LUMPA CHURCH

A tribal religious movement in Zambia, Central Africa, which though all-African has had many conflicts with the government.

The leader of the movement is Alice Mulenga Lubusha a catechumen of the United Church who in 1953 "died" and returned with God´s commission to deliver Africans from witchcraft, sorcery and sickness.

The mass response she received reduced membership in both Catholic and Protestant churches and led to the founding in n1954 of the Lumpa (Higher or Stronger) Church which had some 50,000 members by 1960.

Magic and witchcraft were confesed and renounced, followed by baptism; a strict ethic forbade divorce, inheritance of widows, polygamy, beer drinking and many tribal customs. Followers of Alice who became known as Lenshina (for Regina; Queen) gathered in her Sione (Zion) headquarters in new, clean, palisaded -but illegal- villages.

Alliance was made inn 1957 with the new, largely Bemba, United National Independence Party (members of the church belonged mainly to the Bemba tribe) but an attempt by the church to withdraw from political activity led to violent clashes and in 1964 to a rebellion in which some 600 persons were killed. The Church was banned and Alice Lenshina surrended.

In 1971 she was indefinitely detained and the position and future of the Lumpa Church became uncertain.