African bishop festo kivengere
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Kivengere, Festo (B)
All articles created or submitted in the first twenty years of the project, from 1995 to 2015.
1919-1988
Anglican Communion , Balokole Movement
Uganda
Anglican Bishop of the Church of the Province of Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and Boga-Zaire.
Kivengere was a leading figure in the East African Revival (Balokole [saved ones]) movement. Born in Uganda and trained as a teacher, he was originally rejected for ordination in Uganda; but he was ordained as a deacon in the United States and a priest in 1967 in Uganda. He won a reputation as a preacher and evangelist and launched the work of African Evangelistic Enterprise (a pan-African movement) in East Africa. He was consecrated bishop of Kigezi in 1972 during President Idi Amin’s reign of terror and fled the country in 1977 when Amin attacked the churches and Bishop Janani Luwum was murdered. He returned to Uganda when Amin was overthrown but continued to travel widely, attracting large audiences in America, Australia and Britain. He became an international spokesman for the Church of Uganda and courageously denounced the human rights violations that continued unabated during Milton Obote’s second presidency. In 1982, when thousands of Nyarwandan refugees were expelled from their homes, Kivengere
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Kivengere, Festo (A)
All articles created or submitted in the first twenty years of the project, from 1995 to 2015.
1919-1988
Anglican Communion , Balokole Movement
Uganda
Festo Kivengere, “the Billy Graham of Africa,” was a Ugandan Christian leader who faced the wrath of the brutal dictator Idi Amin. Unlike Janni Luwum, who had been killed by Amin, Kivengere and his family fled the country. He returned after Amin’s downfall to continue an active ministry until his death by leukemia in 1988.
Born in 1919 in a rural setting among the semi-nomadic rural pastoralists of southwest Uganda, Festo Kivengere belonged to a pagan ruling family. He spent his early life as a cattle herder, where he would read children’s books about Jesus while herding calves. At about age ten he joined a mission school established in his village and was eventually sent away for higher education, after which he returned to his village as a teacher. Converted to Christianity during a revival meeting, Kivengere became a pastor and eventually Anglican bishop of Kigezi. After study in England and a trip to Australia he was asked to translate into Swahili the sermons of the American evangelist Billy Graham, who developed such confidence in Kivengere that he told him, “Don’t bother to translat
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