Anglican Church of Congo Records

These records are the result of a project to photocopy and scan documents held by the Anglican Church in Congo and send them to the Yale Divinity School Library for safekeeping. Due to political upheaval in Congo in the 2000s, it was felt with some urgency that church records should be copied and sent elsewhere. Emma Wild-Wood, who had done her doctoral work on the Anglican Church in Congo, made arrangements for materials to be photocopied and mailed to the Yale Divinity Library, as well as donating scanned files that she had gathered in her research. The records that arrived from the Congo had little organization or information about provenance, and most were in French or in African languages. The Yale Divinity Library staff has done its best to organize these records based on notes received with the material, letterhead information, and dates, but we are cognizant of the fragmentary and uneven nature of the files and their organization and description. Many of the files seem to document the work of Patrice Njojo Byankya, who was Bishop of Boga-Zaire and first Archbishop of the Province of he Anglican Church of Congo. We welcome any information that researchers may be able to provide to improve the description and organization of the files.

Series I, Prior to Formation, contains documentation from before 1972. These records document the formation of the Mboga Mission by the Church Missionary Society working from Uganda.

Series II, Diocesan Records, picks up from 1972 when the Diocese of Boga-Zaire was formed as part of the Province of Uganda, Burundi, Rwanda and Boga-Zaïre. Njojo Byankya was consecrated as second bishop of the Diocese of Boga-Zaire in 1980 but also served as Legal Representative of the Province and as of 1992 as the Archbishop of the Province of the Anglican Church of Zaire, so there is overlap between these "Diocesan Records" and the Provincial-level records of Series III. The dioceses of Boga-Zaire, Bukavu, Kisangani, and Nord Kivu are fairly well documented but there is little material from the other dioceses.

Series III, Provincial / National Records, covers the period 1972 through 2001. The first section relates to the Province of Uganda, Burundi, Rwanda and Boga-Zaïre and the Francophone Province of Burundi, Rwanda and Zaire. The second section documents the inauguration and early years of the Province of the Anglican Church of Congo. The third section relates to the Eglise du Christ au Congo / Communaute Anglicane. The Church of Christ in Congo or CCC (in French, Église du Christ au Congo or ECC), is a union of 62 Protestant denominations, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The Anglican Church of Congo is called the Anglican Community within the Church of Christ in Congo. Much of the material in this section has to do with educational work.

Series IV, Programs, gathers together material related to educational, medical, and other types of work, which was not organized in the diocesan or national church files. Of most interest in this series may be documentation of The Mothers' Union program.

Series V, Related Organizations, contains primarily correspondence with various organizations with which the Church in Congo had relationships for financial support or other programs.

Series VI, Collected Material, includes published and unpublished works related to the history of the Church as well as a Mashi-French vocabulary.