Introduction

Toward the end of 1941, some Balokole students at the prestigious Bishop Tucker Theological College in Mukono, Uganda (located about fifteen miles east of central Kampala) began meeting for prayer at 4 a.m. These prayer meetings became opportunities for Balokole students to exhort their fellow students to repentance, with some revivalists even turning the school's water tower into a pulpit. Balokole students had become worried, because they saw that the school term was ending and the graduates would depart without ever really encountering the message of true salvation. Instead, these “unsaved” graduates would continue the various “secret sins” that Balokole students believed were practiced in the school, like drinking alcohol and engaging in minor theft, and likely permit them in their churches. Balokole believed this dangerous cycle would perpetuate the languid spiritual state of the Church of Uganda, so they seized what they believed to be an opportune moment to exhort their fellow ordinands to rid their lives of sin.

In response, the college's warden, John C. Jones, issued a set of rules that he required every student in the college to accept. Among other things, these rules limited the times at which students could gather together, and the duration of their meetings. At stake for the warden was the insidious threat of “indiscipline” and “disobedience,” both of which he sought to curtail. Balokole students deliberately disregarded these rules, as they believed themselves to be unfairly targeted by them. Furthermore, the Balokole students interpreted the new rules as part of an attempt to “stamp out” revival at the college and, by extension, within the Church of Uganda. As a result, twenty-six Balokole students (this number did not, apparently, represent all Balokole students in attendance at the college) refused to sign on to the new rules and, therefore, “were asked to leave immediately.” The repercussions of their “dismissal” nearly split the Church of Uganda along balokole/ non-balokole lines.

The following fall, in November 1942, a few miles to the west of Kampala, at King's College, Budo, a series of student “disturbances” took place. Students threw rocks at instructors, and property, including a portrait of King George V, was destroyed.