Kenyan Churches, Racism and Pan-Africanism

It goes without saying that the case of the churches against the draft Kenya constitution does not make sense. On one hand, they argue that the Kadhi courts in the constitution make Kenya an Islamic state, and yet Kenya should be secular. On the other hand, the leaders want that same secular Kenya they are fighting for to adopt the Christian position on abortion. But worst of all, they have blackmailed Kenya by saying that the country should arrive at a "consensus" with the church in which Kenyans have no choice to acquiesce to the church's position.

What is surprising about this whole scenario is not so much the contradictions as much as the audacity with which the church flaunts the contradictions in public. It is this audacity that leads one to the conclusion that the case of the Christians against the constitution is not about right, but about might - numerical, masculine and, let's be honest, Western. If Christianity wasn't a Western religion, the conversation would be a lot different.

The church's case is about the tyranny of the majority because the leaders are willing to take the gamble that the so-called Christian 80% of Kenya (secular, African traditional and faiths other than Muslim are also "Christian") will vote in their favor. It is a gamble which, numerically speaking, they could win. And it is a win which they will deceptively say was achieved on the basis of principle rather than on the basis of numerical strength.

The bigger problem is, however, that Kenya will not win from a No vote. Instead, she will lose all the structural changes that would prevent a repeat of the 2007 poll chaos, during which the same NCCK now flaunting its strength did nothing because it had allowed itself to be used for political mileage within the Kibaki-led PNU. The schism left in former secretary-general Musyimi's wake denied the church the ability to unite Kenyans across ethnic lines, a silence for which they apologized months after the chaos. Given their arrogance now, it is evident that the church leaders were not sorry for their failure as much as for being caught with their pants down.

But more than that, which is the sadder part, is that the church's position is basically a racist and sexist one. The church has divided Kenya into two camps on the basis of religion and of gender has decided that their side is the superior one, largely on the basis of the fact that the global power behind the church is white and masculine as opposed to Arab and feminine. Given that the inclusion of the Kadhi courts was part of a nationalist impulse to embrace Kenyans of the Muslim faith, the church's position means that Christians should side with their American evangelical sponsors and celebrities like Pat Robertson, rather than with fellow Kenyans.

This Islamophobia therefore presents the second time in less than three years that the church has once again failed to produce a theology that would liberate Africans to love one another, and by extension themselves. The first time was just before 2007 when the leadership took ethnicized political sides. And instead of repenting, the leaders are now telling us that they would rather the Kenyans kill and disembowel each other in the name of ethnic identities than make a concession to a group of people who are also Kenyans. They would prefer a repeat of the ethnic killings in which pregnant women were disemboweled and fetuses crushed to the possibility that a pregnant woman's life would be saved in a medically safe conditions.

Such choices are built on belief in the inferiority of the African and on self-hatred. They rely on a simplistic formula that reduces Kenyans from human beings to pawns of terrorists or to crusaders of a "multi-racial" Christianity. The church leaders would rather Kenyans die, are oppressed and suffer under a draconian constitution than let Western Christian ideology lose its supremacy. Whether Kenyans want to be divided that way or whether that division reflects Kenyan realities does not matter.

The church became this retrogressive by failing to engage the thought of prominent pan-African thinkers such as Julius Nyerere, Kwame Nkrumah and Steve Biko. It joined Kenyatta in celebrating independence as an era of reconstruction AFTER liberation, even while Oginga Odinga reminded Kenyans that they had not yet won Uhuru and tried to make Kenyans understand that Western imperial forces were behind majimbo, ethnic chauvinism and other divisive politics. The church failed to engage with Desmond Tutu and black South Africans as they crafted a South African liberation theology, or with black theologians such as James Cone when they sought to the engage in a conversation with the continent.

Instead, Kenyan theology preoccupied itself with anthropological questions such as the extent to which Christianity could be called African or on whether Africans could be Christian without adopting Western culture. It declared with triumph that it would now assume the missionary project within Africa and even boasted that it would one day send missionaries to the West. Ironically, Kenya now has the largest American evangelical missionary community in Africa. Kenyan theologians shunned dealing with the socio-political context of African theology and introduced an insidious schism between blacks and South Africans on one hand, and the rest of Africa on the other. In an article in the 1970's, John Mbiti of "African Religions and Philosophy" fame characterized black American theologians as angry and full of hatred, as opposed to African Christians who embraced the faith  with joy. He also said that black South Africans "want and need liberation, not a theology of liberation."

The latest saga of the churches' opposition to the constitution simply continues this history of violence. It remains quiet in the face of the dehumanization of Africans, trudging on with its cultural project of Africanizing Western evangelical Christianity while the people who embody the culture are exploited by imperialism and its African agents.

And the church will remain an agent of this violence until it sheds off its cowardice and tackles the tougher questions that black theology tackled 40 years ago. Kenyan theology must address the humanity of the African. It must advocate for a self-love of the African as a cure for the inferiority complex instilled by racism. It must not be cowed by Western theological idealogy that depicts black theology as reverse racism. It must condemn the dehumanization of Africans and the patronizing religion of missionary theology as racist and contrary to the Gospel. It must inspire and inform the quest for a pan-African unity, affirming the right of Africans to prioritize unity with each other over unity with the Christian (read Western) world. It must not succumb to pressure to unite with Western Christians in the name of multi-cultural universalism ushered in by Jesus purportedly forgiving the West of its sin of racism.

Until the Kenyan church learns to shut its ears to Western missionary evangelicalism and tackles the difficult task of crafting a liberating theology that is Kenyan and pan-African, it will continue to take sides in ethnic, religious and other chauvinisms while secular forces strive for unity, justice and equality. I hope Kenyans vote to adopt the new Constitution and show the church leaders that it is the voice of the AFRICAN people, not of the "universal" church, that is the voice of God.