Hey, no you are certainly in the right place and thanks for a great question. Obviously the topic of resistance to European imperialism is a massive one, encompassing a multitude of places, times, people, and situations so bear with me whilst I answer the second part of your question first.

The 1890s saw a swathe of rebellions against European colonialism throughout the continent, in what is often called the Secondary period. Whereas the first period of resistance in the 1870s and 1880s was principally defensive, with attempts to resist the arrival of white settlers, this second period saw the African population go on the offensive with the aim of removing the white settlers from their lands. Where religion plays into this is complicated and very dependent upon location. Let me give you one example I know most about - the Chimurenga in Southern Rhodesia, 1896-97. The Shona (descended from the Kalanga and Karanga who had previously created the states of Great Zimbabwe, Torwa, Munhumutapa, and the Rozwi Empire) and the Ndebele (who had fled to the Zimbabwe Plateau to escape retribution from Shaka and the Zulu for military defeat, and had essentially annexed and subjugated the Rozwi empire that had existed in the southern part of Zimbabwe) rose in revolt against the British settlers, for reasons that historians still debate today - not least of which is the role of African religion.

Let's give you a little context. In 1888, as head of the Cape Assembly and in response to the Berlin Conference of 1886 which saw the partitioning of Africa from a purely geopolitical perspective, Rhodes stated:

I am tired of this mapping out of Africa at Berlin; without occupation, without development...the gist of the South African question lies in the extension of the Cape Colony to the Zambesi.

What this meant was that he would seek to push British colonial efforts northwards, and without going into too much detail this was accomplished over the next decade with Rhodes' company the BSAC gaining mineral rights to Mashonaland in 1888, a royal charter in 1889, and a pioneer column that settled Mashonaland (the north-eastern half of modern Zimbabwe) in 1890 with the establishment of forts. In 1893 a war broke out between the settlers and the Ndebele in Matabeleland (the south-western half of modern Zimbabwe) which saw fierce fighting, mass casualties and the suppression of any African resistance. Religions role in this, the First Matabele War, was limited - essentially the rebellion arose over control of land.

However, three years later in March 1896, the Ndebele arose in revolt again, slaughtering white settlers and forcing the remaining settlers into defensive laagers, whose rescue could only be achieved with troops from the Cape. In June 1896 the Shona uprisings began and both the Ndebele and Shona achieved remarkable successes for the first few months. However, the BSAC and its troops fought hard (and viciously) to put down both revolts and by July 1897 the African resistance had crumbled. (Obviously, the chronology here has been simplified but you get the gist.)

So what role did religion play in these uprisings? Depending on who you read and believe, it was either a crucial factor or a convenient scapegoat. Terence Ranger (that eminent African historian) argued that a cult of spirit mediums and priests called the Mwari cult (Mwari meaning god or creator) played a key role in organising, planning, and controlling the rebellion.^1 One spirit medium in particular, Mkwati, single-handedly spread the rebellion to the Shona with appeals to the idea of a revitalized Rozwi empire. Under the control of this cult, Mkwati was able to pre-plan and orchestrate a simultaneous uprising amongst the majority of the Shona on the night of 20 June 1896 - 'the night of the long knives'.

However, Julian Cobbing and David Beach ^2 have raised serious concerns with the amount of responsibility being levelled at the Mwari cult by Ranger. Julian Cobbing goes so far as to assert that:

Ranger's theory is basically a mixture of company exaggeration and his own guesswork.

They argue that actually the Mwari cult's influence was limited, that the Mwari priests had very little to no control over the areas they 'supposedly' commanded, and that the Mwari cult had little say in whether specific Ndebele or Shona groups rose in revolt or not - in fact many of the groups most closely associated with the Mwari either stayed neutral or actually joined the British, whilst some areas furthest from Mwari influence remained in revolt longest and fought most fiercely. The Shona uprising was also neither simultaneous or pre-planned.

So if the Mwari cult didn't have as big an influence as was argued by early historical work and by the colonial contemporaries, what role did religion play? Well, perhaps instead of looking at the precipitant role of African religious beliefs, it is important instead to consider their role as preconditions to the uprising. Alongside the Mwari cult, and more widely accepted and held by both the Shona and the Ndebele was a belief in the Mhondoro cult based upon ancestral spirits. African king's got their authority not from his status as a warrior or from lineage, but from his abilities as a rainmaker and provider. The power of the leaders came from their acting as intermediaries for the mhondoro (or ancestral spirits) who could either infer good or bad on the people under the king. These disasters, called shangwa, be they locusts, droughts, or disease, were supposed to be avoided by the king, utilising his role as a medium for the mhondoro. During the first few months of 1896, Southern Rhodesia was hit by all of those shangwa for which the political-religious leaders were responsible. The Administrator of the British South Africa Company, Albert Grey, complained that

'all the plagues of Egypt have tumbled at once upon this unhappy country. Droughts, locusts, failure of crops, [and] total annihilation of the cattle by rinderpest.'

The impact of these shangwa caused a rapid growth in the discontent amongst those Africans in Matabeleland, whose leaders sought to blame the whites for the disasters. The mhondoro were shown as being displeased with the presence of Chartered whites in the region, and this view was utilised by the religious leaders to fan the flames of the tensions. To this end the uprising in Matabeleland was made possible by the atmosphere generated by conflict and tensions between whites and Africans over the longer term - including the resistance to colonial pressures the religious 'way of life' which had boiled over most recently in the 1893 Matabele War - and by the shangwa in the short term. Perhaps then this provides an indication of how religion could have been crucial to the uprisings in the African colonies in the 1890s.

Unfortunately, I don't know more about other regions or other uprisings during this period to be able to help provide a more general picture, but maybe somebody else will jump in and help you out.

^1 Terence Ranger, Revolt in Southern Rhodesia, 1896-97, (London, 1967)

^2 David Beach, "Chimurenga": The Shona Rising of 1896-97', The Journal of African History, Vol.20, No.3 (1979), pp.395-420

Julian Cobbing, 'The Absent Priesthood: Another Look at the Rhodesian Risings of 1896-1897', The Journal of African History, Vol.18, No.1 (1977), pp.61-84