“Through this woman God restored the lives of many”
Kholoma Esther (1924-2000) was driven by a passionate desire to bring God’s liberating message to her own people, and she began that work right in the midst of colonial domination and missionary paternalism. Her story, carefully researched and documented by Guy Kapeme following his participation in a 2023 biography-writing workshop in Kinshasa, brings to light the crucial leadership role played by Congolese Christian women in the early days of the Anabaptist church in Congo.
Kholoma’s biographer, Guy Kapeme, writes, “Through this woman, God healed the sick, gave children to the barren, delivered captives, overthrew the altars of false gods, brought joy and relief to the downcast, and restored the lives of many.”
The Anabaptist movement began in Europe in the sixteenth century, but five centuries later, most Anabaptists live in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
Despite this massive shift in the center of gravity of the Anabaptist movement, most of the histories of this movement still focus primarily on Europe and North America. We need a broader story about what it means to be a global Anabaptist church.
The CGCM Global Anabaptist Histories Fund helps to support Global Anabaptist Forebears, a new global history series under the auspices of Mennonite World Conference (a global communion of Anabaptist-related churches). Dr. Anicka Fast (Visiting Researcher at the BU Center for Global Christianity and Mission) is the series editor. Each volume contains biographies of Anabaptists from Africa, Asia, and Latin America, written by local authors who receive training and support in a collaborative, small-scale workshop-based approach.
Volume 1, focused on Anabaptists in DR Congo and including Kholoma’s story, is set to appear in 2026 with Regnum Books.
This project depends entirely on donations to support the costs of publications, workshops, travel, teaching, and editing.
Efforts to create and preserve biographies of global South Christians are critical to making the new face of global Christianity more broadly known. This project leads the way in collaborative history-writing by paying attention to equity in the process of research and writing and to the accessibility of the final product. It contributes to a more accurate understanding of the global flows and non-Western initiatives that have always been part of the church’s story.
Biographies illuminate the active agency of leaders, both women and men, who have helped to make Christianity into a world religion. Books in the series – to be available both through online open access and in print – can be used in academic and church contexts as a new generation of World Christianity textbooks that promote reflection about church renewal and draw Christians from North and South into a broader, shared identity.
Photo: Kholoma Esther (1924-2000), second from left with her husband Mbambi Daniel and another pastoral couple around 1990. Kholoma was a prophet and evangelist during the first generations of the Mennonite Church in Congo. Her ministry was accompanied by signs and miracles.
Source: Africa Inter-Mennonite Mission Records, 1911-2018. X-68. Mennonite Church USA Archives. Elkhart, Indiana.
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