Writing the East African Revival: Jennifer Makumbi’s Kintu in the context of African Christian historiography

Centering around a generational curse and the clan's recourse to the supernatural, the epic novel Kintu (2014) by the Ugandan writer Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi is a fascinating text for scholars of religion and literature. Praised for its mythological retelling of the history of the Buganda Kingdom and its people, a largely overlooked aspect of the novel is its critical commentary on Christianity, in particular the East African Revival (EAR)—an influential twentieth-century religious renewal movement. Positioning Kintu's fictional account in the broader historiography of the EAR and recent reinterpretations of the movement, this article specifically examines the novel's concern with the transition from the Revival to Pentecostalism and with the relationship between Christianity and indigenous religion and culture. It argues that while the novel persuasively evokes the textured lives of Revivalists to raise important considerations of Christianity's role in modern society, it overlooks aspects of the EAR's appeal as a critique of Baganda society. Using Kintu as a case study, the article also examines the relationship between African literary texts and the writing of African Christian history and offers some methodological reflections.