Anglican Swahili Prayer Books Tanzania (1995) and Congo (1998)

Joint Liturgical Study 62

This study attempts to compare liturgical revision in Anglican churches in two neighboring, but quite different African countries, which together straddle Africa from west to east.

The prayer book of the Anglican Church of Kenya, Our Modern Services (K2002), has attracted a good deal of attention, but that is because it was compiled in English, and has circulated around the world. However, with the books under consideration in this Study, on the other hand, few people outside Congo or Tanzania will have seen them, and fewer still will have been able to read them, since they are written in Swahili. They have not been publicized, known, studied or appreciated elsewhere in the Anglican Communion, and this Study is an attempt to redress that lack.

Ian Tarrant