Kenyan Church Marks Christmas With Celebration of ‘Black Messiah’

In a modest, candlelit room in western Kenya, worshippers dressed in white gathered on Christmas Day to commemorate the birth of what they call the “Black Messiah.”

The faithful prayed before an image of Mama Maria, the African woman who co-founded the Legion Maria religious movement.

Earlier, AFP reporters met a man who identified himself as a prophet, Stephen Benson Nundu, who carried a framed photograph of Baba Simeo Melchior — revered by followers as the “Black Messiah.” In the image, he gazes into the camera with clasped hands and a large medallion around his neck.

“Today is a great day, because the Virgin Mary gave birth to King Jesus in the world of black people,” Nundu said.

Legion Maria — known as Legio Maria in the Luo language spoken by many of its adherents — was founded in 1966. According to the church’s website, its origins date back to around 1938, when a “mystic woman” reportedly appeared to Roman Catholics with messages about “the incarnation of the son of God as a black man.”

One of the movement’s founders, Simeo Ondetto — later called Baba Simeo Melchior — is regarded by followers as the “returned son of God” and the church’s “eternal spiritual leader.”

The movement now claims millions of followers in Kenya and at least eight other African countries, including Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Timothy Lucas Abawao, the church’s deputy head, rejected claims that Legion Maria is a cult.

“A cult essentially is an organisation which… believes in the leader. But we believe in Jesus Christ, and we believe in God,” Abawao told AFP.

AFP spoke with Abawao during Christmas celebrations in Nzoia, one of the church’s worship centres. He said “Baba Messiah came for Africans” and that followers believe he is “truly Jesus Christ.”

“He took on the colour of the Black man, so that the Black man could understand him in his own language and receive salvation,” he said.

Legion Maria is not the only African religious movement associated with a black messianic figure. In South Africa, followers of Isaiah Shembe believe he was divinely instructed in 1913 to establish the Nazareth Baptist Church, and many regard him as a messiah. Shembe died in 1935, but the church still claims millions of followers.

In the former Belgian Congo, Simon Kimbangu’s reported healing of a sick woman in 1921 led to the emergence of the Kimbanguist Church. Kimbangu was later imprisoned for 30 years for allegedly threatening colonial authority and died in 1951.

Nigeria’s Brotherhood of the Cross and Star, meanwhile, regards its founder, the late Olumba Olumba Obu, as “the Holy Spirit” and “the Triune God,” according to its website.

Speaking on the sidelines of a Legion Maria gathering, Odhiambo Ayanga said God transcends race.

“As he came for the white, he also came for the black,” Ayanga said.

“He went for the Asian, as he went for other races, God came for us all. That’s why in Africa, he has to be black.”

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