ABSTRACT
Scholars tend to identify 1937 as the year that the East African Revival made its first appearance in Kenya. In March of that year missionary and physician Joe Church travelled from his base in Gahini, Rwanda, to Kabete in Kenya’s Central Highlands to help lead the first East African Revival Fellowship convention in the colony. The event lasted a week and was attended by thousands. 1 In 1938 Dr Church returned to oversee what he referred to as a series of ‘Kenya Keswick Conventions’ at different CMS stations and schools including Limuru and Alliance in Central Kenya and Maseno in Nyanza, Western Kenya. 2 Norman Green, the medical officer in charge of Maseno Hospital was an active revivalist. According to historian Bethwell Ogot, it was under Green’s leadership that Maseno soon became ‘the spiritual home of the Anglican Church in Nyanza’ and, as a centre of revival, ‘the nucleus of a powerful movement that was soon to engulf western Kenya and beyond’. 3
