I'm Christi Tippett.

My guest Isabel Mukanyura lived the mixed spiritual messages of colonial Africa, traditional

beliefs on the one hand and on the other the Christianity brought by Westerners.

For many years she says her religious life consisted of haunting questions.

I wondered very much about the promises of heaven and the suffering of Jesus on the cross.

It was all raising questions of what the meaning of God's love is.

Does it have to cost so much?

And be so difficult to see.

In post-colonials in Bobway, Isabel Mukanyura became intrigued by white-robed people she

saw wandering into meadows at the fringes of the modern city of Harari.

This hour she tells their story, a story that echoes tensions and promises in present-day

Africa and beyond.

This is Speaking of Faith, stay with us.

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I'm Christi Tippett.

At the end of the 19th century, Western colonizers set out to Christianize Africa.

In our time, Christianity is being Africanized.

The Misawa Apostles were founded by an African John the Baptist.

They follow an ancient spiritual pull to the wilderness while addressing the present

...