Friday, January 30, 2026

It is the 30th of January 2026. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org; I’m Dan van Voorhis.

 

As promised, we are back, by coincidence of the calendar, to the East African country of Uganda. On Tuesday’s show, we told the story of those famous martyrs in the 19th century, many pages in the court of the king who converted and were put to death by the new king for their faith. On Wednesday, we looked at Henry Morton Stanley, the man charged with finding the missionary David Livingstone, and who became something of an inadvertent missionary.

Their labors would be rewarded with the East African revival, which broke out in Uganda, Rwanda, and elsewhere in the 1920s.

Amidst the revival and famine of those years came the birth of a young man to a ruling family of the Bahororo people in southwest Uganda. The man who would be called Festo Kivengere was born in 1919 to cattle herders amidst a traditional African Animist context.

But at around 10, he was sent to a school founded by the Church Missionary Society, where he was taught to read and given the Gospel of Luke. His path to becoming “the African Billy Graham” was not as straight as he would have liked. But, he was baptized, and his sponsors, opening the book of Acts, came across the name Festus- the governor who sent Paul to Caesar- and it was adapted for him to become “Festo”.

He would train as a teacher but continued to backslide, in his own telling, until his school experienced something of a revival centering on forgiveness and prayer.

A good student and communicator, he would join the Church Missionary Society in 1946. He would marry- he and his wife, Mera, would have 4 surviving children.

He served as a teacher and evangelist before being invited to England and Australia in the 1950s. It was here that he began to translate for Billy Graham when he would come, known as the “African Billy Graham,” with Graham telling him not to worry too much about exact translation because “you know what I mean”.

Festo would preach with Billy Graham in America and received a Master of Divinity from Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. He would also meet the South African Michael Cassidy, a white man, with whom he would work for the African Evangelistic Enterprise.

Finally ordained a priest in the Anglican Church in Uganda, but this was amidst the deadly coup of Idi Amin. Amin, the “Butcher of Uganda,” ushered in large-scale corruption and killed up to half a million of his own people. Festo Kivengere would be consecrated bishop one year into Amin’s brutal regime. But Festo refused to bend- in 1973, he personally met with Amin to condemn the public execution of three Christians. He would make a name for himself at the Lausanne Conference and as a stalwart of Ugandan Christianity with the bishop Janani Luwum.

As Amin upped his pressure on the church, Kivingere refused to stay silent. It was on this, the 30th of January in 1977, that he took to the pulpit to preach a sermon, “The Preciousness of Life”. This is a protest letter that was the last straw. Amin had Luwum killed, and Kivingere and his family were forced to flee.

He would spend time in neighboring Rwanda before spending 1977 to 1979 in Pasadena, California. He would also publish a book with a remarkably shocking title: “I Love Idi Amin”. Reflecting on the death of Jesus, he came to realize, “On the cross, Jesus said, ‘Father, forgive them, because they know not what they do.’ As evil as Idi Amin is, how can I do less toward him?”

When Amin was overthrown, Kivengere went back home, but would remain a critic of the Ugandan government and its mishandling of humanitarian aid, and the division riled by them between Christian groups.

The 1980’s saw Kivengere as the spiritual head of the church, which was exploding in Uganda- the century of martyrs and missionaries coming to fruition. Unfortunately, Festo Kivengere would succumb to Leukemia in 1988. The convert, the evangelist, and the Christian who dared to state “I Love Idi Amin,” who delivered a sermon against the dictator on this day in 1977, was 69 years old.

 

The Last word for today comes from the daily lectionary and Psalm 15:

Lord, who may dwell in your sacred tent?
 Who may live on your holy mountain?

The one whose walk is blameless,
 who does what is righteous,
 who speaks the truth from their heart;

whose tongue utters no slander,
 who does no wrong to a neighbor,
 and casts no slur on others;

who despises a vile person
 but honors those who fear the Lord;
who keeps an oath even when it hurts,
 and does not change their mind;

who lends money to the poor without interest;
 who does not accept a bribe against the innocent.

Whoever does these things
 will never be shaken.

 

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 30th of January 2026, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by a man who has to remind himself: Forest Whitaker is not Idi Amin… he is Christopher Gillespie.

The show is written and read by a man who reminds himself that Forest Whitaker is not Saw Gererra- I’m Dan van Voorhis.

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.