Kato was born on June 23, 1936, in the small town of Kwoi, in Kaduna State, Nigeria. Being followers of the Jala traditional religion, his parents dedicated him to a local deity, Pop-ku, and trained him to follow their religion. When he was twelve years old, they allowed him to attend the local school, run by the Soudan Interior Mission (SIM). The same year, Kato converted to Christianity, was baptized, and received a Christian name, Henry.

During the second half of the twentieth century, many African nations declared their independence from the European countries that had ruled them. In 1960 alone, the so-called “African year,” seventeen African nations claimed this independence. Their churches also became more independent of European help.

Many African Christians recognized the value of what foreign missionaries had done. Besides preaching the gospel to people, they had built schools and churches, opened new routes, and trained Africans to take over their work. In fact, with their emphasis on translating the Bible in the local languages and creating grammar books so that these languages could be learned, some missionaries had actually strengthened African cultures and made a way for African independence.

At the same time, many foreign missionaries had imposed their way of dressing or acting on Africans, as if those practices were a part of being a Christian. As African nations declared their independence, they often promoted a rejection of western customs.

This rejection reached a dangerous extreme when, in an effort to promote their culture, some African theologians began to teach that African religions are similar enough to Christianity that some Africans could be saved without the Bible and without Christ, just by following their traditions and living a good life. Even when they are not outspoken, beliefs such as this linger in people’s minds, and traditional beliefs are often mixed with biblical teachings in what the British theologian John Stott described as a “fruit cocktail of religions.”

The Nigerian theologian Byang Henry Kato issued a strong warning against this type of syncretism. He reminded Christians that to say that “Africa, as any other part of the globe, was groping in complete darkness without Christ … is no denial of God’s general revelation through nature, conscience, history, and miracles. But it is an admission that ‘he who has the Son has life’ (1 John 5:12 RSV). If there was a time in Africa when there was a need of the clean-cut gospel, it is today.”[1]

Kato’s Life

Kato was born on June 23, 1936, in the small town of Kwoi, in Kaduna State, Nigeria. Being followers of the Jala traditional religion, his parents dedicated him to a local deity, Pop-ku, and trained him to follow their religion. When he was twelve years old, they allowed him to attend the local school, run by the Soudan Interior Mission (SIM). The same year, Kato converted to Christianity, was baptized, and received a Christian name, Henry.

When his father found out, he refused to pay the school’s fees, but the school allowed Kato to continue by offering him a part-time job that could cover his expenses. Kato worked hard both at this job and on his father’s farm, while excelling in his studies.

At 17, he felt called to be a missionary, and enrolled in the Bible College, in Igbaja, in the state of Kwara, Nigeria – an institution run by the Evangelical Church West Africa (ECWA). It was there that he met graduating in 1957. During his last year of Bible College, he married Jummai Rahila Gandu, who was also passionate about Scriptures. They loved each other deeply and brought up their daughter and two sons to share the same love for God and the Bible.

After gaining some experience as teacher, preacher, and counselor, Kato went on to earn a Bachelor of Divinity Degree at London Bible College and a Doctorate in Theology at Dallas Theological Seminary. In 1973, he was unanimously elected General Secretary of the Association of Evangelicals in Africa (AEA). He was the first African to hold this position.

While Kato is usually remembered as a theologian and polemicist, he was also a passionate preacher. There are, for example, testimonies of the fruit of his preaching in London and of the zeal shown by both Byang and Jummai in the Good News Club they started for the local children in Dallas.

Kato died by drowning on December 19, 1975, at 39 years of age, while he was vacationing with his family in Mombasa, Kenya. His last devotional family reading was about Jesus’s feeding of five thousand in Luke 7:1-17 – emblematic of his passion for the spiritual feeding of multitudes. His friend and co-worker Gottfried Osei-Mensah aptly commented, “I know of no other young man in Africa today who was as clear a thinker, biblically and theologically, as Byang Kato, at the same time, had the heart of an evangelist.”[2]

His death affected Christians all over the world. Many shared the emotional response of Francis Schaeffer: “I literally wept. I do not cry easily, but the loss for Africa and the Lord’s work seemed so great.”[3]

Kato’s doctoral thesis, Theological Pitfalls in Africa, was published after his death and became a critical work in African theology.

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