page_title: Esau Khamati Oriedo
section_title: Faith
hierarchical_section_title: Esau Khamati Oriedo / Biography / Faith
caption_attribution_description: English: Ebwali St. John' Anglican Church at Bunyore, Kenya was founded by Esau Khamati Oriedo in 1923.
context_page_description: The Honorable Esau Khamati Sambayi Oriedo was a consummate founding Kenyan statesman, a freedom fighter, a Christian crusader, a philanthropist, an entrepreneur and a trade unionist, a veteran of World War I and World War II as a soldier in the King's African Rifles, a barrister, and an anti-colonialism activist. In 1923 he singlehandedly altered the Christian church landscape in Bunyore and the rest of North Nyanza region—in the present-day western and Nyanza regions of Kenya. He was an indomitable adept all-around crusader for a myriad of polygonal causes—the rights of the aboriginal peoples, a stalwart advocate for the syncretism of Christianity and traditional African cultural moralities, and a literacy champion—in the British East African Protectorate & Colony of Kenya, during the period that span more than five decades of the colonial and postcolonial epoch.
  In 1952 – 1957 he was detained at Kapenguria together with Mzee Jomo Kenyatta and other fellow Kenyan freedom fighters reminiscent of Chief Koinange Wa Mbiyu by the British colonial government in Kenya, under the so-called emergency rule.
context_section_description: As a Christian crusader, a champion of religious (Christianity) tolerance and cultural inclusiveness, he challenged the colonial-era Christian church and missionaries in Kenya to embrace the traditional African heritage; he is credited among those Africans whose efforts effectuated successful amelioration and headway of the modern Christian church into Africa's interior, between 1450 — 1950; in 1923 he spearheaded the founding of St. John's Anglican Church at Ebwali village in Bunyore, Kenya to counter Church of God's dominance in Bunyore, after he forsook Church of God Anderson, Indiana, USA Kima Mission in 1923 because of its censoriously inimical stance towards the African culture—until then, he and Chief Otieno wa Ndale were key Africans in the establishment and growth of the Kima Mission; he had been a crucial African member and a principal stakeholder of the Kima mission. In 1954 he and his wife were presented with an ex post facto award for their outstanding contribution to the success of the Church of God, Kima mission; the award was conferred by the Kima Mission with the approval of International Missionary Board of Church of God at Anderson, Indiana in the USA.
  In 1923 Esau Oriedo singlehandedly altered the Christian church landscape in Bunyore and the rest of North Nyanza. He was a devout Christian, albeit an ardent opponent of the antagonistic stance of the colonial Christian church missionaries and their overseas benefactors toward his native African culture. An embodiment of his embrace of this duality — i.e., a seamless integration of Christianity with the aboriginal African ethos — is contextualized by the events of his wedding in 1923 which blended a Christian holy sacrament of matrimonial covenant, which was celebrated at the Church of God Kima Mission, with a traditional African marriage reception, which took place at Ebwali village. The wedding reception triggered unmitigated controversy and condemnation from the Reverend H. C. Kramer — the head missionary at the Kima Mission who was the matrimonial service officiant — and the mission's home office in United States of America, Anderson, Indiana.  Both Reverend Kramer and the mission's home office denounced the reception as sacrilegious, and demanded contrition by the couple.  A disappointed Esau Khamati, the "inquisitor" and advocate of religious inclusiveness, regarded the demands for contrition as an act of religious servitude aimed at his African heritage; the very same heritage, he opined, that had been instrumental in the success of the Church of God mission in the region.  He emphatically asserted that he and his wife were pious Christians, created by God in His own image of the familial African birthright; antecedently, he explicated that seeking contrition would be an act of sacrilege to his aboriginal African cultural heritage.   Instead of acquiescing to the impious xenophobic stance of the colonial era Church of God establishment de jour, the newlywed couple persuaded fellow aboriginal African parishioners to embrace their heritage by abdicating the Church of God and founding their own Christian church affiliated with the Christian Missionary Society (CMS) that was considerably affable to the native African culturalism as embodied by the CMS Anglican Archdeacon Walter Edwin Owen with whom he had developed apt relationship purposed on core civil commonality initiatives. 
  In 1923 they founded the Ebwali St. John Anglican Church parish with the full blessings of the British Anglican Archdeacon Walter Edwin Owen; the Archdeacon Owen presided over the archdioceses of the Kavirondo region of the Kenya Colony and the British East African Protectorate of Uganda.  He ceded land and other material resources to the nascent church and successfully implored the Archdeacon Owen to preside over the official founding ceremony in support of the nascent parish.  The founding of the Ebwali Anglican Church parish by Esau Khamati became the impetus of the evolution of the three-modern era Maseno Dioceses of the Anglican Church of Kenya.  Moreover, Esau Khamati 
caption: Ebwali St. John' Anglican Church at Bunyore, Kenya was founded by Esau Khamati Oriedo in 1923.
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