UGANDAN ORTHODOX CHURCH

UGANDAN ORTHODOX CHURCH. Uganda is a nation of East Africa on the northern shores of Lake Victoria and bordering Tanzania to the west, Sudan to the north, and Kenya to the east. In the 1920s a group of young Ugandan clergyman, Anglican by ordination and training and led by Reuben Spartas, sought to enter the Orthodox Church. Their motives appear to have been a blend of genuine conviction and resentment against colonial rule. Following a period featuring misadventures and incomprehension on the part of the Greek higher clergy in Alexandria (q.v.), they were finally received by the Patriarchate of Alexandria. Although not without further troubles, the African mission of the Orthodox Church takes its beginnings from these men. The Church of Uganda is today directed by a Ugandan bishop, Theodore Nankyamas, a suffragan of the Metropolitan of East Africa, Makarios, headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya. Two other metropolitanates have since been added to the African mission: Central Africa headquartered in Kinshasa, Zaire, and West Africa, directed from the Cameroons and including Ghana and Nigeria.