In 1953 a Bemba woman named Alice Mulenga Mubisha, near the Presbyterian mission at Lubwa, reported that she had died, met Christ, and been sent back with a commission. Taking the name Lenshina, from regina, queen, she began receiving penitents, and her movement, the Lumpa Church, whose name means best of all or supreme, grew within a few years into one of the largest religious movements in central Africa. Lenshina preached against witchcraft and sorcery, and villagers surrendered charms and horns to her by the basketload; her hymns, composed in Bemba, spread faster than any mission catechism, and at Kasomo she built a great cathedral called Sione, Zion.
Trouble came with nationalist politics. Lumpa members, taught that the church belonged to no earthly power, refused to buy party cards, and in the tense months around independence in 1964 the standoff with the United National Independence Party turned to open violence. Government forces and party militants fought Lumpa villagers armed with muskets and spears, several hundred people died, the church was banned, and Lenshina surrendered and spent most of the rest of her life in detention, dying in 1978. Thousands of members fled into Congolese exile. The episode remains Zambia's hardest lesson in what happens when a new state and a new church each claim the whole of a person's loyalty.