Writing the Empire: Scribblings from Below
An international & interdisciplinary conference
Phillipe de Vigors, ‘Convicts letter writing at Cockatoo Island, New South Wales, 1849’
Reproduced by kind permission of the State Library of New South Wales, Sydney
Event Dates: 25 June 2010
Bristol, UK
Emma Wild-Wood (Cambridge)
The Journal of Apolo Kivebulaya, CMS Evangelist
Ganda Evangelist and Anglican priest, Apolo Kivebulaya, kept a journal for many of the 38 years he preached in villages on the Uganda-Congo border. Listing his intinery of preaching, teaching and building churches and reflecting on the power of Jesus Christ, his writings give glimpses into the way in which converts to Christianity understood their conversion and encouraged others to convert. This informal presentation suggestions that Apolo’s diary does not cohere with common perceptions surrounding modernity and tradition. It also suggests that, on the nexus of literacy and power, Apolo’s diary demonstrates that he operated along a continuum of power-as-control and power-as-empowerment. He understands himself as a missionary in the mould of St Paul and encouraged others to adopt literacy rather warfare in the uncertain early colonial period from 1895-1933.
Emma Wild-Wood is Director of the Henry Martyn Centre, in the Cambridge Theological Federation and is an affiliated lecturer of Cambridge University. She is also Commissioning Editor of the International Study Guides, published by SPCK. She studied Theology at the University of Edinburgh before teaching at the Provincial Theological College of the Anglican Church of Congo and in Uganda. Her research interests lie in the history of Christianities in the Great Lakes area of Africa and she has published /The East African Revival: History and Legacies/, co-edited with Kevin Ward, Kampala, Fountain, 2010 and /Migration and Christian Identity in Congo (DRC), /Leiden, Brill, 2008. An Article on Apolo Kivebulaya as a figure of cultural interface entitled, ‘Saint Apolo from Europe or What’s in a Luganda Name?’appeared in/ Church History,/ 77, 1(2008)
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