Christian churches have played crucial but diverse roles in public debates over homosexuality in Africa. In contrast to the vocal and explicit homophobia witnessed in many Pentecostal-Charismatic Churches (PCCs), homosexuality has until recently been an overwhelmingly silenced issue in the Acholi region of Northern Uganda, and an almost complete non-issue in the local Catholic Church. This article suggests that while this silence in part relates to the temporal proximity of the Northern Ugandan war, the absence of LGBTI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex) activism in the region, and the hesitance of mainline churches to talk about sex, it is also embedded in what are considered to be customary Acholi understandings of sexuality. Offering an analysis of Acholi Catholic teaching on peace and the family, the article suggests that Catholicism has entrenched heteronormative patriarchy in Acholi society. However, as illustrated by the unpopularity of church weddings, the norms that govern sexuality are negotiated in the dynamic space between religion and what are contemporarily understood as 'modern' and 'customary' Acholi moral sensibilities. The article emphasizes the need for scholarship on religion and homosexuality to extend beyond PCCs and capital cities, and beyond the most explicit forms of public homophobia in Africa.Les églises chrétiennes ont joué des rôles cruciaux mais variés dans les débats publics sur l'homosexualité en Afrique. Contrairement à l'homophobie virulente et explicite constatée dans plusieurs Églises Pentecôtistes-Charismatiques (EPC), l'homosexualité a été jusqu'à récemment un problème tout à fait étouffé dans la région d'Acholi du nord de l'Ouganda, et un quasi non-problème au sein de l'Eglise catholique locale. Bien que ce silence se rapporte en partie à la proximité temporelle de la guerre en Ouganda du Nord, l'absence de militantisme LGBTI (lesbiennes, gays, bisexuels, transgenres et intersexués) dans la région, ainsi qu'à l'hésitation des principales églises à parler de sexe, cet article suggère que ce silence est également incorporé au sein de ce qui est considéré comme des conceptions Acholi coutumières de la sexualité. Doté d'une analyse des enseignements Acholi catholiques sur la paix et la famille, l'article suggère que le catholicisme a ancré le patriarcat hétéronormatif dans la société Acholi. Cependant, comme l'illustre l'impopularité des mariages religieux, les normes qui régissent la sexualité sont négociées dans l'espace dynamique entre la religion et ce qui est contemporairement compris comme des valeurs morales Acholi « modernes » et « coutumières ». L'article met l'accent sur la nécessité pour les travaux académiques sur la religion et l'homosexualité d'aller au-delà des EPCs et des capitales, et au-delà des formes les plus explicites de l'homophobie publique en Afrique.

Religion has influenced Ugandan politics ever since colonial times. While the interrelations of religion and politics have altered since the coming to power of president Museveni's National Resistance Movement (NRM), religion continues to influence Ugandan public culture and formal politics in important ways. Building on ethnographic fieldwork in Kampala and Acholi, as well as analysis of media reporting and discussions in social media, this article focuses on the role of religious leaders during Uganda's 2016 parliamentary and presidential elections. We argue that the striking differences between Ugandan clerics' teaching on politics relate in part to genuine differences in religious beliefs, but also to patronage, intimidation, and ethnicity, and to the strategic calculations religious leaders make about how best to affect change in a constricted political environment. In discussion with previous research on religion and politics in Africa, and utilising analytical concepts from the study of publics, the article proposes a model of religious (de)politicisation, whereby both the politicising and depoliticising effects of religion are acknowledged. To do so, the analysis distinguishes between NGOised and enchanted planes of religion, and shows that on both planes, religion contributed simultaneously to enhancing and diminishing the space for public debate in election-time Uganda. While many religious leaders actively or silently supported the incumbent regime, religious leaders also took vocal public stands, fostered political action, and catered for vernacular imaginaries of political critique, by so doing expanding the space of public debate. However, by performing public debate that remained vague on crucial issues, and by promoting a religious narrative of peace, religious leaders participated in the enactment of a façade of political debate, in so doing legitimising the autocratic facets of Museveni's hybrid regime. Acknowledging religion as an important constituent of public culture contributes to more nuanced understandings of election dynamics in Eastern Africa.

Christian churches control substantial areas of land in Africa. While intensifying struggles over their holdings are partly due to the increased pressure on land in general, they also reflect transformations in the relations through which churches' claims to land are legitimized, the increased association of churches with business, and churches' unique positioning as both institutions and communities. This article presents the trajectory of relations between church, state and community in Uganda from the missionary acquisition of land in the colonial era to the unravelling of church landholding under Museveni. Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork, the authors argue that claims to church land in contemporary Uganda draw on: 1) notions of belonging to the land; 2) views about the nature of churches as communities; 3) discontent regarding whether customary land owners gave churches user rights or ownership; and 4) assessment of the churches' success in ensuring that the land works for the common good. The article develops a novel approach to analysing the changing meaning of the landholdings of religious institutions, thus extending ongoing discussions about land, politics, development and religion in Africa.

Christianity, Politics and the Afterlives of War in Uganda sheds critical light on the complex and unstable relationship between Christianity and politics, and peace and war. Drawing on long-running ethnographic fieldwork in Uganda’s largest religious communities, it maps the tensions and ironies found in the Catholic and Anglican Churches in the wake of war between the Lord’s Resistance Army and the Government of Uganda. It shows how churches’ responses to the war were enabled by their embeddedness in local communities. Yet churches’ embeddedness in structures of historical violence made their attempts to nurture peace liable to compound conflict. At the heart of the book is the Acholi concept of anyobanyoba, ‘confusion’, which depicts an experienced sense of both ambivalence and uncertainty, a state of mixed-up affairs within community and an essential aspect of politics in a country characterized by the threat of state violence. Foregrounding vulnerability, the book advocates ‘confusion’ as an epistemological and ethical device, and employs it to meditate on how religious believers, as well as researchers, can cultivate hope amid memories of suffering and on-going violence.

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