An Important Article on the New Apostolic Church

Dr. Victor Kuligin has graciously granted us permission to post his article on the New Apostolic Church to the ACFAR web site. The article, which first appeared in the Africa Journal of Evangelical Theology (Vol. 24, No. 1—2005), offers a rare critique of a cultic movement that’s growing rapidly across Africa with little resistance.

He writes: “With over ten and a half million members worldwide in over 72,000 congregations, the NAC is a church to be reckoned with. Nearly three-fourths of its membership is in Africa, making it one of the largest single denominations in the entire continent....with nearly sixteen times more members in Africa than in Europe. From the surface, the NAC appears to be just another Protestant denomination, but a deeper investigation yields some disturbing theology and practices in this church.”

In conclusion, Dr. Kuligin states that “we can conclude that the NAC is not simply another church or denomination but is in fact a cult.” He adds: “Whereas often we find ourselves concentrating on the ‘classic’ cults such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Mormons, neither of these compare to the NAC in terms of membership numbers and influence on the continent. In the next decade, the membership of the NAC will approach ten million Africans. Teaching concerning this cult should play a more prominent role in the education of evangelical church leaders and pastors, and subsequently of evangelical believers continent-wide.”

Ask Anything Wednesday: New Apostolic Church

Welcome to Ask Anything Wednesday. This week I am answering another great question. Please keep them rolling in! Just submit your question--on anything!--in the comments section below and I'll consider responding to it in our weekly feature.

Question:
What is the "new apostolic church" and is it a problem in Uganda?

Answer:

Well, I think I know who asked this question, since he obviously knows about the situation of false teaching in East Africa. Nevertheless, it is an excellent question. The New Apostolic Church (NAC) is not a well-known group, but they have been remarkably successful around the world, especially in Africa. They can be rather secretive, but some good research has still come out. One example is a brief introductory series by Eryl Davies in the Evangelical Times. Since I see no need to recreate the wheel in this blog post, I highly recommend reading these articles for an informative overview: Part 1 and Part 2.

As far as answering whether it is in Uganda or not, I guess I'll simply say that a picture is worth a thousand words.

This picture was taken in Kampala, Uganda's capital city. What else needs to be said? We have a lot of work ahead of us to counter the errors produced by cults like this!