Anglican Church of Kenya

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The Anglican Church of Kenya is a member church of the Anglican Communion. Currently there are twenty-nine dioceses that make up the Church of Kenya, each one headed by a bishop.

Each diocese is divided into archdeaconries, each headed by a senior priest. The Archdeaconries are further subdivided into parishes, headed by a parish priest. Parishes are subdivided into sub-parishes, headed by lay readers.

[edit] History

The church was founded originally as the diocese of Eastern Equatorial Africa (Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania) in 1884, with James Hannington as the first bishop; however, Anglican missionary activity had been present in the area since 1844, when Dr. Johann Ludwig Krapf landed in Mombasa. In 1898, the diocese was split into two, with the new diocese of Mombasa governing Kenya and northern Tanzania (the other diocese later became the Church of Uganda); northern Tanzania was separated from the diocese in 1927. In 1955, the diocese's first African bishops, Festo Olang’ and Obadiah Kariuki, were consecrated by the Archbishop of Canterbury in Uganda (Olang’ would be elected the first African archbishop in 1970); in 1960, the province of East Africa, comprising of Kenya and Tanzania, was formed with L.J. Beecher as archbishop. Tanzania seceded from the province in 1970 and was created as its own province.