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This study investigates why and how young adult Ugandans who were born and raised Catholic or Anglican are converting to Born Again Christianity in remarkable numbers. The study explores the social, historical, religious, and cultural contexts out of which these conversions arise, the nature of the conversion experience itself, and it compares the converts, three quarters of whom are ex-Catholics, with the Catholics against whose beliefs and rituals Ugandan converts normally define themselves. Born Again Christianity is a subculture whose members share a similar way of life and construct a distinct collective identity through engagement and tension with its rival groups. The factors that draw young Ugandans to Born Again Christianity are multiple and complex. My central argument is that Born Again Christianity provides young Ugandans tools to create distinction from but also significant engagement and tension with Roman Catholicism and mainstream society, while also making some concessions. It offers them something new and different, empowers them to feel, act and believe differently, within an effective support system that satisfies their need for meaning and belonging.

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Luke Ssemakula is a Ugandan born Catholic priest ordained in 1997 and now ministering as an Associate Pastor at St. John Vianney Parish in Walnut Creek, California. He has earned graduate degrees in theology and a doctorate in Christian Spirituality from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California.

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