52 Essays in Anarchism and Religion: Volume 1
gospel as inherently anarchistic in its core values. This follows
recent proposals that outline this understanding in the history of
Christianity, while establishing a philosophical and political cri-
tique to historical processes of Christian institutionalization and
hierarchization.^3 Here, I propose an ethnographic description of
one such example from the Angola and Lower Congo region.
The movement emerged in the 1940s when its founder, Simão
Gonçalves Toko (1918–1984), a former student and teacher in the
Baptist missions of northern Angola (Kibokolo, Bembe), migrated
to the capital of what was then the Belgian Congo, Léopoldville,
and founded a musical choir (the ‘Coro de Kibokolo’) among the
community of Angolan expatriates in the city.^4 This choir, after a
series of spiritual events, eventually evolved into a religious move-
ment, with its members preaching around the city about a new
spiritual order. The first event was the participation of the choir in
an international protestant missionary conference that took place
in Léopoldville in 1946, which hosted missionaries, theologians
and officials from several African, North American and European
countries. In the conference Toko was given the chance of address-
ing the audience, and requested that “the Holy Spirit may descend
upon Africa and save it from darkness”.^5 A second event took
place in July 1949, when Toko organized a prayer vigil, in which
himself and a group of his followers witnessed the descent of the
Holy Spirit and began to speak in tongues, prophesy, engage in
biblical acknowledgement and perform other miraculous events.^6
Immediately after this event, those present took the streets and be-
gan to preach the Bible throughout the city. It was not long before
the Belgian authorities took notice of this unwarranted proselytism
and eventually imprisoned and expelled them from the colony, de-
porting them back to Angola in early 1950. From this moment un-
til Angolan independence in 1974, the story of the members of this
movement was one of repression and suffering through imposed
prison, forced labour, exile and other forms of violence; but it
was also one of resistance and successful clandestine organization
against the colonial apparatus, until it became officially recognized
in the wake of the political transition to independency.
In the following pages, I will describe how the church’s
anti-colonialist moment was based on socio-political configurations