussed case. See [Simon Kimbangu](/codex/simon-kimbangu/). [Byang Kato](/codex/byang-kato/) and other African evangelicals warned against syncretism, while [Kwame Bediako](/codex/kwame-bediako/) and [John Mbiti](/codex/john-mbiti/) tended to read AICs more positively, as authentic African expressions of the gospel. The disagreement maps onto the wider debate at [African Traditional Religion and Christianity](/codex/african-traditional-religion-and-christianity/). ## Today - Some AICs are among the largest churches in their countries, such as the Zion Christian Church in South Africa, whose Easter gatherings at Moria draw very large crowds. - The Organization of African Instituted Churches, based in Nairobi, links many AICs ecumenically. - Since the 1970s many young Africans have moved from older AICs to newer Pentecostal and charismatic churches, which share their focus on the Spirit but use more contemporary forms. See [African Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity](/codex/african-pentecostal-and-charismatic-christianity/). - Membership estimates vary widely and depend on definitions; no single reliable continental figure exists. ## Scholarship Published academic works this page draws on, each matched to a publisher, index or library catalog record. - David B. Barrett, *Schism and renewal in Africa* (1968). [Open Library](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL18400105W) - Bengt Sundkler, *Bantu prophets in South Africa* (1948). [Open Library](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL2663109W) ## See also - [Simon Kimbangu](/codex/simon-kimbangu/), founder figure of the Kimbanguist Church - [William Wade Harris](/codex/william-wade-harris/), whose converts formed the Harrist Church - [Samuel Ajayi Crowther](/codex/samuel-ajayi-crowther/), whose treatment pushed Nigerian Christians toward independence - [African Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity](/codex/african-pentecostal-and-charismatic-christianity/), the AICs' successors and cousins - [Pentecostalization of Global Christianity](/codex/pentecostalization-of-global-christianity/), the global movement AICs anticipated - [African Traditional Religion and Christianity](/codex/african-traditional-religion-and-christianity/), contextualization and syncretism - [Christianity and Colonialism in Africa](/codex/christianity-and-colonialism-in-africa/), the colonial setting that produced many AICs - [Africa and Christianity](/codex/africa-and-christianity/), the master hub
## Common questions this page answers **Q: What are African Initiated Churches?** They are churches founded by Africans in Africa, independent of European or American mission control. The initials AIC are read as African Independent, Initiated, Instituted or Indigenous Churches. They range from mission-style Protestant bodies to prophet-led healing churches. **Q: What are the Aladura churches?** Aladura, Yoruba for "owners of prayer," are Nigerian churches that stress prayer, healing, fasting and the Holy Spirit. They include the Cherubim and Seraphim, the Church of the Lord (Aladura), the Christ Apostolic Church and the Celestial Church of Christ. **Q: What is the difference between Ethiopian and Zionist churches?** The classification comes from Bengt Sundkler's 1948 study of South African churches. Ethiopian churches kept mission doctrine and worship but rejected white control. Zionist churches centered on prophecy, healing and the Spirit. **Q: Why did African Independent Churches break away from missions?** Main reasons included racism and paternalism in mission leadership, Africans reading the Bible in their own languages and finding themes the missions downplayed, the need for prayer and healing in the face of illness and spiritual fears, and the desire to worship in African cultural forms. **Q: Are African Initiated Churches Christian?** Most are, and many hold the historic creeds. A few prophet-centered movements have drifted from historic teaching, for example by treating the founder as divine, and those have been judged to fall outside orthodox Christianity by other churches. **Q: What is the largest African Initiated Church?** The Kimbanguist Church of Congo and the Zion Christian Church of South Africa are usually named among the largest, but membership figures vary widely and are not independently verified.