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Uganda World Religions
Christianity
The largest Protestant denomination is Anglican
(Episcopal).
In 1989 about 4 million Ugandans, or roughly 22 percent of
the
population, belonged to the nineteen dioceses of the
Anglican
Church of Uganda. Other Protestant churches, including
Methodist,
Lutheran, Baptist, Presbyterian, and a small Bahai
congregation,
together had fewer than 1 million members. About 5 million
Roman
Catholics (roughly 28 percent of the population) were
members of
the thirteen Catholic dioceses in Uganda. The Catholic and
Anglican archbishops and other church leaders were
Ugandans.
The first Christian missionaries represented the
Anglican
Church Missionary Society (CMS) and arrived in Buganda in
1877
(see Long-Distance Trade and Foreign Contact
, ch. 1).
Roman
Catholic priests from the Society of Missionaries of
Africa
(White Fathers), a French religious order, arrived two
years
later. These and later Catholic and Protestant missions
competed
for converts in southern Uganda and became embroiled in
local
politics. British and German military commanders organized
Protestant and Catholic converts to defend imperial
interests
against each other and against Muslim armies. Many early
converts
to Christianity were persecuted by local rulers, and
nineteenthcentury martyrs were commemorated in shrines in several
places in
southern Uganda.
After the victories of Protestant armies in the
conflicts of
the 1890s in southern Uganda, membership in the Anglican
church
was a requirement for each kabaka of Buganda. The
Anglican
Cathedral on Namirembe Hill near Kampala became the site
of the
kabaka's coronation. (A Roman Catholic cathedral
was built
on nearby Rubaga Hill in 1925.) When Protestant Baganda
formed
the political party Kabaka Yekka (KY) to press for
autonomy for
Buganda at independence, Catholics formed the Democratic
Party
(DP) to oppose the parochial interests of the KY. The DP
also won
support in areas where opposition to Buganda was high, and
other
political parties organized in reaction to KY and DP
demands.
Religion continued to be a factor in national politics
through
the first three decades of independence.
Data as of December 1990
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