The Kimbanguist Church, formally the Church of Jesus Christ on Earth through the Prophet Simon Kimbangu, is the largest church native to the Democratic Republic of the Congo and one of the largest African Initiated Churches on the continent. It traces its origin to a brief but intense healing ministry the Baptist mission catechist Simon Kimbangu conducted in the Lower Congo region beginning in April 1921, during which reports of miraculous healings drew mass crowds within weeks and alarmed the Belgian colonial administration.
Belgian authorities arrested Kimbangu in October 1921, tried him for insurrection, and sentenced him to death, a sentence commuted to life imprisonment; he died in prison in 1951 without ever leading an organized church in the form it later took. His movement survived underground through the decades of his imprisonment as a loosely connected prophetic current, sustained by followers who continued his teaching and healing practice despite periodic colonial crackdowns and mass deportations intended to break it up.
His youngest son, Joseph Diangenda, gathered the scattered Kimbanguist congregations into a single organized church in 1956 and 1957, formally named the Church of Jesus Christ on Earth through the Prophet Simon Kimbangu. In 1969 that church became the first African Initiated Church admitted to the World Council of Churches, a milestone that marked its transition from a suppressed colonial era prophetic movement into a recognized member of the global Christian communion.