Kenyan church celebrates birth of 'Black Messiah' at Christmas

Eunice Ayieta chicken trader in Kakamega town wait for customers in vein on December 23, 2025. She expected to make a killing this festive month but sales have dropped by 40 percent.[Benjamin Sakwa,Standard]

In a small candlelit room in western Kenya, worshippers dressed in white gathered at Christmas to mark the birth of what they describe as the "Black Messiah".

They prayed before a photo of Mama Maria, the African woman who co-founded their religious movement -- Legion Maria.

Hours earlier, AFP reporters met a man who introduced himself as a prophet, Stephen Benson Nundu.

Nundu carried a framed photo of Baba Simeo Melchior -- the so-called "Black Messiah" -- who eyes the camera with his hands clasped and a large medallion around his neck.

"Today is a great day, because the Virgin Mary gave birth to King Jesus in the world of black people," he said.

Legion Maria -- or Legio Maria in the language of the Luo, an ethnic group to which many of its members belong -- was founded in 1966.

On its website, it traces its roots to around 1938, when a "mystic woman" appeared to several Roman Catholics to deliver messages about "the incarnation of the son of God as a black man".

One of its co-founders, Simeo Ondetto -- later known as Baba Simeo Melchior -- is described as the "returned son of God" and Legion Maria's "eternal spiritual leader".

The religious movement now claims millions of followers in Kenya and across eight other African countries, including Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Timothy Lucas Abawao, deputy head of the church, said the movement "is not a cult".

"A cult essentially is an organisation which… believes in the leader. But we believe in Jesus Christ, and we believe in God," he told AFP.

He has to be black

AFP interviewed Abawao during Christmas celebrations in Nzoia, one of the movement's places of worship.

He said "Baba Messiah came for Africans" and his followers believe he is "truly Jesus Christ".

"He took on the colour of the Black man, so that the Black man could understand him in his own language and receive salvation," he said.

Legion Maria is not the only African religious movement to feature a black supreme being.

In South Africa, Isaiah Shembe's followers say he received orders from God in 1913 to found the Nazareth Baptist Church, and many view him as a messianic figure. He died in 1935 but his church still claims several million followers.

In the former Belgian Congo, Simon Kimbangu is believed to have miraculously healed a sick woman in 1921, marking the early beginnings of the Kimbanguist church.

Convicted of endangering state security and Belgian colonial order, Kimbangu spent thirty years in prison until his death in 1951.

Nigeria's Brotherhood of the Cross and Star sees in its founder, the late Olumba Olumba Obu, "the Holy Spirit" and "the Triune God", according to its website.

Speaking to AFP on the sidelines of a Legion Maria gathering, Odhiambo Ayanga stressed that God, "as he came for the white, he also came for the black".

"He went for the Asian, as he went for other races, God came for us all. That's why in Africa, he has to be black."