Religious Movements

AFRIKANIA MISSION (Religious Movement)

Afrikania Mission is a Neo-Traditional Movement established in Ghana in 1982 by a former Catholic Priest, Kwabena Damuah, who resigned from the church and assumed the traditional priesthood titles, Osofo Okomfo. The Mission aims to reform and update African traditional religion, and to promote nationalism and Pan-Africanism. Rather than being a single new religious movement, […]

AFRICAN ORTHODOX CHURCH (Religious Movement)

Founder: Alexander McGuire/ D.W.Alexander Country: North America/Africa The African Orthodox Church (AOC) represents a rarely successful move of African Independent Churches to join a mainstream denomination. It provided the best available legitimation for black Christian leaders to counter racial discrimination. Origin: USA In 1866 Alexander McGuire was born in Antigua, the eldest son of an […]

AMERICAN FAMILY FOUNDATION (Religious Movement)

The American Family Foundation (AFF) was founded in Massachusetts in 1979 by Kay Barney, the father of a young woman who had become involved with the Unification Church. For a time it was affiliated with the Citizens’ Freedom Foundation (CFF) which later became the Cult Awareness Network (CAN). It also developed links with Evangelical Christian […]

AL-QAEDA (THE BASE) (Religious Movement)

Founder: Osama bin Laden (b. 1957) Al-Qaeda is one of many of the so-called Islamist (see Islamism) groups—movements that are politically active in the cause of establishing an Islamic state—to have emerged in modern times. Others include the Muslim Brotherhood (Ikhwan al-Muslimin). Not all Islamist groups have recourse to violent means to achieve their goal. […]

ALPHA COURSE (Religious Movement)

The Alpha Course is a tool of evangelism first developed at an Anglican church, Holy Trinity, Brompton, in London, England in the late 1970s and later used by churches from every Christian denomination in 132 countries worldwide. It has been translated into fifty languages. Alpha is run largely by lay people meeting in churches, homes, […]

AL-BANNA, HASSAN (1906-49) (Religious Movement)

Founder of the Muslim Brotherhood (Ikhwan al-Muslimin) Hassan al-Banna whose writings and ideas have exercised a profound influence on radical Muslim thinking was born in 1906 in the small town of Damanhur about ninety miles from Cairo and received a traditional Islamic education. After training as a primary school teacher he later attended the prestigious […]

AKINSOWON, CHRISTIANA ABIODUN (Religious Movement)

(MRS/CAPTAIN) Born: 25 December 1907; died 26 November 1994 Co-founder of the Cherubim and Seraphim churches, an African Independent Church Christiana Abiodun Emanuel (nee Akinsowon), affectionately called by the title ‘Captain’, was the daughter of Yoruba Christian parents from Abeokuta. She was baptized into the Anglican Church in Lagos, spent her childhood in Porto-Novo, Ibadan […]

APOSTOLIC CHURCH OF JOHANE MASOWE (Religious Movement)

Founder: Johane Masowe Country of origin: Zimbabwe The Apostolic Church of Johane Masowe can be classified as one of the African Charismatic movements. It was through their Zion Churches that the Shona peoples produced their most powerful and creative independent movements. M.L.Daneel (1971, 1974, 1988) has comprehensively documented the legacy of these Pentecostal and Charismatic […]

APOSTLES' REVELATION SOCIETY (Religious Movement)

The Apostles’ Revelation Society (ARS) is an African Independent Church (AIC) founded in Ghana around 1945. Charles Kwabla Nutornti founded this church at Tadzewu in the Volta Region of Ghana where its Head office is located. Nutornti settled in Tadzevu in 1939 and founded a school and a prayer group. He initially voluntarily affiliated with […]

ANTI-CULT MOVEMENT FAIR (Religious Movement)

Cult Information Centre (CIC) The ‘anti-cult’ movement (ACM) can be considered as the first social response to the phenomenon of New Religious Movements (NRMs) when they emerged in Western countries in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The term ‘anti-cult movement’ is generally used as a generic designation for any, usually secular, organized initiative opposed […]

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