Religion and Politics in Kenya

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 Religion and Politics in Kenya

Essays in Honor of a Meddlesome Priest

Edited by
Ben Knighton
religion and politics in kenya
Copyright © Ben Knighton, 2009.
All rights reserved.

First published in 2009 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States - a division of

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number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS.

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ISBN: 978-0-230-61487-1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data.

Religion and politics in Kenya : essays in honor of a meddlesome priest.

p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-230-61487-1
1. Christianity and politics–Kenya–History–20th century. 2. Christianity and politics–
Kenya–History–21st century. 3. Religion and politics–Kenya–History–20th century.
4. Religion and politics–Kenya–History–21st century. 5. Gitari, David M.–Political
and social views. 6. Anglican Church of Kenya–History. 7. Kenya–Church history.
8. Kenya–Religion. 9. Kenya–Politics and government–1963-1978. 10. Kenya–Politics and
government–1978-2002. I. Knighton, Ben.
BR1443.K4R45 2009
322’.109676209045–dc22
2009003949

A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.

Design by Macmillan Publishing Solutions.

First edition: September 2009

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Printed in the United States of America.

 To Wanja,

Rachel Nyawira, Charis Makena, Joel Munene, and Rosh Murimi

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 Contents

List of Tables and Figures ix

Preface and Acknowledgments xi
Abbreviations xv
Notes on the Contributors xix
1 Introduction: Strange but Inevitable Bedfellows 1
Ben Knighton
I The Religious Background to Politics in Kenya 55
2 Compromised Critics: Religion in Kenya’s Politics 57
John Lonsdale
3 Faith Engaging Politics: The Preaching of the Kingdom of God 95
Paddy Benson
II The Bishop Meddling in Politics 121
4 “Was There No Naboth to Say No?” Using the
Pulpit in the Struggle for Democracy: The Anglican
Church, Bishop Gitari, and Kenyan Politics 123
Galia Sabar
5 Meddling on to 2008: Is There Any Relevance for
Gitari’s Model in the Aftermath of Ethnic Violence? 143
Julius Gathogo
6 The Church and Islam: Vyama Vingi
(Multipartyism) and the Ufungamano Talks 155
John Chesworth
III The Churches’ Involvement in Contemporary Issues 181
7 The NCCK and the Struggle Against
”Ethnic Clashes” in Kenya 183
Jacqueline Klopp
viii Contents

8 Christianity Co-opted 201

Paul Gifford
9 Muingiki Madness 223
Ben Knighton
Bibliography 251
Index 281
 List of Tables and Figures

Tables
1.1 Religious Affiliations in Kenya, 1970–2025 41
6.1 Results of the Referendum for Each Province 175
9.1 Market Share of Kenyan National Newspapers 228

Figures
1.1 Bishop Gitari conducting a service of confirmation
and communion at St. Andrew’s Church, Kabare,
on 3 April 1994 15
1.2 President Moi speaking at Kitale stadium at the
enthronement of Bishop Stephen Kewasis
by Archbishop Gitari on 20 July 1997 34
6.1 An Orange rally led by Musyoka Kalonzo, now
Vice-President, at Kapenguria, Transnzoia District,
on 10 October 2005 175
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Preface and Acknowledgments

First of all, I must thank all the contributors to this volume, without
whom it would not have been possible. All of them have long experi-
ence of Kenya and have published in the area of this topic before, as
the bibliography bears witness. They have endured my editing with
great fortitude and support. Special thanks are due to John Lonsdale,
who committed himself early to a large contribution and gave me some
very helpful advice. A joint paper by two Kenyans was to have been
included, but given the emotionally disturbing events in their home
country during 2008, it is not surprising that they were not able to
produce their chapter in the end. Between them, the contributors have
set out an intriguing balance of tensions, for each part presents a case
for and against the contribution of religions in Kenyan politics—for
them making a valuable difference on behalf of people and nation or
for them being sucked in to the venality and elitism of state politics. It
is left to the reader to learn and decide from this appropriate dialectic.
Are the churches compromised and co-opted or are they reforming and
transforming politics? In which direction is the trend now moving? Of
course a religion that was not rooted in contemporary culture would
not have the leverage to affect it, but a church that has lost its saltiness
will not stop the rot. Where is the balance to be drawn and who is to
regulate it?
Again this book would not have happened but for the “famous four”
Protestant clergy, who put their heads above the parapet when many
refused to do so and faced the onslaught of the powers that be. There
are all too few in their own denominations and in Africa who have had
such a ministry as Henry Okullu, David Gitari, Timothy Njoya, and
Alexander Muge. Gitari’s Episcopal Roman Catholic contemporary,
Archbishop Ndingi Mwana’a Nzeki, also deserves a mention, though
I personally never had the opportunity to enter his sphere during my
nine-year service of the Anglican church in East Africa. Between them
they have made a difference in Kenya’s history, especially when compared
xii Preface and Acknowledgments

with Uganda’s. Each had a burning concern arising out of their faith
that justice be done in the world, which transcended personal ambition
or gain. They knowingly risked much, and in a different time or place,
could have paid a higher penalty than they did. Many would say that
Muge paid the highest price with his early death on the road. While
the book is centered on issues and processes rather than personalities,
the topic’s focus is given by the work of the former archbishop of the
Anglican Church of Kenya, David Gitari, who of the four has had the
longest-running influence and the most structural. Though he retired
in 2002, the contributors have taken their analysis forward to the trau-
matic events of 2008. I am particularly grateful to David Gitari and the
Church Mission Society for giving me seven years in which to watch
this process at close quarters and to encourage it in a younger genera-
tion of clergy who are yet to rise to the top, though several have already
become bishops or doctors of the church. The dearth of prophecy will
not be forever.
I am grateful to those former students, and others who knew me less,
for enabling my access to rich oral evidence, though not much of it has
been brought into this book. I heartily thank the sometime members of
St Andrew’s College, Kabare, particularly my faithful colleague Justus
Mbogo, for energizing my activity in Kenya and for their welcome on
my repeated returns since.
In producing the book, I was helped by Caroline Mose, now
embarked on her doctoral studies in University College, London, who
performed some copyediting work. Thanks are due to Luba Ostashevsky,
Colleen Lawrie, Laura Lancaster, and the production team of Palgrave
Macmillan for selecting this project, holding on to it, and enabling its
completion.
The Oxford Centre for Mission Studies allowed me reading time and
its library resources for me to continue my education in the topic of
this book while being employed by them. My students there may have
found us discussing Kenyan affairs not directly related to their research
topic. Above all I must give gratitude to the one who led me most
unexpectedly to Africa in the first place, through the agency of Philip
Price and John Stott, obliging me to attend to, and so to understand,
the other.
The African Studies Centre in the University of Oxford, where my
wife, Wanja, serves as Administrator, has attracted many “Kenyanists”
over the last decade to Oxford. They are represented by name in the
bibliography, but their ideas have been an aural stimulant of the highest
quality! Last, but no means least, I express my appreciation to my family
who bore most of the cost of this nocturnal vigil. If they read this book,
 Preface and Acknowledgments xiii

they might come to understand why their father or husband was so

preoccupied with matters on the computer when not attending to their
worthy interests. However, they too are learning to study and to think
for themselves.
Dr Ben Knighton
St Crispin’s Day 2008
(According to legend, Crispin and his brother were beheaded on
account of Roman imperial politics on 25 October 286)
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 Abbreviations

AASR African Association for the Study of Religions

ACK Anglican Church of Kenya (previously known as CPK)
ACNS Anglican Communion News Service
A-G Attorney-General
AIC African Inland Church
AICs African Instituted Churches
AIDS Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome
BBC British Broadcasting Corporation
BCMS Bible Churchmen’s Missionary Society (now Crosslinks)
CCK Christian Council of Kenya
CITAM Christ Is The Answer Ministries
CKRC Constitution of Kenya Review Commission
CMI Chr. Michelsen Institute (Bergen)
CMS Church Mission(ary) Society
CPK Church of the Province of Kenya (now known as ACK)
DD Doctor of Divinity
DP Democratic Party
EAK Evangelical Alliance of Kenya
EATWOT Ecumenical Association of Third World Theologians
ECK Electoral Commission of Kenya
EFAC Evangelical Fellowship in the Anglican Communion
xvi Abbreviations

EFK Evangelical Fellowship of Kenya

FGC Female Genital Cutting
FGM Female Genital Mutilation
FOCUS Fellowship of Christian Unions
FORD-Asili Forum for the Restoration of Democracy-Asili
FORD-Kenya Forum for the Restoration of Democracy-Kenya
GEMA Gikuyu Embu Meru Association
GSU General Service Unit
HE His Excellency
HIV Human Immunodeficiency Virus
IDP internally displaced person
INFEMIT International Fellowship of Evangelical Mission
Theologians
IPK Islamic Party of Kenya
ISITA Institute for the Study of Islamic Thought in Africa
KADU Kenya African Democratic Union
KAG Kenya Assemblies of God
KANU Kenya African National Union
KAYO Kenyan Anglican Youth Organization
KBC Kenya Broadcasting Corporation
KEC Kenya Episcopal Conference
KENDA Kenya National Democratic Alliance
KENYA Kenya National Youth Alliance
KGGCU Kenya Grain Growers Co-operative Union
KNC Kenya National Congress
KPCU Kenya Planters Co-operative Union
KPU Kenya Peoples’ Union
KSC Kenya Social Congress
KSCF Kenya Students Christian Fellowship
 Abbreviations xvii

MBS Moran of the Burning Spear

MEWA Muslim Education and Welfare Association (Mombasa)
MoU Memorandum of Understanding
MP Member of Parliament
NAMLEF National Muslim Leaders Forum
NARC National Alliance of Rainbow Coalition
NCC National Constitutional Conference
NCCK National Council of Churches of Kenya (or Christian
Council of )
NGO non-governmental organization
NTV Nation TV
ODM Orange Democratic Movement
PAFES Pan-African Fellowship of Evangelical Students
PCEA Presbyterian Church of East Africa
PICK Party of Independent Candidates of Kenya
PNU Party of National Unity
PROCMURA Programme for Christian-Muslim Relations in Africa
PSC Parliamentary Select Committee
RC Roman Catholic
RGC Redeemed Gospel Church
SDA Seventh-day Adventist
SUPKEM Supreme Council of Kenya Muslims
TEE Theological Education by Extension
UECK United Evangelical Churches of Kenya
UK United Kingdom
UMA United Muslims of Africa
UNDP United Nations Development Programme
US(A) United States (of America)
WCC World Council of Churches
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Notes on the
Contributors

Paddy Benson
After reading Politics, Philosophy, and Economics at Oxford, Paddy
Benson worked for some years for a publishing firm, before taking a BD
degree at Trinity College, Bristol. Following missionary training at All
Nations Christian College, he worked for the Anglican Church of Kenya
with Crosslinks and became Acting Director of Communications to Bishop
David Gitari at a time of vigorous engagement between church and state.
Presently Vicar of Christ Church Barnston on the Wirral, he values
links with the worldwide church, especially in Kenya. For ten years he was
part of the planning group of the Evangelical Fellowship in the Anglican
Communion (EFAC), convening theological seminars for some of the ris-
ing stars among Evangelical Anglican theologians from the majority world.
He has published “The Church’s Witness to the Living God in Social and
Political Structures in Contemporary Africa,” in Gitari and Benson The
Living God and “Ideological Politics versus Biblical Hermeneutics,” in
Hansen and Twaddle, Religion and Politics in East Africa.
He is married to Eleanor, who is head of a church secondary school
and they have three adult children.

John Chesworth
John Chesworth spent almost 20 years working in theological education
in Tanzania and Kenya and established an MA course in Islam and
Christian-Muslim Relations at St. Paul’s University, Limuru. He has
just completed a doctoral thesis on the use of the Bible and the Qur’an
in Swahili in Muslim and Christian outreach in East Africa. Now
based in Oxford, he is working as a lecturer at the Oxford Centre for
Muslim-Christian Studies. His recent publications include: “Challenges
to the Next Christendom: Islam in Africa,” in Wijsen and Schreiter
xx Notes on the Contributors

Global Christianity: Contested Claims and “Fundamentalism and Outreach

Strategies in East Africa: Christian Evangelism and Muslim DaÝwa,” in
Soares, Muslim-Christian Encounters in Africa.

Julius Gathogo
Dr. Gathogo is a full-time lecturer in Philosophy and Religious Studies at
the Mombasa Campus of Kenyatta University. He also lectures in Theology
in the postgraduate program at Daystar University, Nairobi Campus. He
completed his Ph.D from the University of KwaZulu-Natal in 2006. Since
then, he has published over a dozen journal articles in various parts of
the world. This includes his publications in Swedish Missiological Themes;
Black Theology Journal, UK; African Theological Journal, Tanzania; Journal
of Theology for Southern Africa; and Churchman, UK, among others.

Paul Gifford
Paul is Professor of African Christianity at the School of Oriental and African
Studies in the University of London. In the early 1990s, he did research for
the All Africa Conference of Churches in Nairobi. He has written exten-
sively in publications on churches in Africa with Christianity and Politics in
Doe’s Liberia; African Christianity: its Public Role; Ghana’s New Christianity:
Pentecostalism in a Globalising African Economy, and this year, Christianity,
Politics and Public life in Kenya, as well as widely read, edited volumes.

JACQUELINE M. KLOPP
Jackie is Assistant Professor of International and Public Affairs at
Columbia University. Her research focuses on the connections between
democratization, violence, internal displacement, and corruption around
land. Klopp is the author of articles for Africa Today, African Studies
Review, African Studies, Canadian Journal of African Studies, Comparative
Politics, Forced Migration Review, and the International Peace Academy. She
is currently working on a book “Land, Violence, and Democratization in
Kenya.” Klopp received her BA from Harvard University and her Ph.D
in Political Science from McGill University.

Ben Knighton
Ben was born on a farm in England, and read for degrees at the universities
of Nottingham and Durham. He first went to Africa in January 1984, out
 Notes on the Contributors xxi

of which arose his doctoral thesis on a pastoralist people of East Africa, his
monograph on traditional Karamojong religion, and his Fellowship in the
Royal Anthropological Institute. From 1991, he was a Tutor, Director of
Academia, Vice-Principal, and Principal in St. Andrew’s College, Kabare.
Since 1998 he has been involved in leading the Research Programme in
the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies, enabling church people from the
Two-Thirds World churches to read for their Ph.D and MPhil., while also
conducting personal research among the Gikuyu of Kenya. Among his
publications are: “The State as Raider among the Karamojong: ‘Where
there are no guns, they use the threat of guns,’” Africa; a monograph,
The Vitality of Karamojong Religion: Dying Tradition or Living Faith; and
“Multireligious Responses to Globalization in East Africa: Karamojong
and Agi~ku~yu
~ Compared” in Transformation. With Prof. Terence Ranger
he teaches the MSc. course in “Gods, Kings, and Prophets” for the Africa
Studies Centre in the University of Oxford. He is Honorary Treasurer for
the African Studies Association of the UK.

John Lonsdale
His father having served as a chaplain in Kenya, John Lonsdale has
never ceased observing and studying the country over the course of his
subsequent life. He retired as Professor of Modern African History at
the University of Cambridge in 2004 and continues as Fellow of Trinity
College. He has served as President of the African Studies Association
of the UK. With Bruce Berman he published Unhappy Valley: Conflict
in Kenya and Africa, and, with Atieno Odhiambo, Mau Mau and
Nationhood. He put great care into writing “Kikuyu Christianities: A
History of Intimate Diversity” in Maxwell and Lawrie, Christianity and
the African Imagination: Essays in honour of Adrian Hastings. Major pub-
lications are expected on modern Kenyan history.

Galia Sabar
Dr. Sabar is Chair of African Studies in the Department of Middle
Eastern and African History, Tel Aviv University. She has two major
fields of research. One focuses on the processes leading to the estab-
lishment of African communities in Israel and on their sociopolitical
characteristics. Special interest is devoted to their religious life and on
the significance and position of specific forms of African religion in
non-African societies in the context of present waves of overseas migra-
tion. The other concerns state, society, and religion in East Africa, where
xxii Notes on the Contributors

she has analysed the interaction between politics and religion in various
African countries. The main focus is on the role of churches in East
Africa’s sociopolitical arena and how the churches established themselves
as central forces in society and in the state by assuming responsibility
for education, health care, and economic-oriented services to citizens.
Her monograph, Church, State and Society in Kenya—From Mediation to
Opposition, 1963–1993 is most pertinent for this volume.
Chapter 1

Introduction:
Strange but
Inevitable
Bedfellows
Ben Knighton

Religion and politics have a most ambiguous relationship in African

studies. Among African students of religion, it has become an acknowl-
edged orthodoxy that, at least from a precolonial perspective, religion
and politics are one in Africa.1 Certainly, my research among a contem-
porary pastoralist people (Knighton 2005a) does not show this to be a
trite statement, but one supported by the profound overlap of religion
and politics in personnel, functions, and institutions. After all in a
region of uncertain and uncontrolled environments and livelihoods,
where the weak went to the wall, or rather to the hills minus their cattle
(Sutton 1990; 1993), issues of power and religion were vital for the
preservation or expansion of identities and solidarities, and autonomy
in the limits that the transcendent would allow was the prized goal of
each community. With Arab and European invasion, the religions of
traditional societies were not simply overrun by a secular modernity.
The Arabs had little interest in proselytizing Africans beyond those who
would prepare their food, while the European administrators, even if
sons of the clergy,2 were frequently more animated by the secular trends
of Victoriana or an ethnographic fascination sparked by Kipling or
Rider Haggard.3
2 Ben Knighton

Mission and Colony

In East Africa, however, it should never be forgotten how vital the
missionary contribution was, whatever its consequences. Evangelical
Lutherans of the Church Missionary Society (CMS) arrived on the coast
just when Arabs reached Buganda from there, and 33 years later, in 1877,
they caught up with them, closely followed by Roman Catholic missionary
orders. The most rudimentary imperial administration began under the
British Foreign Office some 17 years later.4 The mere proposition of a
Uganda Railway led to a host of missions from many denominations
targeting the region, but it took six years to reach Lake Victoria; so most
of them, faced with an Anglican–Roman Catholic duopoly in Uganda by
law established, stopped off in the East African Protectorate that became
Kenya Colony in 1920 because of the European settlers who were consid-
ered necessary to make the railway pay. Thus, in many localities of Kenya,
it was the missionary who took up residence before the district officer.
Roland Oliver’s (1952) book, The Missionary Factor in East Africa, which
is seen as marking the birth of African Studies as a recognized cluster in the
University, suitably highlights a factor more significant in Africa’s modern
history than for other continents. Missionaries were themselves obliged by
exigency to engage in the political and military conflicts and settlement of
the region. One CMS missionary, Bwana Stokesi, traded in his evangelism
for gunrunning in the Protestant cause in Uganda (Harman 1986).
While the administrators were finding their feet, budgets, and offices,
the missionaries were working with Africans in the rural areas, attracting
them with Western medicine, education, and religion. Often there was
mass interest at first, and even if it proved much harder to distil a group
of committed converts, these were to become highly influential in the
construction of the colonial state and in reactions to it. In religious terms,
they can only be termed as fertile. Not only did mission stations become
permanent fixtures in the landscape, generally on hilltops for reasons of
missionary health, but they also occasioned chains of reactions. Plural
belonging was always a possibility stemming from the common practice of
adhering to select ceremonies of both traditional and missionary religion.
Irreconcilable beliefs or personality disputes frequently resulted in schisms.
Since the missions had worked so hard to break the politico-religious poli-
ties of the existing societies, picking up their transgressors as their most
loyal converts (Karanja 1999), it is not surprising that Africans no longer
saw a religious need for hegemony, especially that instituted by foreigners,
moreover foreigners who disagreed among themselves (Gatu 2006).
Western Kenya, in particular, ecclesiastically governed from the
Protectorate of Uganda until 1921, but in the Protectorate of East Africa
 Introduction 3

from 1902, had the political space for New Religious Movements (NRMs),5
even when these were welcomed by neither missionary nor state. Yet per-
haps the state was more willing to entertain a new sect, if it dissipated
the power of the meddlesome Archdeacon Owen, who campaigned for
worker’s rights. Since American and South African missions were slightly
later on the scene than the European ones, they had to travel further up
the railway to find a vacant sphere, which, with their early fundamentalist,
holiness, or Pentecostalist distinctives, led to an even greater polarity.
The other large concentration of converts was in Central Kenya,
which provides sharp comparison to Western Kenya. Christian mission
centered primarily around what was perceived as one tribe, the Gikuyu.
The first mission, sent by the Church of Scotland, was near the railway
beyond Nairobi on uncultivated land that was soon called Thogoto
(Gikuyu for Scot). The influential Anglican center and mother church
was at Kabete, now a suburb of Nairobi, where Canon Harry Leakey
became a godfather of the Kenyan state. Both missions were strongly
Gikuyuphile, and between them they created a Kiambu elite that was
soon to become the African political establishment of Kenya, right at
the heart of the new nation, ensconced on the pleasant, greener side of
the capital. Any expansion of the mission to ethnolinguistically related
neighbors beyond them was also an extension by them.
The Protestant missions, despite their different denominations and
cultural backgrounds, were also committed at an early stage to an unusual
ecumenism for their day, leading to the Protestant Alliance. Though this
foundered over the rite of female circumcision, as it was called in Kenya,
which did spawn African Instituted Churches (AICs) nevertheless, the
Protestants worked in harmony far more than they competed. This was
the foundation that produced long-term institutions such as the Alliance
High School (Kipkorir 1969),6 St. Paul’s United Theological College
(that even took in a few ordinands from AICs), and the Christian
Council of Kenya (which was to become the most representative eccle-
siastical voice in Kenyan politics, even during the Emergency of the
1950s). One key project for establishing Gikuyu identity in the newly
literate society was the founding of an orthography and a translation of
the Bible, which the missions achieved together.7 The redefinition and
writing of a language is difficult to underestimate in processes of social
change in which literacy becomes popular (Lonsdale 1996, and Chapter 2
in this volume; Stromberg 1993; Peterson 2004). In their dictionaries,
Derek Peterson (1997: 257; 1999) found that “missionary authors gave
voice to the Gikuyu languages of class and politics.”
Thus, while Western Kenya was peripheral, the mixing point between
mountain and lake (both the broadest in the world) and between the
4 Ben Knighton

shifting borders of two states, Central Kenya was very close to the seat of
government, colonial and independent. Western Kenya had experienced
pillage and slave-raiding by Arab and Swahili safaris, who depended on
Central Kenya for purchasing food supplies. The foremost entrepreneur
engaging with them south of Mount Elgon was Mumia, son of Shiundu,
Nabongo of the Wanga, so he and his clan became Muslims (Knighton
1990:I, 138f ). The missions in Western Kenya were disunited within and
between themselves, while those of Central Province were organized, pre-
dominantly mainstream, worked with a more homogenous constituency,
and hosted a great deal of the educational activity in Kenya.8 Archdeacon
Owen’s championing of workers’ rights was sufficient to annoy the
authorities in both government and CMS, but it was not enough to
engage the trust of the Luo. He had not even entrusted them with a ver-
nacular translation of the Old Testament (Onyango 2006).9

Religion and Politics

Religion then, or, in precolonial terms, the weight of symbolic tradition,
was not sought as a third-best compensation for the loss of power or the
consolation of the weak, but as vital force, at times perhaps the most
effective. It was well to have armed men afoot, but if a seer could behold
their coming, or the best medicine could confuse their approach, then the
venture would be in vain. Even a dominant tribe could acknowledge the
capacity of a minor one to court the protection of divinity, thus explaining
why it had not been absorbed by the greater. With the incursion of world
religions—and the Indian sepoys and railway workers brought some expo-
sure to Sikh and Hindu rites also—alternative religion was presented. It
was named dini, a Swahili word from the Arabic, meaning “a reading,”
because all of them were scriptural, and the power of this religion was
often thought to be located in the arcane knowledge of reading scripture.
Thus Africans took the Bible seriously, whether they were convinced by
the missionary gospel or not, and imbibed its stories for generations. The
strength of the white man lay in his ritual practice of knowledge.
In the cultural paradigm shifts during colonialism, religion was fre-
quently a means to innovate, to resist innovation, or to mediate and
comprehend change.10 To convert and join the congregation of the mis-
sion was a strong political statement for communities used to relying
on, and maintaining, their unity and communal traditions, even if there
were many centrifugal tendencies when intertribal wars had ceased. The
religious choices of various families and clans could be politically deter-
minative for them for decades, since others would attribute to them a
certain position whether they held it dear or not. Thus while the colonial
 Introduction 5

administration would look down on the novel strangeness of a new dini

(Mahone 2006), it was the African way of being active and creative in
their appropriation of wondrous new signs and rites. In the pluriformity
of Western Kenya, an NRM could become particularly associated and
identified with a certain place or people, for instance, the Ruwe Holy
Ghost Church and the Musanda Holy Ghost Church (Kuhn 2008:35).
Such a mosaic becomes factored into any political map worth its price,
as John Lonsdale (1992) has emphasized for the Gikuyu. Derek Peterson
(2001) has shown how conversion to the East African Revival in Nyeri
District was a way in which Gikuyu women and men argued about moral
and economic change. Religious adherence binds, divides, mobilizes, or
changes people; this is power whether dubbed religious or social.
Yet religion is not merely a power to conform, but one to subvert,
liberate, and transform also. Hence the new-fangled Christian faith was
a boon to those who, sometimes through no fault of their own, as in the
case of ineligibility for an age-class, had little prospect of good status,
or marriage, according to tradition. Christian reading allowed shortcuts
to higher status, usually through engagement with the colonial govern-
ment, and suddenly the long haul and slow graduation of the tradi-
tions lost their appeal for the younger generation. Churches frequently
offered women the opportunity to escape the sexual tyranny of old men
(Onyango 2006). Countermovements within the mainstream churches
opposed or co-opted missionary rule, sometimes by outbidding them at
their own game, making the rules more exclusive or inclusive than they
would have. AICs could realize some significant freedoms over missionar-
ies or their chosen followers by continuing to observe Anglican or Roman
liturgy and church order, but still permitting a few crucial local customs
(Swahili, mila). The power to dissent or protest is not a widespread right
in Africa, and the religious history of these terms in the Anglo-Saxon
world also bears witness to their being a specific feature of religion, or
even it may be argued, a certain kind of religion that was not necessarily
sectarian (Carter 2001).
Religious concepts of salvation often imply redemption into or eman-
cipation from culture.11 As the very language of fundamental human free-
dom, they cannot be reduced to a mere social function for long, for if it is
that, religion has lost its vitality and the glory has departed. Religion is so
much about the freedom of the human spirit and its capacity to interact
with the divine, that it can be seen as the fount of all freedom and not just
as its would-be controller.12 While the ego may be battered socially, and
the body bruised by furious blows, ultimately no-one can force mental
and spiritual decisions, so it is religion and reflection that develops inner
resolve. Many Kenyans have had to put their convictions to the severest
6 Ben Knighton

tests: whether because of the regular humiliation of migrant labor and

laws passed under colonial rule; Mau Mau being harassed by security
forces and commonly testifying to an extraordinary religious dependence
whether neotraditional or Christian; resolute Christians being threatened
daily by Mau Mau or witnessing atrocities against their brethren for refus-
ing to conform; or because of political dissidents facing a regular beating
from the police whenever the state under Kenyatta or Moi feared an inner
threat.13 It is often forgotten that Bildad Kaggia, the inveterate champion
of freedom and justice in Kenyan politics, much too radical for Kenyatta,
had been, not many years before they were interned together, an itinerant,
revivalist preacher, courted by the masses and CMS (Kaggia 1975).
The Christian gospel of St. Paul explicitly offers freedom. “For
freedom Christ has set us free; stand fast therefore, and do not submit
again to a yoke of slavery” (Gal. 5:1). From its context of cross-cultural
relations, this was a potent message for Africans in Kenya surrounded by
civilizing missions and the restrictive controls pushed by settler politics.
For the secular student in Africa, these things were by the way. Kenyatta
and Kaggia had been involved in and with mission churches, but they
grew impatient of them, and became involved in the “real business” of
politics. Yet, in their lives and consciousness, their turn to politics no
more eradicated the religious influence or motivation than Christian pro-
fession had eradicated their inheritance of Gikuyu culture. Tired of mis-
sionary limitations, the Gikuyu ventured into independent churches and
schools: “The whole Karinga movement was later, under the leadership
of Kenyatta, to become openly political in aim” (Welbourn 1961:151).
Both Kenyatta and Oginga Odinga remained very affectionate of some
of their ethnic AICs to the end of their days, for in their genesis grew the
roots of the independent spirit.14 If they could not also be formal repre-
sentatives of a denomination, it was usually because the churches would
not give space to party politics.
Dini (reading, religion) was contrasted heavily with its Swahili coun-
terpart, siasa (politics) across Kenya, where Swahili is the language of
politics on the stump. In fact the referents of these two terms derived
from Arabic were diametrically opposed: dini was quiet, almost private,
and orderly, for you cannot read in chaos, while siasa implied people
spouting, letting off steam, and vying for supremacy.15 The first was a
cooling down and the second a stirring up; the first made for recon-
ciliation and peace at least within the fellowship, the second for making
trouble; the first dignified people even humble laborers, while the second
consisted of rumor, gossip, and backstabbing. Of course churches could
in practice approximate to the latter, but this did not make them good
churches. The few churches, mostly Spirit-churches that took on some
 Introduction 7

of the forms of early Pentecostalism, such as tongues and times of noisy

worship to the banging of metal, were thereby rather disreputable to others
(Hoehler-Fatton 1996). It is mainly the new wave of Pentecostalism that
has begun to break the quiet-noisy, religion-politics bifurcations in what
Bayart (2000:262) has called “a political alchemy”.
Nevertheless both church ministers and politicians continue to bear
witness to their respective stereotypes. Most churches in Kenya have a
long history of keeping politics, that is, its quality of stirring up and
rivalry, out of their affairs. In this, Max Weber would recognize them
as typologically Protestant, showing that the state of religious grace was
“only possible by proof in a specific type of conduct unmistakably dif-
ferent from the way of life of the natural man” (Weber 1930:153). As
with Weber, this new asceticism was required of everyone who would be
certain of salvation, and it dovetailed nicely with traditional emphases on
customary behavior rather than verbal confessions.
Of course mission churches in their political quietism were expected
to acknowledge the colonial institutions, but none are stricter in the ban-
ishment of party politics than some AICs whose genesis often reflected
early political stirrings. Churches often see themselves as the healing
balm for the hot anger of politics. I was very surprised to observe this
in action in Bishop Gitari’s own, politically conscientized diocese. In
the 1992 and 1997 presidential elections some 98 percent of the whole
of Central Province had voted against the incumbent Moi, yet he was
returned both times. This was particularly galling in 1992, when the
churches had been instrumental in restoring multiparty elections after
23 years. President Moi did not receive “a minimum of twenty-five per-
cent of the valid votes cast in at least five of the eight provinces,” yet was
“declared to be elected as President” with no fresh election as prescribed
in The Constitution of Kenya (Republic of Kenya 1992a:Ch. II Part 1, s5
ss3.F & 4.D.II). A rerun between Moi and Kenneth Matiba might well
have had the latter preferred on the back of Kibaki’s vote, since the two
Gikuyu had gathered more votes between them. This rank injustice was
very galling for the Gikuyu, but on the Sunday after the election, the
Archdeacon of Kabare preached a dull sermon in Gikuyu, considering
the highly charged situation, adding the strict injunction that all people
should “cool down.” This was repeated in 1997, and I was perplexed and
a little disappointed that the prophetic nature of the church had so little
bite in such a situation.
Much later the thinking became clearer. Most clergy used to see
themselves as primarily having a “cooling down” ministry; they have seen
what happens when their people boil over, which can indeed happen in
church as well as outside of it, so they ensure that it does not occur with
8 Ben Knighton

its messy and possibly violent consequences. For instance, when the local
monopolies of coffee co-operatives integrated into a parastatal that was
being broken by the rise of private coffee firms in June 1998, a mob
was incited, in the same rural deanery, that went to the homestead of a
respected Christian elder and devastated his crops and slashed his cows
with pangas on the suspicion that his choice was spoiling the co-operative.
In Kenyan thinking this could not possibly be the product of dini, but
was the inevitable, nasty outcome of siasa. Thus, in 2007 the Gikuyu
counted on the church exercising a similar cooling down of the Luo and
the Nandi. Obviously this did not happen to the same effect, and the
Gikuyu are dismayed with the contrast between their reaction that kept
them out of power, and that of the Luo and the Nandi in 2008, which
gave them a share in power. Yet it is probably the ministry of the churches
that has changed.
Western and Central Kenya are alike in having been heavily influenced
by the East African Revival from the 1930s. The Revival is significant for
making a normative theology out of the dini-siasa polarity. Politics was
dirty in and of itself; it was not a fitting occupation or commitment for
a saved Christian. Politics would make the Christian and the church
unclean. It was their business to pray to God, who would protect them.
Since the Revival spread to many denominations, even to the Roman
Catholics, there was always an obdurate and vocal section of the churches
to oppose the blessing of any political act or person. Thus the National
Council of Churches of Kenya (NCCK) became the expression of a cer-
tain liberal, sophisticated side of the church, not that the whole-hearted,
full-throated dimension was much closer to the Revival and its persistent
witnessing that did bring converts into the church, even if they could
not survive the Puritanism of the Revival Fellowship for life. Neither
could Africa benefit politically from Revival theology, for demonizing
politics only left it to the unscrupulous. The East African Revival had
been born in the Rwanda Mission in the 1920s. Its complete priority
of personal salvation, holiness, and evangelism over sociopolitical action
(Hession 1950) meant that the disengagement of the Rwanda Mission
and Rwanda’s Anglican church meant that it had nothing to say against
the Tutsi genocide of 1994 and even less to say in its own defense. Soon
afterwards the General Secretary of the Rwanda Mission apologized for
this lacuna, and before long the whole organization was reabsorbed into
CMS (Bowen 1996; Gitari 1996a).
When all kinds of Kenyan politicians would beat off the attacks of
churchmen by saying that the churches should keep out of politics, they
knew full well that they were levering deep veins within the churches
themselves, that politics should be kept outside of the church. They often
 Introduction 9

uses Rom. 13 to give themselves scriptural warrant, as have many clergy,

without referring to Rev. 13 (Gitari 1991e). Despite its pejorative con-
notations, politicians have been happy to promote the division of dini
and siasa, whenever the former does not support their particular siasa.
Politicians do not try hard to promote the image of their own profession,
except in terms of remuneration, for they will severally condemn their
rivals for stirring the people up, that is, for acting as politicians. This taint
has by no means been removed; it is just that some churches have become
much more tolerant of it and see political patronage as their means of
growth, especially in fundraising.
The dini-siasa polarity was natural to the particular Christian tra-
ditions brought to Kenya. It has been well said that the mainstream
Protestant missions were liberal in their thought,16 yet at the most they
were Liberal Evangelicals: Presbyterian, CMS (out of the Clapham Sect),
Reformed, and Methodist. There was always some opposition between
church and culture, alongside a great use of the contrasts of good and
evil, light and dark, God and Devil. Even now, ordinary members may be
singing more about the activity and threat of Satan than about magnify-
ing the attributes of God.17 Philosophical theology has a term for such
a pattern of beliefs: dualism. Evangelicals are often too happy with the
simple contrast: the personal choice between salvation and damnation,
“Once I was lost, but now I see,” and a disdain for systematic theology
instead of the traditionally typecast verities of personal witness and expe-
rience. The widespread emphasis on “getting saved,” depreciates the work
of God in Christ through the Holy Spirit and makes it a merely human
decision to join the right side, or the one that feels right. Were it not for
the spiritual gloss, the basis for the choice would not differ greatly from
the choice between political parties, which change their stand as much
as the churches now.
The main theologians who stand at the head of the Evangelical tradition
in the twentieth century, even though their influence is mostly implicit
and anonymous, are Soren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Schleiermacher
(1928), both confined to the playground of faith, fenced off from
knowledge, which Kant allowed (Wolterstorff 1998). From Kierkegaard
came the personal existentialism aimed against anything systematized or
organized, the radical binary oppositions making any coherent resolution
between God and man, Father and Son, impossible. From Schleiermacher
came the incorporation of a feeling of dependence, a subjective appropria-
tion of divinity rather than a direct revelation, though he paid meticulous
attention to the interpretation of scripture (Crouter 2005). The doctrine
of the Trinity became an appendix to his theology, not being immediate
to consciousness, while the sentiments of Pietism and Romanticism could
10 Ben Knighton

be combined. In this brief sketch, one can see the range between Revival
and Liberal, between the convert’s rejection of culture, and the value of
finding some comfort in it. Neither present a corrective to dualism, while
Kierkegaard does much to promote it. Though neither writer could be
said to be determinative of any Christian expression in Africa, neverthe-
less their marks abound in Kenyan Protestantism, which itself has had an
unusual local impact on Roman Catholicism. The religious influence is
self-authenticating, for whatever is happening in the world, the belief in
the encounter with God cannot be taken away.
Kenyans then may not be proud at heart of their politics, but do
find much satisfaction in being “notoriously religious” in John Mbiti’s
oft-quoted phrase (1969:1). This is one aspect of culture in which they
can be assured of superiority over the secularizing Europeans, who
have fallen away from the morals espoused by many a Kenyan church.
Blessing homosexual practice could be no clearer a proof of that. Though
its softer, embedded expressions may not be very visible to the Western
student of Kenya, the religious impulse has been and still is a self-standing
factor in Kenyan public life. It cannot be completely explained in fac-
tors other than itself. Even if Kenyans tire of the absolute contradictions
currently being presented to them in terms of Christian salvation, reli-
gion cannot be reduced to a product of social structure, as Durkheim
would have it. To put it in the terms of social science, religion may act
as an independent variable. It brings to the cultural-historical equation
a unique quality, resisting the political view that all religious ideology is
caused by social conditions; indeed the term “ideology” is only correct
for religion in a sociopolitical perspective. In Africa, anyway, religion is
manifestly not derived, but integral.

Religion—be it Christianity, Islam or that of African tradition—was the

sanction for all that was most traditional in Africa; it was most closely
linked with all that was most colonial, and it would seldom be far away
from all that was most revolutionary.
(Hastings 1979:17)

Though politics has mostly had a poor image, Kenyans have a highly
developed sense of where power lies and its sources. The question that
remains is how to access them. This sense operates also in the institutions
of the church, making them seldom smooth to run, and tending church
government toward the monarchical form of bishops, whose permanent
office could seldom be overturned by the machinations of politicians.18
However much the professional politicians are kept to a limited space, a
political awareness can be acutely sensitive, especially where an ongoing
 Introduction 11

grievance of unfair treatment persists over many years. Politics is also a

perennial aspect of human culture, as is society, economy, and so on.
Culture, also a popular and valued term in Kenya, then co-ordinates
its independent variables of religion and politics, though both are also
dependent variables in that they are both affected to various extents by
military, technological, legal, economic, and social forces among others.
The characteristic error made by the post-Enlightenment departments
of the University is that all phenomena can best be explained in one
discipline or another, but this is another form of intellectual pride.
Religion and politics share a common objective. They work for the unity
of people, or hold up visions of unity for the future, while seldom being
able to escape their diversity. Both hold ideals, however defined, of peace,
justice, and order. There can be no kingdom of God impacting on this
world without such ideas. That is why religion and politics are inevitable
bedfellows, assuming religion has not lost its vitality in a culture. Since
religion expresses values and aspirations for society and mobilizes its
adherents to behave according to certain morals in society, politics is
already happening, and high politics will want to recruit it.

Political Science and Africa

Politics, then, whatever the overlap, is not identical to religion, and
requires different tools to study it. The problem is that political science is
not quite convinced of what it is studying in Africa. Driven by the needs
for policy formation toward Africa, political science too often looks for
Western political features and institutions that are “more honour’d in the
breach.”19 The focus is stroboscopic, with observers flocking in with the
journalists to cover general elections that are urged on and sponsored by
Western governments and NGOs rather than working out and observing
how political decisions are usually made amid the political pressures at
work. Göran Hydén (2006:2) admits that theories come and go in the
social sciences, but the “rotation of theoretical orientation that charac-
terizes the discipline” still produces an overemphasis on some issues in
the last 50 years. One of those must surely be the comparative approach
beloved of the 1960s.20 There is nothing wrong in comparison in itself,
for all study of the other implicitly uses it, but when it amounts to a
systematic abstraction of phenomena from culture, explanatory power as
to human relations is likely to be lost. Politics is that aspect of culture,
which has a special focus on how humans relate in camera and en masse.
Area studies may have become integral in political science, but still
Hydén reports a tension between comparability and contextuality (Hydén
2006:2), and entitles his book a “comparative perspective,” when the
12 Ben Knighton

burgeoning of studies in African history has already decided the case for
contextuality. He has learned that there are institutions “driven by a social
logic that is different from market or the way the modern state operates,”
and that “economy and culture are no longer two separate spheres, but
analytically as well as empirically are understood as one” (Hydén 2006:3).
He concludes with a model of relativities: society has priority over the
state in Africa,21 private over public, patronage over policy, politics over
economics, concentration over the separation of power, and so on, but
religion does not figure (Hydén 2006:229–31).
Political science still cannot escape its positivist birth in its exclusive
search for proximate and immediate causes as opposed to more dif-
fuse or ultimate ones. For instance political succession is assumed to be
determined by elections, but such a starting point can only come from
a deeply rooted Western perspective. Political science is as embedded in
post-Enlightenment thought as is modern Protestant theology.22 Residual
Marxism combines with philanthropic liberalism to insist that class
is more significant than tribe (perhaps if we say it is not there, it will
go away!).23 The problem is that we are looking at Kenya,24 which has
undergone rapid and painful changes, but has not gone through the same
agrarian, industrial, and philosophical revolutions as the West, for good
or for ill. The point is almost too obvious to make, but why is it that the
same kind of polity, the Westphalian state, is imposed in East Africa and
expected to work in a century or so?25
Yet the programs for Africa keep coming from global institutions.
The World Bank’s governance agenda is found to have missed three
pivotal aspects of African politics: “The unity of political and economic
power; the extreme openness of African states to external pressures; and
the salience of historically embedded cultural and political relations”
(Harrison 2005:240). Politics is no longer separated from development
(Mahadevan 1994) and the World Bank has recognized the importance
of Faith-Based Organizations (which it will never fund) for its work
(Belshaw, Calderisi, & Sugden 2001), but the belated recognition of
culture by political science still keeps religion at arm’s length. For political
scientists more than anthropologists, “it seems that unless special
circumstances bring it into view, Christianity is still an occluded object”
(Cannell 2006:11). “In Africa, though, all Christianities—including
the new Evangelical and Pentecostal movements—have engaged with
the cultures, and with the politics, of the strong African peoples” (Ranger
2003:116). This longstanding and widespread failure to appreciate an
important aspect of contemporary African cultures has led Barbara
Bompani (2008:665) to overturn the role of political science and con-
sider it a mere subset of religious discourse: “Rather than evaluating AICs
 Introduction 13

according to a literal Eurocentric definition of politics, this article argues

for a holistic interpretation of African Christianity that treats politics
like other aspects of the realities of religious communities, as integral to
religious discourse.”
To avoid its humiliation in Africa, it is high time that political science
addressed the critique of Karen Fields (1985:18), who observed that the
content of politics was assumed to be an instrumental, practical, and
rational introduction to secular methods, while the cultural content of
religion only consisted of curious ritual behavior that had no practical
political consequences. I have argued that precisely such a one-eyed
stance has meant that observers of the Karamojong in East Africa simply
do not see their traditional political events as they happen (Knighton
2003; 2006b). Fields (1985:18) argues that the pertinent research ques-
tion about religious actors, “Why did they not do what it would have
been rational for them to do?” which of course leads straight to some of
the current frustrations with African governance, but rather, “What did
the converts do and with what consequences?” This book is concerned
with what various religious adherents, Christian, Muslim,26 and NRMs,
have done to certain effect in the Kenyan political arena.
What religious people do is not just personal, private, and mystical,
the corner in which Immanuel Kant and so the modern University would
have it confined, but it is also public, social, institutional, and moral.
Religious adherents are never happy with their rationality being defined,
whether by Mill or by Marx, in terms of material self-interest. The mate-
rial matters, but can never be said (admittedly behavior may contradict
this to varying extents) to be the governing motive. Fields (1985:18)
found that quintessentially religious slogans like “God is great,” “the
baptized are saved,” “leave adultery and witchcraft,” or “Thy Kingdom
come” became a mighty threat to law in Zambia. So she worked by imag-
ining God inhabiting the religious actors’ horizon, and concluded that “a
commonly held notion that the colonial state was ‘modern’ will wither
away” (Fields 1985:20). Perhaps political science’s problem is that it
keeps on supposing that the postcolonial state is, or should be, modern?
Missionaries never had a monopoly on the insertion of norms.
There are signs that the political science of Africa is recognizing the
cultural relativity of concepts such as democracy and seeing how African
politics is “othered” by Western democracies to the detriment of interna-
tional relations, when contextual paradigms are needed.

Democracy is a configuration of governance molded by the general

values, biases, prejudices, and nuances of a given culture. Individuals in
Western countries typically identify with the state as reflecting the desires
14 Ben Knighton

of the body politic. However in the African world, including northeastern

Africa, identity is primarily reflected in one’s ethnicity, religion, and com-
munal adaptations and traditions.27
(Bradley 2005:407)

On the political ground, religion cannot be avoided, whatever its particu-

lar form or direction, because its influences and effects are not limited to
forming a political party, one of Kenya’s more superficial institutions. As
Donal Cruise O’Brien (2000:521) writes:

The political impact of Christianity is not confined to the elite level, the
alliance of big men of church and state in the belly politics28 model of
Jean-François Bayart and Achille Mbembe. Stephen Ellis and Birgit Meyer
suggest that Christian ideas have penetrated deep into African Society, but
with effects that can be contradictory.

This volume is alert to contradictory outcomes.

David Gitari: The Background

Having set the scene for Kenya, it is now important to set David Gitari in it,
for whom these essays were written, without reiterating what Julius Gathogo
has written in Chapter 5. David Gitari was born on 16 September 1937 in
the foothills of Mount Kenya to a highly unusual couple for the division for
Gichugu Division. It was not that his father was born a Kamba, as the area
was a common refuge for famine victims from the east, and Mukuba had
walked, aged 17 with his mother, Mutaa, from Mutunguni near Kitui to
Ngiriambu in Gichugu in 1899 during the great famine (Smoker 1994:200;
Ambler 1988). Neither was it very odd that as a client of a landowner he
should go and look for employment in Mombasa in 1914, provided by an
Asian, to at least raise their hut and poll taxes. What was unusual was that
Mukuba son of Nzuki found the Christian faith there and brought it back.
Mukuba learned to read and write in the CMS evening school, was
converted as not many were there, and catechized with a few others from
near Mount Kenya (Hewitt 1971:129). “In about 1919 he heard a voice
from heaven telling him to go back home and share the gospel” (Gitari
quoted in Smoker 1994:200). The others collected money for him to
go and evangelize the Gikuyu around Ngiriambu (though the British
assigned Gichugu to Embu District then). Converts were scattered in
various parts of Kenya. When he preached to the assembled elders, they
refused to believe he had brought a Gikuyu Gospel of Mark from as far
as Mombasa, so instead he chose 12 young disciples and taught them,
 Introduction 15

Figure 1.1 Bishop Gitari conducting a service of confirmation and communion at St.
Andrew’s Church, Kabare, on 3 April 1994

showing them how to teach others to read the Gospel of Mark (Smoker
1994:201). It was such methods that led Gikuyu elders to dismiss the
Christian God as the “God of children” (Peterson 2004:52).29
Samuel Mukuba was soon discovered by the CMS, who had started
work at Kabare in 1910, and Ngiriambu was the perfect place for an out-
school within walking distance, 10 miles, of the mission station. Mukuba
was the first evangelist and catechist there for over 50 years, becoming
also a prize-winning farmer, and a small businessman with a water mill.
He catechized his Ngiriambu-born fiancée, 20 years younger than him-
self, Jessie, whom he married in 1924. She learnt to sing by heart the can-
ticles of Evensong from the Gikuyu translation of the Book of Common
Prayer, a feat I have never seen equaled. They used to rescue twins and
babies whose upper incisors grew before the lower, as they were believed
to be afflicted by spirits and so had to be devoured by hyenas to avert
worse calamity. Samuel and Jessie added them to their family. He worked
with Revd. W. J. Rampley, the noble’s coachman from Sussex, who built a
dispensary at Kabare.30 After serving on the African court at Kianyaga and
Nyeri, then from 1930 at Embu, District Council, CMS sent Mukuba
to St. Paul’s College, Limuru, in 1931 for two years’ training (Smoker
1994:201f ). Despite having little immediate missionary oversight, he
was meticulous with his pastoral duties, noting down the children for
whom he held thanksgiving services in the church (Gitari, Interview,
16 Ben Knighton

2 December 2007), so accumulated a wide knowledge of the people, their

sub-clans, lands, and ancestries. He became a county councilor.
Mukuba’s quiet ministry was disturbed in the 1940s by a local, edu-
cated, young man, Bernard Makanga, whom he had brought to church
in 1934 and influenced very much. Revd Obadiah Kariuki was active in
the East African Revival and taught the pupils in Kahuhia Normal School
that they must be born again. Makanga was hard against it, but repented
and confessed to all his teachers (who were European), “I am now a new
creation.” Bedan Ireri (who died a canon in the Diocese of Embu) was
born again the same year and together they preached pioneer Revival
messages around Central Province and Embu District. Bildad Kaggia
had also gone to school in Kahuhia, having been brought up in Muranga
District, but had gone to Burma with the King’s African Rifles, where he
was promoted to an interpreter, and saved. He later joined their itinerant
Revival group, trying to coordinate it with others in Muranga, Kiambu,
and Nairobi, but CMS did not like it, comparing these groups to
sectarian Jehovah’s Witnesses (Makanga, Interview, 9 December 2006).
The Revival group consisted of Makanga, who was to become a
District Commissioner (DC); his mother and his wife, Joan, the daugh-
ter of Gideon Mugo Gahika, the Kahuhia catechist who was Secretary
of the Kikuyu Central Association and primary supporter of Kenyatta
and his constitutionalism; Kaggia and his fiancée; Kihiga Kihota from
Kahuhia, brother to Gideon Mugo, who join Kaggia in politics; Peter
Kagendu who was to become a politician; Godfrey Gikunju; the broth-
ers of Geoffrey Kariithi who became head of the Civil Service for the
last decade of Kenyatta’s presidency and later elected MP for Gichugu;
and Jessie Mukuba, even though her husband, Samuel, did not like the
Revival (Makanga, Interview, 9 December 2006). Despite the Revival’s
view of politics, we see here a group of religious enthusiasts whose
political potency span off in a number of trajectories. Makanga was twice
dismissed from teaching posts in 1947, when these “Bible-convincing
Christians” were preaching in the open air at Kiamutugu Market. They
were hauled up before the magistrate, District Officer I, Embu, who told
them, “You held an illegal meeting, with no licence from the administra-
tion, so you committed an offence” (Makanga, Interview, 9 December
2006). They denied the offence and refused the bail offered, in order to
preach to the convicts and warders in Embu Prison while on hard labor
carrying rocks and stones. The Kabare missionaries had a word with the
DC and they were released, but Makanga was banned from teaching
in any CMS school and, later in Muranga prison for a similar offence,
Kaggia declined the entreaties and threats of CMS to conform to church
and law (Welbourn 1966). Within a year he was administering oaths
 Introduction 17

to many people in Nairobi to the Mau Mau cause, quickly becoming a

senior leader until his detention in 1952.
All the indications are that Samuel Mukuba was a man to be trusted
by all-comers, missionary and administrator alike. He did not want to
compromise the gospel with the blood of goats. One night during the
Emergency Mau Mau oath administrators came banging on his door,
frightened by a large, out-of-place hippopotamus. In the morning they
said, “We are not going to give you the oath after all because we saw
something last night that made us really scared,” and they left him under
divine protection thereafter (Gitari quoted in Smoker 1994:202). He
was selected to be an assistant chief and a screening elder (mugunia) at
the nearby police post at Kiamutugu in order to discern who was sup-
porting Mau Mau and who was not. He thought he could do some good
by ensuring fair play. In one screening, the white officer conducting the
interrogation pulled out a knife and pushed it point down into the sus-
pect’s thigh: “Now tell us!” he demanded. Mukuba resigned on the spot
(Gitari, Interview, 2 December 2007). He then began pleading with the
government not to torture people or waste any more human life.31
Since Gitari was 15 when the Emergency broke out and 22 when
it ended, he would have been aware of the grievances circulated, even
though he was slightly insulated from Mau Mau by life at mission-
schools and in the fortified government village of Kiamutugu. He also
recalls another of the early pillars of the Native African Church (NAC) in
Gichugu, Daudi Petro, who was one of the few Independent churchmen
trained at St. Paul’s College, Limuru. Later he became an Anglican, but
lost none of his fire against injustice. During the Emergency he wrote
a letter to Queen Elizabeth II, for whom he prayed according to the
Book of Common Prayer, complaining of the maltreatment and torture
of detainees whom he visited in the Mwea camps (Gitari, Interview,
2 December 2007). Clearly Mukuba and Petro served as role models
for Gitari in both their desire for justice, and their refusal to harbor
bitterness against the white man, which is not to say any would give
Europeans unnecessary leeway.
Gitari, then, was brought up in a time of political and religious fer-
ment. He started teaching Sunday School in Ngiriambu at the age of 12,
and gave his first sermon three years later (Church of the Province of
Kenya 1997:35). As a young man he came to own the Revival tradition
of his mother, so has had an unusually smooth relationship throughout
with the brethren, who can prove irascible in the extreme when roused.
“Her faith has meant a lot to me”, he volunteered to Dorothy Smoker
(1994:201). As a bishop though, he makes little of any born-again experi-
ence, favoring very much instead the connection with his father. Though
18 Ben Knighton

he did not use his father’s name as his surname, which became standard
in the colonial period, he included it as a much-valued middle name,
signing himself particularly “David M. Gitari”. He also seems to have
followed in his footsteps rather than his mother’s.
Though robustly Christian at a time when peer pressure was against
it, Gitari avoided going to any other extreme in a way that is unusual
in youth. Certainly, he avoided all the options offered by his mother’s
Revival group. Talking to those who knew him while at school or when
teaching, the impression given is that he was a loner beyond the norm
in Gikuyu society. For example, he taught Cyrus Mwangi, who ended
up as a University lecturer in Japan, geography and English at Kiburu
Intermediate School, Ndia, in 1959 (Mwangi, Interview 13 September
2008).32 Next he went to the Royal Technical College, Nairobi, to read
for a BA in history, geography, and economics. In his first term he
wanted to leave to study theology, and despite Bishop Beecher’s encour-
agement to stay, he told me he became rather depressed, and on seeking
medical advice, was whisked in for electroconvulsive therapy, which was
then being tried as a panacea for a new mental illness called Mau Mau
(Mahone 2004; 2007). This appears to have been his closest encounter
with hardcore rebels. There are very few who knew him so well as to
understand his capacities and potential, and I have been directed to none
as a best friend or authority on his early life. It is as though he has been
carrying an impartiality from boyhood, which would stand him in good
stead for his selection as a leader.

The Meddlesome Priest

Having been a founder-member of the Kenya Students Christian

Fellowship in 1959, it was at what would soon become the University
of Nairobi that he developed an evangelistic student ministry, which
would continue through his being General Secretary of the Pan-African
Fellowship of Evangelical Students (PAFES) from 1966 to 1968 into his
time as bishop, when he would lead student missions.33 Student ministry
established his Evangelical credentials and he was taken in 1965–1966
by the Bible Churchmen’s Missionary Society to their training college
in Bristol, Tyndale Hall, then the most conservative of all Evangelical
colleges, and then for a Bachelor of Divinity 1968–1971, awarded by
the University of London. His Principal thought well enough of him to
raise his funding,34 but it was not an easy start to married life, and he
was surrounded by British students who assumed, mistakenly, that as an
African he would not cope with the course. Bravely, he supported the
Liberal Party in politics. Back in Nairobi, the Anglican Diocese under
 Introduction 19

the Archbishop, would not license him, so he became General Secretary

of the Bible Society of Kenya and Chairman of the Kenya Students’
Christian Fellowship1972–1975. He did not feel that its work of trans-
lating and distributing the scriptures in several languages was his calling,
but it taught him the administration of an organization as well as how to
relate to all the churches of Kenya. Gitari was ordained priest in his first
year by the Bishop of Mount Kenya, Obadiah Kariuki, Kenyatta’s brother-
in-law, in Muranga. He was also able to preach in Nairobi, working
under Revd George Wanjau at St. Andrew’s Church (Presbyterian) and
under Revd Tom Houston at Nairobi Baptist Church. This was how the
sudden breakthrough came, and it was all politics.
On 2 March 1975, J. M. Kariuki, an assistant minister, was brutally
murdered, having last been seen in the company of Kenyatta’s bodyguard
at the Hilton Hotel. “J. M.” personified the acceptable national liberation
hero. As the most obdurate of young intellectuals, he had gone through
the whole gamut of detention camps in the Emergency, quietly provok-
ing officers to apoplexy and writing about it to every British authority he
could address (Kariuki 1964). When his murder was known, there were
many Gikuyu, Kenyatta’s natural supporters, who were utterly bewil-
dered and weeping.35 It seemed that the government had just become the
opposite of what they had struggled against under colonial rule. Even the
imperialists had not perpetrated or permitted assassinations of politicians
in government. A heavy cloud settled over the whole nation, which was
not removed when an inquiry was set up and then obstructed. The then
National Christian Council of Kenya (also NCCK) declared a week of
national repentance and prayer, inviting Gitari to take the 6:55 a.m. slot on
the voice of Kenya’s “Lift Up Your Hearts” national radio program (Gitari
1996b:13). He structured the talks on the National Anthem, which begins,
“O God of all creation,” climaxing with “the glory of Kenya,” and com-
bined them in a sermon preached at Nairobi Baptist Church the following
Sunday, 20 April 1975. From the start, he put up his manifesto:

In Old Testament days Israel was a nation set apart to serve God. In
adopting the word “glory” for our nation, we accept a calling to which we
must live up. We are consecrated and set apart to render true and glorious
service to God and humanity. It is the Church’s heavy responsibility to
remind a nation, called to be holy, of the standard of righteousness and
justice which alone can exalt that nation . . . If, however, those in authority
depart from the righteousness which God expects of a nation, the church
should follow the footsteps of the prophets and the apostles in declaring
boldly the righteousness and judgment of God.
(Gitari 1996b:14)
20 Ben Knighton

Though the churches had in 1969 anxiously, though belatedly fulminated

against Kenyatta’s oathing of the Gikuyu, no individual of the church
had ever challenged the nation and “those in authority” in the mass
media before. Gitari was not even licensed by his own church, which,
it may be argued, gave him greater freedom to speak, but it also made
him and his responsibility for the Bible Society more vulnerable. No
naïve exhibitionism drove Gitari, because in those days of single-
party rule and the twin silencers, Mbiu Koinange, Minister of State
in the Office of the President, and Charles Njonjo, Attorney-General
(Throup 1995:146; Sabar 2002:178), the President’s authority went
unquestioned. It was still a time, in political theory, for nation-building
and pulling together, not for challenging authority; Kenyatta never wanted
to be on the receiving end. Gitari knew he was taking risks, but had cho-
sen to “follow the footsteps of the prophets and apostles.”36 Anyone who
has read their Bible seriously knows that many of them met a very grisly
end at the hands of the authorities of state.37 The message had bubbled up
within him from his sense of injustice and, unless he was prepared to be
numbered as “men spake from God” (II Pt. 1:21), he would have betrayed
everything for which he had come to stand. After the fourth radio talk,
as he often relates, he was grilled by senior civil servants in the Ministry
of Information, who directly controlled Voice of Kenya radio. They were
disturbed, as Gitari’s talks deemed to imply that the government was
involved in the murder of J. M. (as it undoubtedly was38). Kenyatta sent
out that he wanted a transcript of the sermon at once in Mombasa.

Two weeks later I received a telephone call from the Permanent Secretary
in the Office of the President, who wanted to see me. Assuming that this
concerned the sermon, I called all the members of staff at the Bible House
for special prayers as I went to face the wrath of the authorities.
Carrying a copy of the sermon I walked into the building where I
expected to find a good number of top civil servants. But when I was
ushered in I found only the Permanent Secretary, Geoffrey Kariithi, who
received me warmly and took me by surprise with the question, ‘Why
are you delaying in accepting your appointment as Bishop of Mount
Kenya East’? He then took out his diary, and with my consent rang the
Archbishop, and we fixed 20th July 1975 as the date of my consecration
and enthronement.
(Gitari 1996b:21)

The Electoral College of the newly created diocese had unanimously elected
him the previous week. Though Bachelors of Divinity of the University
of London were thin on the ground in Mount Kenya East, a polyglot
 Introduction 21

region that stretched from the south of Mount Kenya to the Ethiopian
border, there can be little doubt that Gitari’s words made him the man of
the hour. Kenyatta too can have had little objection, else Kariithi could
not have acted so openly. Ecclesiastically Gitari was suddenly made, for it
is extremely difficult and rare for a bishop to be dethroned, an essential
quality when regularly speaking out against the government.39

The Meddlesome Bishop

Gitari led two of the prayers at Kenyatta’s remarkably Christian state funeral,
one on creation and work, the other on leadership and government:

O God of our fathers, God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and Joshua,
who have always raised leaders to meet the challenge of nations at all
times of great need and have endowed them with wisdom, courage, and
devotion beyond anything they can personally claim, we pray for him on
whose shoulders the powers of the President of this Republic have been
placed during this transitional period, His Excellency Mr. Daniel T. arap
Moi. That he and the Cabinet may steer this country to the safe shores of
dignity and understanding among all the sections of our community.
(Republic of Kenya 1978).

He went on to pray for “smooth and peaceful party elections.” Since the
prayers were officially printed beforehand, there is no doubt that Kenya
was content to acknowledge that the necessary presidential powers and
attributes for the common good of Kenya came from God and needed to
be prayed for. The church leaders had reason to be optimistic about Moi,
since he came to politics with a strong Evangelical testimony of being born
again from the Africa Inland Mission, in sharp contrast to Kenyatta’s age-
old split with the Church of Scotland. Gitari had only been bishop three
years; astonishingly the remaining 24 years of his ministry before retire-
ment would be spent with Moi as president, who gradually proceeded to
dismay the most committed believer in the irrefragibility of being born
again. In 1976 Moi had been Guest of Honor at the first fundraising for
the new church at Ngiriambu, when Gitari conducted the ceremony.40
The great turning-point in Moi’s rule was the attempted coup d’état of
1 August 1982, which came as a great shock to him,41 making him there-
after suspicious of the intentions of both Luo and Gikuyu. Replacements
in the Cabinet, and gradually the Civil Service, were quickly made, with
many Kalenjin being drafted in (Throup 1995:147). The meritocracy
of the Kenyan Civil Service was soon compromised with well-qualified
22 Ben Knighton

Gikuyu being excluded for the first time in favor of less qualified recruits
whom Moi could trust.42 The situation was ripe for nepotism and clan
appropriation of skilled tasks necessary for the maintenance of the state.
Disgruntled by the displacement, laymen from Mount Kenya became
his closest supporters. Geoffrey Kariithi retired in Moi’s first year though
there was plenty of politics to come from him. James S. Mathenge was
chairman of the Public Service Commission of Kenya 1986–1989.
Mr. Johnson Ndegwa rose to the heights of the Teachers’ Service
Commission. The Hon. Jeremiah Nyagah was a fixture in the Cabinet
following the Lancaster House talks and his previous elevation to the
Legislative Council in 1958, but he found himself more of a backbencher
and retired from politics in 1992 to become a regular feature of diocesan
occasions in Kirinyaga even though it had been divided from his home
diocese of Embu in 1991. Then were was a former colonel of the King’s
African Rifles, Joel Gatungo; the former DC, Bernard Makanga; and
local chiefs such as Jotham Ngure and Ephantus Mwaniki Thuo. These
were all fine churchmen,43 and they formed the elders behind the bish-
op’s throne, whom Gitari was always careful to bring in when faced with
a challenge to his leadership in the diocese. Some of them had been part
of the Electoral College that had been so keen to select this champion
for their part of Kenya. There was however a problem with this bedrock
home constituency, which Gitari seemed not to see.
The elders of the diocese were too good. They were often more
respectable and more bourgeois than the new thrusting politicians, who
tended to be more transient. They were old men who had seen others
with less professionalism and manners take positions and jobs in the
government. This meant that they, like Gitari, and with reason, soon
became predisposed to disapprove of the direction of Moi’s government.
The problem with this has been well put by Mutahi Ngunyi.

The indigenous elite which came to dominate politics did not differ in
social background, education, socialisation or general outlook from that
which came to dominate the formerly European-based and missionary-
run mainstream Christian churches. In many of the churches in question,
the political elite moreover formed the dominant layer of the laity . . .
Of course it was precisely this elite, in both its clerical and lay/political
guises, who became severed form [sic] the reins of power under the Second
Republic, as the new president sought to construct a new power bloc from
which both the Kikuyu and Luo were excluded . . .
Given this historically produced and politically sustained proximity
between the traditional political class and the activist clergy, the political inter-
ests of ethno-regional elites have often found expression through the church.
(Ngunyi 1995: 146f )
 Introduction 23

Ngunyi goes on to itemize the preponderance of the Gikuyu in

Anglican, Presbyterian, and Roman churches, though he appears to
have had more figures than the churches themselves. In one sense this is
unfair. Suddenly replacing oral polities in a state only a hundred years
old, would inevitably lead to wide differences in education and the more
educated would naturally be those implementing the responsibilities
of the state, as indeed happens in every mature democracy. Western
education and class go together, when education is leading people out
of traditional society, whatever the drawbacks (Knighton 2002). It is
Marxism that makes elites bad per se, irrespective of how dedicated
they may be to the common good. They would not have improved
their image or the state by acting as unsophisticated, antibureaucratic,
ethnotraditionalists, and neither Marxism nor the postwar world order
could do without the state.
On the other hand, independent politics in Kenya has always been
based on “ethnically based coalition building. The nationalist coalition at
independence was therefore jammed with ethno-regional notables flying
the ethnic banners of ‘their’ communities and organising local politics
along ethnic lines” (Ngunyi 1995:146; Salih & Markakis 1998). He gave
Jeremiah Nyagah as a prime example of a leading ethnoregional notable
and ex-member of government, who was also a lay leader in the church’s
rural parishes. Again this has an unfair edge to it, since the Mount Kenya
East elite saw themselves as meritocratic and anti-tribalist, not to mention
Christian, and also suffering from the superiority complex of the Kiambu
elite, who formed a more permanent establishment. Charles Njonjo,
for instance, has been a resolute opponent of Gitari, theologically and
politically, almost throughout.
Nevertheless this is not how other parts of the country perceive it. For
instance Dr. Robert Ouko, a Luo, responded to news of Gitari’s sermon
to the Civic Service in St. Peter’s Church, Nyeri, on Daniel Chapter 6
applying lessons from the story of King Darius to the Kenyan situation,
by insisting that from President Moi down, Kenyans were “God-fearing
people” (“Bishop Gitari under Fire over Sermon” Kenya Times 30 June
1987). Despite the three ministers arriving from the scandalously
abandoned molasses plant near Kisumu, a “huge crowd” responded with
its applause as though this was a Gikuyu attack on the ability of the rest
of Kenya to worship God. Since Ouko himself was dead in three years
from a political assassination in which one of his fellow ministers on
that occasion was thought to be complicit, he might have been better
advised than telling Gitari not to use the church to “freely criticise the
political ideologies”. Bishop Henry Okullu, a Luo, who had been socially
conscientized by being chaplain to the migrant Luo factory and plantation
24 Ben Knighton

workers in Uganda, was consistently critical of both the Kenyatta and

Moi governments (Oluoch 2006), but was seldom a close ally of Gitari.
The relationship mirrored the Luo-Gikuyu political divide with Okullu
favoring the laborer and Gitari favoring respectable enterprise or the
professions,44 not that he has ever despised manual work. Gitari sees no
ethnocentricity in himself, because of his expository preaching, in his
well-used phrase, “without fear or favour,”45 and in his record of standing
up to Kenyatta’s government before Moi’s.
When Manasses Kuria’s arch-episcopate was drawing to its stuttering
end, it was obvious that on merit, Gitari was the obvious successor, since
Okullu was retiring in 1994. However, Kuria hesitated to retire in the
same year despite reaching the age of 65 and delayed solving constitu-
tional issues. This led to a long interim period until 1997 in which Gitari,
as the longest serving bishop, was Dean of the Province, having to man-
age the fast-growing Diocese of Kirinyaga, the chaotic inheritance of the
enormous Diocese of Nairobi, and the whole Anglican province, not to
mention the ecclesiastical tatters of the Rwandan genocide. Gitari felt that
his best years were wasted, while waiting for the highest office. When the
election did at last come on 20 November 1996, resistance was put up by
delegates from Western Kenya and it required three ballots to overcome
the candidacy of the more youthful Luo, Joseph Wasonga. It was felt that
Kuria had been a Gikuyu, who had unfairly supplanted Henry Okullu
in his election with Charles Njonjo’s influence, and it was now a Luo’s
turn. Gitari pointed out that by patrilineage he was a Kamba, but this did
not convince. The Kalenjin bishops disliked Gitari’s frequent attacks on
President Moi, and wanted to work with the government like the Africa
Inland Church (AIC) was doing to its advantage in the area.46
What motivated Gitari to resist the demands to keep politics out of the
church?47 Sub-consciously there was the unstructured influence of his back-
ground, but this all had to be rationalized for Gitari to set out his stance
intellectually. Interestingly the key step was made before his radio addresses
and his election to bishop. It was the epochal conference of Evangelicals from
all over the world at Lausanne in 1974 that gave Gitari a green light theo-
logically. As a Conservative Evangelical Anglican, Gitari was actually signed
up to a tradition that had little to say to party politics. It normally supported
the status quo, preferably and tacitly right wing, while throwing heart and
soul into evangelism and a Biblical ministry (Lewis 2007). Evangelism was
seen then, especially by North American Evangelicals, as a priority over
any involvement over the kind of social action advocated by both Liberals
and Anglo-Catholics, indeed by Liberation Theology (Scott 1994). It was
the unprecedented international presence at Lausanne that began a
sea-change in this regard. In the final formularies the senior Evangelical
 Introduction 25

statesman, John Stott, came down firmly on the side of marrying evange-
lism and social action. Sandwiched between two sections on evangelism, the
Lausanne Covenant stated in §5:

Here too we express penitence both for our neglect and for having sometimes
regarded evangelism and social concern as mutually exclusive. Although
reconciliation with man is not reconciliation with God, nor is social action
evangelism, nor is political liberation salvation, nevertheless we affirm that
evangelism and socio-political involvement are both part of our Christian
duty. For both are necessary expressions of our doctrine of God and man,
our love of our neighbour and our obedience to Jesus Christ. The message
of salvation implies also a message of judgment up every form of alienation,
oppression and discrimination, and we should not be afraid to denounce evil
and injustice wherever they exist.
(Stott 1996:24, where the 1974 Covenant is published in full)

Gitari specifically mentioned the Lausanne Congress on World

Evangelization in the preface to his book of Sermons to a Nation (Gitari
1996b:11), and at the celebration of his retirement at the Oxford
Centre for Mission Studies in 2003. Reinforcing the sociopolitical
line, he chaired the Bangkok conference in 1982 of the International
Fellowship of Evangelical Mission Theologians (INFEMIT) on emerging
Christologies in the Two-Thirds World, which “was the first time that
theologians of evangelical commitment had met at their own initiative,”
in reaction to the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization going
back on its 1980 conference in Pattaya, also in Thailand, on the synthe-
sis achieved in Lausanne (Samuel & Sugden 1984:vii). Soon afterwards,
Gitari also became founder-chairman of the institutional expression of
INFEMIT, the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies, with its publishing
imprint of Regnum.
It was at the inaugural theological conference sponsored by the
Africa Theological Fraternity of INFEMIT, which Gitari hosted, that
he staked out the approach to church-state relations that would guide
him, which indeed they did for life, since the same analysis appeared in
Responsible Church Leadership after retirement (Gitari 2005:147–68).
The venue for the conference was St. Andrew’s Institute for Mission and
Evangelism that Gitari started for ordination training three years after
becoming bishop on the old, abandoned CMS mission station at Kabare
(see Figure 1.1).30 Before 1960 it was the parish centre for the whole of
Gichugu, and he had had some primary schooling there himself. The late
Kwame Bediako gave a paper, who was to become a much-lauded African
theologian in the Reformed tradition, and also Sam Kobia, who became
the sixth General Secretary of the World Council of Churches in 2003.
26 Ben Knighton

As usual Gitari was Evangelical and Ecumenical in his sympathies. In his

own paper he classified African examples of the church’s “four possible
attitudes to the powers and states with which it coexists: enthusiastic
support; passive ignoring; constructive dialogue; or outright opposition”
(Gitari 1986b:119). Because of the human proclivity to sin in church and
state, the first two would amount to “forms of betrayal of the Church’s
God-given prophetic ministry,” while constructive dialogue was for the
good times and direct opposition for the bad. In the 1990s, Gitari sum-
marized this in two words: “critical distance”. The church was to critique
the performance of the state, before saying anything in public, and was
to keep the correct distance, neither so far as not to have any effect, nor
so close that the state held it captive.
In order to bear witness to the truth of the Word of God, to the liber-
ating power of the Gospel, and to the Kingdom of God,48 the church was
to engage in a distinctive detachment, a creative participation in society,
and “the prophetic ministry of Judgement” (Gitari 1986b:119, 135).

Judgement means that the Church will constantly remind people of

the standard of righteousness and justice which alone exalts a nation.
The Church will also take a lead in giving moral and practical support
to the State when it upholds that standard, and will responsibly criticise
the State or those that are in authority when they depart from it. When
society accepts as normal racism, tribalism, corruption49 or the exploita-
tion of fellow men, Christians cannot be silent. They, like the prophets of
old, must speak out and pronounce the will and judgement of God. The
Christian community must be an ever-present reminder to the State that
it exists only as the servant of God and man.
(Gitari 1986b:135)

“If the Church does not challenge wrong structures, she is unfaithful to
her prophetic calling,” because not to challenge signifies consent (Gitari
1986b:136). Thus the churches must of necessity exercise a prophetic
ministry to the state.
Gitari now had a theological mandate for action. Even in the con-
ference discussion of his paper a policy emerged on voting by queuing
(mlolongo), and it was driven by clergymen and civil servants who, quite
understandably, did not want their voting preferences identified by the
people whom they served as professionals. Gitari responded by saying,
“We need to make strong representations to the government to request
that in future all such elections are conducted by secret ballot” (Gitari
1986b:119, 135). Having mastered the administration of the sprawling
Diocese of Mount Kenya East, in 1986 he moved Paddy Benson, who
 Introduction 27

has contributed Chapter 3 of this volume, from St. Andrew’s Institute

for Mission and Evangelism, Kabare, to be his publications secretary in
Embu. This enabled a methodical approach to recording and media rela-
tions, which was continued by Joyce Karuri (Kirigia 2002b).
Gitari ensured thereafter that all his important sermons were fully
typed out, and given to the press and government representatives to give
himself some protection in the event of being misquoted. He would also
take the initiative to have members of the press called to a significant ser-
mon, especially Kamau of the Standard, who had experienced firsthand
the torture cell in the basement of Nyayo House.50 It should not be for-
gotten that it was not the outspoken clergy alone who became the popu-
lar opposition to the Moi government, but as reported by the national
press in particular.51 The famous four, Okullu, Njoya, Muge, and Gitari,
would preach on the Sunday and be reported with photographs in the
Monday dailies.52 Indeed there were those who would buy the Nation or
the Standard then, in order to see what Gitari in particular had to say on
a political issue. This is not to say that these were merely media events,
like televised football with a few spectators. Sermons were usually given
at a diocesan event, and Gitari was good at devising these in front of at
least 2,000 participants. When his life was threatened, there were many
times this at St. Thomas’ Church, Kerugoya in 1989. Those who were
not Anglicans, or even Christian, would come to listen, and the climax of
each four-hour service would be the sermon. Undoubtedly, people came
not only for the church event, but because Gitari spoke for the people,
when others were too scared to. Most definitely Gitari had gone beyond
the usual church role of mediation to one of open contestation with
power, so rare for an Evangelical leader (Freston 2001:152).53 Would it
succeed or be counterproductive?
The turning-point in Gitari’s impact on the Moi government came in
1987, when Gitari preached four major sermons in the month of June, and
had them published by the church’s own press the following year (Gitari
1988b). They took on a prophetic consciousness from Jesus, Jeremiah,
Daniel, and Paul, respectively. They should not be taken for anything other
than sermons, since the political allusions or references to Kenya typically
take up a small proportion only of the content. However the Bible reading
has often been selected and the sermon prepared to give these applications
maximum effect.54 Though Gitari does not explicitly claim to be a prophet,
he still has a clear consciousness of his prophetic task as a preacher.

Furthermore, the expository preacher would fail in his duty if he did not
let the message of the Bible come alive to the modern hearer. Though writ-
ten thousands of years ago, the word of God is meant to be effective in
28 Ben Knighton

our lives today and it is the task of the preacher to make his hearers realise
this fact. The process of bringing God’s word to bear on our contemporary
world is part of what is meant by a prophetic ministry (Gitari 1988b:v).

Gitari, unlike Revd. Bernard Njoroge, preaches as a churchman and

a student of scripture and not as a politician manqué.55 It is just that
he conceives it to be the task of the Christian witness and a bishop in
particular to meddle in politics as a duty to God.56 To an extent, the
Christian in Moi recognized this fact in a way that a Milton Obote, Idi
Amin, and Yoweri Museveni would not.
Though the standard response by politicians has been to say that the
church should not meddle in politics, Gitari’s clams to authority have had
a peculiar affect on Kenyan politics. Moi had tried to embarrass the bishop
into silence, but his response appeared to have been based on a misreport-
ing, certainly of the sermon on Matt. 9: 35–8 (“KPCU: Moi Hits Out at a
Bishop” Standard 9 June 1987). Three sermons and three weeks later, Moi
had learned that it was wiser not to argue the toss with him: “President
Moi said yesterday that the outspoken Bishop David Gitari of the CPK
should be allowed to speak his mind as Kenya was a democratic country”
(“Let Bishop Gitari Speak, says Moi” Nation 1 July 1987). Compared with
Archbishop Janani Luwum’s death after speaking out, Gitari’s practice
might be noted: speak out early and often; give Biblical warrant for what
must be said, choose your words carefully and make them verifiable; check
your facts; and speak in the context of worship and prayer where others,
even politicians, have an opportunity to greet the congregation! Even so
the would-be prophet must face the possibility that a totally unscrupulous
leader would not be daunted by the religious barrier, even if those who
break it usually come to a sticky end. However the churches are in most
countries of the world a political constituency, which leaders have reason
to be loath to alienate. A church that is alert and aware will prevent a gov-
ernment from taking shortcuts, so will benefit from a ratchet effect. Once
the government has conceded that to behave in a certain way would be
moral bankruptcy, the ground is established to extend public morality.
Eventually results came in the form of political decisions:

At one time, the reform of the party appeared to be a distant dream. But we
prayed to those dry bones of Ezekiel’s vision and the bones started rattling:

• The queuing system of election came to an end on 4th December 1990.

• On 21st June 1991 at Kasarani the President announced to KANU
(Kenya African National Union) delegates that anyone could stand for
elections . . .
 Introduction 29

If KANU cannot reform itself to the satisfaction of Wananchi, then the

Nation should have the courage to allow more than one party—after all the
wind of change is blowing all over Africa including South Africa and Kenya
might find itself an island of one party system. Yet the time for Multi-party
has not yet come—pray that God may hasten the day of Multi-party!
(Gitari 1991c)

Before the year was out KANU agreed to scrap the 1982 section 2A of the
constitution that legalized one-party rule and abolished the two-term limit
for a president. This had noticeable effects in ordinary society, since people
could now talk about politics, politicians, and parties openly and freely in a
way that they had not been able to do since 1965 for fear of being reported
to some authority or other that expected complete loyalty. The dry bones
of Kenyan politics were not only rattling but coming together.
A series of confrontations between the churches and the state marked
the drawn-out showdown between Gitari and Moi. When Kenneth
Matiba resigned from the cabinet, he was expelled from KANU and
a by-election held, which was awarded to the new KANU candidate.
Even though a minority had appeared to queue in order to vote for
him, Gitari denounced this malpractice and accepted a summons by
Nahashon Njuno, the former Member of Parliament (MP),57 to face
the KANU committee in Gichugu. Not actually wanting this, the com-
mittee hired KANU youth-wingers to heckle his sermon on 9 April
1989. Two were dragged out of a congregation of 6,000 at St. Thomas’
Church, Kerugoya. The following Saturday one of them accosted Gitari
in a Kerugoya street, and when he was eventually arrested, the District
Officer and Chiefs of Ndia Division insulted the bishop and secured the
youth-winger’s release. Political activists informed the press that there was
a plot to burn the bishop’s home and car; they were arrested and detained
in prison for a month for their pains.
On Sunday morning 23 April 1989, I was woken by a BBC news
report that Gitari’s home had been attacked. Sure enough, in the night,
a large gang, apparently collected in a vehicle from the local prison
and armed with pangas58 and iron bars, came to his house by the main
road, cut the telephone wires, smashed the windows, tore off steel grills
covering them, and prowled around shouting, “We have come to finish
the bishop.” Gitari with his wife and guest, Revd Andrew Adano from
Marsabit, climbed on to the roof and shouted for help. A group of vil-
lagers hurried from Difatha’s armed with anything they could lay hold
of, and the gang scattered. The following Sunday, Gitari preached three
sermons to a congregation of 33,000 and became immortally untouch-
able (Gitari 1996b:86, 90f; Diocese of Kirinyaga 1995:23). With its
30 Ben Knighton

international connections, the Anglican church made the ruling party of

Kenya aware that it could not get away with murder in its own backyard.
President Moi commissioned and received a report of inquiry into the
incident, but it has never been released.
The following year, having been warned by the Minister of Labour
Okondo not to enter his district or he would “see fire,” Bishop Alexander
Muge took up the gauntlet on 14 August 1990, and was then killed on his
way back home by a careering milk lorry. While other church leaders talked
of witchcraft or state conspiracies, Okullu and Gitari with Archbishop Kuria
called for a general election at once and a government of national unity to
cheers at the memorial service (Throup 1995:168–71). Once again KANU’s
bullying tactics had seriously backfired, but they continued using them.
In 1991, I heard Gitari preach from Ezekiel 34 in a most direct
fashion, sparing no leaders.

This passage is relevant for Heads of schools, Chairmen of farmers’ Co-

operatives, Village and Market leaders, Assistant Chiefs, Chiefs, District
Officers, District Commissioners and Provincial Commissioners. The
passage is relevant to KANU leaders at every level, Councillors, Members
of Parliament, and Government Ministers. The passage is relevant to Lay
Leaders, Mothers’ Union Leaders, clergy and even top church leaders. The
passage is also relevant to the sheep i.e. those who are led.
(Gitari 1991b)

He was gloriously specific and detailed about “land-grabbing” in

Kirinyaga District and quoted a Standard article (7 June 1991) naming
leaders who owed large sums to the Kenya Grain Growers Co-operative
Union (KGGCU):

KSh.
The Minister of Energy owes KGGCU 13,000,000
Ass’t Minister of Livestock Development 3,500,000
Minister for Local Government 3,700,000
Minister for Research Science & Technology 3,000,000
A nominated member of parliament 7,000,000
A former Asst. Minister for Agriculture 4,900,000

Setting the undisputed facts in the prophecy of Ezekiel gave them moral
force, especially when the finger was pointed at all who would lead, not just
those in government. Gitari interwove the story of Israel with the stories of
 Introduction 31

Kenyan current affairs, including that of Kenneth Matiba still detained by

Moi in solitary isolation at Kamiti Maximum Security Prison after a stroke,
and compared it with the story of Steve Biko in South Africa.59
A multiparty, secret ballot duly occurred in December 1992. This
became part of what Terence Ranger (2008:9) has called Africa’s “second
democratic revolution,” the first being independence from colonialism.60
Yet in Kenya it was born dead, as elsewhere (Villalón & Huxtable 1998;
Ellis & Haar 2004:103f ). A mighty alliance against KANU, the Forum
for the Restoration of Democracy (FORD), split down the middle.
KANU, using cash bribes, rigged the elections in many constituencies
where there was little monitoring, so there was no change of government.
Moi was to complete 24 successive years as president.

But if the principle of “majority rule” did not ensure democracy in the
1970s and 1980s, neither did the concept of multipartyism in the 1990s . . .
In many countries networks of corruption replaced outright military
repression, but popular democracy seemed as far away as ever. Hence what
is being attempted at the beginning of the twenty-first century is a “third
democratic revolution”: the struggle against presidential third termism; the
struggle for incorrupt “transparency”; the struggle not only to develop elec-
toral institutions but also to achieve a democratic culture and practice.
(Ranger 2008:9)

Gitari was always focused on the church before the state, however. After
20 years as Bishop, he claimed in his cathedral that he had confirmed
some 120,000, made 500 lay readers, ordained 136 clergy, and conse-
crated 89 church buildings. As Gitari took up the reins of the Church of
the Province of Kenya (CPK) and had it renamed the Anglican Church
of Kenya (ACK),61 another uphill task faced him.62 With the elections
of 1992 and 1997 producing ethnic clashes over land in Rift Valley and
Coast Provinces,63 but no change in ruling party or president, Gitari with
the NCCK and the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Nairobi, Raphael
Ndingi Mwana’a Nzeki made repeated calls for a constitutional review
and a limit on presidential terms. Jackie Klopp picks up the ongoing
territorial violence and the work of the NCCK in Chapter 7.

The Meddlesome Archbishop

Gitari served the last five years of his ministry as Archbishop, seldom
staying in the official residence just round the corner from State House
(Throup 1995:144), and making a point of retiring on his sixty-fifth
birthday on 16 September 2002. He failed to outlast his old adversary,
32 Ben Knighton

Moi, by three and a half months; the President, by that time, was already
a lame duck, and the Christian and Muslim call for a constitutional
review, which Gitari had led, had become unstoppable. John Chesworth
will take these issues further in Chapter 6.
The initiative of meetings in Ufungamano House (run by the NCCK)
wrested the initiative away from Parliament for years.64 On 7 July 1997,
saba, saba (seven, seven: a politically significant date for radicals) reform-
ers decided to hold pro-democracy rallies in Uhuru Park without prior
permission from the government as the procedures prevented them hap-
pening anyway. So the security forces used violence to disband them and
demonstrators took sanctuary in nearby All Saints’ Cathedral,65 but some
of the presidential guard followed them in and spilt their blood on the
floor. Dr Timothy Njoya

suffered 20 head injuries, many bodily bruises and a broken arm. He

escaped being shot thanks to journalists who covered his battered body.
“On July 7 members of the press didn‘t do what journalists did after
Princess Diana’s accident—they didn’t keep snapping pictures. In this case
they dropped their cameras and piled on me. They saved my life,” Njoya
said. His heart stopped in the hospital, but he was revived and has recov-
ered. Fourteen people were killed in that clash.
(Christian Century 10 December 1997)

It was as if Gitari’s life had been a preparation for this moment, since he
knew exactly how to respond, though only enthroned Archbishop for
six months.66 He informed the primates of the Anglican Communion,
who often with their governments quickly expressed their displeasure
to the Republic of Kenya. The Archbishops of Canterbury, Canada and
Korea; the Church of the Province of Southern Africa; and the Synod of
the Church of England at once sent Gitari messages of support. The fol-
lowing Sunday he carried out a service of cleansing in the cathedral67 to
remove the taint of the men of violence.68

Moi allowed the All Saints Cathedral to be defiled when his police
stormed it to break up pro-democracy demonstrations. That is enough
to bring down divine wrath on him, as the writing appeared on the wall
when King Belsassar [sic] defiled the holy vessels in the Book of Daniel.

I am no prophet [quoting the prophet Amos (7:14)], but I told Moi

myself that his days are numbered and his kingdom will crumble if he
refuses to repent and accept constitutional changes.
(“Kenya Primate Predicts President Moi’s Kingdom Will Crumble”
Anglican Communion News Service 21 July 1997)
 Introduction 33

Two days later he, along with five members of the NCCK, five Roman
Catholic archbishops, and two Muslims, met with the President: “We put a
lot of pressure on him. We told him there would be a lot of trouble if he does
not agree to constitutional changes.” Until then Moi had refused to make
changes, but with condemnation from the whole world, and the United
States, UK, and Japan pressing for reform, he announced the following day,
“From now on, licences for public rallies will be issued automatically. He
also agreed to meet with opposition leaders next week to discuss democratic
reforms.” The price of the next election for Moi, then, was an agreement
to a constitutional review and the promise that it would be his last term. It
needed the Prophet Daniel to bring President Daniel to the end of his rule.
There was a face-to-face confrontation at the consecration of the first
Bishop of Kitale on 20 July 1997, which aligned Gitari, the bishops, and
the NCCK General Secretary in the centre of Kitale Stadium, facing
President Moi and his ministers (see Figure 1.2). I witnessed this set-piece
display of church and state nearly end in rupture. Mutava Musyimi tried
to rub in the current ascendancy of the NCCK by talking about a dia-
logue between the government and opposition on constitutional review,
since the mainstream churches had experience of dialogue ever since the
missionary alliance was hatched in 1913. Irked, Moi replied in Swahili:

You cannot dictate to us about the issue of politics and dialogue. Before
you were born I was in politics, fighting for the independence of Kenya.
You cannot teach us history about dialogue. This is Sunday, a holy day,
and I do not want to engage in politics.

He became very angry, so Gitari was obliged to pacify the situation.

Michael Wamalwa of FORD-Kenya and leader of the opposition con-
ceded that the opposition could not criticize Musyimi, because it could
not agree among itself. Then he admitted as a Kenyan politician: “The
trouble is that everyone wants sole power.”

The Decline of Prophecy

So it was that by 2002 the rats were leaving the sinking ship of KANU
with as much state booty as they could take.69 Sadly a number of them
soon reappeared in Kibaki’s government. Kibaki himself, a Roman
Catholic, had a good record in regard to the church and politics. When
Minister of Education, he declared during the annual meeting of the
NCCK in May 1971:

A modern church is expected to be outspoken because other groups in

society must be cautious. We must have at least some organization which
34 Ben Knighton

Figure 1.2 President Moi speaking at Kitale stadium at the enthronement of Bishop
Stephen Kewasis by Archbishop Gitari on 20 July 1997

speaks up for the right of men regardless of what happens tomorrow . . . an

active organization which speaks for our problems which we face today. I
cannot think of any other organization or better place than the church to
play the role.
(Quoted in Sabar 1997:31)

In March 1984 Gitari found it refreshing to hear Kibaki as Vice-President

say, while addressing the member churches of the NCCK:

The church leaders should not spend their time praising politicians; we
have enough people to praise us. Your task is to correct us when we go
 Introduction 35

wrong and need to be reminded of the justice that God requires, and to
pray for us.
(Quoted in Gitari 1986b:125)

During a service in December 1997 to give thanks to God for Gitari’s

ministry in his two diocese, Mount Kenya East and Kirinyaga, Kibaki
assured him that “the medals of a leader are sometimes insults and false
accusations,” adding as a matter of fact, St. Andrew’s is the best theo-
logical institution in the CPK.” Such a self-denying approach did not
advance his political career at the time, since it is not one to be found in
either of Kibaki’s two predecessors or in any of his would-be successors,
who are already lining up at his political backdoor in the race for succes-
sion in 2012, if not earlier.
Faced with a much more benign, liberal, and Gikuyu president,70 the
problem for the churches has been that they lost their critical distance from
government almost as soon as he was elected. Signally, the General Secretary
of NCCK and chairman of the Ufungamano Initiative, Mutava Musyimi,
having been a resolute opponent of President Moi was anything but with
President Kibaki. Musyimi accepted high-level government appointments,
such as Chairman of the National Anti-Corruption Campaign Steering
Committee, and did not resign after the shameful hounding out of John
Githongo (Wrong 2009) and the resignation of the Director, Jane Kiragu,
in February 2004. Musyimi admitted that “the committee has been unable
to implement its mandate” amid a growing opinion that the government
was not preventing “massive looting” of public funds, and not punish-
ing those responsible, least of all government ministers (“Second Kenyan
Anti-Graft Chief Resigns” (Namibian, 21 February 2005). The rumors
that Revd Musyimi would join the ruling party were confirmed when
he stood for Gacoka, Jeremiah Nyagah’s old constituency, and won it for
Kibaki over his son, Norman Nyagah. At least he resigned his church job
six months before the election.
Now it is very difficult to say that the NCCK is politically impartial,
so the media has been paying it and the churches much less attention
in 2008. Kofi Annan, who spent an inordinately long time in Kenya
during the crisis, mediating between the two main parties searched for a
senior churchman of integrity and courage to enable a Kenyan solution,
but never found one. The current leaders are commonly regarded as
too compromised (K’Aluoch, Maurice “Chaos: Churches Blamed for
Silence” Nation 3 January 2008), which gives John Lonsdale his title
for Chapter 2. Metropolitan Archbishop, John Njue of Nyeri soon
sided with his lay member, Mwai Kibaki, and suffered a rare public
reaction from his brother Luo Archbishop, Zacchaeus Okoth (Munene,
36 Ben Knighton

Mugumo “Church Split as Poll Draws Near” Nation 16 December

2007). Bishop Wasonga was to stand yet again in 2009 for Anglican
archbishop, while his fellow Luo, Bishop Abiero, anointed Raila Odinga
for election as president (Otieno, Daniel & Kiragu, Sollo ‘Clerics Anoint
Raila for Top Seat’ Nation 29 July 2007). The Evangelical Alliance of
Kenya condemned the secret Memorandum of Understanding between
Raila Odinga and Muslim representatives, while four Luo bishops
supported it, irrespective, it seemed, of its content. Neo-Pentecostalist
clergy, sweeping aside the old suspicion of politics being dirty, stood
for President and for Parliament, Bishop Margaret Wanjiru triumphing
in Starehe for Raila Odinga who was to be seen smugly in her church
(Kavulla 2008). Gitari opposed Wanjiru’s candidature, and Pastor Pius
Muiru of Maximum Miracle Centre from bidding for the presidency:
“Bishops and other ordained church leaders should not seek elective
political positions” (Barasa, Lucas, & Thuku, Wahome “Keep Off
Politics, Gitari Tells Clergy” Nation 19 January 2007).
Gitari is acutely aware of the failure of the church to fill the void, and
when he is given a platform in the church,71 he usually emphasizes the
need to speak out, as when he spoke before Internal Security Minister, John
Michuki, a sick Kenneth Matiba, more than ten serving and retired bish-
ops, Vice-President Moody Awori, the chief guest at the centenary of the
mission station at Kahuhia in Muranga District (“Gitari Appeals to Clergy
to Keep Government on Toes” Nation 4 December 2006). Previous genera-
tions of clergymen had contributed toward the liberation of the country
(Gitari was obviously referring more to times after independence rather
than before) and the current religious leaders needed to pick up (Elijah’s)
mantle, for they had the duty of monitoring the government of the day.

“You are the conscience of the nation. Pray for the country. Keep an eye
on the Government. You must criticize it fearlessly” he said.72

. . . The church must ensure that this country is not led by chaos and con-
fusion but by the peace of God.
(Mwangi, Alex “Keep an Eye on the Govt, Gitari Tells Church”
Christian Today, 4 December 2006)

Yet Gitari does not criticize from on high, for he is very comfortable
engaging. During campaigning before the 2007 election, he delighting
in praying for all-comers who were standing as candidates at a service at
St. Mary’s, Kabete,73 for the renewal of wedding vows of a couple from
Embu he had married. It was well covered by the media on the Monday
(“Elect Trustworthy Leaders, Gitari Advises Voters” Nation 3 December
2007), but they did not relay these words from his sermon expounding
 Introduction 37

Exodus 18, where Jethro advises Moses on the four qualities to check
before choosing leaders:

We cannot tell you from the pulpit who to vote for: that is quite wrong,
but we can tell you the qualities to look for . . . we only need three
parties—and Safina (Muite’s)
i. Capable There is one MP who has never spoken in Parliament since
he was elected in 2002. You go to Parliament to represent your people.
Those who do should check their facts before they speak, yet they must
be courageous.
ii. God-Fearing Fearing God is obeying his commands, the Ten
Commandments. One is “thou shalt not kill!” Who killed Tom Mboya?
JM Kariuki? Robert Ouko? they were people who had been elected.
Showing capability raises up enemies. “Bless this our land and Nation!”74
The nation cannot be blessed if the leaders are mad. “Thou shalt not
steal!” And there is a lot of stealing going on.
iii. Trustworthy We must have people we can trust to collect taxes.
I hope we will come up with a good constitution after the elections.
iv. Incorruptible Bribery is a two-way traffic. Both the giver and the
receiver are corrupt.
Elections are very important. “Seek and ye shall find!” was Jesus’ most
comprehensive statement on prayer. We had to struggle to remove the
one-party leadership that was bringing us problems. An owner of a shamba
(cultivated plot) complained to his priest: “Why did you not pray for my
shamba?” “This shamba does not need prayer, but manure.” You must
seek! Don’t stay at home on 27 December. Uganda allowed Amin to rule;
the consequences were terrible for the church as well. Make use of your
democratic right, go and vote and do your homework first! . . . God bless
you as you go for elections!

All four candidates were still listening at the end, before going outside for
their media interviews.
Paul Muite returned for Holy Communion with George Nyamweya,
the President’s campaign organizer, who had forged a political reconcilia-
tion the previous night over how much funding the President’s campaign
chest would allow Safina, a different political party but one which would
support Kibaki for President. It is most likely that the main purpose of the
Anglo-Leasing government procurement scandal was to fill that chest years
before, which explained why John Githongo hit a wall when he fulfilled
his job by investigating it. Such is the curious mixture of religion and
politics in Kenya. At least on this occasion the church was not succumb-
ing to immorality, when temptation abounds. Before the 1997 elections,
Gitari told me that a reformist a political party had already mentioned
had offered to make a donation of millions of shillings to the church, if
38 Ben Knighton

Gitari would endorse the party. Kenyans in 2007 were convinced that a
number of churches had taken such bribes in a ripe season for fund-raising.
In this way the people of God could benefit too from the mammoth,
national corruption, aided and abetted by externally funded NGOs granting
cash to each of about 200 political parties that tried to form.
Gitari cannot easily be made out as a hypocrite. He maintained his
clear dictum throughout: that clergy should not take a party-political
role or government post. If they should definitely be called of God in
that direction, then they must resign their ecclesiastical appointment first
without any expectation of return (Gitari 1986b:138).

“Our work is not to take over the presidency, but to be the light of the
world.“

A Church leader could possibly take over for a short while only, in a tran-
sitional capacity, Archbishop Gitari suggested. “But I can do a better job
as an archbishop than as a politician.”
(“Kenya Primate Predicts President Moi’s Kingdom Will Crumble”
Anglican Communion News Service 21 July 1997)

In May 2002 after telling Moi to resign from the chair of KANU and
announcing his forthcoming retirement (“Primate of Kenya Announces
Retirement after Calling on Moi to Quit” Anglican Journal, 1 September
2002), delegations from his Mwea parliamentary constituency visited
him at home, requesting him to be their candidate. There can be little
doubt that if he had, he would have won, for standing up for ordinary
people there in the past. “God called me be to be a Priest and not a
Politician” was the reply (Gitari 2005:iii).
As a priest, Gitari could not do everything, depending more on the power
of story than of command. He did not leave a perfect church behind him, but
a better administered one with a brand new constitution (Anglican Church
of Kenya 2002), which the politicians had not managed to achieve after the
lead he gave them. What he could not pass on was his undoubted courage,
which he so much wanted his new bishops to take (Gitari 1996b:131–35).
In 2008 he was lamenting that “the State and the Church have gone to bed
together . . . the Church has been compromised . . . the conscience of society
has been wounded.” Admitting that church leaders took politicians’ “loot”
of late, he remained optimistic of the potential of the churches in recom-
mending that those leaders should return the money and others preach
against ethnic partiality and “the evil of greed”. “They must stand firm on
what is good even if it means death because that is what is required of them”
(Thatiah, Peter “Archbishop Gitari: The Conscience of Society is Wounded”
Standard 8 July 2008; Moberly 2006: 147). The question remains is Gitari’s
 Introduction 39

model, of which Julius Gathogo writes in Chapter 5, the one needed by

church and state now?
The book will not give a clear answer to the future, inviting you to
choose. Paul Gifford’s hypothesis in Chapter 8 is that whatever effect the
churches had before on Kenyan politics, this has been dissipated in an
increasing involvement in development that has made them all indistin-
guishable from the woes of their country. In contrast to this Afropessimism,
Galia Sabar, who has published more on the Church of the Province of
Kenya than anyone, came to this unambiguous conclusion:

Under Moi, the Church sometimes on its own, sometimes with other
churches and civil society organizations, provided virtually the only avail-
able public stage for protesting against the government’s abuse of power
and discussing the need to change the rules of the political game. It drew
the government, accustomed to secrecy and silence, into a discourse it
did not want. It actively encouraged people to know their rights and
fight for them. It monitors the vote-counting, documented evictions and
land-seizure, and brought to public attention other forms of violence and
corruption. It led the struggle for human rights and multipartyism. It gave
succour and support to political detainees and to persons thrown out of
their homes. In its words and actions it taught over and over again that
politics is no dirtier than the people who engage in it, that the churches
had a Christian obligation to engage in politics so as to create a just
society, and that citizens had the responsibility to participate in the politics
that shaped their earthly lives.
(Sabar 2002:291)

She continues, arguing that the church models democratic conduct, but
that is less convincing even in 2008 against a generally freer Kenya with
a prospering middle-class. In Chapter 4 of this volume, she details the
political contribution of the churches up to the 1992 elections. Is this
still their a true picture or have they all changed? Are the churches accu-
rately portrayed by their faded generation of prophets, or by their post-
modern successors only too ready to enjoy the politico-socio-economic
benefits of leadership, as Lonsdale exemplifies by the former Provost of
All Saints’ Cathedral in Chapter 2? If the latter, then Chabal and Daloz
(1999:70–73) are right in saying that the churches, like civil society
are insufficient for reform, even if some culpability in the postelection
violence is being recognized: “Clergymen admitted to blessing warriors
to engage in violence and inviting politicians to disseminate hate mes-
sages that incited people against members of various communities.”
(“Clergyman Own Up to Partisan Role in Post-Election Chaos” Nation
23 August 2008).
40 Ben Knighton

Ranger (2008:19–27) identifies African churches’ lack of positive

content for democratic society as a major obstacle. They face crises of
violence, poverty, and morality, and are too often sucked into them.
Though commerce has grown apace under Kibaki, Kenya has produced
a shocking outburst of premeditated violence, which the church had
come too close to stop. Can it win back its integrity through another
wave of brave leaders, or have hierarchical bishops had their day? Ngunyi
(1995:152) argues that, “Those institutions with more authoritative
systems of governance, lower involvement in local level development,
less autonomy from parent organisations and more socially dependent
leadership were more susceptible to political patronage.” Yet how do
more democratic leaders with more involvement in development stand
out against general trends? The mass media have now identified the self-
ish materialism that is adding to the 44,000 churches associated with the
EAK, which itself says, “Churches are coming up at an alarming rate”
(“How Preachers Fleece their Poor Flock” Nation 10 October 2008). The
Registrar of Societies says it is receiving 60 applications a month to start a
church, when 10,000 denominations have already been registered, many
by people with little theological knowledge or training who want to make
money. Academics are reporting beliefs and practices detailed by Gifford
(2004) in the prophet-churches of Ghana,75 so unrecognizable by Gitari’s
model. He would mark their shepherds down as doomed, and the gov-
ernment is asking his successors to help curb the proliferation of sects.
After a serious lapse from 2003 in the churches acting as “the con-
science of the nation” in Gitari’s view, in February 2009 they, alongside
representatives of other religions, did confront the President and the
Prime Minister in a national event. The Inter-Religious Forum (moved
by the NCCK) organized a prayer meeting and fund-raising, ironically
for two disasters occasioned by greed in which 160 people were burnt
to death: In the first, the management of a supermarket allegedly locked
the exits when a fire broke out, to prevent looting (Ombati, Cyrus “More
Nakumatt Staff Grilled” Standard 6 February 2009), and in the second,
poor people opened an overturned tanker to steal its load of petrol as
someone lit a cigarette.

The Church versus State wars broke out, with the men of the cloth harshly
rebuking President Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga “for abetting
corruption”.

Threatening mass action, the religious leaders told Kibaki and Raila to
their faces that Kenyans were disillusioned by their reluctance to punish
perceived friends who are “corrupt and greedy”.
 Introduction 41

In a bold move not seen among the clergy in recent years, they regretted
that while the public expected the two to punish lawbreakers, the princi-
pals were doing the exact opposite.
(Ndegwa, Alex & Jamah, Ally “You have Failed Us, Kibaki, Raila Told”
Standard 20 February 2009)

To loud cheers and wild applause from the crowd, the “blistering attack”,
televised live, was led by the Anglican Archbishop, Benjamin Nzimbi,
followed by the chairmen of the EAK, the Supreme Council of Kenya
Muslims, and the Hindu Council in an unprecedented show of religious
unity against the Grand Coalition government. It was only spoilt by the
failure of the RC Archbishop, John Njue, to take his place, and after-
wards he disowned his church’s involvement to accusations of tribalism.

Table 1.1 Religious affiliations in Kenya, 1970–2025

Kenyans’ affiliations % Number % %

Year 1970 Mid-2000 Mid-2000 Mid-2025
Christians 63.5 23,859,839 79.3 82
Unaffiliated 10.6 1,380,462 5.1 2.9
Roman Catholics 16.8 7,000,000 23.3 25.6
Independents 14.3 6,607,000 22.0 24
Protestants 14.5 6,375,000 21.2 24.6
Anglicans 5.1 3,000,000 10.0 10.8
Orthodox 2.2 740,000 2.5 3.1
Marginal 0.0 30,000 0.1 0.1
Doubly-affiliated 0.0 –1,274,635 –4.2 –9.1
Trans-Megabloc Groupings
Evangelicals 14.8 6,750,000 22.4 25.2
Pentecostals/Charismatics 8.9 8,350,000 27.8 30
Great Commission Christians 10.0 3,693,709 12.3 14
Ethnoreligionists 28.1 3,461,629 11.5 8.4
Muslims 6.4 2,187,002 7.3 7.4
Baha’is 1.1 308,292 1.0 1.3
Hindus 0.3 145,988 0.5 0.5
Jains 0.3 55,317 0.2 0.2
Non-Religious 0.0 32,003 0.1 0.1
Sikhs 0.1 27,518 0.1 0.2
Jews 0.0 1,786 0.0 0.0
Zoroastrians 0.0 728 0.0 0.0
Buddhists 0.0 271 0.0 0.0

Total Population 11,498,062 30,080,000 30,080,000 41,756,000

Source: Adapted from Barrett, Kurian, and Johnson 2001:III, 426

42 Ben Knighton

At the time the public believed that members of the government were
benefiting from a rise in untaxed remuneration, the sale of a plush hotel,
the disappearance of millions of liters of fuel, and a huge scam under the
Ministry of Agriculture that more than doubled the price of maize-meal,
while 10,000,000 starved and the promises of reform in the National
Accord, which had ended the political violence the year before, remained
unfulfilled. The President’s main reply to the religious leaders was: “It’s
not that you are holy and you are not guilty at all” (Makan, Jami &
Barasa, Lucas “You’ve Failed Kenya, Kibaki and Raila Told” Nation 19
February 2009). What the event does show is that the prophetic impulse
of Protestantism in Kenya is still alive and kicking, if not entirely well.
Not taking media reports at face value, I conclude the book with
Chapter 9, which charts the rise of an NRM, trading violence with the
state, but gathering political force as the church is nonplussed by the
ethnicity into which it wants to plug. Paddy Benson, recognizing this
sharply, puts forward a theological solution in Chapter 3. David Gitari
had assumed that modernity was the whole future for Kenya, but this
has not been evidenced since he has left office. It is not that Muingiki are
retreating from modernity, for they would attempt to control it under a
new solidarity. The trouble is that their discipline operates by command
enforced by violence, and they are not Christian, whatever the manifold
conversions of their leaders. The churches have not tackled the burgeon-
ing problems of youth poverty, so the nation is not redeemed, however
many souls confess Christ (see Table 1.1).

Notes
1. The influence of John Mbiti (1969:2) here is still enormous: “Wherever
the African is, there is his religion; . . . if he is a politician he takes it to
the house of parliament.”
2. No less than 34 out of 95 British colonial governors in the twentieth cen-
tury were the sons of Anglican clergy alone (Nicolson & Hughes 1975).
If clerical progeny were not to take the cloth like their fathers, then they
were financially and socially obliged to make the most of their unusu-
ally privileged education at Anglican foundations, such as Marlborough
College whose chapel is festooned with the names of imperial agents, and
find an expanding profession. As with the sons of the Victorians (Brown
1961), reactions against the paternal faith were many and varied.
3. For instance, Graham Greene (1951:14) was repeatedly drawn to colo-
nial service in Africa by reading Rider Haggard, who was highly popular
among boys at the turn of the twentieth century. For British motives in
going to empire, see Rich (1990).
 Introduction 43

4. A Protectorate of Uganda was declared in 1894 and a Protectorate

of East Africa the following year. These declarations more than any
other brought about obvious change on the ground throughout these
expansive “territories,” parts of which took decades to come under civil
administration.
5. The strategy of the Anglican mission to encompass both Luyia and
Luo by basing their work between them at Maseno chiefly resulted
in antagonism between their clans (Kuhn 2008:25–7). The result
has been a multiplicity of self-insufficient diocese, reflecting these
divisions.
6. The Alliance High School was located on the large tract of land owned
by the Church of Scotland at Thogoto in leafy Kiambu and was the
producer of the political elite under its legendary CMS headmaster,
Carey Francis, though his worries about the depth of the Christian char-
acter of his products was well placed. “Carey Francis made the Alliance
High School one of the leading secondary schools not only in Africa
but also in what was then called the British Colonial Empire” (Mann
2003). Though he had his detractors in CMS, he was immensely loved
and admired by the elite he had equipped, and many of the cabinet
turned out for his funeral at All Saints’ Cathedral. At a diocesan event
in Kirinyaga, the Hon. Jeremiah Nyagah lauded a whole litany of
Protestant missionaries, not least Francis. In a country where a nation-
state was an exotic hybrid, they taught their pupils to understand it,
even though he said, “I dislike all politics and most political missionar-
ies [WE Owen was the one he knew best]. Yet so wickedly unjust is
some of the legislation here that we must do something to stand up for
Africans politically” (quoted in Greaves 1969:87). Obadiah Kariuki, the
first Gikuyu bishop, who was an old boy of the Alliance before Francis,
wrote, “He helped the churches to raise their voices against injustice,
and to bring healing and peace to our peoples” (quoted in Greaves
1969:181).
7. The United Kikuyu Language Committee proposed the adoption of
the Westermann system, recommended by the International Institute
of African Languages and Culture, and was gazetted by the govern-
ment in 1934 with two extra vowels, “i” and “u” marked with a tilde
(Barlow 1951:v–vii). Despite various objections, this is the one gener-
ally used when publishing Gikuyu texts. Gakaara wa Wanjau, however,
insisted on doubling long vowels. The committee failed to follow their
orthography in using the Anglicized “Kikuyu”, instead of the “gikuyu”
in their translations. Church texts still predominate among publica-
tions in Gikuyu. Indeed, apart from one multivolume work of Ngugi
wa Thiongo (2004–2007) none is to be found in the Text Book Centre
in Nairobi. Accents are regrettably omitted here in the interests of wide
publication, and ethnic names, like Gikuyu, are used in their uninflected
form.
44 Ben Knighton

8. Though self-interested, John Anderson (1971:9) is right to point out tha

the widespread formal, political implications of education, which before
nationalization was overwhelmingly mission-run, issued in the
gradual development of popular political consciousness and party orga-
nizations able to bring mass pressure to bear on the colonial authorities.
A remarkably sophisticated pattern of political reaction developed,
including the creation and influence of trade unions, efforts to gain a
footing in the legislative councils, appeals on moral grounds through
the church, appeals against injustice in the courts, and the utilization of
the whole apparatus of petition, negotiation, and democratic election,
which Europeans appeared to emphasize so much in their own political
aspirations. Throughout this development, formal education played a
central role. Formal education of the European type was essential for
Africans to make contact with and to understand colonial authority,
and also to develop and organize local feelings into party-controlled
mechanisms able to challenge colonial power.
9. John Anderson (1971:11–13) contrasts the missionary approach adversely
in Central Province as against Western Kenya, but most mainstream mis-
sionaries were more liberal and patient than Dr. Arthur. Perhaps the most
significant difference lay in local responses to mission education. While the
Luo came to be happier to have mission education for its own sake, for the
Gikuyu it was much more of a political tool (Ranger 1965), leading to a
greater emphasis on independent schools as opposed to churches.
10. Ellis & Haar (2004:9) argue that, “throughout Africa’s history religion
has served as a means of regulating change in both individuals and col-
lectivities, and continues to do so.”
11. The Gikuyu name for the East African Revival was simply uhonokia,
salvation, which was understood in a highly personal and spiritualized
way, but with indisputable social and political implications.
12. This is where I part company with Ellis and Haar’s (2004:4) belief in
a widespread perception in Africa that “all power has its ultimate origin
in the spirit world.” To be sure it is there, but Kenya is rather different
in having deep influences from Cushitic and Nilotic cultures, which do
not emphasize ancestors and spirits so much as the Bantu. More like the
Bible, they emphasize divinity and humanity more, thus giving more
space to human freedom and moral responsibility. Similarly their asso-
ciation of religion with the invisible and supernatural, defining it with
Tylor as a belief in spirits and including magic (2004:3) does not do
justice to the regularities of religion in a created order.
13. The inveterate dissident whom I interviewed had been so often tortured
that he was at last robbed of his sound mind.
14. Much of Kenyatta’s political activity before they were closed early in the
Emergency revolved around the independent schools attached to indepen-
dent Gikuyu churches (Kangethe 1981; Knighton 2005b). Odinga assisted
Legio Maria to register as a society in 1960, so they in turn supported
 Introduction 45

Odinga’s Kenya People’s Union when it was formed in his Luo constituency
in 1966 (Ngunyi 1995:135).
15. See Kuhn (2008:120f ). It is astonishing that the dictionary definition
gives exactly the opposite association for siasa (politics): orderliness, gen-
tleness, carefulness (Inter-Territorial Language Committee 1939:428).
We can only suppose that their Swahili assistant was a would-be politi-
cian who did not want the Europeans to have a low opinion of African
politics!
16. Lonsdale (1999) uses the term “liberal” ten times in “Kikuyu
Christianities” of the mainstream Protestant missionaries and their
churches that they instituted, and is correct to qualify it as “a relative
term.” Throup (1995:143) is incorrect to state that, “Most clergy and lay
workers of the Church Missionary Society and the Church of Scotland
Mission had belonged to the conservative evangelical tradition.” Later
products of St. Paul’s United Theological College came not to see
themselves as Evangelicals when taken to be American fundamentalists,
but, to the British observer, easily fit Bebbington’s (1995) four marks of
Evangelicalism: conversionism, activism, biblicism, and crucicentrism.
Certain traits of Conservative Evangelicalism are to be found, but not
self-consciously as they were in Britain after the battles between Liberal
and Conservative Evangelicals, not least in the CMS (Knighton 1990:I,
406–10).
17. This observation is replicated in Kenya (Lonsdale in Chapter 2
and Gifford in Chapter 9 of this volume; Ellis & Haar 2004:209;
Blunt 2004), in Ghana (Meyer 1992; 1996), and elsewhere (Ellis &
Haar 1998; Clough & Mitchell 2001), including nineteenth-century
Germany where demons were stronger than God in people’s daily lives.
Donal Cruise O’Brien (2000:522) quotes Weber as saying, “You don’t
need to go to Africa to find the devil.” Gitari, on the other hand, will not
allow politicians to wield evil power, for the power to rule comes from
God. Therefore he is not a dualist, though many who confess Christ are,
including various Evangelicals and Pentecostals, but Ellis (2007:247) is
wrong to cast either the Christian or Islamic faith as dualist, since their
contrasts between God and Satan are not “absolute,” when Satan is a
creature of God (Job 1:6).
18. In 1988, Timothy Njoya, under Presbyterian church government, was
transferred to Nyeri and not given a pastorship, but left to the mercies
of the Special Branch and the Nyeri District Security Committee. “Only
church leaders have the freedom to criticize the government without
risking detention” (Throup 1995:156, 159).
19. This is admitted by political scientists who stay with Africa and do not
fall into Afripessimism, for example, Baker (2000), Chabal and Daloz
(1999), and Villalón and Huxtable (1998).
20. The problem consists mostly in politics being approached as though it were
a universal science, free from epistemological considerations. “In what is
given to us as universal, necessary, obligatory, what place is occupied
46 Ben Knighton

by whatever is singular, contingent, and the product of arbitrary

constraints?” (Michel Foucault quoted in Bernauer & Carrette 2004:8).
21. Kobia (2003) well represents the priority of society from an African
perspective, with his finger on the root of disjunction in African politics,
which the Western state-spectacled eye simply does not and cannot see
(Gifford 1998:9). “The coming of the nation-state was not only a false
start in Africa but a crime against Africa” (Kobia 2003:58). Constitutions
are alien because nation-states are alien (2003:77) to the point of tyranny
(2003:101). Political development is mapped out for Africa “without
any criticism of the models of the nation-state form itself ” (2003:78).
However, when he advocates “a new way of doing politics in Africa as
people recognize the irrelevance and unpopularity of the nation-state”
(2003:108), he goes beyond his compatriot Gitari who seeks to establish
it in justice. Is this an example of Christian mission imposing recogni-
tion of the West “as the sole center of meaning” (Young 1994:281)?
22. In his attack on the Western philosophical tradition, Foucault dissolves
the boundaries between politics and theology produced by modernity
(Turner 1991).
23. Kenyan scholars are prepared to be more open about ethnic political
features (Oucho 2008), when not saturated by the political correctness of
Western academia. It is an obvious, if far from sufficient, explanatory fac-
tor (Salih & Markakis 1998). Kenyans talk far more easily of their ethnic
culture than of their national culture; though religion is but one aspect of
culture, they talk more readily of their Christian faith than their traditional
rites. The logic of these generalities is that the Christian religion usually
functions as a mask rather than as the solution for ethnic loyalty that the
Bible alone potentially is.
24. A Kenyan, Gideon Mutiso (1975:284), writes on Kenyan politics from a
secular social scientific approach, but by the end includes primary mate-
rial that betrays the Christian influence in what he is examining: “My son
Noah . . . I turned myself into myself and was Jesus.”
25. Hallpike (2002:1) argues that the “characteristics of the modern state are
antithetical to those of tribal societies.”
26. Internal Muslim politics of the North Eastern and Coast Provinces of
Kenya lie outside the scope of this book, not least because their context
lies beyond Kenya towards Asia (Simpson & Kresse 2007).
27. Ngunyi (1995:124f, 145–9), for one, emphasizes “the salience of ethnic-
ity,” when examining religious institutions and political liberalization.
This increased the explanatory, indeed predictive power of his argu-
ment: “a protracted ethnic showdown may ensue,” as indeed it has,
1997–2008, with no genuine resolution in sight apart from the ghastly
lessons given.
28. Kobia (1993a) tries to demonstrate a few of the possible mechanisms by
which the profit-maximizing goals of the West combine with the politics
of the belly to privatize the value of Africa’s labor and natural resources.
 Introduction 47

29. Carey Francis noticed this, which did not endear him to his fellow
missionaries: “So often Christianity is made to appear an affair for ignorant
and childish people” (Greaves 1969:93). Similarly the Karamojong regard
the Christian church as “a religion of children” (Knighton 2005a:76).
30. The good works of the Rampleys and the Mukubas are connected, for
Rampley answered the invitation of the Save the Children International
Union to a conference in Geneva in 1931 with enthusiasm: “they wanted
to work for the ‘arousing of native interest and native help, and thus
gradually bringing into being a national movement for the care and
protection of children’” (Eglantyne Jebb quoted in Marshall 2004:273).
31. Thus Mukuba does not fit neatly into Bayart’s (2000:261) “anonymous
legion of Africa catechists . . . [et al.], who contributed mightily to the
concrete form of clientilism taken by the colonial ‘rhizome state’.”
32. He also taught in Thika High School 1964–1965 after graduating (Diocese
of Kirinyaga 1995a:28; Church of the Province of Kenya 1997:36). Paul
Muite of the Law Society of Kenya and Parliament well remembers being
taught by him. Gitari’s prayers and laying on of hands at St. Mary’s,
Kabete, for his candidacy (and others) on 2 December 2007 did not result
in re-election for a fourth term for Kikuyu constituency, however:
We thank you for those who have led this country, and now we have
come to this crucial time of election for the tenth Parliament. May
elections be free and fair . . . for those aspiring to be MPs, we pray,
Lord, that you be with them, you care for them, that they will be able
to communicate . . . Help people not be violent, until the [result] of
this year’s election result be known. We pray that justice be done.
33. PAFES was renamed the Fellowship of Christian Unions (FOCUS) and
joined the politically conservative Evangelical Alliance of Kenya, directly
opposed to Gitari’s later ministry. It was in PAFES that Gitari met and
mentally and spiritually bonded with Rene and Catherine Padilla. Rene
was Latin American traveling secretary for Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador,
and Peru (Padilla, personal communication 15 October 2008).
34. “We all agree that he has outstanding abilities. It would be a very great
pity if he had to leave with only half his diploma completed . . . he is a
first class man.” Trinity College Archives, Bristol; Revd John Stafford
Wright, Principal, Tyndale Hall to Dr. Oliver Barclay, General Secretary,
Inter-Varsity Fellowship, 9 February 1966.
35. The choir of PCEA Gathaithi composed a protest song, Mai ni Maruru,
meaning the water is bitter (Ngunyi 1995:135).
36. As with the early Gikuyu converts, Gitari used the Biblical prophecies to
argue that a new epistemological and political era was at hand. Religious
thought was experimental and embodied, not dogmatic and abstract.
Despite Gitari’s theological education, he was not interested in debating
contending theologies, so much as finding theological permission to try
“new forms of social power” (Peterson 2004:25, 35).
48 Ben Knighton

37. Gitari (1986b:136) himself later quoted David Bosch approvingly,

“Prophecy will inevitably lead to controversy and unpopularity.”
38. Whether it was a blunder by the security forces under James Kanyotu or
an intentional assassination has still not been established, but J. M.’s family
blame the state (“JM Kin Sue State over his Murder” Nation 2 June 2000),
which itself at long last opened an inquiry (Kago, Tony “Assassination
of JM to be Probed Afresh” Nation 4 June 2004). If it were a blunder,
Kenyatta could be expected to be more tolerant of sermons on the sanc-
tity of human life. Though born in Kirinyaga, Kanyotu might have been
seeking an implicit absolution, by giving a record KSh. 420,000 to build
Kerugoya Cathedral, which gave him a vote of thanks despite its probable
Goldenberg connections (Diocese of Kirinyaga 1995a:23).
39. Gitari once said in camera at Kabare, that “democracy is a disaster for the
church,” in terms of its internal dynamics. Though ithe Anglican con-
stitution has adequate provision for synodical government at provincial
and diocesan levels (Anglican Church of Kenya 2002) as well as councils,
boards, and committees, at the diocesan level and below, the members of
these frequently allow the bishop more power than the constitution allows.
The opposite error was seen when the whole diocesan synod would deter-
mine a new bishop in a sitting. This allowed campaigning, and candidates
promising rewards to supporters, including ordination without meaning-
ful training, which then packed the house of clergy. It must be remembered
that the church virtually always consists of a people called out of society as
custodians of certain beliefs and traditions. For a large body to elect anyone
would undermine the church, which is not there to replicate society, but
to leaven it. If, as salt, the disciples of Christ lose their savor, they have lost
their reason for being in the world (Matthew 5:13, a verse used in Gitari
1986b:135; Luke 14:34). Therefore, there must be greater discipline in the
church, but much dictatorial, monarchical behavior will leave it little to say
to authoritarian or repressive governments (Mwangi 2008).
40. The guests of honor for the next two harambees in 1983 and 1985 were
Isaiah Mathenge, close friend of Kenyatta and founder-member of the
Democratic Party, the Provincial Commissioner for Eastern Province, now
reputed to be the largest landowner in Nyeri with 10,000 acres besides
ranches in Laikipia and properties wherever he served, and Kenneth
Matiba, who had also gone to Kangaru High School, then Minister for
Transport and Communications, owner of hotels and schools, and presi-
dential candidate from 1992 (Diocese of Kirinyaga 1995b:14f.).
41. Had Moi listened to Gitari’s sermon two weeks before, he would not
have been so surprised. His Provincial Commissioner was present, but
insisted on countering the sermon with a message of “peace, peace, when
there is no peace,” which was published by the press to the exclusion of
the sermon, so there was no doubt in the bishop’s warning:

You may be a member of the armed forces in the military, air force
or navy. If you discover that some of your colleagues are planning to
 Introduction 49

change the government through the unconstitutional use of military

action, you must not keep quiet.
(Gitari 1996b:41)

42. Appointments on the basis of ethnic discrimination meant that the state
could not be emancipated from society, for the Civil Service was con-
strained “by the dynamics of social pressure,” making the state “simulta-
neously illusory and substantial . . . unable even to domesticate internal
violence” (Chabal & Daloz 1999:5, 10f ).
43. Nyagah was given this unusual tribute when he died by the Kenya
Broadcasting Corporation: “Mzee Jeremiah is considered by Kenyans
to be the most humble and honest Cabinet Minister and politician to
ever grace Kenya’s political landscape.” (Kanyongo, Wangari & Kamau,
Rose “Jeremiah Nyagah Dies” KBC 10 April 2008). The disempowered
moiety in Mbeere would beg to differ when faced with the Nyagah
dynasty for half a century, but Nyagah made relatively few enemies
nationally and internationally.
44. “Where there are openings, Christians should find their way into every
aspect of the nation’s life, including business, education and politics”
(Gitari 1986b:135).
45. “Without fear or favour”, words from Britain’s judicial oath, appears
to be one of Gitari’s contributions to the constitutional review
process in the oaths actually taken by the President and the Prime
Minister on ascending to office in 2008.
46. The Africa Inland Church made political capital from Muge’s alienation
of KANU. At the same time, the African Independent Pentecostal
Church of East Africa (an old AIC, not a Pentecostalist church),
the Association of Baptist Churches, the Full Gospel Church, the
African Gospel Church, the Redeemed Gospel Church, and the
United Pentecostal Church all dissociated themselves from the NCCK
for presidential patronage (Throup 1995:151f ). American-instituted
churches found a home in the Evangelical Fellowship of Kenya (EFK),
founded in 1975 but revived in the late 1980s to counteract the radi-
calism of NCCK, which became much more pronounced when Sam
Kobia replaced John Kamau, the nation-builder, when he declared in
his maiden speech, “political issues are an integral part of our witness
and mission” (Ngunyi 1995:136, 160f ). John Karanja (2008:70) gives
an ethnic reading of EFK as a “feeble Luo-Kalenjin device,” whose only
theological consistency lies in support for authority. He might be right,
when the Kenya Assemblies of God (KAG), as a Gikuyu-dominated
denomination, did not join EFK but also opposed ODM’s dalliance
with Muslims; see Chesworth Chapter 6. Its church building near
Eldoret was burnt to the ground by a Kalenjin mob on New Year’s Day,
2008. As the Evangelical Alliance of Kenya (EAK), it is the umbrella
organization for many Pentecostalist churches. For Gitari they were
always the fracture in a united religious front to politics.
50 Ben Knighton

47. These demands were set before Gitari’s ministry at the beginning of
independence:
African politicians will want to see the Church remain separate from
the state and preoccupy itself entirely with religious matters . . . whatever
advice churchmen give politicians should be given privately or regard-
less of faith. The new states would prefer that political parties, trade
unions and civic organizations should be the ones to speak publicly on
political matters.
(Mboya 1963:23)
48. See Benson, Chapter 3 in this volume.
49. Gitari makes Africans be morally responsible for corruption, while Revd
Samuel Kobia, then General Secretary of the All Africa Conference of
Churches whom he invited to a graduation at St. Andrew’s, Kabare,
tends to shift the blame to the West (Kobia 2003:75, 80). The British
taught corruption back in the Second World War more than either side
expected: “Almost everyone here, black, white, brown, in and out of
uniform, is on the make . . . Nairobi is full of controls and controllers;
the black market flourishes; stealing and corruption abound” (Francis
quoted in Greaves 1969:82).
50. The tower-block in the centre of Nairobi is named paradoxically after
Moi’s hegemonic project in the “footsteps” of Kenyatta, Nyayo. The
three keywords of Nyayo party dogma are proclaimed as unity, love,
and peace, themselves deeply indebted to Christian teaching (Benson
1993; 1995:177–9). It is misleading to characterize politics as ever being
actually driven by this policy for which Gitari and the NCCK gave the
content (National Council of Churches of Kenya 1983), for no idea or
principle provides the motivation. Nyayo is itself the key term (Gitari
1998:13).
51. The Weekly Review (12 January 1990:33–35) reflected why the mass
media had given more coverage to Njoya’s sermon, than to the Vice-
President’s justification of one-party rule, arguing that Eastern Europe
now revealed the bankruptcy of the single-party state. Clearly Njoya was
moving with the times and was not speaking out of his own self-interest.
Gitari (1997:20) also saw prophetic significance in regimes toppling in
eastern Europe, especially Communism only holding sway in Russia for
75 years.
52. It is noteworthy that these four oft-recurring names did not coordinate
their political pronouncements more, especially the three Anglican
bishops. With these three, ethnic considerations appear to the fore: Muge
was “a stalwart opponent of Kikuyu power in and out of the church,” even
if he had to be helped out of a local political tight spot by Gitari visiting
his Nandi District Commissioner (Throup 1995:148f, 161), but they
differed on reporting a meeting with Mwakenya to the authorities and
the issue of a one-party state, for which Gitari, supported by Okullu, was
denounced by President Moi in Kirinyaga on 10 May 1990. Gitari once
 Introduction 51

had Njoya to preach in a diocesan service at his cathedral in Kerugoya,

but evidence of the prophets honoring one another is thin, which could
be due to the clerical ego. Compared with the Roman Catholics, it was
the lack of organizational unity, which attracted state retribution (Throup
1995:161), but also greater publicity and public admiration.
53. If Pentecostalism is included under the head of Evangelicalism, as Freston
does, contesting the ruling system is rare indeed despite participation in
party politics: “Pentecostals almost always make politics subservient to
proselytism” (Maxwell 2006:220); “We also honour the great by contrib-
uting to make them greater. Add to greatness” (Duncan-Williams quoted
by Gifford 2004:63). These statements, when applied to pastors of the
prophet-churches, are hardly a threat to political leaders.
54. Again, in the use of expository preaching and the importance of applica-
tion, Gitari (1996b:11) makes explicit acknowledgement to John Stott,
who led the first mission to the University of Nairobi, which he orga-
nized, as well as Martin Luther King.
55. In September 1988 Vice-President Karanja claimed in response to
Gitari’s “merely a rubber stamp” jibe at a KANU conference, “some of
the clergy are frustrated politicians trying to come out,” and President
Moi termed the CPK, “The Church of the Politics of Kenya” (quoted in
Sabar 2002:209).
56. Gitari’s role in meddling contrasts greatly with the gruff Thomas Becket,
who changed from pursuing the King’s interests to the church’s material
interests, and started excommunicating Henry II’s supporters. Because of
Becket’s intransigence, the Pope threatened to excommunicate the whole
of England. Gitari was reticent even to allow claims for charitable relief
on import duty on church vehicles in case it compromised his position
with the government.
57. Njuno was the brother of Revd. Titus Ngotho Njuno, a maverick
clergyman who had known Gitari from boyhood and tried to take him to
court over the issue of women priests, whom Gitari wanted to ordain.
58. A heavy steel blade commonly used in agriculture and forestry. A local
KANU chairman has always been believed to have been behind the
event. In 1976 Gitari had complained outspokenly that party elections
at Kiini were not free and fair, because membership cards were only
being sold to a few. Kenyatta nullified the elections and when they were
repeated, James Njiru lost the branch chairmanship to John Gachie,
who had been detained in prison over the issue (Diocese of Kirinyaga
1995b:14).
59. For the power of story in Kenyan politics, see Gitari and Knighton 2001
and Benson 1995.
60. Ali Mazrui had called it the “second liberation struggle” (Gruchy
1995:178ff ). Jeffrey Haynes (1999:14) claimed it was a trend to democ-
ratization in the “third world” as a whole, stimulated by international,
transnational, and domestic pressure fuelled by globalization. It made Sam
Kobia (1993a) very optimistic about Africa. Of course the end of the Cold
52 Ben Knighton

War and the collapse of one-party states in Eastern European was a major
factor (Gifford 1998:14; Gruchy 1995:193), but in Kenya change was
not initiated by politicians rightly interpreting the times, but because their
authoritarian defenses had been breached by clergy and churches, who
spoke for the Kenya public as an alternative political vehicle, and whose
active membership was far greater than that of the political parties.
61. In order to promote local participation, he asked a meeting of diocesan
clergy and church-workers in Kutus for suggestions for a name; ACK was
proposed on the grounds that it made the church sound less provincial.
62. Being Dean of the Province and not yet Archbishop did not prevent Gitari
contesting power directly. He invited the Minister of Education, Joseph
Kamotho, to the graduation at St. Andrew’s College of Theology and
Development, Kabare, in November 1996, when the government was pro-
posing the registration of all religious organizations, a requirement that the
old Protestant churches had pre-existed. Gitari’s message to the minister
was, “We do not want it!” After that the bill was quietly dropped.
63. Even Gikuyu literati used to write, “What is better, money or land? Is it
not land?” (Peterson 2003b:91). Land questions were the prime source
of Gikuyu suspicions (Maher 1938:17), and the Kenyan hunger for land
has only increased with the population (Juma & Ojwang 1996; Heyer
2005). Ellis & Haar (2004:106) call the events of the 1990s straightfor-
ward “ethnic cleansing.”
64. Involvement for AICs in Western Kenya remained controversial (Kuhn
2008:132f ).
65. The dispersing mob flooded Kirinyaga Road roundabout as I drove
round it with my family, disconsolately throwing a broken paving slab
toward my windscreen.
66. In the enthronement at All Saints’ Cathedral on 12 January 1997 an Anglican
bishop from elsewhere in Africa prayed: “Give us boldness to preach the
gospel in all the world, and fearlessly condemn injustice, lawlessness and
violence in our midst.” The General Secretary of the WCC, Konrad Raiser,
prayed (in part), “Guide the leaders of this country into the way of Justice,
Love, Truth, Peace and Unity.” The General Secretary of the NCCK, Mutava
Musyimi prayed, “Protect our ministers from threats and harassments from
the enemies of truth” (Church of the Province of Kenya 1997:18–20).
67. As Archbishop, Gitari was in a position to create services of worship
that were in every sense national events. For instance, the consecration
of the first bishop of Kitale on 20 July, 1997, was followed by a series of
ceremonies in the run-up to the general elections, at each of which Gitari
invited the politicians present to greet the people: the Enthronement of
the first Bishop of Diocese of Kajiado on 3 August, the Enthronement
of the first Bishop of Mbeere at Nyangwa on 26 October, the
Enthronement of the Bishop of Kirinyaga to succeed Gitari at Kerugoya
on 23 November, and the “Ceremony of Thanksgiving and Farewell for
the Ministry” of Gitari at Kerugoya on 15 December. Many politicians
took the opportunity to endear themselves to a mass audience, including
 Introduction 53

Vice-President Saitoti, Charity Ngilu, Kalonzo Musyoka, Martha Karua

(MP for Gichugu), and Mwai Kibaki.
68. The front cover of Freston’s (2001) book pictures clergy in cassocks
holding Bibles as the tear gas spreads in Uhuru Park on 7 July 1997,
while Ranger’s (2008) cover has a photograph of Gitari spraying holy
water outside the cathedral in the service of cleansing. These then are the
central public events involving the church in Africa of the period.
69. Ali Mazrui (1988:336, 357f ) might see this as the ancestor’s fighting
back at the imposition of the state.
70. Such relativized adjectives do not absolve Kibaki of his lapses.
71. The Anglican Church of Kenya has been careful to allow him no posi-
tions of importance, with his successor, Benjamin Nzimbi, levering him
out as council chairman of St. Paul’s University as the theological college
became on 14 September 2007.
72. These are pointed words in the light of Koigi’s experience of state per-
secution: “For a long time, I thought our national conscience was dead,
but it is only frozen with fear” (Wamwere 1997:274).
73. What he would have said if Kamlesh Pattni, the central figure in the
enormous Goldenberg financial scandal, who had now converted as Paul
and was happily using his wealth to bankroll a party of candidates who
had failed to be selected elsewhere, named Kenya National Democratic
Alliance (KENDA), was not put to the test, as he failed to attend.
74. This is the second line of the National Anthem, still a determinative
source of unity, not least because it begins “O God.”
75. “Tomorrow is only the fruit of seed sown today” (Otabil 2002:107).
Pentecostals are now teaching Kenyans that God will reward seed-giving
to the church an hundredfold.
This page intentionally left blank
Part 1

The Religious
Background to
Politics in Kenya
This page intentionally left blank
Chapter 2

Compromised Critics:
Religion in Kenya’s
Politics1
John Lonsdale

Introduction
Early in 2008 up to half a million Kenyans fled their homes in fear
for their lives. Their country seemed about to rupture into communal
violence after a disputed election or, in some areas, in anticipation of it.
Hundreds were killed before they could flee. Some had their homes or
businesses or, in one especially horrific incident, their church, torched
and burned over their heads (Cheeseman & Branch 2008). Many won-
dered if “Kenyans” could still exist after such a horrendous breach of
trust between neighbors. Had they become, irrevocably, tribesmen and
women, mutually hostile, no longer fellow citizens? The poor, espe-
cially, had known political violence for more than a decade, suffering
at the hands of thugs acting on behalf of political elites. Other gangs
outdistanced their patrons’ ability to control them. The state had lost its
monopoly on the use of force (Mueller 2008). Memories were revived of
the partisan violence of Mau Mau—the insurgency that had propelled,
hindered, and then divided the politics of freedom half a century earlier.
The colonial state, barely more than half a century before that, had itself
been founded on violence, small in scale, localized and spasmodic, but
destructive all the same. The burning of huts and standing crops and the
confiscation of livestock had, in British eyes, “punished” native obduracy.
As if that history were not intimidating enough, soon after the colony’s
birth, in the First World War, the British had had to defend it against its
58 John Lonsdale

German neighbor, now Tanzania. More Africans lost their lives in this
war, in more wretched circumstances, than modern Kenya has witnessed
before or since.
The British effort to impose ruling institutions on self-governing
peoples, who had run their affairs with little executive apparatus, initiated
Kenya’s long century of violence. It was revived at halftime by the Mau
Mau “Emergency.” In this internal war insurgents, African “loyalists”,
and the British each abandoned their customary or statutory rules of
law. In recent years successive Kenyan presidents, keen to weaken any
public institution or opinion that might check their massively central-
ized, divisive, executive powers, have not been slow to use force. Any
attempt to analyse the role of religious belief, teaching, or practice in
Kenya’s modern history must start by acknowledging the often disastrous
consequences of state-building, insurgency, decolonization’s transfer of
the sovereign power to allocate resources, and, now, of presidential will
amid state decay, in blighting the lives of Kenyans, believers and unbe-
lievers alike, clerical and lay. Personal survival has more often demanded
prudential acceptance of one’s inevitable entanglement with arbitrary
power rather than criticism of or resistance to it. People are the clamor-
ing clients of power, its expectant kinsmen with reciprocal obligations of
obedience, and its resigned subjects more insistently than they feel them-
selves to be its free, dignified, citizens, its legally protected critics. It has
often taken great courage—and underlying that, a particular theological
conviction—to speak out against oppression. Lurking powers of darkness
continually reemerge in public to revive the fears that haunt the Kenyan
mind (Mwangi 2007).
This chapter does not aspire to be a narrative history of the interac-
tions between “religion and politics” or “church and state.” It is no more
than a series of reflections on Kenya’s long last century. It attempts to
suggest the moral and religious premises, arguments, and competitions
that have shaped Kenyans’ critical reactions to their successive politi-
cal predicaments. The best summary of its argument is that nothing
is simple. There are ambiguous, complex, and variable answers to
such questions as: Can Kenya be said to have developed a religious,
or moral, culture that is its own, that is indigenous rather than alien
in its arguments, its images, its references, and in its demands upon
behavior? Has this religious tradition, whether “derived” or “authen-
tic”—both misleadingly exclusive terms—helped or hindered the
realization of the rights and obligations of citizenship? How far has the
development of capitalism affected the issue? Has “religion”, in belief or
practice, demanded the “good governance” of a citizenry, or colluded,
if only by neglect, in their misrule? How far are religious institutions
 Compromised Critics 59

independent of, or clients upon, state power and how far are they seen
to be legitimate? How far do the holders of state power feel it necessary
to pay heed to moral scruple or clerical reproof and, if not, in what else
might their legitimacy rest?
The answers, as I say, are bound to be blurred by cautious qualifica-
tion. Kenya’s political and moral culture cannot be read as a stable “text”.
It is created and recreated by many and continuing contests between
unequal players, each attempting to exploit differently remembered
aspects of Kenya’s past, imagined as indigenous or foreign, authentic or
colonial, but in every case intertwined within the knotty rope of history,
wonderfully well analysed in Haugerud (1995). This chapter will exam-
ine five causes of complexity and ambiguity.
First, Kenya is for the most part Christian in self-admitted allegiance
but includes a large Muslim minority. Both faiths, moreover, are inter-
nally divided in the theological views they take of earthly matters, social,
political, and economic. Second, one Christian attitude to state power—
the “liberal” Christian theology, the one most often voiced but probably
not the most widely held—what I call Kenya’s “emancipation theology”
(to distinguish it from quasi-Marxian “liberation theology”), has changed
in several cycles in modern Kenya’s history. Third—and underlying those
theological cycles—while much has changed in the social, economic,
and cultural life of Kenya’s peoples, there has been much continuity
too, not least in the fluid, porous, argumentative, nature of these local
ethnic communities or nationalities. These hybrid and disputatious pasts
are increasingly denied in a competitive electoral politics that demands
intraethnic solidarity, supposedly rooted in historical rights to indigenous
territory, to native “soil” (Lonsdale 2008).
Fourth, the narrative poetry of the Bible, available in many vernacular
translations, has contributed far more than the astringent advice of the
Qur’an to these argumentative but local continuities in change. Fifth, the
relationship between these historic localities and the new center in Kenya
has changed greatly over time. While some degree of devolution of power
in colonial times helped missionary church-builders to retain some (if
not much) independence from state power, the increasing centralization
of power since independence in 1963 has entangled relations between
churches, which are always locally rooted, and the state, which so often
seems to disturb matters from without. It could only be as severely com-
promised critics, therefore, that the churches and, to a lesser extent, imams,
played their part in the 1990s, alongside other members of civil society,
in demanding for Kenya a “second independence”, a process to which I
can only refer rather than narrate. The churches—but never all of them in
unison—reacted to 20 years of one-party rule and a growing restriction on
60 John Lonsdale

freedom of thought, with Biblical arguments for constitutional reform. In

this most recent turn in the cycle of local emancipation theology, church-
men hoped that Kenya’s political independence would, at long last, allow
its citizens to experience the rewarding, demanding, moral dignity of
personal liberty.
In Kenya, as elsewhere, the Old Testament is generally regarded as the
main Biblical archive in which to search for prophetic statements of truth
to power, the New as the source-book of personal and societal salvation.
Many Kenyan churchmen, those of a more liberal theological persuasion,
combine the two. One favorite image has been the prophet Isaiah’s vision
of a God who called on a rebellious Israel to “reason together” with Him.
Another is Christ’s declared intention for his people, that they should
enjoy “life more abundantly” (Isaiah 1:18; John 10:10). Both texts lend
themselves to wide interpretation but multiparty democracy was seen
as the proper response to the divine invitation of the first text and as a
necessary condition for fulfilling the divine promise of the second—a
better, fuller, life for the Kenyan children of God. The result of the
general election of 2002, which swept a multiparty opposition coalition
to power, was greeted with high expectation accordingly, leading many
churchmen to feel that their work was done. Like their Creator on the
Seventh Day, they could take a rest from political activism, leaving the
achievement of social justice to the alleged market disciplines of political
competition—so often flouted, as they tried not to remember, by a
calculated circulation of political elites. The unreformed behavior of the
new government and continuing factionalism between and within the
churches soon made such Biblical expectation seem no more than naïve
illusion. The conduct of the 2007 general election has converted dashed
expectations into ethnic paranoia, felt equally by those who believe their
patrons were cheated of their lawful power and by those, generally the
weakest of their supposed “enemies”, on whom their anger fell. The
“second independence” seems to have come and gone.

Prayers for Cash

What, if anything, can religious belief and action do to break disillusion?
It is a commonplace to say that Africa is now Christianity’s most ebullient
frontier, and that the religion that not long ago used to be the faith of the
world’s affluent North is now, more accurately, that of its impoverished
South—although the world’s most powerful nation, for the moment, is
also said to be its most Christian, even if many of its widely held beliefs
are not easily accepted as such by someone who was brought up as an
Anglican of middling-to-low church inclinations, doubts, and prejudices.
 Compromised Critics 61

Kenya is no exception to the African rule of energetic Christianity.

Perhaps 80 percent of its 32 million people claim to be Christian, and
of these no less than 10 percent say that they attend church regularly—a
figure reported by an Evangelical survey that seems not to have counted
Roman Catholics, Kenya’s largest single church denomination, as fellow
Christians (Africa Center for Missions 2004). As with other Africans, “it
is largely through religious ideas that [Kenyans] think about the world
today” (Ellis & Haar 2004:2). Religion and politics are topics that obsess
them, whether in bars or bus queues (Spear 1999:307). Many ask, con-
stantly, in private and in public, in a remarkably outspoken press, how
it is that so avowedly Christian a country can be so badly governed by
politicians, lords of misrule who shamelessly loot the public purse like
bloodsucking ogres or the devil’s accomplices (both common figures of
speech); who have no sense of the common good, and yet who were edu-
cated at church-related schools; who go, ostentatiously, to church most
Sundays; who invoke God’s name when paying funeral tribute to their
departed companions in ministerial kleptocracy; and who seem to sleep
soundly at night?2
It is a question to which most Kenyans give robustly cynical answers.
Their political leaders, they say, have no shame, but are nonetheless full
of the hypocrisy that pays tribute to virtue—a double standard of self-
esteem examined by Iliffe (2005). That can be of little surprise. Many
of their church leaders appear to be no better—and in a country where
Christ himself was believed to have appeared to Nairobi slum-dwellers
at a service of faith-healing only 20 years ago (Ellis & Haar 2004:43).
In 2004 a judicial inquiry was launched into the “Goldenberg” finan-
cial scandal of the 1990s. This, under President Daniel arap Moi, had
debauched the currency, made all Kenyans 30 percent poorer, and slashed
the gross domestic product by 10 percent. Yet, Moi claimed to be not
only Christian, but one who was born again. There were calls for him
to testify before the inquiry. Most believed he had been personally and
profitably involved in the grand fraud. Yet, an ecumenical gathering of
church leaders declared that to put the ex-president in the dock would
demean national honor. The next day the leading Nairobi daily carried
a cartoon showing a gimcrack procession of sanctimonious bishops and
other holy dignitaries trooping past a disbelieving crowd of citizens.
One of the crowd exclaims, “Ah! Those are Moi’s new lawyers!” At the
bottom the cartoonist’s signature mouse asks, “With bishops like these,
who needs lawyers?” (Nation 7 December 2004:8). When the Asian
tycoon who facilitated the scandal converted to Christianity and opened
a church in Nairobi’s International Casino, others may well have asked,
“With converts like that, who needs bishops?”
62 John Lonsdale

Public respect for episcopacy had not been helped by reports a few
weeks earlier—headlined “Rent-a-Bishop” or “Prayers for cash”—that
the new Anglican Bishop of Nairobi had been put on the city council’s
payroll. He was promised an exorbitant fee in return for a monthly
prayer for the city’s welfare. Most observers thought that service should
be freely rendered as no more than his bounden Christian duty—as his
archbishop’s rebuke confirmed. Did the bishop then return the money?
“No,” my Nairobi friends told me, “He couldn’t. He had eaten it!”
Meanwhile there was also the “miracle babies” scandal. A self-styled
“Bishop” Deya, a Kenyan, promised to relieve the misery of childless cou-
ples in London by offering instant infant births. These were discovered
to be no miracle but abandoned babies sold off by a Nairobi orphanage.
There was not much popular reaction to this affair in Britain, certainly
not from students. They see things differently in Kenya. A Nairobi
University drama society produced a play lampooning “Bishop” Deya.
Flyers advertising the show were pasted all over the campus in late 2004.
They portrayed Death, capped with bishop’s miter and holding a bishop’s
crook. The posters boldly promised “Prayers and miracles for sale! Instant
Miracle Childbirth, from shillings 149,999/-. Instant riches, 29,999/-.
Husband Repossession 24, 999/-. Hurry now while stocks last!” (Personal
observation 2004). A recaptured husband was clearly a cheaper miracle
than fertility. Kenyan women always appear stronger than their men.
In this chapter I hope to show why Kenyans can be so cynical, not so
much disillusioned as unillusioned, and yet at the same time take their
religion seriously. At stake, for them, is no less than their survival, moral
no less than physical, in peace and justice. They have an acute sense,
reinforced by the recent postelectoral catastrophe, of how fine is the line
between moral civilization and devilish anarchy. Their theologies reflect
urgently on the sheer uncertainty of life in Africa, pauperized too often
by the fickleness of nature, failures in human fertility, the malevolence
of man for man, the arbitrariness of power. Where else could one find
a glossy magazine called Disasters3 advising on how to cope with rural
banditry, drug abuse and HIV/AIDS in school, muggers, female genital
mutilation, or IT fraud, with offers of training in disaster management?
Its “Thug Tips” (clearly borrowed from an American magazine) began:
“Please remember there are 11,500 thugs that were released during
the month of December from Prison: please read on” (Disasters 10;
2004:19).
This chapter tries to take Kenya’s modern history as seriously as
Kenyans take it themselves and to enter, however vicariously, into their
often bitter life experience, one that they bear with stoicism and cyni-
cism, hope, humor, and, many of them, with faith. But does that faith,
 Compromised Critics 63

to take up the first of my five causes of complexity, help them to see

themselves as citizens?

Religion and Citizenship?

Christianity and Sunni Islam, Kenya’s two main religions of the book,
both make universalist claims on their adherents. The children of God,
or the ‘umma, are both, in imagination, global, transnational and there-
fore, surely, transethnic. Each has a history of critical engagement with
secular authority in demanding social justice. They therefore have the
potential to unite Kenyans as citizens no matter what their ethnic ori-
gin. Furthermore, one of Kenya’s bravest newspaper groups, the Nation
Media Group, always as far as possible on the side of liberty and good
governance, has for the past 40 years been owned by Muslims—by the
small Shi’a Ismaili sect, followers of the Aga Khan.
And yet, as elsewhere, in practice these religions also divide Kenyans,
and not constructively. The most obvious fracture, one might think,
would be between the 80 percent Christians, the perhaps 7.3 percent
Muslims—religious affiliation is deliberately not required by Kenyan
census returns and the figures are disputed—and the perhaps 11.55
percent who follow supposedly “traditional” religious practices. These
figures, educated “guesstimates” from my Kenyan sources of information,
suggest that there are now twice as many Muslims in Kenya as 20 years
ago (Cruise O’Brien 1995:201; Oded 2000:1f ). In fact the divisions
within the religions of the book have more power to inflame passions
than divisions between them—except very recently when an openly rec-
ognized status for shari’ah courts was mooted as an element of possible
constitutional reform. Among the severest divisions of opinion are those
that reflect on how far faith is concerned at all with secular governance
and social justice.
Of all the world’s religions, Islam states most clearly how rulers should
act justly, not least with respect to the fatherless and the widow. It was
no accident that President Mwai Kibaki, a Roman Catholic, early in
his first term of office in 2002, appointed a Muslim, a Somali, to be
his Chief Commissioner of Police, charged with cleansing the police
service of its corruptions. Yet, Islam in Kenya is a minority faith, and a
potentially secessionist one at that, among its two main minorities, the
well-armed Somali pastoralists of Kenya’s northeastern deserts and the
peaceable Swahili and Arab townspeople of the Indian Ocean coast.
The Muslim desire for the entrenchment of shari’ah law courts has been, in
the eyes of many Christian Kenyans, a major obstacle to otherwise desir-
able reforms that would decentralize state power. And Kenya’s Muslims
64 John Lonsdale

are indeed law-abiding. Their street demonstrations in defense of their

shari’ah family courts against the Christian onslaught were uncharacter-
istic. Nor is there much evidence that Kenyan Muslims harbor terrorist
designs—despite the 750 Kenyan guards posted at the American embassy
to reinforce the U.S. Marine contingent after the truck bomb of August
1998, and more recent violence against Israeli citizens and interests at the
coast. Such threats are apparently derived from Somali or other extrem-
ists, based in what used to be Kenya’s neighboring state of Somalia, now
a living example of anarchy (Abrahamsen & Williams 2005).
Kenya’s Muslims are, then, united in a critical political theology, but
territorially unreliable in their now-latent secessionist political allegiance,
and in any case difficult to mobilize as a political constituency, being as
decentralized and non-hierarchical as anywhere else in the Muslim world,
despite the government endowing them with a unified council structure
with which the state can deal (Oded 2000: chap. 2). Kenya’s Christians
are still more divided. They have no agreed theology of power. None of
them, apart from Roman Catholics and perhaps Anglicans, can claim
to speak on behalf of all Kenya’s peoples—did not the latter continually
multiply their ethnically defined dioceses. Only Roman Catholic bishops
regularly speak for a whole institution. Other churches more often speak,
if at all, through individuals.
To take the so-called mainstream churches, the Roman Catholic
and Protestant churches with British missionary origins—Anglicans,
Presbyterians, and Methodists—all espouse a liberal, incarnational,
Trinitarian, political theology in which the Son of God’s sufferings
demand, in response, the pursuit of justice for His suffering brothers and
sisters on earth. This theology is informed by Biblical hermeneutics that
assume that the Bible’s authors were men of their particular time in his-
tory, divinely inspired but also contextually limited in their interpretation
(Benson 1995). These churches conclude that while obedience is indeed
due to Caesar, Caesar also owes it to God to protect his citizens, not
least to defend the human dignity, the key measure of liberty, owed to all
children of God, especially the least of them.4 Although the Presbyterian
Timothy Njoya is for many a controversial figure (not least because of his
recent dialogue with Nairobi’s Muslims), liberal churchmen would agree
with his core beliefs: That work is the means by which people affirm their
dignity, there is no dignity in material or philosophical dependence on
others, and “human dignity always starts with freedom and ends with
responsibility”—just as the Israelites “obtained the salvation of their
national dignity” in their harsh desert journey to self-discovery in Exodus
(Njoya, 1987b:7, 12f, 16, 27). This last image is deep rooted. One of
the earliest criticisms of independence was expressed in the Presbyterian
 Compromised Critics 65

hymn Mai ni Maruru (Water is Bitter); Moses had released sweet water
from the rock, not so Kenya’s politicians (Chepkwony 1987:156–57). But
liberal clergy find the Beatitudes as appropriately subversive of Kenya’s
political culture as the Old Testament’s prophets; they used to engage in
vigorous and plain-spoken voter education before that need seemed to
come to an end with the opposition victory in 2002. Nonetheless Kenya’s
political theology, a local version—or subversion (Freston 2001)—of lib-
eration theology, what I call emancipation theology, has borne a cyclical
tendency to worship the state before examining it critically, a matter on
which I will elaborate shortly.
But these mainstream churches, all represented in the National Council
of Churches of Kenya (NCCK), have in recent years hemorrhaged fol-
lowers to the charismatic churches—“sheep-stealers” as their critics call
them, or “mushrooms” that grow overnight, in the dark—as everywhere
else in Africa. And for Kenya’s thousand or more charismatic churches
or its quieter, older, Conservative Evangelical congregations descended
from American faith missions, the nature of secular governance seems
to be largely immaterial to personal salvation (but see Kavulla 2008).
Their theology is dualist, contrasting good and evil, God and the devil,
more sharply than the liberals, and urgently eschatological, preaching the
imminence of Christ’s Second Coming, an event that makes salvation so
much more compelling than earthly justice. So different is their church-
manship that, under the aegis of the Evangelical Fellowship of Kenya
(EFK), they seceded from the NCCK in the mid-1970s. Insofar as they
comment on politics at all, Evangelicals would say it is the conviction
of personal salvation in the country’s rulers, rather than their respect for
democratic rights and procedures, that is the best guarantee of just rule.
These churches quote more from the Old Testament than from the New.
They recall how God rewarded or punished Israel’s rulers according to
their obedience or disobedience to Him, not according to their adher-
ence or otherwise to democratic procedure and the will of the people,
who could so easily be led astray. In this respect, Kenya’s charismatics,
Conservative Evangelicals, and older African Instituted Churches resem-
ble their counterparts elsewhere in Africa (for example Gifford 2004);
but in Kenya, charismatic congregations seem to be much less tolerant
of the “gospel of prosperity” than elsewhere (Droz 1997, 1999; Lonsdale
2002a:183–92). This chapter says far less about Kenya’s charismatic
Pentecostalists than their growing numbers deserve.
The distinctions drawn above relate to formal theologies, to the Bible
learning of Kenya’s clergies. One suspects, again as elsewhere in Africa,
that many laypeople judge politicians according to their supposed per-
sonal power to exploit rather than to be defeated by unseen forces (often
66 John Lonsdale

ancestral forces, curses, or the sorcery employed by rivals) that neither

Christianity nor Islam seem willing to confront and overcome (Ellis &
Haar 2004; Haar 1992). There is certainly popular demand for pro-
tection. Nairobi pavement kiosks sell, for KSh30 each, pamphlets on
“How to Identify and Break Curses”, and “The Dangers of Witchcraft
Covenants Practices”, sourced from Deuteronomy, Leviticus, Proverbs
and other largely Old Testament texts and published by Stephen Gichuhi,
founder-director of Global Revival Ministries. President Moi felt he had
to set up a commission of inquiry into devil worship, mainly to clear
himself of the popular suspicion that he shared in the occult power, after
he was blamed for Kenya’s growing poverty and unemployment at a time
when there was too little of the work that gives people their dignity. In
a continent full of unseen powers, both malevolent and benign, some
people, sometimes, believe it is only prudent for one’s rulers to have
some familiarity with those powers—and the devil is especially accessible
to golfers and Freemasons, both popular forms of community among
Kenya’s elites—while others, especially charismatic Pentecostalists, are
terrified or repelled by that prospect (Droz 1997; 1999).5
If these theological differences were not enough to cast doubt on
the capacity of Kenya’s Christianities to inspire good governance or
effectively reprove the bad, there is the still more disabling fact that in
the popular mind, many of its churches bear an ethnic, not national,
character. This segmentation makes it easy for politicians to scorn cleri-
cal critics as “tribalists” rather than defenders of the common good. The
problem stems from the early twentieth century when a colonial govern-
ment nervous of the potential for religious strife between excitable natives
obliged different missionary societies to evangelize separate spheres of ter-
ritorial, and therefore ethnic, influence. Far too often since the rebirth of
multiparty democracy in 1992, political competition has pitted NCCK
churches against those of the EFK (Ngunyi 1995). This correlation
between church and tribe is said to be fading today, but it nonetheless
remains strong. Urbanization, and social and denominational mobility,
may in time produce a cohesive Christian voice that is less vulnerable to
factional competition for political favor, but in popular opinion that time
is yet to come. Only the Roman Catholic church dares to post some of
its clergy—but almost none of its bishops—to areas of the country other
than those into whose ethnic culture they were born.
So the relationship between religion and citizenship is far from clear cut.
Nonetheless—despite the manifest failings in both Kenya’s Islams, Sunni
and Shi’a, and in all of its many Christianities, with respect to their capacity
to nourish a critical citizenry or transparency in government—there
remains much that the religions of the book can claim to have achieved in
 Compromised Critics 67

helping to imagine the Kenyan state and even a Kenyan nation. Quite how
much they can claim is disputable. Unlike too many of its near neighbors,
Rwanda and Burundi, Uganda, the Sudan, Ethiopia, and Somalia, Kenya
has not fallen apart in civil war; it retains constitutional procedures, if only
when they suit today’s holders of power. But the relative peace enjoyed
until the last two decades owes more to the transition in Kenya’s political
economy than to its religious history, in which it is very similar to these
neighboring states. Until the 1980s, Kenyans’ competitive energies were for
the most part constructively employed in exploiting the opportunities left
by the departure of white settlers from the land and of many South Asian
traders and artisans from townships and cities. It was natural for churches,
especially for the NCCK, to work with the grain of this “development”
phase of nation-building (Chepkwony 1987). But various time-bombs
were set ticking in the process, liable to explode when the national cake of
fertile opportunity ceased to expand or, indeed, started to shrink into bar-
ren, life-wasting evil when measured against the expansion of population.
In the last two decades, electoral tension has repeatedly erupted into vio-
lence along the internal boundaries of these earlier African colonizations
of the formerly colonial economy. In the 1990s the churches and Islamic
civic bodies did much to help exert the pressure that restored some of the
formal decencies of good governance. But the electoral crisis of 2007–2008
has shown once again the near-fatal flaws that persist within Kenya’s more
fundamental political culture and economic structures.
Religion is deeply implicated in that culture and in those structures.
But it is not religious division, not directly, that most threatens Kenya’s
peace. Many would indeed say that Kenyans were encouraged to take the
risky plunge back into competitive party politics in the 1990s because
their experience of mutually tolerant religious pluralism—within families
as much as between neighbors—had taught them that difference did not
necessarily invite mutual hostility (Thomas P. Wolf, in conversation).
Moreover, whenever Kenya’s public life has descended into violence, it
could well be claimed that religious communities have done more to
heal wounds than to inflame them, both after the Mau Mau war of the
1950s (Anderson 2005:338, 340; Elkins 2005:367) and after the elector-
ally calculating “ethnic cleansings” of the 1990s (Githiga 2001:122–27;
Sabar 2002:218–20, 247–48; Achieng 2005; International Theological
Commission 2000). This combination of religious entanglement in politi-
cal culture and the ability at times to stand apart from it is best explained
by what appears to be a cyclical relationship between church and state
in the building of a civil order in Kenya, governed by a local variation
on a Christian theology of liberation. History has brought church and
state together, complicit in the cause of civilization, development, and
68 John Lonsdale

nation-building, to cite successive names for Kenya’s future; it has as often

caused the one to criticize the other in the name of local or individual
freedom and dignity.

Kenya’s Emancipation Theology

Clean contrary to Latin American liberation theology, with its biases
toward the poor and against the structural sin inherent in the alliance
between corrupt local states and international capital, Kenya’s theol-
ogy of emancipation is suspicious or contemptuous of the poor, or of
African humanity more generally, with its supposed liability to indulge
in violence and anarchy and is inclined to be indulgent of and respect-
ful toward the state. It does not bear the sword in vain, as Paul put it
(Romans 13:14), but justifiably, for the protection of the faithful, often
emancipating them from the slavery of their own lower natures (Githiga
2001, and my Foreword thereto).
It was a peculiarly colonial theology of emancipation in origin, though
it was not only colonial but also indigenous, as will be explained. British
officials saw themselves as heirs to the Royal Navy’s Indian Ocean cru-
sade of freedom that lasted half the nineteenth century against the Arab
slave trade. The first representative of British power on the East African
mainland was the Imperial British East Africa Company, chartered in
1885. There was a rising sun on its escutcheon, with the motto beneath:
“Light and Liberty”. A Company shield still hangs in the Nairobi Club,
a favorite watering hole for senior civil servants on their way home to the
wife. Colonial officials believed in this redemptive, civilizing, mission.
(Chenevix Trench 1993; Lovatt Smith 2005; Berman 1990: chaps. 3 and 5).
White settlers believed in it as well, no matter how much that belief
also served their material interests. While Arab slavery had humiliated
and infantilized Africans, labor, even coerced labor on a white farm was,
in their view, a salutary education in self-discipline and responsibility
(Lonsdale forthcoming).
The missionary view of colonialism was strikingly similar. The first
East African Christians were newly captured slaves fortunate enough to
be recaptured at sea en route to their places of servitude and then eman-
cipated, to be educated by the Anglican mission in India. These were the
“Bombay Africans”, who played a similar role in East Africa’s Christian
history as West Africa’s “Sierra Leoneans”. In the first, coastal mission
stations they inevitably attracted slaves away from their Arab owners.
Kenya’s first Christian martyr, David Koi, also known as Abe Saidi,
was decapitated in 1882 by Arab slaveholders, for leading a Christian
community of fugitive slaves, watoro as they were known (those who had
 Compromised Critics 69

run away) (Anderson 1977:16; Reed 1997:79–80). White missionaries,

remembering David Livingstone’s appeals on behalf of a suffering Africa,
could scarcely find fault, in principle, with an avowedly Christian
colonial rule that protected their evangelism, their teaching, and their
healing against Africa’s cruel uncertainties. In 1898, one year after the
British decided they could not rule Kenya, as they had hoped, through
the intermediary means of the Sultan of Zanzibar, there was a dispute
over Christian converts at the coast who had run away ten years earlier,
as watoro, from their Arab master. Slavery was still legal in the Sultan’s
dominions, and it was supposedly in his name that the British ruled the
Kenyan coast. The Arab master demanded his slaves back. The local
British magistrate ruled in his favor, as he was legally bound to do.
The Methodist mission at the coast protested. The home government
got alarmed. The Secretary of State thereupon ruled that should slaves
succeed in liberating themselves, no British official could hand them
back to their master (Mungeam 1966:60). The Standard Swahili-English
Dictionary (Inter-Territorial Language Committee 1939), compiled
largely by missionaries and with a Foreword by Thomas, Bishop of
Zanzibar, chose to illustrate the meaning of Toroka (verb: to desert or run
away from) with the phrase mtumwa ametoroka bwana wake, “the slave
has run away from his master.”
It is not difficult to see why the early missionaries at the coast should
see colonial rule as providential, at least when it was called upon to be
true to itself by superior authority back home. The same applied still
more upcountry, where Africans appeared to allow barbarous tests of pro-
bity in their own legal systems, where polygamy ruled, where at the turn
of the twentieth century famine and disease were rife, where Africans
were seen as both a savage and at the same time a suffering people, for
whom famine relief carried inland on the new railway was a clear bless-
ing of British rule. It was also important that missionaries generally
followed the flag. They did not precede it as in nearby Buganda, or in
western Nigeria among the Yoruba. Such understandings as they reached
with local African notables were negotiated under the tacit umbrella of
colonial power. Officials indeed regarded mission stations, British ones at
least, as an “auxiliary arm” of their rule. It was difficult for missionaries
to criticize in any fundamental way a dispensation that seemed to have
saved Africans from so much misery, barbarity, and ignorance and which
made it safe for white men and, still more, white women, to preach the
Gospel. One did not have to read Romans 13 to come to this conclusion
(Oliver 1952, still essential reading).
This view left missionaries to get on with their vocation, evangeliza-
tion and the nurture of Christian communities. They were in Africa to
70 John Lonsdale

build churches, not to engage in politics. Anybody studying the relations

between religion and politics at any time in history or anywhere has to
accept that conflict is most likely between the two when the institutional
interests of church and state are at odds, rather than when theological,
moral, or philosophical proprieties alone are under threat. That is
certainly true of the history of Kenya.
Kenya’s churchmen, whether expatriate missionaries or Kenyans, have
rarely been systematic theologians. They have been steeped in the Bible,
they have felt called on to create and serve local church communities
in its light and to preach salvation. Kenyan churchmen are also heirs
to stern traditions of self-reliant industry from their indigenous moral
economies. They have viewed society and the state with these preoccu-
pations in mind. Kenya did not exist little more than a century ago; it
was a stateless territory. Commercial, fire-armed Islam had made some
upcountry trading alliances that supplied ivory and slaves. Unarmed
Christianity could make little or no impression beyond the few freed-
slave settlements at the coast. To the outsider, warfare seemed to be the
rule. After conquest, peace became the new order. Kenya’s churches, mis-
sionary and indigenous, have from the start more often felt themselves
to be militant against societal sin, perhaps original sin, than against
political oppression. They have repeatedly felt that the sword of the state
is properly allied with the shepherd’s crook in rescuing God’s children
from slavery, literally and metaphysically, from the slavery of supersti-
tion, ignorance of a loving God, and disease (Okullu 1974:26–27). Even
anticlerical African Christian revivalists, later in the twentieth century,
took the pax Britannica to be a deeply religious presence (Welbourn &
Ogot 1966:19).
What first roused the dismay of British Protestant missionaries, those
enjoying a politically privileged, “established”, connection as much with
the British government as with the colonial state in Kenya, was the way
in which official support for white settlers subsidized that tiny minor-
ity by means of African taxes and coerced labor, before and after the
First World War. In this most famous intervention by the churches in
Kenya’s colonial history, what angered them most was the way in which
oppression was mediated through the state’s local agents, African chiefs,
many of whom opposed, as rivals, the “native catechists” who were
more effective evangelists than white missionaries. Official economic
policy sapped the energies of African peasantries and official practice
factionalised African society. Both policy and practice hindered the self-
sustaining growth of local churches. The redeeming promise of colonial-
ism was betrayed. But the missionaries’ practical emancipation theology
was allied to a self-interested paternalism on behalf of their closest
 Compromised Critics 71

converts. They even declared that forced labor was tolerable under two
conditions: that it was supervised by upright British officials and that it
excluded from conscription all those African men who could prove they
had worked for themselves, and their families, for a season. All whites
deplored what they assumed to be African male idleness at the expense of
African women. Labor, even when coerced, would educate them out of,
and would free them from, sinful sloth. It took the church in England,
with the Archbishop of Canterbury in the lead, to argue that the whole
principle of forced labor for private profit was wrong. This combination
of local self-interest and critical overseas backing was as important to
Kenyan church advocacy in the 1990s as to the missionary societies in
the 1920s (Oliver 1952: chap. 5; Spencer 1975).
The cycle of church-and-state relations returned to mutual cooperation
in the later 1920s when the colonial government responded to African
discontent by conceding to Kenyans the most progressive form of local
government to be found in British colonial Africa. New district councils
gave subjects some of the rights and responsibilities of citizens—if at
their own expense in local taxes additional to the taxes owed to central
government—and placed some checks on the powers of those decentral-
ized despots, the official chiefs (contra Mamdani 1996). Despite vigorous
disagreements over standards and funding, African local councils went
into educational partnership with the missions. Many of Kenya’s leading
politicians at independence had risen up the missionary educational ladder
to its apex, the Alliance High School, Kenya’s best, on local government
bursaries—not by accident relieving central government of much of its
own responsibility for African progress (Anderson 1970:136–39; Kipkorir
1969). Tension between local church and central politics returned before
independence. First, some Gikuyu Christians were, in their churches’ view,
martyred by Mau Mau insurgents (Phillips 1955; Wiseman 1958; Smoker
1994)—less for their religious belief than for their obstinate courage as
potential informers. Second, as Kenya’s nationalist politicians (all of them
alumni of mission schools) turned the Christian belief in equality into
action: they acquired more power, more sophistication, more important
external contacts, and seemed to attract more popular allegiance than the
now pauper-looking churches they had left behind. Mission paternalism
had given birth to African nationalism and was now overtaken, and for a
time affronted, by its headstrong child (Lonsdale 2002b).
But what of church and state relations since independence in 1963?
This has revolved through two further cycles and perhaps embarked on
a third, with reference to the theological understanding and practice of
Kenya’s emancipation. The attitude of the churches to the state cannot
be properly understood, however, without some prior discussion of the
72 John Lonsdale

strict sense of moral economy held by most Kenyans. Their parents and
grandparents, whether from pastoral or agricultural communities, taught
them that resolute self-reliance supported by self-disciplined labor, “holy
sweat” as Ngugi wa Thiongo has called it, was the only route to personal
honor and civic virtue. The prosperity of one’s household brought civic
influence today and the respectful memory of posterity tomorrow. Since
land was more or less a free good before the population growth of the
past century, and since no Kenyan society bore a great weight of ruling
structure, one’s success in life was judged to be in one’s own hands, no
matter that one might start life as the client or tenant of another. Wealth
was honorable, provided it was loaned out in influential support for
others. While selfish wealth was sorcerous, poverty was more often a
reason for scorn than pity. For Kenyan Christians, “abundant life” is not
a matter of spiritual riches alone; and a bias toward the poor is not yet a
majority understanding of emancipation. The poor first owe this duty to
themselves (Anderson & Broch-Due 1999; Lonsdale 1992).
The mission-originated churches Africanized their leaderships almost
as rapidly as the British transferred political sovereignty. They acquired
still closer links with the hierarchy of state. The Anglican bishop,
Obadiah Kariuki, was brother-in-law to Kenya’s first president, Jomo
Kenyatta. One of his wife’s, Mama Ngina, brothers, Monsignor George
Muhoho, was a Roman Catholic chaplain at the University of Nairobi
(Throup 1995:145). More generally, hope for a more abundant life for
the children of God was placed in an independent government commit-
ted to their emancipation from the humiliations of colonialism. That
hope was tinged with some relief that what many saw as the demonic
force of Mau Mau would not bedevil (literally) the culture of indepen-
dent Kenya, something much feared by Kenya’s last white Anglican
bishop, and first archbishop, Leonard Beecher (Pastoral letter 1960).6
Kenyatta’s Kenya appeared, initially at least, to facilitate the release of
constructive energy. The new president’s own chief criticism of colonial
rule had been that it enfeebled “the spirit of manhood,” removing from
Africans the self-realising responsibility of choice in their lives (Kenyatta
1938:211). That such self-realisation must involve a search for prosperity
was, as explained, accepted by all, provided that the wealthy person did
not neglect his or her responsibilities, chiefly to their extended kin. The
churches could have no moral objection to the “pact of domination” as it
has been called, between the presidency, Kenya’s own aspiring elites, and
international capital, provided that the interests of labor were recognized
under the ideology rather loosely termed “African socialism” (Branch &
Cheeseman 2006). The churches also saw evangelistic opportunity in
cooperating as the local sponsors of the work of “development”—a new
 Compromised Critics 73

term for emancipation from the shackles of poverty, ignorance, and

disease—often funded from overseas through the channel of the NCCK.
Christianity was on the way to becoming the professed religion of a
majority of Kenyans.
So Kenya’s churches were slow to criticize increasing authoritarian-
ism. No church leader questioned Kenyatta’s decision in 1968 to ban the
sole opposition party, the Kenya People’s Union, although one or two
junior clerics, notably the young Henry Okullu, did protest. Opposition
did however stir in 1969 with the assassination of Tom Mboya at the
instigation of persons still unknown but widely believed to be close to
the President. There was great popular anger against Kenyatta’s Gikuyu
kitchen cabinet. Partly in reaction (there is evidence that the process had
started before Mboya’s death), Gikuyu were coerced into taking an oath
of loyalty to the continued Gikuyu domination of Kenya. This was far
too reminiscent of Mau Mau and its supposed opposition to Christianity.
Many Christians, forcibly oathed and at least one martyred, felt that they
had been exposed to the power of the devil. Kenyatta’s authority with
the churches never recovered from this confrontation between the saving
blood of Christ, Lamb of God, and the supposedly demonic blood of
goats intrinsic to the Gikuyu oath of political loyalty (Chepkwony 1987;
Lonsdale, Booth-Clibborn, & Hake 1978; Githiga 2001; Sabar 2002;
Knighton 2009).
The churches therefore renewed their hopes in the state when in 1978
Kenyatta was succeeded by Daniel arap Moi, a born-again Christian,
and from the relatively weak Kalenjin people, naturally antagonistic to
the concentration of wealth and power in Gikuyu hands. Moi released
political prisoners, set limits to the accumulation of land, and appeared
to set the Kenyan state, once again, on the path of freedom for its indus-
trious citizens. Once again, too, it took the churches some time to realize
that they must still be ready to prophesy against unjust power when Moi
declared Kenya a one-party state in June 1982, with scarcely a murmur
from Parliament, and centralized his own powers still further after those
indecipherable “August disturbances,” the attempted coups later that year
(Widner 1992:143–47; Throup & Hornsby 1998:30–50). Kenya’s ruling
culture of order became a culture of fear, in the words of the Anglican
Church’s Justice and Peace Commission (Sabar 1997:25), in which only
church leaders continued to enjoy the status of protected critics. The
death, in August 1990, of an especially turbulent priest, the Anglican
Bishop Muge, led many to doubt that even that limited, clerical excep-
tion to state intolerance would long remain.
When churchmen did speak out—and these were the years of Bishop
David Gitari’s most pointed sermons in defense of local communities
74 John Lonsdale

against state oppression (Gitari 1988b, 1996)—their spokesmen tended

to be Presbyterian or Anglican. The former church was almost exclu-
sively Gikuyu, the latter denomination strongest among Gikuyu and
Luo. Both peoples felt unjustly excluded from power. Could their
churchmen speak for the Kenyan people of God as a whole? That was
certainly their intention and claim. Initially, the government too easily
discredited them by reason of their ethnic partiality—and their peddling
of allegedly “foreign” ideas of democracy—just as the Archbishop of
Canterbury had argued from London against forced labor in the 1920s.
Moreover, as in the earlier missionary protest, the churches spoke up
partly in their own interest. What they opposed was the replacement of
the secret ballot by “queue-voting” in the ruling party’s primary elections.
And their grounds? That to line up behind any candidate would either
show church leaders to have voted against some other member of their
flock or else oblige them to act as party organizers in telling their eman-
cipated people to act once again as political sheep (Githiga 2001:83).
But in the 1990s almost all of civil society, save for the Conservative
Evangelicals among the Kalenjin peoples closest to President Moi, fol-
lowed the mainstream churches in arguing the case that liberty, and
not just for clerics, could be assured only with the rebirth of multiparty
democracy and, when that was thwarted by state-sponsored violence
prior to the elections of 1992 and 1997, by constitutional reform that
would drastically reduce the powers of the executive, give more indepen-
dence to Parliament, and decentralize much administrative power and
financial responsibility.
It was on this wave of popular anger and voter education, the lat-
ter conducted mostly by the churches—but exploited by high-political
intrigue that constantly thwarted the purposes of the reformers—that
Mwai Kibaki came to power in 2002. And once again, as at the outset
of colonial rule, as in Kenyatta’s first years and in Moi’s, the churches
have, by and large, been content to tend their own—and the succor of
tens of thousands of displaced persons, even before the 2007–2008 crisis,
was responsibility enough. When the very survival of a unitary Kenya is
so very much in question, it is perhaps good for the churches to act on
the advice of their founder when He first sent out His apostles “as sheep
in the midst of wolves:be ye therefore wise as serpents and harmless as
doves” (Matt. 10:16), quoted to me by Bishop Stephen Njihia Mwangi
of Nakuru. Nonetheless, there is clearly a need, once again, for Christians
to reexamine their theological bias in favor of the state when the state
and those contending so zealously for its power have proved themselves
so terrifyingly able to wreak death and destruction, in sharp contrast to
the mutual tolerance inherent in the normally transethnic social relations
 Compromised Critics 75

of daily life. Formerly, where the stateless African society was seen as the
threat to Christian emancipation, its domestic networks now look to be
the people’s only refuge from the Kenyan state.
Before ending this account of Kenya’s cycles of emancipation theol-
ogy, one has to add the essential rider that successive governments have
returned the compliment rendered them by the churches. The colonial
government welcomed missionary supervision of schooling as some
insurance that African traditional disciplines, eroded by social change,
would be replaced by religious restraints. While missionaries were wary of
being seen as an economical substitute for a police force, their decreasing
financial capacity gave them little option but to cooperate with govern-
ment. The Kenyatta government agreed that while education was chiefly
the responsibility of the state, church sponsorship of teachers and local
parental support was a vital guarantee of seriousness of purpose. President
Moi was often seen in church; and Kibaki makes no secret of his Roman
Catholic Christianity, despite the embarrassment of a household com-
plicated by the presence of what many see as a second wife. Christian
Religious Education and, at the coast, Islamic Religious Education
remain compulsory elements of the school curriculum.
Church and state in Kenya remain closely entwined, each to some
extent complicit in the supposedly providential authority of the other.
There is—in the growing fear of violence not only from the state but also
from the poor, the ill-educated, and the unemployed—good reason why
Kenyans should acquiesce in this close relationship while also doubting
the purity of motive of either of the contracting parties. There is a similar
ambiguity in the popular understanding of the social changes and chal-
lenges with which people, church, and state have had to cope—my third
cause of Kenya’s complexity.

Bible Change and Continuity

In the beginning here, as elsewhere, are words, especially words in songs.

They invite reflection on what sort of social, political, and religious transi-
tion, if such it may be called, Kenyans have undergone in the past century
or more. Thirty years ago—ten years after her country’s independence—
one of Kenya’s best-known woman poets, Micere Githae Mugo, wrote a
lament for the lost songs of her people’s oral tradition that once upon a
time had imparted purpose and discipline to their lives: Where are those
Songs? She asked what had become of the songs her mother had sung to
fit the changing rhythms of life, whether tied to the agricultural year or to
a child’s passage through life, to warriorhood, womanhood, marriage, and
death (Chipasula & Frank 1995:129–31).
76 John Lonsdale

Today, 30 years on, Kenyans still sing at weddings and funerals and
as warriors. Kenyan weddings in which organizers are smart enough to
have service sheets printed in English are made joyful or meditative with
songs like “To God be the Glory, great things he hath done”, “Great is
thy faithfulness”, and “Guide me, oh thou great Redeemer!” At funerals,
the soulful words that give rhythm to the lives past and to come are,
for example: “Abide with me”, “What a friend we have in Jesus”, “Rock
of Ages”, “The Lord is my Shepherd”—Psalm 23, sung to the Church
of Scotland tune Crimond, even in a Roman Catholic cathedral, and
crooned to an electric guitar. The recessional hymn at funerals is almost
always “God be with you ‘til we meet again”. This is also the modern
warriors’ song, since it often ends the term at the most prestigious, mis-
sion-founded boarding schools, the oldest of which, the Alliance High
School, is now over 80 years old (Kipkorir 1969; the author’s own visits
to Nairobi churches, too few of them Pentecostal).
Such changes in popular song—and in the sites of their singing, from
cooking stones to cathedral, or in their singers, from mothers or grand-
mothers to choir-led congregations—all invite the idea of transition:
from tradition to modernity, from small-scale, simple societies, to large-
scale social complexity, or from a formerly laborious self-sufficiency to
an often unemployed half-existence today under the market rigors and
inequalities of globalization. Micere Mugo’s lament and the hymns I have
sung with Kenyan friends more recently suggest stark differences between
an oral culture in which the symbols of meaning and rules of life were
fragmented into different ethnic songs around the cooking pots, to an
increasingly literate culture in which hymn-books and Bibles provide
the rhythms of a life now bounded by the much larger community ruled
over by the Kenyan state. But this may not be the best way to approach
the history of modern Kenya’s religion and politics. How much of a
transition has there been? How full is it of continuities and, if so, what
discords have been stirred up? But if one needs to question the notion of
transition, as one must, it is difficult to give another such simple name to
the process that Kenyans have undergone. Most of them do indeed see it
as a transition, and not necessarily for the better. Nor, in answering, must
I forget the minority of Kenyans who do not sing when at public worship,
because they are Muslim.
One distinguished Kenyan, one of the small number who are
beginning to write autobiography, Professor Joseph Maina Mungai,
has described this transition, if such it is, very well for my purposes.
Mungai—a herdboy when young and then head boy at the Alliance High
School in the 1950s; record three-mile runner at Makerere University
College where his medical training reinforced his Christian faith; who
 Compromised Critics 77

was awarded his London Ph.D for research into the brain’s nervous
system; was the first African dean of Nairobi’s medical school and ended
his career as Secretary of the Commission for Higher Education—has
described the transition as one “from multiple simplicity to integrated
complexity.” He saw such a definition of transition embodied in his own
life, from herdboy to vice-chancellor, used it as a method of teaching his
medical students, and has observed it in the life of his country, from the
multiple simplicities, so-called, of ethnic existence under alien rule to the
integrated complexity of life in a self-governing, urbanizing, and now
electronically networked, blogging, and texting nation (Mungai 2002).
That is one way of seeing the transition, and a helpful one since it
is free of value judgments, free of teleology. There have been at least
three other perspectives, both in African historiography and in Kenya’s
popular opinion. These are full of value-judgments, since those who lived
through them, and provided historians with the evidence, were them-
selves of a teleological cast of mind, either Whiggish or premillennialist.
White missionaries, the first African Christians, Protestant leaders since,
and British officials were all convinced of their civilizing mission, and
thereafter the nationalists were equally convinced of theirs.
Perhaps the most popular account of this transition among Kenyans,
as I have suggested, is that of the breakdown and decay of traditional
societies that are imagined, once upon a time, to have practised a com-
munitarian ethic of care for all their members, an ethic that has now
fallen apart, no longer at ease in a world corrupted by colonialism,
capitalism, and now, globalization. It is the “Garden of Eden” theory of
African history,7 espoused as much by frustrated colonialists or alarmed
anthropologists in times gone by as by disappointed Kenyan Christians
today. “Where now are those songs?” asks an African Eve driven from the
Garden. More insistently, many Kenyans ask, is this decay the main cause
of their vulnerability to HIV/AIDS? Has there been no effective moral
replacement for the lost sense of ethnic virtue, for the old disciplines that
once taught responsible man- and womanhood in the sacred work of pro-
creation? (Thomas 2003:17–18; Catholic Bishops of Kenya 1987; Ogot
2004:53–54; Geissler 2003: chap. 6; and especially Iliffe 2006: chaps. 8
to 11). Most would agree that their communities have double standards;
even the law represents “a jumble of different traditions” (Macgoye
1996:22). Kenyatta summed up this view more than 70 years ago with
this oft-quoted complaint about the fate of his Gikuyu people: “Religious
rites and hallowed traditions are no longer observed by the whole com-
munity. Moral rules are broken with impunity, for in place of unified
tribal morality there is now . . . a welter of disturbing influences, rules and
sanctions, whose net result is that a Gikuyu does not know what he may
78 John Lonsdale

or may not, ought or ought not, to do or believe, but which leaves him in
no doubt at all about having broken the original morality of his people”
(Kenyatta 1938:251). Nor did he find it at all easy to see a way out of his
people’s predicament (Berman & Lonsdale 2007).
But there is, or used to be, a more optimistic variant, a sense that tran-
sition might indeed entail the decay of old, small-scale, social obligations
but only because they were supplanted by an enlargement in the scale of
social and moral community as migrant labor, literacy, world religion,
urbanization, and so on remade African selves and identities, from other-
directed tribespeople into inner-directed citizens responsive to a capitalist
ethic (Wilson & Wilson 1945). This transition used to be called modern-
ization. Almost everywhere in Africa such expectations of modernity have
been dashed (Ferguson 1999), not least in Kenya—but might it not be the
case that the anger of dashed expectations provides the stimulus to politi-
cal and moral reform? Kenya presents only equivocal evidence in support
of that hopeful case, largely because of the continuities in value systems
that have created double standards of moral judgment (Iliffe 2006).
But the weaknesses in Kenya’s theologies and traditions of political
thought—if such they are—could also be explained by a third, more
captivating, view of modernization that is associated with the Chicago
anthropologists, Jean and John Comaroff, who studied the cultural his-
tory of the Tswana people of southern Africa in the era of missionary
Christianity and white settler colonialism. On their reading of this his-
tory, African minds were colonized rather than emancipated by the seduc-
tive affinities to be found between Christianity, commercial capitalism,
and comfortable domestic commodities. In the Comaroffs’ analysis of
this “lop-sided conversation” (Stanley 2003), African subjects, Christians
especially, found themselves inwardly much divided between what they
imagined as traditional culture and the new individuality of Christian
modernity (Comaroff & Comaroff 1991, 1997). This is a view that a sur-
prising number of Kenyan ordinands themselves seem to take—to judge
by the criticisms of their supposedly “too Western” Christianity that I
encountered when lecturing at St. Paul’s United Theological College,
Limuru. They thought that it was useless to expect much social energy
from their churches until they came to know a more truly African, less
materialist, Christ. Until that time came, the churches were bound to be
seen as voicing the views of a deracinated, Westernized, and wealthy elite,
not the earthier instincts of “Wanjiku”—the embodiment of an authentic
womanly wisdom in her management of supposedly non-exploitative
human relations.
I cannot accept that view of an anemic, “derived,” dazzled, still expa-
triate Christianity, removed from the practicalities of daily life. While
 Compromised Critics 79

all these different approaches undoubtedly capture aspects of modern

African experience—and are espoused, to differing degrees, by most edu-
cated Kenyans today—they all miss what I regard as vital, namely, the
continuity in moral argument that has always existed between Africans,
within the continuous social change that, together with all other people
in the world, they have experienced through their history. This constant
argument, always focused on the sacred materiality of existence—
precapitalist as much as capitalist—has, until the last 40 years or so, been
carried on mostly within ethnic groups, each possessing their own public
sphere of argument, not within an all-Kenyan public sphere, since that
did not previously exist. My definition of an ethnic group in fact is that
group of people with whom you feel the greatest need to argue out the
most important questions of life, all the time—most of these questions
have nothing directly to do with one’s own ethnic identity as distinct
from that of another’s, but are to do with moral obligations between
near kin and near neighbors (Lonsdale 1992; Grignon n.d.; Katumanga
1998). Other ethnic groups will get drawn only occasionally into the
argument, until they become, along with one’s own, that community
which we imaginatively call a nation. As Gikuyu say, “One has no need
to quarrel with those you do not know.”
The essential premise of my argument is that all Kenya’s ethnic groups
have always been in some kind of motion, geographically, socially, or
economically, for as far as one can trace their history. They have always
welcomed strangers (often as wives) or have cast off their starving failures,
forcing them to seek a generous or enserfing asylum in some neighbor-
ing group. They were never static, isolated, self-sufficient societies. They
lived in no idyllic gardens of Eden but were always experimental in their
means of subsistence or in their religious or legal practices or in their
means of defense. They had to be. They faced too many disasters not to
look for new ways of doing things, if always with a simple toolkit. They
were always hybrid in culture. They were always unequal in their social
relations. There is nothing especially new about the present day, except
perhaps insofar as the advent of literacy, print-capitalism, a much wider
market for alienated labor, a greater social distance in the relations of
economic exploitation, and broader religious and historical sensibilities
have enabled Kenyans to imagine, as Benedict Anderson would say, their
ethnic groups as pristine communities descending out of the mists of
time, such as may be fondly conjured up in print, on the page—but that
can never have existed in real history (Anderson 1983, 1991).
Those are the main questions and qualifications that occur to me
when joining with Kenyans in speculating on the nature of their modern
predicament. They have not undergone a transition. That is too neat and
80 John Lonsdale

tidy an image, too linear, too purposive, and with some final end in sight.
That end never comes in real history. If there were a word like “complexi-
fication” that would fit, and I think Professor Mungai would approve. So,
for want of anything better, complexification will have to do.
But to elucidate further the peculiarly Kenyan elements of this com-
plexity, one must move on to its fourth element, suggested at the begin-
ning of this chapter, namely, the competition between Bible and Qur’an
for the Kenyan moral imagination, a contest that the Bible seems, for the
foreseeable future, to have won. This has no doubt been due in large part
to the close affinity between Christianity and colonial and postcolonial
state power. But one cannot ignore the superior translatability of the
Christian over the Muslim Word, and its ability therefore to infuse local
narratives of history and destiny, both ethnic and national. Biblical texts
and images give Kenyans a moral and political language that most of
them share, so that no matter what their ethnicity, they can understand
each other on matters of personal and public morality well enough to
agree on what they disagree about.

Islam and Christianity, Qur’an and Bible

To revert to and then deepen earlier reflections on the relationship
between Islam, Christianity, and politics, these two world religions still
compete for the Kenyan religious imagination. The former came to
Kenya’s coasts in Islam’s first century. But until recently, it has been in
a long-term decline of intellectual vitality and political power. In recent
years it has come back to intellectual life, thanks to Arab and Iranian oil
money expended on student bursaries rather than to Wahhabi extremism
(Chesworth 2001, 2002, 2003). Christianity on the other hand made a
late start in Kenya, but has never stopped growing and mutating as it
grows, becoming ever more popular in its practices and beliefs.
This competitive religious history has certainly been of profound sig-
nificance for Kenya’s politics. Ibn Battuta visited Kenya’s coastal towns,
then the only towns in the region, in the fourteenth century. He was
impressed by the rigor of their Islamic practice (Sperling 1988:18). He
would find them perhaps 30 percent Christian in their population today,
as Kenya’s upcountry peoples have come to the coastal ports to find work.
This relative decline of Islam in the past century has deprived Kenyans
of a potential source of religious and linguistic unity, even (possibly) of
a sense of nationality. Swahili—the local language of Islam with around
50 percent of its vocabulary derived from Arabic, the language of the
Qur’an—has never been so important to Kenyan identity as it has been
to that of Tanzania, Kenya’s southern neighbor (Mazrui 1995).
 Compromised Critics 81

Because of Islam’s relative decline, the foundations of Kenya’s

nationalism have been Christian, and therefore linguistically and territori-
ally divided, for Kenya’s upcountry missionary Christianities were in their
origins—barely more than a century ago—rural and, therefore, ethnically
specific. Islam was preeminently the religious culture of Kenya’s first
towns and their trading networks. The coastal towns, Mombasa especially,
have been there for centuries. But Islam also dominated African Nairobi,
Kenya’s first new town, probably until the 1940s. Rural Christianities
did not come to town until the First World War. They consolidated their
urban presence as recently as the 1950s, with the triumph of the African
nationalism they had helped to inspire. Kenya’s Christianities retain today
all the energy of the late-comer, if with all the attendant risks of rapid
disillusion.
These two world religions have provided Kenyans with contrasting
visions of progress and civilization. Muslims called civilization ustaarabu
(being like an Arab), which in Kenya meant to be a sophisticated towns-
man (Middleton 1992; Romero 1997; Strobel 1979; Swartz 1991; Willis
1993); or else uungwana (the state of being free, not enslaved), and it was
of course on slavery that Islamic civilization in East Africa was founded.
Non-Muslims, if not slaves, were known by Muslims as washenzi
(barbarians). But the washenzi themselves, upcountry Kenyans, knew
that townsmen despised them and returned the compliment. In many
upcountry vernaculars Arabs and Swahili were urban strangers, wacomba,
and Nairobi was known as “the place of heedless strangers,” gicomba-ini
in the Gikuyu vernacular.
To follow such contrasts further, if coastal Muslims were strangers
upcountry, Kenya’s first Christians, in the late nineteenth century, were
runaway slaves at the coast, refugees from Muslim power or from famine,
the watoro to whom David Koi had dared to preach (Anderson 1977:15;
Emerson 2002). There was good precedent for this: the Holy Family, par-
ents of Christianity itself, had come down to Africa, Egypt, as refugees from
an earlier power, Herod’s (Sundkler & Steed 2000:7). As recently as 1993,
when speaking at a national holiday, Moi publicly reminded Muslims that
they had once enslaved fellow Kenyans (Gomes & Cussac 2004).
Unlike Muslims, Kenyan Christians rarely named themselves accord-
ing to a sense of cultural or status distinction as “civilized” or “free.” True,
early Luo Christians, in the far west of the country, called themselves
jo-ngwana, free men like Muslims, but free from the authority of parents
or chiefs, not of slaveholders. More commonly they called themselves
jo-nanga or clothes-wearers, shockingly distinct from their parents (Hay
1992:15). They could as well have called themselves the dwellers in
square houses or, in Gikuyuland, untainted grave diggers.
82 John Lonsdale

But this self-appellation according to cultural status was rare. Early

Kenyan Christians more commonly named themselves for their peculiar
skill: wasomaji if they were at the coast, athomi if they were from central
Kenya, josomo if they were Luo speakers in the west, on the shores of
Lake Victoria. They were all “readers.” Their missionaries wanted them
to be able to read the Bible, but many African evangelists advanced the
frontier of literacy on their own, with benefit of bicycle but without a
missionary presence (Anderson 1977: chap. 12). Reading led to writing.
Clerical skill was not only a catechetical requirement but also a political
technology, as much a tool of imaginative new organization as a means
to write petitions, as Derek Peterson (2004) has taught us. Mission
education was also an apprenticeship to the administrative machinery
of the state. In 1913, no less a person than the British governor of the
colony acted as examiner for the standard African typists’ exam (Spencer
1983:10). This combination of political and bureaucratic skill gave a
head start to Christians over Muslims, the latter only now fully awake
to the need to repair their relative backwardness in modern educational
skills. Christians may not have named themselves after a new concept
of civilization (others did so for them, calling them tie-wearers or black
Europeans), but kusoma (to read) was nonetheless to be modern, if in
very Kenyan ways, given the narrative quality of their Word.
That the Bible is, above all, a storybook, is supremely important, as
J. D. Y. Peel (2000), Adrian Hastings (1997), or Lamin Sanneh (1989)
has rightly insisted. The technology of the Word was one advantage for
Christians. The other was the character of their book. It was very differ-
ent from that of the Muslims. By contrast with the Qur’an the Bible is
more translatable, it tells a national history, it is full of heroic biography,
of individual endeavor under the eye of God. Let me take those three
points in turn.
Lamin Sanneh is surely correct to contrast the ready translatability
of the Bible into many languages with the Islamic insistence that the
Qur’an remain in its unpolluted Arabic for liturgical and expository
purposes. He argues that polyglot Christianity, from its earliest days,
has been a major influence on the formation of local cultural identities.
Any people can make Christianity’s sacred text their own, to be rumi-
nated on and elaborated on in their own familiar terms, something not
so clearly true of Islam. The Bible has been translated into many of the
world’s vernaculars. One third of its translations have been into African
languages. By 1971 portions of the Bible had been translated into 28 of
Kenya’s tongues, the complete Bible into nine, including Swahili. In that
year alone, 73,000 New Testaments were sold in the country and 60,000
complete Bibles (Barrett et al. 1973:99, table 1).
 Compromised Critics 83

I would go further, with Hastings (1997:3–4, 18, 195), to contrast

the narrative natures of the Christian and Islamic words. The Bible is
full of stories, Hebrew in origin but universal in appeal, all woven into
the history of a suffering yet at times faithful people, a veritable primer
in nationalism. The Qur’an, on the other hand, on my own inexpert
reading, is for the most part a compendium of God’s commands and of
the moral behavior that should follow, more than the history of a com-
munity. Such heroes as it celebrates—Noah, Abraham, Joseph, Moses,
and David—are in any case taken from the Torah or Old Testament,
and they are heroes of an Israelite nation that lacks a destiny, thanks to
its corruptions of belief (Dawood 1956). Until the 1950s, moreover, the
Qur’an was available only in Arabic. Since then it has been translated
into Swahili and three upcountry vernaculars, Gikuyu, Kikamba, and
Dholuo, and moreover with the same Ismaili money that has run the
English-language Nation, a wonderful (and by no means unique) exam-
ple of Islamic money funding both national and local needs (Gomes &
Cussac 2004:2). But one is told by Kenyan Muslims that the vernacular
Qur’an holds less authority than the Arabic original.
By contrast with Kenya’s Muslims, Christian scholars among Kenya’s
upcountry peoples found a book in which national and personal destinies
were often gloriously intertwined and in their own language, a tongue
that they themselves helped to standardize in print while sitting with
their white co-translators on the mission verandah, and whose images
and proverbial formulae found their way into Testaments Old and New,
making the Bible very much their own ethnonational story. Some of
these organic intellectuals have gone so far as to locate their people’s
origins in refugee migrations from misri (Egypt) even on occasion as one
of the lost tribes of Israel (Kenyatta 1938:275; Ochieng 1972; M’Inyara
1992; Droz 1999:343). Gikuyu detainees during the Mau Mau war of
the 1950s had particular reason to reflect on the similarity between their
situation and that of the children of Israel when enslaved in Egypt (Elkins
2005:200). In the Gikuyu-language Bible, after all, Pharoah’s Egyptian
taskmasters had become corporals of police or Boer farmers, akaburu as
Gikuyu called them both (Exodus 1:11—or, in Ibuku ria Ngai, Thama
1:11). Local oppression acquired global significance—which may or may
not explain why, in Nairobi’s street slang Sheng, kaburu today means any
European, whether slave-driver or not.
Missionaries, moreover, made Biblical biography the subject of school
textbooks to inspire their young “readers” to emulate the moral endeavors
of the ancients in their own lives (Peterson 2003a). One of the most pop-
ular gospel parables was the story of the prodigal son (Luke 15: 11–32).
Many early Christians, often seen as delinquents by their elders, were
84 John Lonsdale

anxious to count themselves worthy sons of their ancestors (Lonsdale

1996), to put their own lives back into the imagined tribal story. Kenya’s
African churches have in many ways continued to strengthen the real
and mythical solidarities of coethnic neighbors who might otherwise
have found themselves estranged by social mobility, class formation, and
the other complexities peculiar to modern life (Welbourn & Ogot 1996:
Part. IV; Geissler 2003).
While Islam might possibly have united Kenyans, Christianity has
tended to keep them separated—local, or indeed “tribal,” as Kenyans
unabashedly call themselves. And Islam lost its opportunity very early,
before there was more than a handful of missionaries in the country. The
moment was 1897, when Sir Arthur Hardinge, British Consul-General
in Zanzibar with responsibility for Kenya, then called the East Africa
Protectorate, traveled upcountry with the Arab Sultan of Zanzibar for
“a State levée” with local chiefs, most of whom were naked. The Sultan
and the chiefs had nothing much to say to each other (Hardinge 1928:
153–54). There was no possibility of the British using the Sultan as an
intermediary authority. Thereafter, the Christians could the more easily
be let in.
The first task of missionaries was to learn the vernacular local to their
mission-station, in order to preach. Their second was to reproduce it in
print, in sample readers for the instruction of their adherents, who soon
proved themselves so much better evangelists than their white teachers.
Vernacular Bibles followed, starting in the 1920s. But the Swahili Bible
had been available since 1889, before British rule. The Bible furnishes
Kenya’s shared national language of politics as much as it feeds its several
ethnic imaginations. If Micere Mugo’s mother sang her ethnic folktales,
the Bible is a national storehouse of folktales. They may be told in dif-
ferent vernaculars but they are still the same stories. And it shows in
everyday Kenyan culture.
In July 2004 the Bishop of Liverpool, James Jones, was reflecting on
religion and the environment in BBC Radio 4’s “Thought for the Day”
in the morning’s news magazine, the Today program. He remarked that
the only place he had ever heard the Lord’s Prayer said with the correct
syntactical rhythm by a mass congregation was in All Saints’, the Anglican
cathedral in Nairobi, where, without a pause for breath at the end of the
line after “be done,” the people prayed “Thy will be done / on earth—as
it is in Heaven.” Bishop Jones speculated that that was because Kenyans
lived closer to the soil than did Britons, who, not seeing the connection
between God and the environment, leave an uncomprehending pause
between God’s will and the earth on which it should be seen to be done.
I met the same holistic understanding of the Lord’s Prayer in the Roman
 Compromised Critics 85

Catholic Basilica of the Holy Family, half a mile from All Saints’, when
at the funeral of Dr. Pius Okelo in late 2004. It is not only in cathedrals
that Kenyans get their religious syntax correct, or where they produce
their religious imagery. It is everywhere, in the press, in daily conversa-
tion, in greetings and farewells. One could cite endless examples, but one
or two must suffice.
In 1994 I was mugged by three young men who claimed to be in the
police drug squad. They left me penniless, without my passport, without
my three weeks’ work in the archives, having driven me off to the slum
area called Bahati, which means (generally good) luck. Certainly my luck
changed there, since a kind young man, Wainaina, came up and led me
to the nearest police station. I made a statement to the sergeant of police,
ending with the account of my rescue by the young man. The sergeant
read my statement back to me, ending with the sentence: “And then a
Good Samaritan came by.” Those were his words, not mine. He had
translated my misfortune into a Kenyan story of salvation.
This pervasiveness of Biblical imagery raises the following questions:
is this because Kenya is predominantly Christian, as it is? Or because the
Bible has become the nearest thing to a national narrative, an archive of
universally recognized moral and political images, akin to what anthro-
pologists once said of oral tradition, or the songs that Micere’s mother
sang? Ngugi wa Thiongo, an avowed atheist, has complained that he
simply cannot escape the Bible if he wishes to make himself understood
in his novels. I think that the answer to my question is perhaps not vital
for the issue of religion and politics. Politicians can be stung by being
compared to the Emperor Darius, or to the Egyptian Pharoah, or to
King Ahab lusting after Naboth’s vineyard, whether they are believers
or not—all images taken from Bishop Gitari’s sermons (Gitari 1988b,
1996b). For the vivid aptness of the simile, they will know all too well,
will be equally apparent to all Kenyans, no matter from which corner of
the country they hail. The Bible may not be taken by all Kenyans to be
God’s word, but its images are certainly at the center of their political
culture—if in a rather ambiguous way.
Such ambiguity was displayed by Mburu from Muranga, who wrote
to The People newspaper (“Fair, Frank and Fearless” as its masthead pro-
claimed) on 9 September 2002, shortly before the general election that
ended 39 years of rule by the Kenya African National Union (KANU). He
warned the Luo people that their leader, Raila Odinga, had made a mis-
take in taking his then party, the National Democratic Party, into a merger
with KANU, which was widely, and correctly, forecast to lose: “You are
being taken back to Egypt by your Joshua,” he warned. “Your Joshua has
feared to cross [the] River Jordan, unlike the Joshua of the Bible.” But
86 John Lonsdale

Mburu had no trouble in switching to a less Biblical, more vernacular,

political image in his next paragraph: “I am asking you not to be misled by
Raila and his bunch of eaters while you have no bone to chew.” In Kenya,
as in most of the rest of Africa, political power is often expressed in the
imagery of the belly, of eating and being eaten, or of being famished by
political failure. The Bible and the belly are each as homely as the other.
But what does that mean? Are Bible and belly in conflict, as the New
Testament surely insists, or in collusion as many heroic stories in the
Old Testament would suggest, in which faith gives rise to prosperity and
progeny? To this fundamental question one has to turn, for answer, to
my fifth and final cause of complexity, the history of the conflicts and
compromises between the local and the central in modern Kenya, where
the local was the site of church building and the center was the focus of
the state, colonial and national alike. One must also remember the labo-
riously honorable, even spiritual, materiality of local moral economies
when now revisiting Kenya’s emancipation theology from the point of
view of the local churches that were in the process of growth.

Local Community and National State

Throughout Kenya’s modern history there has been tension between the
local and the national, between local church or mosque on the one hand
and colonial or national state on the other, a tension that rests on the
contradictory interdependence that has long existed between household
authority over labor on household land, and the lost, alienated, migrant,
labor that works in town, as often for the state as for the capitalist. Salaried
urban workers still say that they live, in today’s Nairobi, in a house rather
than a home. Home is where one’s umbilical cord is buried out in the
rural areas, or where one was once circumcised, or where the spirits of
the ancestors feel most comfortable, where everybody tries to return for
Christmas and the New Year, and where one expects in the end to be
buried, where productive rather than merely monetary social relations
are gathered, handed down from the past, laboriously constructed in the
present, and invested for the future (Cohen & Atieno Odhiambo 1992).
A recent French publication on Nairobi characterized it, not wholly
accurately, as a capital city without cemeteries (Droz & Maupeu 2003).
Home upcountry is also where, until recently at least, one’s church was
almost bound to be—or one’s mosque, if home is at the coast. The state,
by contrast, is too often in the hands of strangers, once the British, and
now politicians, most of whom are not of one’s own people.
In these intertwined threads there are, perhaps, the makings of a
critically alert Kenyan political culture—provided that one adds to them
 Compromised Critics 87

the self-interest of clerical patrons who seek to protect and promote the
interest of their own community of the faithful, whether they be a par-
ticular local church or the ’ummah. It may be that here, without being
overoptimistic, one can see the beginnings of a more healthy redefinition
of the relationship between small-scale society and the state.
But first one has to explore, to the limited extent here possible, the
degree to which vernacular Bibles stimulated lively local argument. It is
also worth remembering that John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress was some-
times the second text, after the Bible, to be translated into African lan-
guages, with its heroic individual, Christian, casting off all that hindered
him from his native society, in order to reach his spiritual goal (Hofmeyr
2003). There would be no point in conducting such explorations in the
influence of religion upon politics unless one could be sure that Africans
took their Bible, or Bunyan, seriously as inspiration for behavior or belief
and made them their own. As already mentioned, some young Kenyans
in training for the ordained ministry doubt if the Christianity they are
hoping to serve is yet theirs, theologically speaking. Were that the case,
the Biblical images that populate Kenyan public and private discourse
would be of no existential weight, mere decorations on the outer walls of
a culture that has not yet invited them in, has not yet domesticated them
and become their intimates.
It is doubtless the case that the translatability of the Christian (or
Islamic) messages has varied greatly among their hearers and readers.
At one extreme, one might call it the extreme of appropriation, their
messages, both belief and practice, were absorbed into existing Kenyan
narratives of being and belonging while also expanding the latter in new
ways—such as the range of comparative images and stories with which
one could reflect on, and remake, one’s own. At the other extreme,
which one could call, with the Comaroffs and with my questioning
ordinands, the “colonization of consciousness,” one would say that the
world religions transformed moral images—so much so that they also
transformed ways of moral thinking, at least for those few who were most
captivated by them. On such matters I have sought enlightenment from
the maverick Presbyterian minister Dr. Timothy Njoya,8 who initiated
the call for the “second independence” with his New Year’s Day sermon
in 1990. It was his view that Kenya’s Muslims were better Muslims than
its Christians were Christians, precisely because Muslims had not tried
to colonize African consciousnesses but had allowed their Islamic faith
and sense of moral community to be absorbed as and when their listeners
chose to adopt one more of its injunctions or practices into their own
lives. Christianity, by contrast, had in his opinion demanded too much
too soon and too peremptorily to be fully absorbed.
88 John Lonsdale

That is an interesting observation from a knowledgeable observer. But

it must surely be more generally true—or that is how I read the Kenyan
evidence (more accurately, the evidence I have read of the Gikuyu, Luo,
and Luyia peoples, about one third of the population)—that it was the
conflict between new belief and old moral knowledge that constituted new
communities of social argument, that gave people a new sense of what was
really worth arguing about and with whom. In short, I would argue that
churches or other communities of belief were formed in the same way as I
argue ethnic groups became self-aware (Lonsdale 1992; Bravman 1999).
To argue in this manner is to take a position on the reception of
Christianity somewhere between Peel’s account of the Yoruba and the
Comaroffs’ account of the southern Tswana. With the former, one can
agree that Christianity could be bodily transposed into argumentative
African moral narratives about what sort of people they were or should be.
With the latter, one can accept that the new images and material culture
of mission Christianity could, and can, be astonishingly powerful, able
to colonize consciousness. But I feel the more convinced that Africans
could domesticate Christianity and make it their own, the more I learn
how much they disputed its moral and cultural implications between
themselves, between the generations, between the genders, and, perhaps
especially, between different denominational valuations of Father, Son,
and Holy Ghost, as I have argued elsewhere for the intimately different
Christianities to be found among the Gikuyu people (Lonsdale 2002a).
While trained African theologians, therefore, have only recently
addressed themselves to the supposed problem of Africanizing, or encul-
turating, Christianity, African lay Christians have been doing African
theology all the time, largely due to the implausibility of enculturating
Christ anywhere—or at least the Christ preached by Paul. How is it
remotely possible, he asked (I Cor. 1:23–9), that any social establishment
can take Christianity seriously? How can it not be seen as, if not foolish,
then subversive?

But we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews, and foolish-

ness to Gentiles . . . For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom;
and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength . . . But God chose
what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak
in the world to shame the strong . . . so that no one should boast in the
presence of God.

If therefore Christianity is taken seriously by any people, then it is

bound to provoke conflict within any cultural tradition as of course its
founder predicted. What some will see as its fulfilment of tradition others
 Compromised Critics 89

will perceive as destruction. Christianity has certainly been received in

that contested manner in Kenya: it has helped to stir up arguments that
were always there, if expressed differently, between the generations—as
John Iliffe (1979:216–37) showed 30 years ago in the early his-
tory of Tanzanian Christianity: “Most Tanganyikan converts accepted
Christianity chiefly for what was new and different about it. They
thereby determined it should be established through conflict” (1979:220;
and Anderson 1977: chaps. 9 to 13). There were also fierce differences
between the genders, as Peterson (2004: chap. 7) has documented for the
Gikuyu and Emily Onyango (2006) for the Luo, and between individual
salvation (or ambition) and family responsibility, as missionaries con-
stantly observed. And Kenyan Christians of every generation and of both
sexes have long argued over the implications of their faith with respect to
the observance of the rites that mark one’s passage through life, for ideas
of death, burial, the afterlife, and so on.
The clearest example of such local argument must be the so-called
“female circumcision” crisis among Gikuyu in 1929–1930. What is
most pertinent to my thesis here is the way in which the Christians who
opposed clitoridectomy justified their stand as fully in accord with tradi-
tion, a living tradition, one that governed change but did not obstruct
it. Gikuyu, their Christians argued, had known change throughout their
remembered history. Each named generation had had the authority to
change the norms of society. In opposing clitoridectomy in their own
generation, they were fulfilling tradition, not destroying it. “We are at
the beginning of a great building up of new customs and the forming of
Christianity, the same as those who before us made ordinances for the
generations after them.”9
Arguments carry most conviction when carried on within a living tradi-
tion. They not only create new or affirm old communities, they also have
the power to make new ideas one’s own. That is why I disagreed with my
questioners among the students at St. Paul’s United Theological College,
and why I tend to side with Peel rather than with the Comaroffs. Kenya’s
Christianities are Kenyan; they have become inextricably part of most
people’s argumentative moral narrative. But what about Kenya’s Muslims?
Dr. Njoya believes that Kenya’s Muslims honor their Islam more than
Kenya’s Christians honor their Christianity, especially Islam’s charitable
demands on one’s purse. He should know; he often preaches at one or
another of Nairobi’s many slum mosques—not at the central mosque
because, he says, it is too bourgeois. Nor is it Njoya’s view alone. Analyses
of the different forms taken by conversion to Islam also convince one of
the inward struggles that Africans underwent to become members of the
Islamic community.
90 John Lonsdale

Rural coastal communities have always taken their time in becoming

Muslim. A first generation of villagers at the time of Islam’s commer-
cial spread inland in the middle or later nineteenth century will have
practiced a socially convenient plurality of religions, offending none of
their kin or neighbors. A second generation might then go to a Muslim
madrasa or Qur’anic school nearby and acquire a sterner view of the
faith’s demands. Later still, a village might appoint their own imam and
agree that all neighbors, not just some, should obey Islamic dietary laws.
Their children’s generation might then go so far as to obey Muslim laws
of inheritance. But against this gradual, arduously negotiated process of
societal conversion, one can also find overnight, “therapeutic,” conver-
sions to Islam by individuals tormented by and seeking escape from
social envy and witchcraft accusations by claiming to be members of a
new moral community (Sperling 1988: chap. 4; contrast Parkin 1972).
It is this very variety that makes Kenyan Muslims argue about what their
faith actually means, and why they are taking it increasingly seriously
today, boosted perhaps by well-funded competition between Shi‘a and
Sunni, between Iranian and Saudi schools of learning, each with their
own scholarship programs for young East Africans.
For both Christian and Muslim Kenyans, then, the “religious” side of
the couplet, religion and politics, is something to take with all seriousness
within their local communities. It is that which makes it necessary to take
seriously the relationship between locality and center, local and central
government, church and state, ethnicity and territorial nationalism.
Almost all church or Muslim property in Kenya was first given by
local communities, whether on clan land or on wakf, Islamic trust,
land—and therefore on the tacit, indeed often explicit, understand-
ing that local interests remained paramount in determining the future
uses to which the land was put. The labor of building was similarly
provided locally, without charge, whether in colonial times or since, for
the local common good. Many who contributed land or labor saw it as
essential to the well-being of both their ancestors and their posterity.
They were fulfilling local doctrines of laborious self-help. Moreover, the
word taught in a clan or other community school was often put to use
in arguing out land cases with neighboring communities. It was this
connection between the mission churches and very local, African defini-
tions of welfare that in colonial times was the most frequent stimulus to
conflict between church and state. Missionaries sometimes took up the
cudgels on behalf of this local African autonomy, their own community
of the faithful whose tenants the missions were. It has been the same
local concern that has stimulated religious opposition to secular tyranny
more recently.
 Compromised Critics 91

Two Anglican missionaries best remembered for their readiness to

champion the local African community against white-settler demands
on government for more African labor and tax were Handley Hooper in
Muranga, Gikuyuland, and Archdeacon Walter Owen, called by the set-
tlers the “Archdemon of Kavirondo”, of Ng’iya and Maseno in Central
Nyanza. What perhaps also most distinguished them from their contem-
poraries was not so much their vision of a self-sustaining native church
as their clear sense that it must have a foundation in the economically
prosperous local society, demanded—as Hooper and Owen undoubtedly
knew—by indigenous moral economy. Hooper in particular had a clear
image of a peasant church, of building a new community on what he saw
as the “slums of paganism”—and the comparability of mission in Africa
to that in London’s East End was a common connection made in mis-
sionary minds. Hooper deplored any demand of the state that weakened
an energetic local godliness. And in that conviction he lent his typewriter
to the Kikuyu Central Association. Owen thought similarly among the
Luo. His Kavirondo Taxpayers Welfare Association paid great attention
to the local agrarian and domestic economy, both at risk from the colo-
nial government’s bias toward the white settlers. His hopes for African
self-government in the mission church were derived from his earlier
experience in Uganda, where church history was so much more mature
than in Kenya (Casson 1988; Lonsdale 1964).
The same determination to protect the church’s service to local com-
munity was at the heart of the protests made by David Gitari and other
churchmen against the centralized kleptocracy of President Moi’s Nyayo
state (Sabar 2002). It was always this local concern that governed the
cycles of Kenya’s emancipation theology. Between the wars, the concerns
of people like Hooper and Owen were met largely by the development
of African local government. It was their schools’ easy relationship with
African District Councils after the Second World War that helped to
make the churches look askance at the central ambitions of African
nationalism. And Kenyatta’s destruction of local government after
independence was one of the reasons for the growing coolness between
church and state.
What replaced the institution of local government was Kenyatta’s
exhortation of “Harambee!” which could be translated as “Let’s all pull
together in schemes of self-help.” In its first years, the 1960s, in the first
flush of independence, self-help meant precisely that, in rather the same
ways as churches and mosques were first built by local communities early
in the twentieth century. Once schools or clinics were built, and their
access roads, by local self-help, the central government would come in
with trained staff, with shared arrangements for their pay and supply. This
92 John Lonsdale

was a relationship in which local autonomy and, with it, local churches
and Islamic communities, continued to flourish, with fairly well under-
stood boundaries of responsibility between locality and state.
This happy co-operation did not last long. Local energy was too
tempting a political resource. Members of Parliament (MPs) and more
senior politicians wanted to patronize it by donating money from above,
and being seen, and praised, for doing so. As they competed among each
other in what was still a competitive politics (even when it became a
single-party system), so their cheques got larger and the sources of their
money more dubious. Over time Harambee ceased to be a system that
matched local and central energies and responsibilities. It was trans-
formed into a system of central patronage of local clients, a humiliating
state of local dependence on the factional intrigues of the center from
which it was increasingly difficult to escape. This was not the fulfilment
of local moral economies, since no one could tell the social origins of the
politicians’ largesse. Church communities found themselves sharing in
the amoral economy of the state. John Iliffe quotes a Kenyan MP—and
self-appointed archbishop—as commenting, in terms that recall Mburu’s
warning to the Luo people about their reluctant Joshua before the 2002
elections: “You [the locality] must have a Cabinet Minister so that when
the meat [so much more Kenyan than “the national cake”] is cut you are
seen . . . Otherwise you will chew bones” (Iliffe 2005:338). As the Moi
government increasingly ate the meat itself, more and more Kenyans,
more and more local communities, more and more church congrega-
tions, chewed bones.
As if that were not enough to fire demands for the “second indepen-
dence,” to renew Kenya’s emancipation theology by reform of the state,
to rid God’s people of satanic oppression, the churches found them-
selves increasingly implicated in party politics. If the local community
depended on extravagant political largesse, its church had little option
to behave “like a party sub-branch.”10 This transformation in central
and local relations, through the politicization of Harambee (Githongo
2008), made the churches complicit in the corruption of the state, just
as the mission churches in colonial times became complicit in support of
white supremacy. When Moi’s regime appeared to be in league with the
devil, wasting away the energy of Kenya’s citizens, the clamor for reform
became inevitable.
But what can one say with any confidence about the future? The
growth of democracy in “the West” depended not so much on political
theory or turbulent priestly theology as on competitive advocacy by self-
interested and corporately organized social, professional, and economic
groups. Historically, it was organized lawyers, not political theorists, who
 Compromised Critics 93

eventually established a rule of law. Parliaments grew powerful not out of

pluralist political theory but from their rulers’ need to bargain with their
most powerful subjects for cash. Workers established rights by frighten-
ing the comfortable classes, even if the guilty conscience fostered by
Wesleyan Methodism also played its part.
In Kenya one may perhaps discern the beginning of the same sort
of story, although it would be foolish to suppose that it must lead,
ineluctably, to a similar conclusion. Kenya’s churches first protested on
behalf of their clerics and their flocks against the Moi regime’s abuses of
power in the “queueing election” of 1988, not on behalf of the Kenyan
citizenry at large. In this they followed, if unknowingly, the example of
the missionaries on the issue of forced labor 70 years before (Githiga
2001: chap. 5; Sabar 2002: Part 3). But the churches’ self-interest was
also propelled from below, by marginalized congregations who expected
support from their institutional patrons. A combination of clients’
expectation from below and their clerical patrons’ self-regard from above
can have quite dramatic effects in promoting a vigilant culture of critical
democracy.
If to this conjuncture is added the outraged service ethic of Kenya’s
trained professional classes, telephoned in confidence to their bishops,11
then the basis of a future Kenyan democracy looks as if it could be much
the same as that of many democracies in “the West,” many of them not
more than over a century old. It is not easy to stand up to the divisive
political patronage of the state. It is just as difficult to refute the tenets
of an inherited moral economy with its labor theory of an individual’s
value and consequent contempt for poverty. But only if the professional
classes—those vital supports on whom the state has depended ever since
kusoma (reading) Christianity spread in the 1920s—face up to both these
challenges will churchmen and theologians be able to turn to what preoc-
cupied the Church of England in the nineteenth century, “the condition
of England question”, and then only if “prayers for cash” have also been
purged from the churches. “The condition of Kenya question” must
focus on the poor and outcast children of God, not any longer on their
emancipation from inherited misfortune but, now, on their liberation
from contemporary oppression. They are still waiting to take their place
at the center of Kenya’s moral economy and, with that, to emerge fully
into the political arena.

Notes
*
This chapter originated as the “Henry Martyn Lectures” of February 2005, given
at the invitation of the University of Cambridge’s Faculty of Divinity. For Henry
94 John Lonsdale

Martyn, see Kings (1997). For the original lectures, see Lonsdale (2005). I have
been much helped by conversation over the years with bishops Gideon Githiga
and Stephen Njia Mwangi, Prof. Esther Mombo and the Revd Emily Onyango,
all of the (Anglican) Church of the Province of Kenya; Dr. Hassan Mwakimako
of the University of Nairobi and Hamid Slatsch, Trustee of Jamiy’a Mosque,
Nairobi; Revd Timothy Njoya of the Presbyterian Church of East Africa; the Revd
Paddy Benson, Canon Graham Kings, and Dr. Ben Knighton, all formerly of
St. Andrew’s Institute, Kabare; my colleagues David Anderson, Atieno Odhiambo,
Derek Peterson (who gave a critical read to an earlier draft), and Ben Kipkorir;
and with Charles Njonjo and Tom Wolf, both expert in Kenya’s politics. None
bear any responsibility for my argument.

1. But it used to be said that President Kibaki needed the moral simplicities
of P. G. Wodehouse as an antidepressant (Bloomfield, Adrian. “President
Goes to Bed as Kenya Declines.” Daily Telegraph London, 16 February
2005:15.)
2. See www.disaster.ke.org.
3. For God and Caesar in the same storm-tossed boat, see the Anglican
Bishop David Gitari’s sermon on Mark 12:13–17 in October 1988
(Gitari 1996b:71–6). For freedom and dignity, see the Anglican (bishop)
Okullu (1984:chaps. 5 and 6). Dr. Timothy Njoya’s Presbyterian ser-
mons on human dignity in Njoya (1987a) are elaborated in Njoya
(1987b).
4. Government of Kenya. (n.d). See http://www.rickross.com/reference/
satanism/satanism58.htmlA (accessed 4 July 2008) for the (Nairobi)
Daily Nation’s summary report of 4 August 1999: “Devil Worship exists
in Kenya: Commission says.”
5. Leonard Beecher papers, file 39, National Museum of Kenya. Seen by
courtesy of Derek Peterson.
6. A term I owe to Ronald Robinson, my first mentor in African history,
well illustrated in that romantic ethnography, Kenyatta (1938).
7. At breakfast, Heron Court Hotel, Nairobi, Sunday 12 December 2004.
8. “The Opinions of Kiambu Kikuyu Natives on Female Circumcision,” 12
September 1929, Appendix IV to Church of Scotland, 1931. Consulted
at the Friends African Mission, Kaimosi, Western Kenya, 1962.
9. “Keep Traditions out of Church—Njoya,” Standard, 1 August 1988.
10. Leonard (1991) and Iliffe (1998) for their professional experience.
Information from Stephen Njihia Mwangi, Bishop of Nakuru.
11. Information.
Chapter 3

Faith Engaging
Politics: The
Preaching of the
Kingdom of God
Paddy Benson

Between 1978 and 1989 I worked in a privileged position with Bishop

David Gitari’s Diocese of Mount Kenya East. From close quarters I
observed his engagement with politics in Kenya as he dealt with party
apparatchiks, elected representatives, and also with the state’s appointed
functionaries. John Lonsdale has written elsewhere (2004, 2005) about
the factors that allow religious leaders to have a national ministry in
Kenya, and that also explain why their influence is limited. The pres-
ent chapter arises from my own reflection on some of the themes that
Lonsdale has proposed.

Religion in Kenya: Malign or Ineffectual?

The three principal religious groupings of Kenya are Christianity,
Islam, and traditional religions; with substantial minorities of
Hindus, Jains, and Sikhs. The last three are strictly confined within
ethnic boundaries and rarely impinge directly on national life.
However, Christianity (nearly 80 percent of Kenyans) and Islam (not
more than 15 percent) have adherents within every ethnic group,
although Islam has a strong geographical bias to the coast and in the
north; the various mainstream Christian denominations are rooted in
different rural areas.
96 Paddy Benson

An unkind observer of contemporary Kenya might say that from

the beginnings of the modern state, religion has had a negative effect
on the course of politics. The ancestral governing structures of ethnic
communities were destroyed by the European colonizers, yet the values
of traditional religion have continued to exert a profound influence on
public life, preventing it from conforming to a modernist paradigm.1 At
times, the collision between old values and new has been very public.2
However the continuing effect of religiously sanctioned traditional
assumptions is usually less visible; it is part of a complex ethical and
spiritual mixture.3 There is a wide gap between such traditional-religion
values as clan loyalty and fealty to a senior elder and the values required
by a pluralist, democratic, and meritocratic modern state.
Kenya has not escaped the troubles created by expansionist and intol-
erant Islam. There have been serious bombings and attempted bombings
in Nairobi (1998) and Mombasa (2002), while the conflicts in Sudan
and Somalia have spilled over into refugee communities in Kenya. In
recent years, the state has had to resist calls for the application of exclu-
sively Islamic law in the Kenyan Muslim community. There is also a
history of covert U.S. use of the Kenyan security apparatus to prosecute
its struggle against al-Qaeda.4
Mainstream Christian churches have not engaged in violence against
the state, but neither have they been successful in reforming Kenya’s pub-
lic life. The churches’ greatest achievement was the part they played in
bringing an end to the one-party state; but they have proved powerless to
preventing the ensuing slide into new depths of corruption by the hold-
ers of public office. The last, post-Nyayo years (1991–2002) of the Moi
government saw the rice industry falter and stagnate as its proceeds were
misappropriated. There was a further bleeding of other cash-crop sectors
as state purchasing boards channeled their profits into private hands. The
election of the Kibaki government in 2002 led to initial guarded opti-
mism: the appointment of Prof. Wangari Maathai5 to a junior ministerial
post seemed to betoken better days ahead. However, these hopes proved
as delusive as the expectation in 1978 that the Moi administration would
clean up the excesses of the late Kenyatta regime. The still-unresolved saga
of the Goldenberg scandal6 and the more recent Anglo-Leasing scandal7
show how limited is the reach of the Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission.
John Githongo’s inquiry into the latter scandal suggested that beneficiaries
of the scam were to be found in the highest ranks of government. However
Githongo had to flee to Britain in fear for his life, while civil servants and
politicians closed ranks to prevent an effective investigation. For years, the
churches have spoken against corruption: sometimes strongly, sometimes
feebly. Their entreaties appear to have fallen on deaf ears.
 Faith Engaging Politics 97

In a European country such as Britain, this kind of gloomy assessment

of religion, as either distorting public life or powerless to improve it,
would be embraced by politicians, media, and public alike. Religion in
Europe is commonly seen either as a malign influence on politics, or as
(at best) ineffectual. Kenyans too are frustrated by the failure of religious
faith to deliver public righteousness, peace, and prosperity. However,
Kenyans, as individuals and in their institutions, remain happy to give a
place to religion in the public sphere.
In this chapter my focus will be on the foothold of Anglican lead-
ers in political life. As we shall see, there are historical reasons why
Anglicans should be in a privileged position to exercise influence among
politicians. However no claim is made that other religious leaders are
unimportant.

Religious Groups and Kenyan Administrations:

Some History8
The Kenyan state is the successor of a colonial administration domi-
nated by Englishmen who were familiar with an established Anglican
Church. English Anglican missionaries had themselves been brought up
to interact with the civil authority. At a personal level, colonial admin-
istrators and Anglican missionaries were from the same social “drawer,”
and had attended the same schools and universities. (This contrasts with
home experiences of missionaries from other national and denomina-
tional backgrounds, such as American Presbyterians or English Roman
Catholics.) As Kenya moved to independence, the new African elite had a
similar shared experience of education, often in Anglican mission schools:
the new cadre of politicians, civil servants and bishops had strong ties of
affinity and indeed kinship to one another, comparable to those of their
European predecessors. From the colonial era onwards, both the govern-
ment and the Anglican Church in Kenya have expected the Anglicans to
have influence in civil matters beyond what might be gathered from a
reading of the Constitution.
The Anglicans were, then, handed a certain informal influence and
responsibility by historical accident. It was not a foregone conclu-
sion that they would welcome and make use of this opportunity. The
Anglican Church was planted in Kenya largely by missionaries of the
Church Missionary Society (CMS), and from 1930 by others from
the Bible Churchmen’s Missionary Society (BCMS, now Crosslinks).
The majority of Anglican missionaries sent to Kenya were Evangelicals.
Evangelical Anglicans typically emphasize the importance of individual
conversion to Christ and the development of personal spirituality
98 Paddy Benson

expressed in repentance, prayer, and study of the scriptures. They may

feel closer to fellow Evangelical Christians from other churches, than to
non-Evangelical Anglicans.9 Crucially, Evangelicals have often defined
themselves against liberal Christians who focus on social transforma-
tion.10 To caricature this: Evangelicals have sometimes said that work-
ing to improve conditions in society does not save souls, and so is a
distraction from the work of the gospel. Githiga (2001:22–24) gives
examples from colonial times of Anglican missionaries responding to
political events that bore on their work: for example, the protest of
Archdeacon Owen against certain forms of forced labor, and the com-
plaint of Harry Leakey concerning expropriations of Gikuyu land round
Kabete. Nevertheless, the nationalist jibe “Gutiri ngurani na mubia na
muthungu.” (“There is no difference between a settler and a missionary.”)
was uncomfortably close to home.
Yet this missionary attitude is only one—and not necessarily the most
significant—of the influences shaping the approach of Kenyan Anglicans
to the state. John Lonsdale (1999) has provided a detailed case study of
the interaction between Christian faith and Gikuyu ethnicity. No doubt
similar case studies could be produced for other ethnic groups. Lonsdale
agrees with Adrian Hastings that “Africans have had a large hand in
making their Christianities,” and “many black Christians scarcely met
a white missionary at all.” Of greatest importance was the vernacular
Bible itself, which provided “an allegory of their own history, a story of
national servitude, salvation, exile and return.” The Bible informed the
inquiry and debate of Christian converts as they worked out their faith
and their morality.
Christian converts in Kenya came from every section of society:
established, wealthy families but also dispossessed and marginal people.
In the course of time an immense variety of interpretations of Christian
faith emerged. Some accepted traditional customs such as Female Genital
Cutting (FGC);11 others rejected them. Some honored the traditional
structures of elders and clans; others lived outside them. Some withdrew
from the world into prayer and ecstatic praise; others were inspired by
the Bible to fight for land and morality. Within this variety, the Anglicans
found their usual via media. Anglicanism, once planted, proved a suitable
vehicle for the aspirations of the old establishment: order, respect, hard
work that brings reward, and a world in which spiritual and material pros-
perity went hand in hand. Lonsdale (1992:442) says of the missionaries,
“They preached salvation; but they encouraged improvement, including
the stone houses that symbolized progress; their schools enjoyed state
subsidy . . . They taught the power of the Word but were men of power
in the World.” The African Anglican Church continued this spirit.
 Faith Engaging Politics 99

What all the converts shared was a need to work out their faith within
a rapidly changing society, in which new institutions and new economic
realities were subjecting inherited ways of life to intolerable strains. To
adapt an observation by Lonsdale (1999:209–10), converts had been
condemned by their parents as delinquent; but they came to see them-
selves as the ones who alone could save their own people from cultural
or social extinction. “To missionary dismay, their Protestant adherents,
a Christian establishment, continued to accept the old cosmic equation
between wealth and virtue.”
Between the two World Wars the this-worldliness of mission-based
Anglicanism was challenged by the impact of the East African Revival
movement. From the 1940s onwards, the Revival had a profound
influence on the Anglican Church and other churches. It associated
individual conversion, confession, and testimony with the very mean-
ing of “being a Christian.” The Revival had a difficult early relation-
ship with ecclesiastical authority: missionary bishops were commonly
suspicious of the Revival’s creation of its own, alternative governance.
However, the Revivalists continued to attend church and did not
officially dispute ecclesiastical authority.12 In the fullness of time,
Revival mores in effect captured the hierarchy of the church. Today, a
man or woman can scarcely be ordained into the Anglican Church of
Kenya without being able to produce at least a pastiche of a Revival
testimony.
Revivalists vigorously rejected the idea that worldly possessions or
position were of any value or conferred honor beyond that of being a
man or woman in Christ. In particular, Revivalists regarded politics as
being worldly and corrupt beyond all mending.
Given that the Revival became so important to Kenyan Anglicanism,
the church might have turned its back on exercising political influ-
ence. In fact, this did not happen. In the first place, despite the
economic conservatism of many Anglican converts the Christian
agenda was from the first inseparable from social transformation.
Those who preached in the early twentieth century called men and
women to remodel their lives in accordance with the gospel. This
brought Christians into conflict with the customs of the traditional
societies from which they were converted. In many parts of Kenya,
the touchstone issue was FGC. Christians who rejected FGC or
other customs (such as polygyny or widow inheritance) brought the
church into conflict with inherited practices. This was a highly politi-
cal act, confronting fundamental tenets of traditional communities.
Furthermore, converts typically learned to read in order to have access
to the scriptures. Their new learning had the important side effect
100 Paddy Benson

of giving them access to employment and influence, and made them

better able to deal with courts and other authorities as Kenyan society
modernized. This in turn subverted traditional patterns of leadership:
a 20-something literate, employed Christian was at an advantage over
tribal elders whose experience of life had not prepared them for the
modern world.
The preaching of the gospel had these accidental political repercus-
sions. However, in some places, where traditional societies were strong
enough to exclude and persecute converts, the missionaries deliberately
encouraged the formation of Christian villages at the mission compound.
These experiments were not necessarily shining successes, but they indi-
cated the willingness of the church to engage in social engineering as a
corollary of preaching the gospel. Even the Evangelical and pietistic mis-
sionaries were, in fact, ready to embroil themselves in “politics” when the
stakes were high enough.
The border between “state’s responsibility” and “churches’ responsibility”—
which is in any case fuzzy—falls in a different place in Kenya from the
present norm in Europe. In Britain, for example, the church can claim
to have originated systems of poor relief, of education and health care,
but the core provision of all such services is now made by the state.13 The
churches of Kenya by contrast still have a holistic view of their mission.
Long before the first Lausanne Conference,14 the churches were engaged
in medical work and education—spheres of action that in Europe long
ago passed largely into the hands of the government. In independent
Kenya, nationally funded health and education services took over most
but not all of the church-planted institutions. However, the church con-
tinues to pioneer new initiatives in community development, including
health, agriculture, water supply, and other services. International fund-
ing agencies often prefer to work with churches rather than government
agencies: partly because of their better record in avoiding corruption and
partly because the church has better grassroots “reach” into the commu-
nity than the organs of state. Church and state agencies are intertwined
and work closely together in the delivery of services to the population,
especially in rural areas. When church and state address one another in
Kenya, they do so as partners in hundreds of small, local everyday activi-
ties that affect the lives of citizens.
In summary, the Anglican Church in Kenya does not have a strong
ideological bias toward interfering in government affairs; if anything,
its pietist tendency might push it in the opposite direction. However in
practice it is deeply committed to engagement with the state. It has a
vision of social virtue, it is involved in development projects, its leaders
have personal ties to administration officers, its members believe that part
 Faith Engaging Politics 101

of their Christian duty is to uphold a version of traditional society, and it

has a Bible that tells of God’s sovereignty over all human activity.

Religion in the Public Square

Most Kenyans are religious believers, but no church or religious group is
established in Kenya. Bishops and imams do not sit ex officio in its par-
liament. The government presides over a nation where many religions,
with large numbers of adherents, can claim to be naturalized; but the
state does not favor any of them. Rather, the state endeavors to make
space for all the religions to be practiced. Even in such a sensitive matter
as the administration of justice, the government attempts to allow reli-
gious believers freedom to order their own affairs. Islamic Khadi’s courts
and traditional tribal courts are both allowed a certain limited scope to
settle disputes within their own communities. However, the state keeps
a watchful eye on the activities of religious groups and will curtail their
activities if they seem not to be in the public interest. The Kenyan state
is secular.
Yet the Kenyan state is not secularist. John Mbiti’s (1969:1) famous
statement that “Africans are notoriously religious” has been set in a
contemporary sociological context by Grace Davie (2002). She points
out that Europe is currently unusual in a world context for its low
engagement between religious faith and public life.15 Kenya is nearer
than Europe to the global norm. Readers in Britain have to make an
effort to realize how far their society is from the atmosphere in Kenya.
In Britain, the former prime minister Tony Blair’s personal religious faith
was a source of embarrassment to his spin doctors.16 When General Sir
Richard Dannatt was revealed to be a committed Christian,17 there was
agonized correspondence in the national press about whether it was suit-
able for the head of the army to be a person of faith. The local authority
in Macclesfield wished to cancel the annual church service for the town’s
traders because they thought it inappropriate for the town thus to “favor”
the church. (The service was reinstated when the traders protested.)
In Kenya, by contrast, religion and politics lie on a single spectrum
of human response to the world we live in. The example of Mau Mau
is instructive. The politicians who campaigned for independence in the
1940s and 1950s made a case deploring the alienation of African lands
by European settlers. However, those who fought in the forest saw the
settlers’ actions as unjust for reasons that were specifically religious: for
example, the land for which they fought had been given to Gikuyu
by Ngai (God).18 The most powerful weapon of social control in the
Mau Mau armory was its system of oaths by which political assent was
102 Paddy Benson

enforced with a religious sanction.19 The connections of Mau Mau were

too specifically Gikuyu for them to provide an unambiguous foundation
myth for the Kenyan state—and indeed the state is as much the succes-
sor of the Loyalists and Home Guard as it is of the forest army—but
today the motivation and the courage of the fighters is widely admired
even by those who would not have identified with them at the time.
Mau Mau is often now remembered as an example of faith in action,
seeking justice.
According to Lonsdale (1992:442) the Anglican strand of Christianity
always had a particular resonance with the state’s secular project. Writing
of mission activity in the Gikuyu area, he describes a Christianity “of the
Kikuyu establishment . . . worldly in belief and practice, conventionally
Kikuyu in its estimate of wealth . . . Membership of a mission church gave
entry to well-paid employment and, to judge by the growing number of
Christian chiefs, to political office.”
As Kenya came to independence, the Anglican Church had the
potential to make a significant contribution in the public square. At its
best, organized Christianity held an inclusive vision of society, and in the
Bible’s teaching it had a yardstick by which to measure it. The church was
equipped to speak to the state. Yet, for most church leaders, addressing
the state was not the first priority. John Lonsdale (2001) lists some of
the controversies between church and state from colonial times to Moi’s
presidency and then comments that “in each of these eras the church was
not only slow to learn, it was also aroused first in its own narrow interest
and only later in the interest of the health of Kenyan society as a whole.”
Having said this, it is also true that individual bishops could find eventu-
ally that a large part of their energy was devoted to dealing with the state.
Henry Okullu drew the conclusion most directly:

Okullu declared that he was a priest in the order of Melchizedek and “I

will die a priest, when I die, I will be buried in my robes. I am also a politi-
cian and will die a politician.” He said he was a priest by conviction; the
same applied to politics.20

However, Lonsdale’s point is well taken. With the possible exception of

Alexander Muge, Anglicans who have engaged with the state often give
the impression of doing so contingently rather than out of the belief that
this is a core part of their task.
Even when Anglicans became embroiled in political matters, the
church has neither become confused with the state nor attempted to
supplant it. From the colonial era onwards, most church leaders under-
stood that they should maintain a critical distance between themselves
 Faith Engaging Politics 103

and the political elite, and refuse to be co-opted as a kind of Ministry of

Religious Affairs.21 Thin-skinned government ministers interpreted cleri-
cal criticism as “politics from the pulpit,”22 but in truth they were never
subjected to a root-and-branch onslaught from Anglican clergy.
The Revival legacy also set a limit on church leaders’ freedom to
embrace politics.23 At the village level, the Revival constituency continues
to hold that although there are good politicians as well as bad politicians,
there are no saved politicians. Politicians are always outsiders from the
Revival’s point of view.24
It should always be remembered that the vast majority of church
interactions with the state involve local cooperation in development and
are positive in tone. Inevitably, public pronouncements often relate to
problems, though this is not always the case.25 Church and state in Kenya
have learnt to acknowledge and value one another. At some level, the
interaction of religion and politics is taken for granted.26 Yet the distinct-
ness of the two spheres is understood. Given the closeness of the links
that exist, it is perhaps surprising that so few individuals appear confused
about their roles—so few churchmen are identified with political parties,
and so few politicians see themselves as agents of the church.27

Influence and Its Limits

Kenyans, then, believe that religion is part of life and, therefore, that
there is a religious angle to national debates, which should not be
ignored. This creates the conditions for religious leaders to speak and be
heard. However, there is no institutional mechanism for religious input
to be made. Church leaders who wish to speak on national matters have
to find their own means of doing so.
Although almost all Kenyans have a formal religious allegiance, in
many cases this seems to be quite lightly held. As individuals move around
in search of work, they worship in and identify with the churches they
find (so fulfilling the hopes of the Kikuyu Conference participants). It
is common to find an extended family whose members belong to several
different mainstream denominations, and maybe one or another of the
independent churches or Pentecostal groups, and even a wanderer who has
become a Muslim. Except in strongly Muslim areas, most families are able
to accommodate religious variety with tolerance and mutual respect.
It may be that the same attitude, writ large, accounts for the manner in
which the populace receives church leaders’ pronouncements on national
matters. Religious authority is not recognized in Kenya solely on the basis
of denominational loyalty—“my” cardinal, “my” bishop, or “my” imam.
Rather, any person of faith may command a degree of respect by their
104 Paddy Benson

wisdom and their integrity, and may have an influence even on those
who have no intention of joining their organization. In the last decades,
Kenyan Roman Catholic leaders, such as the late Cardinal Maurice
Otunga, and Nairobi’s Archbishop Ndingi Mwana ‘a Nzeki, have spoken
out on national concerns, and their remarks have been widely reported:
a rare occurrence with previous generations of Roman Catholic leaders.
They have been heard because they were willing to speak, and because
what they said made sense.
Conversely, when a religious leader appears to lack integrity or
wisdom, he or she will be pilloried. Lonsdale mentions above the case
of a prominent clergyman who accepted a large stipend for minimal
duties from the Nairobi City Council and was given a severe pasting
in the newspapers.28 Clergy, in short, are admitted to national debate
on terms similar to those on which politicians operate. They are given
comparable scrutiny by the media, and are tested for signs that they are
working toward some hidden agenda. I will argue presently that ethnicity
is a defining factor in the workings of both state and church in Kenya.
However, it appears in the media, at least, that there is also a national
conversation in progress in which participants from any and every sec-
tion of society can participate equally and in which contributions are not
weighed first for ethnic origin.
As in the West, the media manage the debate; the contributors have
to follow rules that others have set. One consequence is that church lead-
ers who want to take part in national discussions have to become media
savvy. Some, such as David Gitari and the late Henry Okullu, were: they
understood the requirements of the media, they dealt with reporters and
editors as human beings, and they knew how to craft a sound bite. Others,
such as the Presbyterian Timothy Njoya and the late Alexander Muge,
were less effective because they were less discriminating in their choice of
targets. They attracted attention because they could always be relied on
to say something controversial, but they sometimes allowed themselves
rather than their message to become the center of attention.29
However, in engaging with and correcting the state, the Anglican
Church has not addressed all issues equally. It appears to still embody
the priorities that Lonsdale identified in the way in which the African
Anglican Church grew: that is, it baptized and transformed yet embod-
ied a traditional system of virtues. Hard work should lead to prosperity;
human beings owe a duty of care to family and community; the land is
held in trust to be worked and made to bear a yield. The ideal of the
upright man in traditional society resonates with the version in Christian
thought.30 Consequently, the church has confronted most vigorously the
evils that most directly assault these values.
 Faith Engaging Politics 105

The courageous and forthright sermons of David Gitari illustrate

the point. One example among very many is a sermon (1996b:145ff )
preached on 16 January 1994, in response to news that a plot of land
on the edge of the Mwea rice scheme had been expropriated and sold
to new owners, leaving homeless the family that had cultivated it for
more than 30 years. Gitari took his text from 2 Timothy 2: “The
farmer who has done the hard work should have the first share of the
harvest.” In the address that followed, he gave a detailed account of the
course of the scandal; he named the guilty parties including the District
Commissioner and three other officials; he examined the sorry state of
the rice scheme, and he gave an account of the plight of landless people
in Kirinyaga District. There was significant fallout in the following
weeks, not least that local people physically prevented the new owners
from taking possession of the plot. The Provincial Commissioner was
eventually forced to cancel the expropriation, although other iniquities
proceeded unchecked.
In other sermons, Gitari demanded justice and civic virtue at the
national as well as local level, notably to criticize unconsidered consti-
tutional changes (1988b:39), vote rigging and other forms of election
fraud (1988b:17), and political violence (1996b:59). Gitari makes the
wry observation that even among his own Anglican Christians, his call
for even-handed justice was widely misunderstood:

The last time the Bishop had visited Mugumo Parish was in April 1988
when he got a very cold reception from the Christians. This was mainly
because of an article in the magazine Beyond where the Bishop was quoted
as having said that elections in Gichugu has been rigged in favour of
Mr Kariithi, who apparently comes from St Mary’s Church, Mugumo . . .
In September 1988, Kanu grassroot and Branch elections were held,
and Mr Kariithi was removed from the chairmanship of Gichugu sub-
branch through vote rigging. The Bishop once again spoke firmly and
openly against the rigged elections . . . And so when the Bishop visited St
Mary’s Mugumo on 2nd April 1989, he received a VIP treatment for hav-
ing upheld the principle that elections should not be rigged.
(1996b:82)

No reader of Gitari’s sermons could doubt for a moment that his preach-
ing arises from an informed reading of the Bible and its apt application
to contemporary life. Yet we might also identify other ills in Kenyan soci-
ety, which are at least as destructive and ungodly as those against which
he inveighed, but that seem to receive less attention. The most glaring
example is that within the canon of his published sermons, there is only
one address specifically targeting ethnic rivalry.
106 Paddy Benson

Ethnic tension in Kenya is occasionally touched on in passing. The

sermon collection In Season and Out of Season, for example, contains four
or five mentions of the subject, of which one on page 143 is typical:

As peacemakers, bishops and pastors have to be involved in the quest for jus-
tice; after all, politics is so important that it cannot be left to politicians alone.
Left on their own they have created the “Hiroshimas” of their world, which in
our nation at this present time include West Pokot, Molo, Enoosupukia, Burnt
Forest etc, where clashes have continued unabated. (And now we hear there
are marauding youths in Kwale district of Coastal Province.) A bishop should
never listen to those who tell him to keep quiet when the people are bleeding.

This passage identifies a serious and longstanding problem in Kenyan

society: interethnic violence, especially that perpetrated by young men.
Young men in every society in the world have a propensity for vio-
lence. In Kenya, youthful folly is sometimes sanctioned by ancient cus-
tom. Among the Rendille of Northern Kenya, for example, a young man
wishing to impress a girl may steal cattle from another group; if someone
gets killed in the process, that will not diminish his allure. However,
as Gitari pointed out, interethnic violence is particularly linked to the
activities of politicians. The politicians “create Hiroshimas” by encourag-
ing their supporters in their own ethnic group to attack the groups that
might support their rivals. The catastrophic events of early 2008, when
more than 1000 people died and hundreds of thousands of Kenyans
became internally displaced, was an extreme case of this familiar evil.31
Gitari was always willing to challenge ungodliness wherever he found
it, in the church as well as outside of it. He himself acknowledged that
the church was not immune to ethnic tensions and misunderstandings:

This Diocese has made great progress during the last ten years. One of
the secrets of our great success is that the Christians in this Diocese have
been united behind their Bishop. The Gikuyu of Kirinyaga, the Wa-Embu
and Wa-Mbeere of Embu District, the Wa-Meru of Meru District, the
Wakamba of Karaba, the Gabbras and the Borans of Marsabit, all of us,
have worked together to build a diocese where great things are happening.
But we have not been completely free from elements of disunity.
Pockets of quarrelling by leaders have been found at parish and con-
gregational levels. We thank God that these have not been widespread . . .
Nevertheless we still have some leaders who are like Euodia and Syntyche . . .
Church leaders can never succeed in reconciling quarrelling groups if they
are already prejudiced against one group or the other . . . Heed this: you can-
not reconcile them if you are already biased.
(1996b:49)
 Faith Engaging Politics 107

In another sermon, Gitari spelled out the path of reconciliation a little

further:

We must work to remove all that which divides us if we want to lay a

deserved claim to shalom. Where there is division we need to work for
reconciliation. True reconciliation does not come by sweeping problems
under the carpet or by a mere shaking of hands in public places. We
must find the root cause of our divisions and deal with it. The Christian
must labour to produce right relationships between people . . . Christian
reconciliation means reconciling people to God and reconciling people to
each other. A reconciler must not take sides except when it is the side of
the truth.
(1996b:89)

This is a worthy exhortation, but it does little to guide the process that
Gitari himself says is essential: to “find the root cause of our divisions
and deal with it.”
We must ask why it is that a gifted Biblical expositor, who is a clear-
sighted and courageous leader in church and nation, finds so little to
say to address what must surely be one of the most serious fault lines
in Kenyan society. My belief is that it is not an oversight, and certainly
not a lack of willingness to tackle a difficult issue. Rather, the problem is
structural—the result of the organization of Kenyan churches.

The Ethnic Architecture of the Kenyan State and

the Kenyan Churches
Lonsdale (2004:3) draws attention to the origins and structure of the
Kenyan political elite as a whole. Typically, members of the elite are
drawn from the leading families of particular ethnic groups. They often
have homes or estates in the rural area from which their family sprang,
but their life is lived elsewhere. Their privileged education and lifestyle
distance them from the community from which they sprang; neverthe-
less, that home community and its church32 are the essential hinterland
to each member of the elite.
Lonsdale contrasts this elite of weakened ethnic roots with the
growing phenomenon of urban dwellers who have no ethnic roots in
a rural area. He particularly refers to the urban poor, the speakers of
Sheng, among whom the Pentecostal churches have made progress.
Lonsdale agrees with Timothy Njoya that Pentecostalism is “a survival
strategy for the poor,” and has little interest in engaging with the
political system.
108 Paddy Benson

We could add that there is also a growing urban middle class, which
still acknowledges a family in the rural areas, but rarely thinks of it or
visits it, and does not identify with it. This last group is represented in
the congregations of Nairobi Baptist Church and All Saints’ Cathedral,
among many others. When it finds a distinctive political voice, this group
may well change the landscape of governance in Kenya. But it has not
happened yet. Kenyan politics is still dominated by the old postindepen-
dence elite and its children, which manipulates the ethnic block votes
into shifting coalitions, as David Throup (1987) has explained.
Despite the weakness of the tie between elite and ethnic base, the alli-
ance is essential to both parties. For the constituents, the success of their
patron is their best hope of advancement—either bringing development
projects to their district, or offering employment and other advantages.
For the elite politician, the mass of supporters is his bargaining chip
when he negotiates with his peers. The ebb and flow of support at the
clan and subclan level is the stuff of Kenyan local politics,33 and the
fortunes of politicians in the ethnic heartland are intertwined with their
opportunities on the national stage.
Lonsdale (1992:316) has offered an important insight into a concep-
tual weakness at the heart of the nationalist project in Kenya:
Empire did not foster the kind of nationalism that political scientists
thought they ought to see. Structures that shaped political debate were not
territorial but local . . .; there was no coherent doctrine of modernization . . .
Ethnic thought had long addressed issues of civic rights and duties, insepa-
rable from those of gender, with more passion than the extramural class of
territorial nationalism could ever have done before Independence. Kenya
nationalism’s chief tactician, Tom Mboya, openly admitted that his secret
of success was political inanity.

Kenya has a flag, currency, sports teams, and national armed services;
but the energies within the nation are located mainly within the ethnic
communities. This is sometimes miscalled “tribalism.” The hard-edged
concept of “tribe” is a recent creation, formed in part by the vernacular
Bibles and in part by the administrative convenience of colonial officials.
Lonsdale (2005a) approvingly quotes Lamin Sanneh to the effect that
“the vernacularisation of Christianity . . . has been a major influence on
the formation of local cultural identities.” Rather, the nation is shaped
by the more fluid concept of “ethnicity,” as different groups cooperate or
compete, intermarry, or struggle for influence and resources.
Kenya’s churches are not in some Olympian place above this exciting
and varied ethnic stew. They are located within it. The old missionary
comity arrangements sanctified the link between denomination and ethnic
 Faith Engaging Politics 109

group, and (as we have seen) the denominations came to be the bearers of
traditional ethnic aspirations in the modern world. Consequently, it was
always going to be difficult for the churches to develop a critique of ethnic
competition, since ethnic allegiance was built into their foundations.
Yet such a critique is inescapably a Christian task. The task of the
church is to announce the Kingdom of God. In the Kenyan context,
this must include the Kingdom’s bearing on interethnic relations. The
Bible is particularly well-equipped to address this issue. Large parts of
the New Testament wrestle with the problem of Jews and Gentiles within
the church. The clear message of the Bible is that a Christian’s identity
as a man or woman in Christ has to take precedence over any other
identity—whether ethnic identity, gender identity, or economic/social
identity.34 This is more than a pious aspiration. The New Testament con-
tains evidence of a painful struggle to apply the insight in daily life. In
matters such as ritual purity and food laws, sexual morals and the obser-
vance of holy days, let alone hot-button issues such as circumcision, Jews
and Gentiles had to negotiate their different cultural presuppositions in
the light of a common allegiance to Christ. They were not permitted to
remain within a ghetto of Christians who shared their culture and ethnic-
ity. They were required to learn unity with one another.35
But despite this treasury of Biblical material, Kenya’s Anglican Church
has only infrequently addressed the issue of ethnic relations in the nation.
On the occasions when it has done so, it has generally failed to give clear
guidance or practical leadership. The church is hampered not by a lack of
courage or of insight, but by its own structure, for the church is cut from
the same ethnic cloth as the rest of society. One outstanding example
concerns the Gikuyu oathing at the time of Mboya’s murder in 1969,
and again at the time of J. M. Kariuki’s murder in 1975. In each case,
Kenyatta’s government wished to protect its own authority by ensuring
solid support in its Gikuyu heartland. The (largely Gikuyu) Anglican
leadership was rather slow and muted in its response. One of the most
outspoken critics of the oathing in 1975 was David Gitari—not yet a
bishop—who in a broadcast address (1996b:18) said.

An appeal for national unity must be an appeal that we may be united in

truth, but not in falsehood. It is quite possible for a tribe or a group of
people to unite by entering into a secret superstitious oath. That kind of
unity is founded on fear, not on truth . . . Once a person is set free from
the bondage of superstition, he is freed from secret tribal oaths.

Gitari’s protest was an act of considerable courage, and seems to have

played its part in bringing the oathing to an end. Nevertheless, we must
110 Paddy Benson

observe the basis on which Gitari denounced the oathing: not that ethnic
divisions are abhorrent to Christians, but that the oath being used to
enforce them was superstitious. John Lonsdale (2006) has written that

It took the murder of Tom Mboya and the oathing crisis of 1969, designed
to keep Kenya’s flag in the House of Muumbi, to awaken Kenya’s African
church leaders to the extreme dangers of ethnocratic power, a too easy
successor to racism.

However, I question whether then or subsequently the church leaders

have truly awakened to the dangers of ethnocracy. They would certainly
wish to moderate the manner in which ethnic competition works itself
out. Violence, corruption, and traditional oaths are repudiated, because
these all offend against the transformed traditional civic virtues that
Anglicanism espouses. But the competition itself, and the underlying
rivalry between clans and ethnic groups, is largely unchallenged.
The church is in an even weaker position now than in the past to
develop a critique of ethnocracy. Thirty years ago there were only seven
Kenyan dioceses, each of which embraced a diversity of ethnic groups. In
a large, ethnically mixed diocese, no bishop could for long get away with
egregiously favoring one group against the rest. Clergy were posted where
they were needed and often found themselves serving outside their ethnic
comfort zone. There was a structural necessity to confront and overcome
ethnic jealousies. In practice, however, the jealousies were contained
rather than confronted; and rapid church growth rescued the church from
the need to give unpalatable teaching. Even the best dioceses experienced
stresses and strains (testified to in Gitari’s sermon cited above). Gitari was
unusual for trying to broaden the basis of appointments within his dio-
cese.36 As Archbishop he even, extraordinarily, encouraged the appoint-
ment of European bishops in Kenyan dioceses when they were the most
suitable candidates. Nevertheless, like King Canute he could not hold back
the tide. When his diocese of Mount Kenya East was divided in 1990, the
desire for change arose from the belief of leaders of the Embu community
that they were being neglected in the making of senior appointments. A
prominent Embu layman said in synod that positions and resources in
the diocese were being allocated principally to people from Gitari’s own
Kirinyaga District: what Embu received was “a drop in the bucket.”37
As of early 2009 there are 29 dioceses, most of them coterminous with
a tribe or sub-tribe. Three northern missionary areas (Turkana, Marsabit,
and Wajir) have been taken away from the southern dioceses that were
rather reluctantly hosting them, and have been added to All Saints’
Diocese (the Archbishop’s episcopal responsibility). The three southern
 Faith Engaging Politics 111

dioceses have thus been set free to pursue the “normal” path of ethnic
homogeneity. I am aware of at least four more dioceses that are under
active consideration in the next three years, and another ten in the five
years beyond that. Presently, a diocese will gather just the Anglicans of a
single clan. In those circumstances, no diocese has within it the diversity
that compels the church to address the transethnic dimension of the
Gospel. Bishops may continue to declare Christ’s saving grace and teach
Christian conduct to the people, but they are locked into the minutiae
of clan politics that dominate life in rural Kenya.38
The proliferation of dioceses has encouraged a perfectly proper pride in
local achievements, and has released resources and encouraged energetic
participation by Christians in the life of the church. However, it has also
had negative effects. When there were few dioceses, becoming a bishop
was not a realistic ambition for most clergy. Today, there are many more
opportunities of preferment, and more still can be opened up whenever
another new diocese is created. The moral authority of the church has
been weakened by infighting among senior clergy as they maneuver for
their chance to be bishop. In some cases, clergy have reverted to the client-
patron model of ethnic politics, and have enlisted the aid of politicians
from their locality to secure nomination to ecclesiastical office.39 Finally,
some of the smaller dioceses hover on the edge of financial bankruptcy,
and their bishops must constantly seek subsidies from outside to keep
them afloat. The best and most independent bishops will continue to hold
politicians to account in local matters.40 However, the bishops of small
dioceses may be dependent on wealthy politicians, and certainly have no
higher vantage-point from which to analyse and correct the conduct of
interethnic relations within the nation.
In 2002, in response to the burgeoning number of dioceses, the
Diocese of Nairobi too was subdivided. The city was made into a dio-
cese with its own pastoral bishop; while All Saints’ Cathedral Diocese
became the nominal metropolitan see of the Archbishop. This in effect
set the archbishop free to exercise a national and international ministry.
However, the ministry of one man, even if he be a gifted prophet, is no
substitute for an entire church living out the gospel imperative to become
one people of God, irrespective of ethnic origin.
In retrospect, the 1980s and 1990s look like a golden age for Anglican
influence in national life. That is because the issues of the time—which
centered on vote-rigging and the manipulation of the constitution within
the one-party state—were ones which offended the traditional civic vir-
tues that are at the heart of the Anglican project. Today, vote-rigging is
an expression of the flux of ethnic politics, and Anglican leaders are on
much less solid ground.
112 Paddy Benson

Anglican leaders continue to command respect in the government in

such matters as resolving tribal clashes, but typically they do so as ethnic
rather than transethnic figures. In 2006, the Anglican Church of Kenya
suffered the tragedy of losing one of its most gifted young leaders. The
Provincial Secretary, Rt Revd William Waqo, died in a plane crash in
Marsabit. Bishop Waqo was one of a party of civic and political dignitar-
ies who had gone to broker a peace deal between warring Boran clans.
He had been invited to participate in the negotiations because he was a
respected Boran ethnic leader.
An even clearer example of a churchman being an ethnic leader was
Bishop Okullu. His retirement in 1994 coincided with the death of
Jaramogi Oginga Odinga. According to Oluoch (2006:64), it was seri-
ously mooted that Okullu could take over Oginga Odinga’s old parlia-
mentary seat, and that he could take on the mantle as senior Luo leader.
His powerbase was insufficient to secure such a position, but the idea was
not inherently ridiculous.

A Theological Basis for Influence

Lonsdale (2005a) mentions several different theological strands that
inform church leaders as they engage with the state. They include:

● An incarnational theology that recognizes a division between the realms

of God and of Caesar, and insists that Caesar should order his realm in
a godly fashion—for example, maintaining consultative government,
protecting human rights and allowing citizens to take personal moral
responsibility. The churches see the power of the state as fundamentally
beneficent, protecting society against violence and social disintegra-
tion. Lonsdale characterizes this as “a local version [some might call it
a local subversion] of a theology of liberation.”
● A theology, as much traditional-ethnic as Biblical, that stresses indi-
vidual rather than structural responsibility for wealth and poverty,
and that emphasizes faithfulness to tradition and hierarchy as the
guarantee of social discipline.
● Yet the Kenyan Protestant churches, with their roots deep in rural
ethnic cultures, have a weak theology of class and nationhood. So while
they may rebuke kleptocracy, they are unlikely to develop a positive call
for redistribution. Lonsdale refers to “the weaknesses in Kenya’s theolo-
gies” that set limits on the church’s ability to guide the state.
● Lonsdale also refers to the theological environment into which
the church speaks—the popular theology of the masses. “One
suspects . . . that many laypeople judge politicians according to the
 Faith Engaging Politics 113

inherent quality of their personal power to exploit rather than to be

defeated by unseen forces, curses, or the sorcery employed by rivals,
that neither Christianity nor Islam seem willing to overcome.”

In another place (Benson 1995), I have suggested that during the time of
President Moi, the Kenyan churches did not subscribe to an overarching
theology of power. Their response to the state was pragmatic and piece-
meal, the result of their reading of the Bible. They did not have a master-
plan for the nation, but rather saw their task as reacting to the initiatives
of politicians. They claimed that the Bible was a yardstick by which the
state’s actions could be assessed. Church leaders believed that they should
weigh the contemporary deeds of politicians in the scales of God’s require-
ments, discovered from a study of his acts and the prophets’ words.
I now think that this position needs to be modified, and that the lack
of a robust theological basis for national engagement is more apparent
than real. Leaders of the Anglican Church and other churches possess a
framework, a political metanarrative that integrates their interventions
in national affairs—but they have often not articulated it clearly, to
themselves or to their hearers. (David Gitari would say that they have
not always been willing to do so; but that is another matter.) The con-
sequence of this communication failure is that their pronouncements
may appear to be rather random and moralistic, disconnected from one
another and not contributing to a vision of godly society.
This metanarrative can be summed up as the Kingdom (or kingship)
of God. If God is King, then other forces—once, Roman emperors,
today, Kenyan presidents—are not. Their authority is diminished; their
power is relativized. The kingship of Christ is far more than an obscure
doctrinal formula. It is the heart of the apostles’ message.41 It declares
Christ’s lordship, explains God’s purpose of redemption, and demands
our submission to him.
Lonsdale’s observation is valid, that the churches are not theologically
equipped to demand more participatory democracy or a redistribution
of wealth. They would deny that they are called to have such a program.
However, the result of preaching the Kingdom of God is to change the
terms of living in society. To take one specific case, it answers Lonsdale’s
point that “many laypeople judge politicians according to the inherent
quality of their personal power to exploit rather than to be defeated by
unseen forces.” The gospel contains the message that the ultimate unseen
force is God himself; we cannot exploit him, but because of his kingship
in Christ, he can protect us from all other forces.42
In David Gitari’s preaching, this theme of the kingship of God was
always close to the surface, and his preaching was effective for that very
114 Paddy Benson

reason. The sermons in his published collections (1988b, 1996b) and his
many unpublished sermons share these characteristics: they take a Bible
passage, seek to understand it in its context, and then show that God
speaks through the passage to declare his will for how people should live
today. The sermons show the implications for his hearers of the fact that
God, in Christ, is Lord and King.
Of particular interest in this connection are sermons that Gitari preached
at the consecration of new bishops and at the commissioning of other church
officers: for they disclose his understanding of the root of a “prophetic minis-
try” and the way in which it should be carried out. So, for example:

Who knows but that [four new bishops] are becoming bishops at such
a time as this in the history of Kenya: a time of multi-party democracy,
ethnic clashes and economic hardships . . .
No leader is completely free from opposition and the best antidote is
courage: God tells Jeremiah, “Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you
to deliver you . . .”
The Christian leader is called upon to destroy and overthrow the kingdom
of Satan. The kingdom of Satan is the kingdom of darkness. At this time in
the history of our nation we must not underrate the power of Satan.
(Gitari 1996b:131–35)

Unfinished Business
The church in Kenya has grown through its proclamation of the
Kingdom or kingship of God, and it is the same central truth that shapes
its engagement with the state. The good news is that God is King, and
that all people everywhere can be free from sin and death. God’s blessings
and promises are equal for all people.
This is not a political program, yet it has important political conse-
quences. In the first century, the message of the Kingdom demanded that
Jews and Gentiles accept one another as equals, and the seismic effect of
this innovation is reflected on page after page of the epistles. The implica-
tions continue to be revealed: for example, the abolition of slavery and
the emancipation of women, and the breaking down of class barriers. (To
see an implication and to win the battle are different things.)
From my perspective as an outsider, it looks as if the Kenyan church
should articulate the same gospel today by telling Kenyans that King
Jesus has one people and that no discrimination according to tribe or clan
can be tolerated among Christians.
If significant numbers of Kenyan Christians were to reject divisions
based on ethnicity and if the church could model a community in which
family loyalty and bonds of kinship did not result in nepotism or a
 Faith Engaging Politics 115

freemasonry of race, then the gospel of the Kingdom of God really would
shape Kenyan society. There have been times in the church’s past when it
seemed as if this were about to happen. The Revival insisted on the equal-
ity of races and tribes in Christ. Its dogmas continue to receive lip service,
but as the church has grown, it has become easier for people to have their
whole Christian experience within their own cultural and ethnic ghetto.
Many in the church, including many leaders, have lost sight of the urgent
need to challenge inherited cultural ethnocentricity.
The New Testament shows how difficult it was in the early days of
the gospel to reconcile Jew and Gentile in the church. ( Jewish Christians
today might well say that the task has still not been completed.) Although
the letter to the Ephesians says that the “dividing wall of hostility” had
been removed by Christ, the letters to the Galatians and the Philippians
show that some people were busy building it up again. Nevertheless, with
all its flaws, the testimony of the early church was powerful enough to
capture the Roman world. Faith like a grain of mustard seed is enough to
move mountains, said Jesus. Even the beginnings of ethnic reconciliation
in the church could transform Kenya, and Africa as well.
As a bishop and archbishop in the Anglican Church of Kenya, David
Gitari bore the responsibility for the spiritual welfare of many thousands
of Anglican Christians. He created and oversaw a team of lay and ordained
ministers, devised and implemented strategies for evangelism and pastoral
care, and set a strategic vision for developing the physical resources of the
church.43 He carried out his duties by a mixture of exhortation, planning,
prayer, Biblical teaching, and personal example. Yet, any Kenyan would
confirm that his ministry and his influence went far beyond the boundaries
of his own church (Keyas 2005). He was heard with respect by individual
Kenyans who did not share his affiliation. Furthermore—and this is the
point of this collection of essays in his honor—he deliberately addressed
the Kenyan state and its officials, and they learned to listen attentively to
what he had to say. He did as much as any Anglican churchman to call
the nation to transform in the light of the Kingdom of God. The point
of engagement between the Kingdom and the state is different now from
what it was in his day, but the heart of the task remains the same.

Notes
1. John Lonsdale (1992:328) has argued that the contrast between
reactionary “tribe” and progressive “nation” are largely the product of an
evolutionary myth.
2. Most obviously, during the Emergency. “In the forests of Mount Kenya
and Nyandarua Mau Mau fought as much for virtue as for freedom.”
John Lonsdale (1992:317).
116 Paddy Benson

There is a powerful contemporary example of traditional religious

values making a direct impact on politics. Muingiki, banned by the
Kenya government as a “criminal gang,” regards itself as a religious sect:
in effect, a New Religious Movement within traditional religion.
3. “Nationalist politics was conducted within a prophetic idiom that
merged indigenous and Christian traditions” (Ambler 1995:236).
4. See, for example, The East African 1 January 2001; and New York Times
13 January 2001; see also the U.S. Public Broadcasting Service website,
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/binladen/upclose/
computer.html
5. She is a Nobel prizewinner and champion of the environmental move-
ment. In Moi’s time, she led a successful campaign to prevent developers
from encroaching on Uhuru Park in Nairobi. She lost her seat in the
2007 election.
6. 1991: relating to export credits fraudulently paid for the export of non-
existent gold.
7. 2002: relating to a contract for passport equipment that was priced at
five times the actual cost.
8. For a chronicle of the Kenyan state and its interaction with the church,
see the excellent summaries by Oluoch (2006:1–30) and Githiga (2001).
9. At the 1913 Kikuyu Conference, the Anglican bishops of Mombasa and
Uganda wished to embrace a comity arrangement with missions from other
denominations. The different missions divided up the region between
them, and agreed not to plant churches across these mission boundaries.
Each mission would also accept as members any Christian in good standing
with another church who moved into its territory. These pragmatic arrange-
ments sidestepped traditional Anglican requirements for confirmation and
episcopal ordination. The High Church Bishop of Zanzibar accused the
Kikuyu Conference participants of heresy, and the Conference did not (as
it hoped) become the first step on the path to a united Protestant church of
East Africa. However, it illustrates the willingness of Evangelical Protestant
mission leaders to put the gospel before denomination.
10. This may seem strange to those who have recently celebrated the achieve-
ment of the Evangelical William Wilberforce in ending the transatlantic
slave trade. However, the principal of my theological college was typical
when he said that ministers were in the business of handing out either
tracts or sandwiches; and that he was unambiguously in favor of tracts.
11. From the point of view of traditional communities, FGC was a sign of
initiation into adult membership of society. The lengthy “catechesis”
that preceded the operation was considered as important as the physical
procedure. Traditionalists reacted angrily to the attack on FGC, not (as it
is sometimes portrayed) because they wanted to control female sexuality
and subjugate women, but because they saw FGC as integral to main-
taining inherited relationships and values.
12. For an example of the tension between Revival leaders and the ecclesiastical
authorities, see Oluoch (2006:45).
 Faith Engaging Politics 117

13. Individual European Christians continue to be actively engaged in

social-care provision, such as founding and running hospices, schools,
night-shelters and counseling services. But it is now rather unusual for
Church of England dioceses, for example, to be directly involved in the
delivery of social care beyond appointing an education officer.
14. A gathering of Evangelical Protestants held in 1974. The first Lausanne
Conference produced a covenant that included a ringing endorsement of
Evangelical engagement in social action for the sake of the Kingdom of God:

5. CHRISTIAN SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY

We affirm that God is both the Creator and the Judge of all. We
therefore should share his concern for justice and reconciliation
throughout human society and for the liberation of men and
women from every kind of oppression. Because men and women
are made in the image of God, every person, regardless of race,
religion, color, culture, class, sex or age, has an intrinsic dignity
because of which he or she should be respected and served, not
exploited. Here too we express penitence both for our neglect and
for having sometimes regarded evangelism and social concern as
mutually exclusive . . . [see also Chapter 1] When people receive
Christ they are born again, into his kingdom and must seek not
only to exhibit but also to spread its righteousness in the midst
of an unrighteous world. The salvation we claim should be trans-
forming us in the totality of our personal and social responsibili-
ties. Faith without works is dead. [Acts 17:26,31; Gen. 18:25; Ps.
45:7; Isa. 1:17, Gen. 1:26–27, Lev. 19:18; Luke 6:27,35; James 3:9;
John 3:3,5; Matt 5:20; Matt. 6:33; 2 Cor. 3:18; James 2:14–26]
Within Evangelical circles, this affirmation did not go unchallenged.
Some saw it as compromise with theological liberalism. However,
the endorsement of elder statesmen such as Revd. John Stott created
space for a new flowering of global Evangelical movements of social
concern. Fresh respectability was conferred on Evangelical organiza-
tions such as World Vision (established 1950), TEAR Fund (1968),
Mercy Ships (1978), and A Rocha (1983), which engage in social
transformation rather than traditional preaching.
In the 1980s David Gitari’s Diocese of Mount Kenya East (now
subdivided into four successor dioceses) established a conspicuously
successful Department of Christian Community Services, which
assisted local communities in deprived areas in organizing them-
selves for development by identifying needs (a water project here,
a health visitor there) and selecting community workers whom
the diocese would train. This organization, Christian Community
Services of Mount Kenya East, continues to function throughout
the old territory of the now-defunct diocese that created it.
118 Paddy Benson

15. Davie claims that European sociologists have commonly assumed that
religion belongs to premodern, uneducated societies, and that as societies
advance, so religion will be privatized or marginalized. In conversation,
Davie said that this axiom was so strongly held that European sociologists
for long denied the evidence of the rapid growth of Pentecostalism in Latin
America, in societies that were modernizing and becoming more educated.
16. Alistair Campbell batted away a question about his boss’s beliefs with the
comment, “We don’t do God,” (Daily Telegraph 3 May 2003).
17. This followed his public expression of disquiet about the government’s
handling of the conflict in Iraq, October 2006.
18. See, for example, Maina wa Kinyatti (1980). Gikuyu is the first ancestor
of the Gikuyu people. Mau Mau was far from monolithic, and the pre-
cise role of religion—including Christianity in Mau Mau is the subject
of controversy. However, Lonsdale (1992:442) concludes that “however
vigorously missionaries would deny it, Mau Mau owed much to [estab-
lished, Anglican] Christianity.”
19. Oathing has, in secret, remained a means of creating strong political alli-
ances at times of crisis within independent Kenya. Although the use of oaths
is strongly deprecated by all public figures, and would often be considered
illegal, there have been various occasions over the years when politicians,
especially Gikuyu, were known or suspected to have used this tool.
20. Nation 10 April 1996; cited in Oluoch (2006:83).
21. During the Moi era, some of the AIC and Pentecostal leadership did
indeed allow themselves to be co-opted by the ruling party, but no
Anglican bishop was perceived to have capitulated to the same extent.
22. The Church of the Province of Kenya (as the Anglican Church of Kenya
was formerly known) was sometimes denounced as “the Church of
Politics of Kenya.”
23. This is not to say that key Anglican leaders are cowed by the Revival.
Gitari (1991), in particular, has written critically about the Revival’s
unwillingness to confront evils in society: “The brethren are so con-
cerned about their own individual souls that they show little concern for
the corrupt and sinful world around them.”
24. It has been suggested that the role of a politician in Kenyan society is
somewhat similar to the role assigned to a traditional healer (Swahili
mganga, Gikuyu mundu mugo). Like the healer, the politician wields
occult power, and his assistance is sometimes necessary. But he is remote
from the usual ties of clan and age-set; ordinary people need him but do
not trust him. The Revival’s mistrust of politicians may have a sociological
as well as a theological root.
25. “Shalom means welfare and well-being at their best and at their highest . . .
When the President initiates the fundraising drive for the disabled in
the country and helps to raise over 70 million shillings, he is a peace-
maker. When he hears the cries of coffee farmers and directs that they
be paid their long outstanding dues, isn’t he a peacemaker?” (Gitari
1996b:88).
 Faith Engaging Politics 119

26. Although Gitari (1988:62) is quick to point out hypocrisy in this matter:
“Sometimes politicians allow church leaders wide freedom to discuss
“political” matters. In a recent sermon a bishop of an indigenous church
touched on many political issues, including voter registration and loyalty
to the government and to KANU. He even threatened to use his church’s
disciplinary machinery to expel any member who opposed the govern-
ment and KANU. The bishop, as far as I am aware, has not been criti-
cized as interfering in KANU affairs, or mixing religion with politics.”
27. As Bishop of Mount Kenya East, David Gitari was faced with a dilemma.
Jeremiah Nyagah, then a cabinet minister in Moi’s government, was an
Anglican lay reader in the church in Embu. He had also been a member
of the search committee that selected the Bishop for his diocese. Bishop
Gitari asked Nyagah not to act as reader while serving in political office;
but he continued to invite him to “greet the congregation” in his capacity
as a politician when he attended important church gatherings, which he
continued to do until incapacitated in 2007.
28. See Chapter 2. This is one case among many. The stupidity and cupidity
of the clergy is an entertaining subject for the media in Kenya as else-
where in the world.
29. This is not a reflection on the forthrightness of the latter two. Wangari
Maathai (2007:212) pays particular tribute to Njoya’s courageous support.
30. It is suggestive that the Gikuyu term for freedom, wiathi, connotes
self-mastery. The English word implies throwing off restraint while the
Gikuyu word implies keeping oneself under control.
31. The outbreak of violence followed the disputed election of 27 December
2007. President Mwai Kibaki claimed to have been reelected; his chal-
lenger, Raila Odinga, was unwilling to concede defeat. Outside observers
reported that the polls had been widely rigged by both sides. The margin
of Kibaki’s alleged victory was tiny.
32. This reflected the old missionary comity arrangements. Thus, most
Protestant Gikuyu from Muranga and Kirinyaga are Anglicans, most
Meru are Methodists, Rift Valley Province is the stronghold of the Africa
Inland Church, and so on.
33. The arcane workings of local politics are chronicled in Kenya’s daily
press, though it takes time to break the code. Several of Gitari’s published
sermons give glimpses of the process, especially in Gichugu Division of
Kirinyaga District.
34. “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, slave nor free, male nor female, for
you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28).
35. Within Christian missiology there is a longstanding debate about the
“homogeneous unit principle”: the observed truth that it is easier to
evangelize within a cultural group, than to insist on converts leaving their
culture as soon as they receive the Gospel. The New Testament is scoured
for evidence that the apostles would approve such a procedure. However,
this is a separate discussion. Since the end of Apartheid, few Christians
have openly suggested that the church should endorse ethnic segregation.
120 Paddy Benson

36. He briefly appointed a clergyman from Western Kenya to a senior role

within his diocese; though the clergyman moved on before he had the
chance to make much impact.
37. In 2007 a senior clergyman from Embu surprised me by saying that he
thought there was more than a grain of truth in the old accusation. The
argument is somewhat reminiscent of Acts 6:1.
38. Clan politicking in the church assumed scandalous proportions in the
circumstances that led to the creation of Katakwa Diocese (separated out
of Nambale Diocese in 1991). In the years before the creation of the new
diocese, the infighting was regularly chronicled in Kenya’s press. Since
then, several other dioceses have been down the same road. David Gitari
worked hard to mitigate the effect of tribalism (Keyas 2005).
39. A senior clergyman gave me a detailed account of a secret gathering of
clan elders convened by a candidate for office in a new diocese and the
steps that were taken to outsmart the rival clan from which another
candidate came.
40. Many of Gitari’s sermons are addressed to national political situations; but
others concern local matters. See, for example, a sermon (1996b:102–10)
on I Kings 21, “There was no Naboth to say No,” which challenged the
illegal expropriation of public land by politicians in Kirinyaga District.
41. N. T. Wright (1997) in an outstanding book has demonstrated how this
theme energizes all Paul’s letters.
42. Life is uncertain in Kenya, and most people believe that they are usually
at the mercy of dark powers. Yet, the Christian message of God’s unusual
protection is received with enthusiasm. I heard a graphic example of this
during the 1980s, when two of my students at St. Andrew’s Institute,
Kabare, were on placement in Meru. They visited the village of Uvariri,
which was notoriously the dwelling of many practitioners of traditional
medicine and magic. The people of Uvariri warned them of a curse
that would fall on them if they walked around the village. The students
prayed and boldly walked through the cursed area. The people of Uvariri
were amazed that they were not struck down by the curse. The students
then spoke about the Lord in whose name they had come and who pro-
tected them from curses. Many of their hearers believed their message of
the power of God. Nevertheless, neither the students nor the converts
thought they were now immune from all evils.
43. He led the church at a time of extraordinary growth and development. I
worked in his Diocese of Mount Kenya East in the period 1978–1989.
During this time, the number of Anglicans grew by about 150 percent.
The comparable statistics for the increasing number of parishes and
church buildings, ordained clergy, and clergy with university degrees,
and the account of the development of a national theological training
college and the department of Christian Community Services can be
found in the papers of the diocesan synod.
Part 2

The Bishop Meddling

in Politics
This page intentionally left blank
Chapter 4

“Was There No
Naboth to Say No?”
Using the Pulpit
in the Struggle
for Democracy: The
Anglican Church,
Bishop Gitari, and
Kenyan Politics
Galia Sabar

Bringing God’s word to bear on our contemporary world is part of

what is meant by a prophetic ministry.
(Gitari 1988a:ix)

If I keep quiet . . . I’m a sinner in the eyes of God and in the heart of
my people.
(Gitari, Kirinyaga, 1989a)

In his crystal-clear style, the Anglican clergyman, tMost Revd Dr. David
M. Gitari, not only defined his role as a religious leader but also challenged
those calling for the separation of church and state or for the exclusion of
religion from the political arena. While the official position of the Most
Anglican Church was carefully maintained to indicate that it was not a
rival claimant to power but simply sought to “complement” the work
124 Galia Sabar

of the politicians, the political establishment regarded it as dangerous

and treacherous, a view that helped push it further into opposition. Moi
himself, careful to maintain the image of a devout Christian, tried hard
to appear reasonable and conciliatory toward the churches, even while he
came down ruthlessly on any and every form of criticism and opposition.
In this chapter we shall analyse the ways in which Anglican leaders
used religious sermons in an attempt to challenge the regime of President
Daniel arap Moi. We shall focus on the ways the sermons were used
as a vehicle for political and social transformation in Kenya between
1982–1989, the first years of the struggle for political change, the re-
introduction of multiparty system and democracy. We shall examine
the issues they raised and assess their influence on the political processes
taking place in those years. Though analysing several leading Anglican
clergy, the focus will be on Dr. David Gitari who not only formed the
political debate through the sermons but also led the struggle and set the
path for others to follow.
This chapter is based on the understanding that religion is a strong
force in the politics of all states, both those termed “modern” and those
termed “traditional” (Ahanotu 1992; Haynes 1994; Huntington 1993;
Norris & Inglehart 2004; Roberts 1988; Shore 2006; Ellis & Haar
1998; Wald & Calhoun-Brown 2006). Moreover, it joins the debate in
the literature that claims that the interaction between theology, politics,
culture, and society is an ongoing process the world over, with complex
implications and consequences (Bax 1987; Haynes 1994; Keogh 1990;
Mews 1989; Moyser 1991; Sahliyeh 1990; Shore 2006; Wolf 1991). In
many Sub-Saharan African countries, scholars have shown that as govern-
ment authority and legitimacy plummeted in the wake of corruption,
economic failure, and political repression, people turned to churches
and to other civil society organizations to champion their interests and
to exert pressure on politicians.1 Though scholars agree that civil society
groups played a role in shaping social and political processes in Africa, the
nature and effectiveness of that role is still in dispute (Holmquist & Ford
1987; Sabar 1996, 1997). Based on a rich variety of sources not previ-
ously tapped,2 in what follows we shall highlight the debate between the
church and the state 1982–1989 and demonstrate that while the debate
became more acrimonious with every round, the basic claims remained
the same throughout the decade. The representatives of the state sought to
sunder the prophetic and the political realms. The churches’ rôle, as Moi
articulated it, was to preach personal piety, resignation, obedience, and
peace—and to avoid politics. The church argued, through its sermons and
publications, its moral imperative to guide the politicians by speaking out
against the evils in society (Gitari 1996b; Maupeu 1996; Okullu 1984).
 “W a s T h e r e N o N a b o t h t o S a y N o ? ” 125

Travel around Kenya, and every Sunday morning you see never-ending
trails of men, women, and children making their way to church. Clad in
long white robes with elegant white African head-cloths or in European-
style outfits, the churchgoers fill city streets and dusty rural trails. They
walk in groups, playing musical instruments and chanting hymns, stop-
ping to collect additional followers. Whether they congregate in huge
Gothic churches or in small huts, public gardens or busy roundabouts,
the believers always end up holding a prayer service.
Talk to Kenyan men and women, and many of them will tell you their
religious affiliation along with their ethnic background: the two anchors
of their identity. You will hear stories about the congregation they belong
to and about their work on church committees and organizations. As
they speak, you will hear the joy in their voices and see the flame that
lights up their eyes. Stop to listen to a sermon in one of the churches or
prayer gatherings, and you will see more than depth of religious feeling.
Listen to the preachers as they speak in English or Kiswahilli or any
other Kenyan language. Some stick to the Bible story on which they have
chosen to preach. Others go beyond it, using the story to comment on
current affairs or as a metaphor to criticize Kenya’s rulers.
For many years, open expression of political dissent was illegal in
Kenya and even today carries risky implications. However, even in the
1980s when Moi’s regime brutally reacted to any and every sign of pro-
test, you could still hear skilful preachers circumvent the restrictions, and
their congregates listening eagerly while talking to one another about the
issues at hand. At times the prayers were small and tame and at others,
large and provocative. Read the newspaper the next day and, if one of
the sermons happened to be especially provocative and well preached,
there was a good chance you will come across an article on it and then
some other articles on the reactions of the politicians or maybe some
international body.
You will discover what everyone in Kenya has known since the 1980s,
if not earlier: that religion was a force to be reckoned with in Kenyan
politics. Moreover, the churches were able to mobilize thousands of men
and women to various sociopolitical causes. Both the readiness and abil-
ity of the churches to play this leadership role are anchored in the deep
religious feeling of the Kenyan people and the place of religion and their
churches in their everyday lives. Hence, in Kenya of the 1980s there was
little, if any, separation between religion and the fabric of everyday life,
between spiritual and material, God and politics.
The Anglican Church is one of the oldest and among the best estab-
lished churches in Kenya.3 Favored over the other churches, especially
the non-British ones, by the colonial power, it developed over the years
126 Galia Sabar

a wide ethnogeographic spread and a wide net of social and economic

services and activities. Since the arrival of the first Anglican missionar-
ies in East Africa in 1844, this church has gradually become one of
the major institutions in Kenya’s social and political arena. Though its
members numbered less then 10 percent of the Kenyan population, both
the people and the government recognized it as a strong political force
(Karanja 1999; Sabar 2002).
I have shown elsewhere that the combination of the spiritual authority
that is the province of all churches, with the wide net of social, educational,
health-related, and economic activities, gradually made the church an
integral part of society, an instrument of its transformation, and a power
that the government had to reckon with (Sabar 2002). Moreover, research
has shown how over the years the Anglican Church utilized the multiple
power bases it established through its initiation, organization, and funding
of a wide range of educational, health, and economic-oriented activities
to place itself in a pivotal position in Kenyan society (Barrett et al. 1973,
1974; Cole 1970; Karanja 1993, 2008; Sabar 1996, 2002).
Following Kenyatta’s death in 1978, his loyal follower Moi was elected
president. In the beginning, he portrayed an image of a loyal follower. To
further this image and to bind people more closely to him, he authored
a new rallying call. Whereas Kenyatta had mobilized the population
under the pragmatic slogan of harambee, Moi chose as his slogan the
term nyayo—the Kiswahilli word for “following footsteps.” When he
first came into office, he promised to follow in the footsteps of Kenyatta
and demanded that, in return, Kenyans follow in his (Benson 1995).
To counter complaints that the meaning of nyayo was vague and that it
was not clear what he was asking the people to do, he declared that the
meaning of nyayo was summarized by the three Christian values of peace,
love, and unity.
As mentioned, by the time Moi was elected, the Anglican Church’s
extra-religious activities were well entrenched and its ability to mobilize
both its followers and others to various sociopolitical calls was well-
known and acknowledged. Moi saw in the churches, Anglican and oth-
ers, the obvious institution to help him legitimize his rule. Going beyond
Kenyatta’s call for the churches to act as the conscience of society, Moi
explicitly invited them to play an active role in managing the country.
At a meeting with Anglican bishops at his official residence in January
1981, Moi urged the churches not to relax their efforts in preaching
spiritual matters. He stated that their preaching of the Holy Scriptures
helped the government maintain stability and stressed that the churches
should regard themselves as part and parcel of the government (Nation
22 January 1981). In May 1981 the then Vice-President, Mwai Kibaki,
 “W a s T h e r e N o N a b o t h t o S a y N o ? ” 127

reaffirmed this stand, asserting, “Politics and religion are inseparable”

(African Press Service 25 May 1981).
The extent to which the churches were alert to Moi’s efforts to
co-opt them is beyond the scope of this chapter. There are no indications,
however, that they did not initially accept Moi’s invitation at face value.
Presenting himself as a loyal follower of Kenyatta, Moi seemed to offer
himself as a less corrupt alternative, who had the will to spread the
country’s wealth to those who had been neglected and underprivileged.
The idea that a devout Christian, who respected the churches, would rule
the country through the Christian philosophy of peace, love, and unity
also had obvious appeal.
Between 1980 and the summer of 1982, Moi set on an increasingly
oppressive course. He limited the freedom of debate in parliament by
threatening to “take disciplinary action,” including police force, against
Kenya African National Union (KANU) members who crossed the line
between acceptable and unacceptable speech. He increased his personal
control of KANU by promoting his supporters and not calling meetings
of the party’s governing bodies. He undertook a campaign against dis-
sidents and “political splinter groups” (Widner 1992:142), using tactics
such as rumor-mongering, false accusations of corruption, and selective
dismissals and appointments.4 He threatened and harassed journalists
and editors, university students and faculty, and leaders of the Law
Society of Kenya and other professional organizations who criticized
him. In June 1982 he set in motion the process of making Kenya a de jure
one-party state to strengthen his fight against any and all opposition and
to enable him to better dismiss local and international criticism that his
actions were unconstitutional. The law was pushed through parliament
in 45 minutes on 9 June 1982.
In spite of all this, for the first few years of Moi’s presidency, the
churches seldom objected publicly to this growing coerciveness. As under
Kenyatta’s regime, only a few lone voices were raised against the patent
abuses, and then not very loudly. The turning point came in August
1982. On the first of the month, some Air Force officers and their allies
attempted a coup. Moi crushed the attempt in two days using a massive
exertion of force, and then proceeded to clamp down yet further on the
few remaining freedoms that Kenyans had.
In early September 1982, the Anglican Archbishop Manasses Kuria
called for the full participation of the churches in restoring peace and
order. At the same time, though, he also spoke out against the wide-
spread detentions and arrests and continued to speak out in the follow-
ing months. On 10 September the Roman Catholic bishops published
a pastoral letter calling for a more accountable leadership, a more just
128 Galia Sabar

division of wealth, the renewal of Kenya’s commitment to socialism

and democracy, and for the churches to assume the responsibility that
Kenyatta had assigned them as “the conscience of the nation.” Although
politicians responded with angry demands that the churches stay out of
politics, Kuria continued to call for the release of the detainees, while
Anglican bishops Okullu, Gitari, Muge, and the Presbyterian Revd Njoya
spoke out at every opportunity and in every possible forum against the
abuse of human rights, detention without trial, the corruption in Kenya’s
leadership, and the evils of a one-party system.5

The Sermons Debate

As mentioned, when Moi invited the churches to take part in a debate
on the nature of the country, he hoped they would provide legitimation
for his regime. In fact, by doing so he invited them to join him in a dis-
course on the way the country should be governed. In the aftermath of
the coup, the discourse assumed momentum. It became an increasingly
intense and nasty debate.
Gitari, as editor of the book A Christian View of Politics in Kenya
(NCCK 1984) and as a leading figure both in his own church and in
the National Council of Churches of Kenya (NCCK), laid the theologi-
cal groundwork for their assumption of the prophetic role, by which it
meant the rôle that the ancient prophets had assumed in inveighing
against the wrongs of the rulers in Biblical times.6 Among other things, it
argued that keeping silent about political abuses was itself a political act.
In the mid-1980s it began to act on its prophetic ministry with increasing
vigor, involving itself actively and persistently in more narrowly defined
political issues. At this point it is useful to stress again that the Anglican
Church as a whole did not speak with concerted or conciliar voices on
these things, but with varying amounts of support from the silent to the
outspoken.
The radicals within the Anglican Church fostered this debate and
mobilized in it all the resources at its command: its various newsletters
and the magazines Target, edited by Revd Henry Okullu, and Beyond,
published by the NCCK; its publishing house, Uzima; weekly slots for
sermons and lessons on the state radio and television; the many forums
it provided through its youth groups, women’s groups, vocational train-
ing courses, religious classes in schools, and, of course, its pulpits. And,
through its pulpits, it enlisted the broadcasting and print-media, both
local and international.
The sermon was of course a long-used vehicle of protest in Kenya,
as in the rest of Christian Africa. Since the Anglican Church had always
 “W a s T h e r e N o N a b o t h t o S a y N o ? ” 129

permitted its clerics to express their views freely, both in colonial times
and under Kenyatta, churchmen who so wished had used their pulpits to
criticize government actions. Under Moi, the use of the pulpit attained
new heights. The radicalized higher clergy, especially Okullu, Gitari, and
Muge made increasing use of it. These leaders were powerful speakers,
who made skilful use of a long standing oral tradition, which aimed not
only at arousing the interest of the congregation but also at stirring them
up emotionally and engaging them intellectually.
The sermons of the church leaders were presented to huge congrega-
tions who flocked to their churches to hear what they had to say about
the political issues. Their churches, which could seat over a thousand per-
sons, generally flowed over when they preached, and loudspeakers were
often placed outside to carry their message to the crowds there.7 Their
sermons were also geared to the media, whose power they consciously
enlisted. In the early and mid-1980s, using either the “bushphone,” as
word of mouth is termed, or in Gitari’s case, calling and inviting by let-
ter when a significant sermon was to be preached, they made sure that
reporters knew when and where they were scheduled to preach. By the
end of the decade, both local and international reporters followed them
around of their own accord, knowing that there would be something
to report. The accounts of the sermons in the press, in turn, forced the
government to respond.
The first direct conflict on ballot box issues came in June 1985 after
the ruling party, KANU, adopted the queuing system, which required
voters to physically line up behind their preferred candidate or his poster.
The measure was introduced to turn KANU into a vehicle for transmit-
ting the views of the president to the populace—to which end, only
Moi’s parrots had to be elected and all disagreement within the party
eliminated.
Leading Anglican clergy, though not in planned concert or detailed
agreement, led civil servants, teachers, and clergymen of other denomi-
nations, along with some trade union leaders in written and spoken
protests, arguing that one should not have to reveal one’s political prefer-
ence publicly by queuing behind one’s candidate. Several church leaders,
emphasizing their role as models and the need for clean elections, added
that their queuing could lead to improper pressures and propositions by
politicians.8 There were also clerics who connected the queueing with
the rampant corruption in the state’s political processes and emphasized
the need to keep the voting clean and uncorrupted (Sabar 1997). Once
again, it should be noted that while Okullu, Muge, and Gitari were
speaking out on these issues, the church had little alternative leadership,
since Kuria was not giving much in public.9 KANU’s Secretary-General
130 Galia Sabar

promised the protesters that alternative arrangements would be found

for the next elections. This did not happen. The following year, at the
KANU annual delegates’ convention in August 1986, the party’s national
executive put through a series of electoral revisions aimed at consolidat-
ing its power, obliterating all distinction between party and state, and
ensuring that candidates for elective office would bear the president’s
stamp of approval. Among the various means to attain these ends, the
most contentious were the decision to abolish the secret ballot and con-
tinue the queuing (Widner 1992).
The NCCK was the first to protest. It so happened that a confer-
ence that it had organized to discuss the role of the church in society
was in session at the same time as the KANU annual delegate’s confer-
ence. Under the chairmanship of Bishop Gitari, the 1,200 pastors at
this conference signed a statement, which Gitari drafted, calling for the
abolition of the queuing system and sent to the press.10 Archbishop Kuria
warned that politicians should not underestimate the depth of popular
discontent and opposition to the abolition of the secret ballot.11 Bishop
Okullu delivered a similar caution, pointing out that the number of
people who secretly supported the NCCK position was staggering. The
more moderate bishops, A. G. Njuguna of Mount Kenya South and John
Mahiaini of Mount Kenya Central, added their protests.12 Bishop Muge
of the Diocese of Eldoret strenuously demanded that Moi rescind the
resolution. Addressing a Kenyan Anglican Youth Organization (KAYO)
meeting, he urged the church to protest “when God-given rights and lib-
erties are violated.” He argued that in Africa, where there were so many
one-party states, “it was the role of the church to stand up against the
pressures of totalitarianism in the name of one party systems” (Weekly
Review 29 August 1986).
The political response was strongly charged. In the early months of
1986, a new national disciplinary committee with broad discretion had
been formed in KANU. This committee had the power to expel party
members or otherwise impose sanctions on those who, in its view, com-
mitted “any act which in the opinion of KANU is not in its interest” or in
any way undermined the president or the KANU government (Widner
1987). Most politicians lived in the fear of losing their positions through
a party purge.
Scrambling to outdo one another in their excoriation of the challeng-
ers, Moi’s people rushed to accuse the NCCK and its member churches,
especially the Anglican Church, of disloyalty and of intentionally creat-
ing chaos. Nicholas Biwott, a powerful Kalenjin politician, urged those
churches that disapproved of the NCCK’s attitude to leave the organiza-
tion. This call resulted in the withdrawal of some of the Conservative
 “W a s T h e r e N o N a b o t h t o S a y N o ? ” 131

Evangelical churches (the African Independent Pentecostal Church, the

mainly Gikuyu Association of Baptist Churches of Nyeri, and the Gospel
Church to name only a few). They came out for KANU and the new vot-
ing system, and their leaders railed against clerical involvement in politics
(Nation 25 March 1986; The Standard 22 March 1986). The Bishop of
the African Independent Pentecostal Church asserted that the NCCK
was opposing African culture and suggested that it be investigated since
it was trying to ruin the country (Weekly Review 29 August 1986). John
Kamau, the General Secretary of the NCCK retorted that “the question
of disloyalty does not arise . . . debate is a healthy exercise. If a country
cannot debate an issue of national significance, we shall be denying our-
selves the very root of democracy” (Weekly Review 29 August 1986).
The charges and countercharges were exchanged within an extremely
tense atmosphere, as extra-parliamentary resistance mounted on the
state’s further encroachment of Kenyan’s political space. In addition to
the Anglican Church and the other mainstream Protestant churches, the
Roman Catholic Church, the Law Society of Kenya, large sectors of the
business and farming community, intellectuals, and politicians in exile
all joined in the attack on the queuing and other repressive measures. So
did five Kenyan politicians: Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, a Luo; Masinde
Muliro, a Bukusu; Charles Rubia, Kenneth Matiba, and Kimani wa
Nyoike, all Gikuyu.
In effect, the only two safe venues left for speech were the lawyer-
client relationship, which could be protected by confidentiality, and the
churches, in which the members could speak among themselves and with
their pastors. In this atmosphere, Archbishop Kuria hurried to assure
Moi that the church supported the one party system and “would not act
contrary to the interests of the government nor associate with those who
aim to undermine the government.”13 Okullu, Gitari, Muge, and others
in the CPK, however, continued to use their pulpits to declaim against
the restrictions on freedom and the corruption that it fostered.
In an effort to put an end to the discomforting public debate, Moi
promised that clergymen, civil servants, and members of the armed forces
would be exempt from queuing (Throup 1995). However, only a few
months later, in November, his Attorney-General, Muli, introduced the
Constitution of Kenya (Amendment) Bill, 1986, to anchor the resolu-
tions of the KANU delegates’ conference and other repressive resolutions
in Kenya’s constitution. The Anglican Church supported the opposition
to the bill led by the chairman of the Law Society (Weekly Review 21
November 1986). Such constitutional changes should only be made after
a public debate, it stated (Weekly Review 21 November 1986). Moi, rather
than relate to the issue, reiterated his warning that “religion must not be
132 Galia Sabar

dragged into politics and church leaders should confine themselves to the
spiritual aspects of life, leaving politics to the politicians.” Church pul-
pits, he insisted, “should not be turned into political platforms” (Weekly
Review 28 November 1986).
Several months later, in March 1987, Oginga Odinga, following the
church’s lead, wrote an open letter to the President demanding respect
for freedom of speech and calling for a democratic, multiparty political
system (Weekly Review 7 March 1987).

Expository Sermons, 1987–1988

The high-pitched public debate continued in 1987, when Kenyans’
voting rights were further curtailed and their ballots sapped of even
more of their meaning. As before, the criticism of government actions
came from many church forums. The debate seems to have been fired,
however, by the powerful use that leading Anglican preachers, and
especially Gitari, made of their pulpits. The middle of 1987 saw what
Gitari termed “a sermons debate.” Four sermons preached by Gitari
that were pointedly related to the current affairs of June 1987 are con-
veniently published, along with the political and media commentary
they elicited, in his book Let the Bishop Speak (Gitari 1988b). In the
foreword, Gitari explains that these are examples of the “expository
preaching” that he favors. “Expository sermons,” he explains, combine
preaching and teaching. They take a Biblical passage and analyse it
verse by verse in both its historical context and current application.
“This process of bringing God’s word to bear on our contemporary
world is part of what is meant by a prophetic ministry,” he explains
(Gitari 1988b:ix). This section deals with two sermons and the debate
they evoked.
The first sermon came in response to an announcement in a daily news-
paper on 19 May 1987 stating that only those who produced evidence
that they were members of KANU and had paid their annual dues would
be permitted to vote in the general elections. The sermon was delivered
on 7 June in the coffee growing area of Mutira in Central Province, on
the occasion of the inauguration of the Mutira Archdeaconry. The listen-
ers thus included many clerics, and the sermon was specifically addressed
to them as well as to the lay attendants.
The sermon was based on Matthew 9:35f and tells of Jesus going out
to the cities and villages to preach and to heal and of the compassion he
had for the “harassed and helpless.” The sermon criticized the KANU
membership requirement as “unconstitutional,” pointing out that it
would deny the democratic rights of those who could not afford the dues,
 “W a s T h e r e N o N a b o t h t o S a y N o ? ” 133

and warning that rich politicians would pay the fee for them in exchange
for their votes. It noted the low KANU registration in the district, que-
ried obstacles that were put in the way of joining the party, and urged
people to join up so that they could vote.
The most infuriating aspect from the government’s point of view was
that the sermon urged the church’s evangelists and priests to “follow in the
nyayo of Jesus Christ” and to go out and preach and teach in “every market,
every secondary school, every primary school, every dispensary, and every
village” in the parishes where they were licensed (Gitari 1988b). This was
of course a general call for an active and involved ministry. But it was also a
political call. The ministration that Gitari envisioned was not focused only
on individuals. “We are called upon to be healers of broken societies and
communities,” Gitari pronounced. It was a ministration, he told his audi-
ence, that required a priesthood who could “challenge the present genera-
tion” and who read the newspapers to keep “up to date in current affairs.”
Moreover, in listing the “harassed and helpless” people that the clergy
should visit with, Gitari specifically urged them to go out and mingle
with the coffee farmers “and listen to their uncertainties as they ponder the
implications of the dissolution of KCPU [the Kenya Cooperative Planter’s
Union] and its replacement with a new union controlled by Moi loyalists”
(Gitari 1988b). Delivered in a coffee growing area, this call raised among
some the specter of the churches instigating revolt.
In the next few days, James Njiru, assistant minister in the Office of
the President and local KANU branch chairman, called Gitari’s state-
ments “destructive criticism” (Standard 8 June 1987), and Gichinga
Muchine, the district KANU Organizing Secretary, commanded Gitari
to “stop turning churches in the district into a political forum” and
accused him of “misleading Kenyans” (Kenya Times 10 June 1987). In
addition, according to Gitari, some local KANU leaders were evidently
perturbed that he had invited a member of Parliament (MP) to speak at
the inauguration sermon and sent a contingent of KANU’s rowdy Youth
Wing, created in the early 1980s as an arm of the party’s social control, to
his sermon the following Sunday to heckle him should he make mention
of KANU there (Gitari 1988b).
Moi himself hedged. He initially asserted that he was “taken aback” by
the Bishop’s urging his congregates to pray for the “oppressors” in the Kenya
Planters Cooperative Union (Standard 9 June 1987). Then a day later he
retracted the registration requirement, though with the recently legislated
voting procedures, being able to vote in the general election meant little
since most of the representatives were elected in closed primaries anyway
(Nation 10 June 1987). The following Sunday, in his sermon on the prophet
Jeremiah, given at a service to inaugurate the Archdeaconry of Kabare,
134 Galia Sabar

Gitari blasted the organized intimidation and criticism, not sparing mention
of KANU and the Youth Wingers, and reaffirmed the Biblical injunction to
preachers and prophets to “expose injustices in society” (Gitari 1988b).
The Bishop spoke his mind again on 21 June, in a sermon at St.
Peter’s Church, Nyeri, where he had been invited to preach by the local
Anglican bishop, John Mahiaini. The occasion was a civic service held in
that church every June since the early 1960s, in which the local political
leaders traditionally took part. The vicar had originally chosen Joshua
1 as the text for the sermon, but Gitari had already began to prepare a
discourse on Daniel 6, relating the episode of Daniel in the lion’s den,
which he felt better suited his purpose.
Gitari’s name was not included on the invitation. His arrival was appar-
ently a disconcerting surprise to the politicians in the provincial center,
as the debate over his criticism of the voter registration was still raging.
Before he delivered his sermon, the District Commissioner, the Mayor, the
Chairman of the County Council, and the Party Chairman all gave brief
addresses. The mayor reminded the church leaders not to bring politics
into the church. The senior political leader, who traditionally read the
Biblical passage on which the sermon was based, refused to read the text.
Gitari used the occasion to criticize the state’s abuses of power, from
the 1986 change in the constitution through the widespread dismissals of
persons—often of the Gikuyu Embu and Meru Association (GEMA)—
civil servants from their jobs in and outside the government.14 As Gitari
interpreted it, the text describes a situation in which conspiracy and
corruption were the order of the day and truth had to struggle. His ser-
mon drew a pointed and explicit parallel between Daniel and the honest
Kenyans persecuted by Moi’s representatives.
He presented Daniel, King Darius’ trusted advisor, as “a hard work-
ing civil servant, honest, capable [who] was removed unjustly from his
position . . . due to tribalism and corruption.” As he told it, Daniel was a
Jew “who spoke the truth” and was disliked by “the rest of the civil ser-
vants [who] could not deal with him.” His interpretation of the action of
Darius’ advisors in getting the King to approve an ordinance consigning
anyone who worships any god but himself to the lion’s den is peculiarly
apt: “The method used to remove him was by changing the constitu-
tion.” To deflect the anticipated censure, he compares Darius’ ordinance
to the “change [in] the constitution campaign of 1976,” which Moi and
his supporters had thwarted. But his point that “King Darius made the
mistake of allowing the constitution to be changed before this matter
which affected fundamental human rights was thoroughly discussed by all
concerned” obviously applies to the various constitutional changes under
Moi’s regime (Kings 1996). In case any of his hearers missed the point,
 “W a s T h e r e N o N a b o t h t o S a y N o ? ” 135

Gitari hammered it home: “Daniel was in effect telling the king that when
the constitution is illegally changed so as to interfere with a fundamental
human right . . . that new law can be disobeyed” (Kings 1996).
Again, his sermon provoked a barrage of criticism. Moi, as before, pre-
tended to stand above the dispute. Noting that the bishop had praised him
in some previous sermons, he claimed that “it is beyond his understanding
to see what is the bishop trying to say to us” (Standard 22 June 1987). But he
let others do his criticizing for him. Thus, Nyeri’s Provincial Commissioner
warned that the sermon bordered on subversion and that church leaders
should make sure that “they did not appear to be waging a war against the
state” (Standard 22 June 1987). The Assistant Minister of the Office of the
President, who had not attended the sermon, demanded that he recall his
statements (Standard 24 June 1987; Nation 24 June 1987). Okiki Amayo,
the KANU national chairman, claimed that the Biblical story “has no paral-
lel in Kenya” and accused Gitari of “seeking to create chaos, confusion, and
incite wananchi against their popularly elected leaders.”15 The charges were
answered by Gitari, as well as by clerics who came to his defense.
Finally, about a week later, after Gitari delivered yet another sermon criti-
cal of the government, this time referring specifically to the criticisms of the
Daniel sermon and rejecting the right of politicians to tell preachers what to
preach, Moi again intervened personally to cool things down, asserting that
since Kenya was a “democratic country” the bishop should be allowed to
speak his mind (Nation 1 July 1987). These sermons, far from the only ser-
mons that Gitari and others preached criticizing Moi’s regime, give something
of the encompassing, uncompromising, and, at points, provocative tenor of
the church’s censure of Moi’s regime in the mid-through-late 1980s.

Expanding the Debate: The Spillover Effects of

the Sermons
The sermons were not only a vehicle of debate, they also fomented the debate
that the government had inadvertently started. The sermons were massively
attended, with some of them having audiences of 5,000. Their messages
were clearly understood by ordinary Kenyans, even where the Biblical abuses
of power were discussed without specific reference to the local scene.16 The
sermons were also intensively reported, by virtually all of Kenya’s papers. On
some of the sermons, including the one on Daniel, the coverage lasted for
over a month, with the charges and countercharges flying back and forth.
The sermons served most of the press with a means of stirring up
public opinion and conveying their own criticisms of the government.
For example, the 8 June 1987 Standard article reporting Njiru’s criti-
cism of Gitari’s statements on the coffee-growers’ problems is headlined,
136 Galia Sabar

“Gitari under Fire over KPCU”; terms his involvement in the matter
“alleged”; goes on to present a most sympathetic account of how “Bishop
Gitari . . . urged clergymen to mingle with coffee farmers and listen to
their uncertainty as they pondered” the dissolution of their union and
its replacement with another one; and quotes his statement, “You cannot
but have compassion for them.” In similar vein its 22 June article follow-
ing the Daniel sermon opens with the headline, “Gitari Calls for Public
Debate,” and highlights in large print that he “called for sufficient public
debate before changes are made in the Constitution.” In both cases, the
newspaper expressed its support for Gitari and its criticism of the govern-
ment in its choice of what to report and what to highlight.
The use that the Standard and other papers made of the sermons
enabled the press to circumvent the restrictions that the government had
begun to place on the media in about 1984 and that had intensified in
1986, when it detained hundreds of newspaper reporters and editors and
confiscated editions that dealt with issues of human rights, government
corruption, and the increasing strangulation of democratic processes.
The sermons were beyond this type of control, however. The use of ser-
mons to express political discontent, barely cloaked in Biblical imagery,
goes back to the colonial period in Africa, as does the reporting of ser-
mons. Kenya was no exception. With all of the corruption and brutality
of Moi’s regime, it would have been very difficult, if not impossible, for
it to extirpate this tradition in a Christian country.
The debate that the sermons fomented spilled over to large sectors of
the population, way beyond the Anglican churchgoers. The Evangelical
churches lambasted the mainstream churches for interfering in secular
issues (Maupeu 1996). The daily papers published letters to the editor
both for and against the sermons. These letters related to the major issues
that the sermons raised, foremost among them being the government’s
corruption and misuse of power and the role of the church in politics.17
The public attention that the sermons brought to the abuses of
the regime and their ability to muster sympathy made it necessary for
the government to respond. Some of its response was in the form of
direct intimidation, such as the despatch of the Youth Wingers. But, like
the church, the government also used the press. For example, following
the Daniel sermon, the Kenya Times, which was partly owned by KANU,
conveyed the following warning and threat:

The laws of the land do not allow any churchman, or any foreigner resi-
dent on Kenyan soil, to indulge in any manner of subversion, and it is a
penal offense to incite disaffection . . . Dissemination of subversive litera-
ture, too, constitutes a penal offense and all those clerics who are nowadays
 “W a s T h e r e N o N a b o t h t o S a y N o ? ” 137

circulating written sermons among worshippers should be extremely

careful lest they are caught red-handed breaking the laws of the land.
(Kenya Times 29 June 1987)

More subtly, the Kenya Times was used to drum up support for the gov-
ernment view, as is done for example in its 1 July, 1987, article “Former
Freedom Fighters Hit out at Gitari” and its editorial of the same date,
“Enough of All That, Dr David Gitari.” The titles speak for themselves.
Parliament was also dragged into the debate. Various MPs challenged the
right of the clergy to speak out, accused them of “serving foreign mas-
ters,” and advised President Moi to limit their freedom of speech.18
The sermons did not restrain Moi and his henchmen. But, through
the newspaper attention they received and the public discourse they
stimulated, they put the regime and its supporters on the defensive, forc-
ing them to respond to the charges and engaging them in a debate that
they doubtless would have preferred to have ended by this time.

Epilogue
It took the Anglican Church and other civil society organizations, as
well as brave local politicians several more years of struggle until the
political system underwent some major changes. The year 1990 was
a turning point in Kenya’s political history. Due to international and
internal pressure, a number of changes were implemented in the politi-
cal system. The queuing system was abolished and a KANU Review
Committee headed by the Vice-President was established to review the
country’s political system. In 1991, the constitutional provision instat-
ing one-party rule was repealed and several opposition parties were reg-
istered. Finally, at the end of 1992, the first multiparty elections since
independence were held.
On virtually all major issues prior to the elections, the opposition was
split and much energy was wasted on internal power struggles. In seek-
ing common ground for a united stand, these groups discussed with one
another issues such as the current ethnic clashes, their common fear of
election rigging, and the power of a united opposition. In addition, all
opposition groups held joint discussions with the Attorney-General about
the unsatisfactory election regulations. On 11 May 1992 the Protestant
NCCK, with the active involvement of the Anglican Church, organized
a two-day interparty symposium. The main purpose of the gathering was
to discuss national issues. Since KANU representatives refrained from
attending, the symposium turned into a meeting between the NCCK
and its member churches and the various opposition groups.
138 Galia Sabar

In the absence of the ruling party, the gathering turned into a

campaign by the churches to unite the opposition. The symposium
named several senior government and KANU officials as the instigators
of the ethnic strife,19 and when a report on the ethnic clashes was deliv-
ered to the audience, the chairman said, “President Daniel arap Moi had
lost control of the country, leaving a vacuum that had been filled by
Rift Valley war-lords.”20 The report identified a “Kalenjin factor” in the
ethnic clashes and linked the conflicts to political rallies held in 1991 by
several pro-KANU political leaders. Although this information was com-
mon knowledge in Kenya, it had rarely been stated so explicitly.
The symposium had no concrete results but was nevertheless of the
utmost importance in two respects. First, the NCCK and its member
churches took an official stand to actively assist the opposition in its fight
against the ruling party; and second, the churches created a new arena
for the opposition to discuss political issues. Inter alia this caused various
opposition parties to use the churches’ vocabulary when dealing with
explosive political issues. This first NCCK-opposition symposium led to
more symposia of the same kind. In the following meetings, the stand of
the NCCK closely paralleled that of the leading opposition parties. In
fact, the NCCK, and especially the CPK and the PCEA clergy, basically
identified themselves with the opposition parties. The Kenyan clergy
calling for change cannot be seen as naive when regarding the political
struggle and the nature of future Kenyan politics. Relating to the role of
the churches in politics, Bishop Gitari quoted Studdert Kennedy: “When
a country changes its government, it only pushes one set of sinners out
and puts another set of sinners in. The most passionate idealists are never
completely free from egocentricity and partisan bias” (Gitari 1986b:136).
In fact, Bishop Gitari stressed that the Kenyan churches should not sup-
port one party or the other, rather “engage in a critical collaboration with
any state which attempts to respect God’s purposes” (Benson 1995:195).
The last months of 1992 were replete with mutual accusations on vot-
ing procedures among the various parties. Rumors about the President’s
intentions to cancel the elections caused riots in and around major
towns. Nevertheless on 29 December 1992, and under the watchful eye
of international observers and inspectors, the first multiparty elections
since independence were held in Kenya. President Moi and KANU
emerged victorious although the total number of votes cast for opposi-
tion candidates and parties was far greater.21
The reactions of the opposition to the proclaimed results were harsh.
Declaring that the elections were a hoax and the results rigged, the
opposition reacted to the president’s call for a united postelection Kenya
with great suspicion. Leaders of the opposition tried to unite ranks in
 “W a s T h e r e N o N a b o t h t o S a y N o ? ” 139

order to continue their struggle for change from within and without
the parliament. The CPK clergy, together with the Roman Catholic
and the PCEA leaders, hardly congratulated the president and KANU
on their victory and called simply for peace and prosperity in what they
described as a troubled country. Officially, the churches stated that as
religious organizations they were neither affiliated with, nor was their
work affected by, one party or another. Thus, their activities would not
change. As expressed in nonofficial statements, however, the general feel-
ing was one of great loss: “We shall continue to fight for what we believe
is right. Freedom, justice peace and human dignity are at stake and not
one candidate or another,” said a frustrated CPK clergyman in Nairobi
on the day the results were published.22
In the months following the election, the clergy were seldom heard
(in stark contrast to the period of 1990–1992 when hardly a day passed
without a church member appearing on the news or releasing a state-
ment to the press). Since early 1993 to about mid-1994 the churches
had generally refocused on human issues, peace and justice. Most of the
large churches have continued with their activities related to education,
health, development, and welfare, making little or no effort to fit into
the government of the country. It took the Anglican Church, as well as
other leading churches, almost a decade until they regained their position
as a vanguard force in generating and molding the debate on the actual
nature and content of politics in Kenya. Years went by until the Anglican
Church repositioned itself as an integral part of society, an instrument of
its transformation, and a power with which the government had to once
again reckon.

Notes
1. The early literature tended to dichotomize state and society, and to view
civil society as either engaging or disengaging with state and society, or
exiting the state or voicing the grievances of society. The initial assump-
tion, held by scholars in the 1980s, was that a vibrant civil society
would, as a matter of course, bridge the gap between the people and
the regime—engage them, incorporate them, and voice the grievance
of the people to the ruling powers—and lead to democratic reforms.
See, for example, Anyang Nyonga, 1983, 1989; Azarya 1988; Barkan &
Homquist 1989; Pellow & Chazan 1986; Chazan et al. 1998; Harbeson
1988; Migdal 1991; and Widner 1992. When time proved this a vain
hope in such countries as Cote d’Ivoire, Senegal, Tanzania, Kenya, and
others, it became clear that the assumption would have to be reconsidered.
The simple dichotomies were modified in favor of the understanding that
the relationship between the state and civil society is a dynamic and
140 Galia Sabar

multidimensional one, varying with the particular social group, conditions

in the state, and the key players. Moreover, the limitations of the power of
social organizations were better appreciated, as was the diverse nature and
modus operandi of these organizations. See, for example, Bratton 1989;
Bayart 1989; Comaroff and Comaroff 1997; Harbeson 1998; Mamdani
1990; and Mbembe1989, 1992, 2001a, 2001b.
2. These include both published writings, such as magazines, local church
newsletters, and official church brochures, and a wealth of unpublished
materials in numerous archives, mainly the Kenyan National Archives in
Nairobi, the Church Mission Society archives in London, and the Public
Record Office in London. More extensively, it employs the abundance of
unpublished material available at the central Anglican Church of Kenya
archive in Nairobi and in the many church archives throughout Kenya’s
rural dioceses and parishes.
3. The Anglican Church of Kenya, until 1999 titled The Church of the
Province of Kenya (CPK), was established in 1970 after the Church of the
Province of East Africa was split into two independent churches: Kenya
and Tanzania. Even before 1970, however, it was regarded and managed
as an independent Kenyan Anglican Church. The titular head of the CPK
is the archbishop. While he can set the tone of the church, his formal
powers are limited. He is elected by the bishops of all the dioceses. Major
decisions are made by the Provincial Synod thus, the archbishop’s power
is a matter of his personal standing, while the bishops have a great deal
of independence and formal authority vis-a-vis him. On the level of the
diocese, the main theological, administrative, and operational unit of the
church, the bishop has considerable formal authority and independence,
while formally being constrained by a complex system of checks and bal-
ances. On the practical level, the Bishop oversees ordinations and controls
budget disbursements to the parishes (these are rarely made: it is the par-
ishes that should pay diocesan quota on top of their own projects, while
the diocese takes care of clergy training and remuneration). On the moral
level, he issues statements on behalf of the diocesan clergy on matters of
public concern and interprets the church’s theology at the diocesan level.
Each bishop is free to comment on whatever matters he sees, whether
they are issues of individual moral behavior or the conduct and policies
of the country’s rulers. Thus, while the bishop has many powers and a
strong leadership role in the diocese, most of his workday decisions are
made following discussion and voting in the synod and other diocesan
bodies. This limits his power vis-a-vis the parish clergy, and allows them
some degree of independence in turn. The important point is that the
bishop does not need to seek reelection and in those days the rules about
retirement were unclear, so the government could not unsettle a bishop.
Despite the diocesan oversight, the local parish clergy have some
latitude both in the daily running of the parish and in expressing their
personal views. Thus most parish clergy play it safe and do not try to be
more outspoken than the bishop. Through their sermons and catechism
 “W a s T h e r e N o N a b o t h t o S a y N o ? ” 141

classes, the parish clergy are the primary interpreters of church traditions
at the local level, and they have the freedom and opportunity to express
their personal understanding on issues ranging from moral conduct
through national politics subject to the above. The hierarchical organi-
zation of the clergy at the national, regional, and parish level represents
only a portion of the institutional church. There are also positions that
do not fall clearly into this hierarchical structure such as the newspaper
editor and heads of a development cooperative to name but two. These
non-parish positions provide the clerics who hold them with even further
opportunity for independent expression and action.
4. On these restrictions, see Weekly Review from 1 August 1980, 8 August
1980, 22 August 1980, 12 September 1980, 17 October 1980, and 14
November 1980.
5. Weekly Review 9 October 1982, 15 April 1983, 13 May 1983.
6. It should be noted that it is difficult to attribute this attitude to the
Anglican Church as a whole. Anglicans in the NCCK were not typical,
and more radical clergy set the pace (National Council of Churches of
Kenya 1984).
7. The author joined very many sermons and diocesan events of Anglican
bishops all over the country in 1988 and between 1989–1992 and
1995–1996. Gitari’s sermons in Embu and Kirinyaga as well as his
church events in St. Andrew’s College of Theology and Development,
Kabare in Kirinyaga District, for example, some of which were open to
the public, were always overcrowded.
8. For some of the clerics’ statements, see Weekly Review 7 June 1985:3–5;
and 28 June 1985:1, 7–9.
9. After Muge’s death and replacement, and especially as Gitari took over
from Kuria as archbishop, Kalenjin bishops wanted less speaking out
against the government and tribal motives were attributed to Gitari
across Western Kenya.
10. Interview held with Bishop Gitari, Kirinyaga, July 1992.
11. Archbishop Kuria as quoted in Throup, “Render Unto Caesar” 1995: 15.
12. Bishop Njuguna in an interview carried out in Jerusalem, May 1987, and
in Nairobi in August 1987. Bishop Mahiaini interviewed in Muranga,
July 1991.
13. Kuria as cited in Throup 1995: 154.
14. For an excellent interpretation of Gitari’s sermons using Daniel 6, see
Graham Kings (1996).
15. Nation 27 June 1987. See also the editorial in the Kenya Times 29 June
1987 accusing Gitari of misinterpreting parts of the Old Testament “in
a vain effort aimed at justifying his own radical disposition.”
16. From many unofficial talks with CPK members in Kirinyaga and Nyeri,
for example, John Ndungu Gathuo and Catherine Mburu Gathuo,
Nairobi 1995–1997, on several occasions and St. Andrew’s Institute
theological students (no names mentioned) in an open discussion held
during my visit there in July 1992.
142 Galia Sabar

17. For “Letters to the editor,” see Nation 23 June 1987; Standard 23 June
1989; Nation 30 June 1987; Taifa Leo 30 June 1987; Nation 1 July
1987.
18. The House of Parliament stated: “This is an eccentric Bishop, there is
nothing wrong in the resolutions . . . [A]ll Kenyans should be patriotic
and the bishop is serving external masters . . . [T]he CPK is a mere prov-
ince of another church and it is possible the bishop is serving those mas-
ters” (Nation 30 September 1988). Concerning the right of the clergy to
speak out, the Minister for Training and Applied Technology, Prof. Sam
Ongeri, said: “Kenya recognizes Christianity and the power of God and
that was why parliament allowed church leaders to attend Parliament
and pray for the country during state opening of the house. What we
heard from Bishop Gitari constitutes a rebellion. This is a rebellion acti-
vated by some politicians” (Nation 30 September 1988).
19. The key figures named were the Vice-President Prof. G. Saitoti, the
Minister for Local Government William Ole Ntimama, N. Biwott, and
several other MPs and key political figures. For the full list of names, see
Weekly Review 19 June 1992.
20. Revd George Wanjau from the Presbyterian church of East Africa as
cited in Weekly Review 19 June 1992:14.
21. Presidential votes: D, Moi 1,930,534; K. Matiba 1,402,069; M. Kibaki
1,012,569; O. Odinga 914,550; G. Anyona 14,048; Parliamentary Seats
(total 178): KANU 94; FORD-Kenya 29; FORD-Asili 30; DP 22;
KENDA 0; KNC 1; KSC 1; PICK 1.
22. Interview with Revd S. K. of the CPK in Nairobi, January 1993.
Chapter 5

Meddling on to
2008: Is There Any
Relevance for
Gitari’s Model in
the Aftermath of
Ethnic Violence?
Julius Gathogo*

In this chapter “Gitari’s model” refers to the boldness in church leadership

that Archbishop David Mukuba Gitari displayed in his prophetic ministry.
Can retrieving his approaches in ministry inspire a nation in general and
its church leaders in particular? Are there lessons for the African churches
to draw from Gitari’s model today? To address the above concerns, I will
first attempt in this chapter to locate Gitari’s background and analyse
his formative influences. I will then attempt to survey the approaches to
ministry that he employed during its turbulent days. The chapter will
then conclude with a critique on Gitari’s all-inclusive approach to church
ministry (1986–1991). This critique is made by taking into account the
general elections of December 2007 and the subsequent ethnically geared
violence, which claimed at least 1,133 lives and left at one time 400,000
as internally displaced persons (IDPs). In other words, was Gitari’s mes-
sage unheeded by his succeeding leaders in the church and the nation
at large? The primary materials for this chapter were gathered through
oral interviews and in participant observation by the researcher who was
an eyewitness for a large part of Gitari’s ministry. An extensive reading
144 Julius Gathogo

of some materials under discussion has also been done. The chapter is
aimed at cautioning postcolonial Africa against squandering the gains of
freedom. It concludes with the question, “Is Gitari’s model relevant to the
post-December 2007 Kenya?”

David Gitari’s Background

The retired Anglican Archbishop, David Mukuba Gitari, was born on 16
September 1937. In strict phonetic spelling, his names should be written
as David Getare Mokuva. Obviously, African names have intended mean-
ings. In Gitari’s case, his second name, Mukuva, is a Kamba name that
may mean “a sewing needle”; while among the Gikuyu of Kirinyaga, it is
written as Mukuba, but with the same Kamba meaning. Interestingly, the
name Gitari may mean a doctor, a nurse (dagitari), or even a mutari, that
is, a prophet-like character who advises or counsels people in times of
need. David is the baptismal name that Gitari received from the church,
and is taken from the Biblical King David, the son of Jesse (see Ruth
4:17–22; I Samuel 16; I Chronicles 2:12–17).
Considering the deep religiosity of the African people (Mbiti
1969:1–2) and bearing in mind that Gitari’s two African names, Gitari
wa Mukuva (Gitari son of Mukuva)—which may be interpreted to mean,
“the sewing needle that counsels, or prophesies,” or “a sewing needle that
mends a wound,” or even “the sewing needle that nurses”—one wonders
whether these names signaled prophetic insights into his future role as
one of Kenya and Africa’s great prophetic bishops who courageously
called for sanity when the nation had lost its conscience? Could he have
been seeing something that others were not able to fully comprehend?
Were his words of counsel, sometimes stinging remarks, meant to stitch
up a torn nation? Does it mean that Kenya needed to have always listened
and heeded his prophetic sermons and speeches?

Gitari’s Pedigree and Its Relevance

Gitari’s father, the evangelist Samuel Mukuba, was a Kamba by ethnic-
ity. He was born in Kitui District, Mutongu-ini Location, in about
1882. But owing to the great famine that ravaged the district in 1899,
Mukuva went to Gikuyuland, Ngiriambu in Kirinyaga District, with his
mother Mutaa. As fate would have it, Mutaa and Mukuva were adopted
by the family of Warui Gituku and became members of Ugaciku clan.
Obviously, adoption by the Ugaciku clan means that they became heirs
of the clan wealth. Subsequently, they were given portions of Ugaciku
clan land to settle on like anybody else. As Mukuva grew up, he traveled
 Meddling on to 2008 145

to the coastal city of Mombasa to look for a job in 1914, and while there,
the Church Missionary Society (CMS) missionaries led him to faith in
Jesus Christ. In 1919, he returned to Ngiriambu to share the good news
with the people; and in so doing, he became the first missionary to ever
preach the Gospel in the locality. Subsequently, the present day church,
St. Matthew’s, Ngiriambu, was built by the locals in memory of Samuel
Mukuba, the pioneer missionary, evangelist, and teacher.
At the church where Samuel Mukuba taught literacy and the gospel of
Jesus, he met Jessie Njuku who was one of his pupils. After falling in love
with Njuku, their Holy Matrimony was solemnized by Revd Rampley at
St. Andrew’s Church, Kabare, about ten miles west of Ngiriambu, on 24
October 1924. Samuel and Jessie’s marriage in 1924 has several lessons for
the postelection crisis on 27 December 2007, which developed on tribal
lines. This marriage was transethnic, and Kenyans need to just appreciate
cultural diversity for their coexistence. In view of this, reports that some
intermarriages among the Gikuyu and the Kalenjin are negatively affected
when villagers were set on one another after the disputed elections along
ethnic lines shows that Samuel (a Kamba) and Jessie (a Gikuyu) have
much to teach us in 2008. Second, ethnic coexistence has been there in
Kenya since time immemorial. For when hunger struck a community, a
person could migrate to another one and be a blessing to the new com-
munity. Third, making a son of a Kamba a bishop in a predominantly
Gikuyu-dominated diocese is in itself a lesson for ethnically cleansed
Kenya. It shows that any good leader can emerge out of a meritocracy but
not out of ethnic or other prejudicial considerations. It is for this reason
that Gitari played his role with confidence and dedication, knowing that
he was there by merit. Kenya has to learn from this experience.
Reportedly, Jessie and Samuel’s marriage was the first Solemnization of
Holy Matrimony to be celebrated in Kabare Parish, which was nearly half
of the present day Kirinyaga District. They were later blessed with eight
children: Hannah (1925), Harun Njagi (1930), Peninah (1932), Stanley
Nzuki (1935), David Gitari (1937), Mary (1940), Eliud Njiru (1943),
and Freda (1948). In my interview (3 March 2008) with Revd Marclus
Njiru, Gitari’s nephew, in the early stages of Gitari’s lifetime, people in
the family circle did not think he would make it in later life, especially
due to his “conservatism” as a committed Christian. This view was how-
ever proved wrong, as God works with even the most unlikely people.
Samuel Mukuba passed away on 3 October 1970; Jessie followed
on 2 January 2000. Jessie Njuku, who had a rare opportunity of seeing
three centuries, by virtue of the fact that she was born in 1898, remained
a widow for nearly 30 years. Like her husband, she also became an
adult educator in the 1930s and 1940s. In addition, she doubled as a
146 Julius Gathogo

traditional midwife. Indeed, even the Kenyan government recognized her

by honoring her as a traditional midwife. In an interview, Gitari says: “I
can remember her being woken up at the wee hours of the night to go
and help women to deliver.”
In his early upbringing, Gitari was taught by his parents not to fear
the superstitious beliefs that had filled the community. In turn, Jessie and
Samuel Mukuva rescued babies whose parents subjected them to death
by exposure, either because they were twins or they grew the upper teeth
first. As Gitari noted in our interview, his father would ring the church
gong (bell) to call people for worship at 6:00 a.m. every morning and
6:00 p.m. every evening. This sound of the gong was believed to have
driven the demons of Karumba valley away. People in the locality had
long been disturbed by the noises that were coming from Karumba valley
at odd hours. These mysterious sounds were believed to have been made
by demons. With the coming of Christianity in the locality, the locals no
longer heard them, or had reason to fear. Gitari grew up in such an envi-
ronment, which had room for such beliefs, an environment that helps us
to see some of his formative factors. With parents highly informed for
those days, Gitari had an early advantage in modern Kenya.

Gitari’s Marriage, Ordination, and Schooling

Gitari attended the prestigious Kangaru High School in Embu District of
Eastern Kenya before attending the University of Nairobi for a Bachelor of
Arts honors degree, in 1959. He married Grace Wanjiru on 31 March 1966
and God blessed them with three sons, Sammy, Jonathan, and Mwendwa
(Keyas 2007). In his younger days, he was greatly involved in preaching
in schools and universities all over Africa. From 1968 to 1971, he studied
theology at Bristol as an external student of the University of London and
graduated with a Bachelor of Divinity (BD). From 1972 to 1975, he served
as the General Secretary of the Bible Society of Kenya and Chairman of
Kenya Students Christian Fellowship (KSCF) (Keyas 2007).
Gitari was ordained into the priesthood of the Anglican Church
in 1972 by Bishop Obadiah Kariuki. On 20 July, 1975, at the age of
37, Gitari was consecrated and enthroned as the first bishop of Mount
Kenya East diocese, which covered a quarter of Kenya’s landmass.
In that position, Gitari founded St. Andrews College of Theology
and Development at Kabare. Since then, St. Andrews has become a
University campus of St. Paul’s University, Limuru. Gitari served as the
Bishop of Mount Kenya East, until the diocese was split into Embu and
Kirinyaga diocese. He then moved to Kirinyaga, thereby becoming the
first bishop of Kirinyaga.
 Meddling on to 2008 147

In both his tenures as the bishop of Mount Kenya East (1975–1990)

and of Kirinyaga (1990–1996) there was phenomenal church growth in
these two dioceses. As evangelism was his first priority, he led many mis-
sions in African universities. These initiatives were creatively combined
with development, theological education, liturgical renewal, and the
encouragement of women’s ordination (Kirigia 2002b). He served
for many years as chairman of the Provincial Board of Theological
Education in the Anglican Church of Kenya. He served four times as
chair of the National Council of Churches of Kenya, and acted as a
mediator between the international Evangelical and Ecumenical move-
ments. He also served as chairman of the board of St. Paul’s United
Theological College, now St Paul’s University, Limuru. He was a mem-
ber of the Anglican Roman Catholic International Commission from
1983–1990 (Keyas 2005).
In 1983 he was awarded an honorary degree, Doctor of Divinity (DD),
by Asbury Seminary, Ohio, USA. In 1997, he was elected as the third
African Archbishop of the Anglican Province of Kenya and the Bishop
of Nairobi where he served till 2002 when he finally retired (Gitari
1996b:10). During his tenure as the Anglican Archbishop of Kenya,
Gitari revived training institutions, especially the Anglican Theological
Education by Extension (TEE) program, which was floundering in many
diocese, and with the help of grants from Trinity Church, New York,
he helped set up the Anglican website so that all dioceses could have
access to an Internet service. This made communication and networking
easier. With such achievements it is no wonder that in his enthronement
speech of 22 September 2002, Benjamin Nzimbi, the fourth Kenyan
African archbishop and Bishop of All Saints diocese, paid tribute to his
predecessor, Dr. David Gitari, for his bold leadership, vowing to follow
in his footsteps. Archbishop Nzimbi also quoted a Kiswahili poem
praising Dr Gitari: “Gitari ni hodari. Gitari ni daktari. Gitari ni jemedari.
Gitari ni hatari” (Gitari is bold. Gitari is a doctor. Gitari is an army
commander. Gitari is dangerous) (Keyas 2005). Following the regime
change in December 2002, the new president, Mwai Kibaki, in 2003,
gave him one of the highest state honors, the Moran of the Burning
Spear (MBS), for his dedicated services to the Republic of Kenya
(Gitari 2005).

The Bishop of Mount Kenya East (1975–1991) and

the State
Following his election as the Bishop of Mount Kenya East in 1975,
Gitari concentrated most of his energies in bringing up his newborn
148 Julius Gathogo

diocese, which had less than 20 parishes and clergy.1 Following the death
of President Jomo Kenyatta on 22 August 1978, the new president,
Daniel arap Moi, appeared to have started well, encouraging the nation
to preserve their environment by planting trees, telling the nation to use
family planning, and encouraging respect and care for the elderly, chil-
dren, disabled, and other marginals of society. He even introduced a new
philosophy—the Nyayo philosophy of Peace, Love, and Unity—which
Gitari and other church leaders of the time found compatible with the
New Testament.
However things took a turn for the worse when a fresh alertness
towards government matters began to emerge after the constitutional
amendment of 1982 that made Kenya a de jure one-party state not long
after, the attempted coup of 1 August 1982. Subsequent constitutional
amendments consolidating the power of the executive did not make mat-
ters any better—as the state became very intolerant of dissenting voices.
As a result, some of these dissenters were abducted and killed, others were
jailed or detained without trial.

The Relevance of Gitari’s Approach to Church

Ministry
Gitari’s approach to church ministry was prophetic and contextual and
hence was relevant. Gitari took the Bible as authoritative in his context
where it is translated in the local Gikuyu language. Knowing his audi-
ence, which was liberally influenced by the Christian teachings, was a
big plus for Gitari as he spoke his political mind through the use of
expository sermons, faithfully interpreted from the Biblical texts. For
example, when decrying the grabbing of Kamuruana Hill, a public prop-
erty entrusted to Kirinyaga County Council, by two local politicians
who called their company Jimka and Jaken, Gitari went to the nearby
Holy Trinity Church, Mutuma, in 1991, and picked the relevant text of
I Kings 21:1–29, and then asked his congregation, according to the title
of his sermon, “Was There No Naboth to Say No?” (Gitari 1996b:16). As
a characteristic method, such an approach would always stir his audience
to think and apply the evil King Ahab to the land-grabbers of their day.
Another example is his decrying of a government crackdown on
Mwakenya political dissidents—a group of people who were said to be
releasing pamphlets that were criticizing the excesses of the state. Gitari
noted that most of the suspects, who were taken to court at odd hours,
were innocent Kenyans, who were tortured and forced to confess that
they were involved in clandestine activities, were subsequently sen-
tenced by compromised judges, and were finally jailed on trumped up
 Meddling on to 2008 149

charges. In such situations Gitari, in his sermons, would urge people

not to conform to the patterns of this world no matter the persecu-
tions (cf. Romans 12:1–2) (Gitari 1996b:54). This reliance on the
Bible confirms its centrality in African Christianity and is shown by its
wide translation, being “the most widely read book in tropical Africa”
(Mugambi 1995:142).
Gitari used an all-inclusive approach in his ministry (1986–1991).
One day, in early 1991, he invited everyone who was interested to pray
for a return to a multiparty political system to assemble at St. Thomas’
Church, Kerugoya. As I observed, the “prayer session” included a “who’s
who” of the opposition politics of the time! I remember in 1987 when,
as my bishop, he invited Hon. Nahashon Njuno, the then Kirinyaga
East member of Parliament for what is now the Gichugu constituency,
to speak to a congregation in my local Emmanuel Church, Mutira,
and to greet the congregation even when the government had barred
him through the local KANU Branch from speaking in public. By
“breaking the law”, Gitari was trying to tell the Kenyan authorities
that “no-one has a right to deny you the right to freedom of speech
and association.” Gitari was trying to guard against any form of societal
fragmentation, as being united is far better than being divided when
we have a common cause.
Gitari saw to the production of a Christian hymnbook, Nyimbo Cia
Gucanjamura Ngoro (literally meaning, “songs to warm the heart”), with
ancestral melodies that clearly reflected the local context. In so doing, he
led the Christians in owning the Gospel as their word that was delivered
to them through their ancestors who used to sing happily. Gitari’s use of
ancestral resources compares with Wole Soyinka’s proposal on the way
forward with regard to handling reconciliation in Africa—where one of
his resources is that of religious myth. Specifically Soyinka turns to his
ancestral Yoruba pantheon and to their rituals and mythology. In this, the
gods come down to the mortals to oversee the atonement festival, remind-
ing them of the necessity for atonement and forgiveness (Soyinka 2000).
Gitari used antiphony to take his audience with him. To drive his
point home, he had a unique way of keeping the crowd together. For
example, whenever he made a “sensitive” comment, he would ask the
crowd, “Mugukiigua? Mugukionai?” (literally, “Did you hear? Did you
see?” or “Are you traveling with me?”). And the ever-enthusiastic audi-
ence would automatically note the seriousness of the matter under dis-
cussion and respond in unison: “Tugukiiguai, Tugukionai” (literally, “We
have heard, we have seen”).
When the Pentecostal wave threatened to entice Gitari’s church
members, and suspected government agents were releasing leaflets to
150 Julius Gathogo

discredit him and the church in general, he responded by coining a

sloganeering song that was sung thus:

Ona ni kure mbura Even if it rains

Ona ya kiboboto Even if it is heavy flooding
Kana ya micumari Even if it rains nails
Kanitha ndikoima I will never abandon the church
Kanitha nii ndikoimai I vow never to ever abandon my church
Kanitha ndikoma I will stick to my church
Ona ni kure mbura Even if it rains
Ona ya kiboboto Even if it is heavy flooding
Kana ya micumari Even if it rains nails
Kanitha ndikoima I will never abandon the Church

By the word “church” Gitari, though an Ecumenist, was referring to his

own Anglican Church of Kenya. Raining nails referred to the state perse-
cutions that the church was undergoing as a result of the uncompromis-
ing stand that he had taken on matters of social justice at the local and
the national levels. Like John in his book of Revelation (1–4), Gitari was
simply telling his audience (in Swahili), “Vumilia mateso ya sasa. Ni ya
muda tu! Tuzo la baadaye ni kubwa” (Persevere through the persecution
that you are encountering now. It is only for a while. You will be crowned
with abounding victory later. So stand firm).
By Gitari cautioning his audience not to abandon the church, he was
telling his local Kirinyaga Diocese first and the nation as a whole through
the media, that they should not allow themselves to be carried away. So
whether Pentecostal churches are making big waves with their “new gospel”
should not make Christians lose their focus. And since some were support-
ing the government and arguing that Gitari was doing politics rather than
“preaching the Word of God,” it made them increase in membership—as
some were convinced that the church could never be involved in politics.
In his retirement (since 2002), Gitari has watched some leaders of these
Pentecostal churches declaring their intentions to vie for elective posts in
the governance of the nation, after some of them had opposed his crusade
for a laissez-faire society for all. Hence he used the Gikuyu proverb, Murimi
tiwe murei, meaning, “He who tills the land is not the one who eats.”
Gitari would tell stories in the pulpit that were always relevant and
compatible with his chosen Biblical text. In these stories, Gitari would
use figurative and symbolic language. He would sometimes tell stories
of personified animals. At other times, he would tell stories of natural
objects, for example, the competition between the Sun and the Wind. In
general, storytelling is a means of communication that links the history
of a people from their origins to the present. It is also one of the major
 Meddling on to 2008 151

forms of informal education in Africa, and is indispensable as a means

of illustrating an important message in the context of Africa. Storytelling
as a traditional art creates above all, a deep sense of friendship and
community. This finds a parallel in the Bible, which is a collection of sto-
ries told about a people, namely the Israelites and the disciples of Jesus.
He would use storytelling in communicating the “sensitive” messages,
because it was a way of educating the masses without necessarily causing
lots of legal conflicts with the local government who were always trailing
him for the wrong reasons. For as Anthony Balcomb (2000:50) says,

Stories are the domain of all human beings who want not only to make
sense of life but [also] to open up all sorts of possibilities in life. This
is because we do not only tell stories about what does happen but also
about what could happen. We challenge ourselves to greater possibilities,
unknown in practice but known in the imagination by asking ourselves
the question “What if?”

His was a continuous story in instalments “told with even more frequent
use of the copula than the Bible itself ” (Knighton quoted in Gitari and
Knighton 2001:247). Indeed, “the Bible is the only universal literature
[that] Kenyans possess, telling the same stories, with all their contest-
able teleological possibilities, in all the main vernaculars” (Lonsdale
1999:222). Thus, Gitari’s prophetic approach is worth paying attention
to, considering that the comparative silence of the church during the
Kibaki era did not help in stopping the ethnopolitical violence after the
27 December 2007 elections.

Critique of Gitari’s Model

By inviting everyone regardless of race, creed, religion, gender, faith, or
color to call for the same national objectives during those turbulent days,
Gitari risked making his church look like a mission without borders. In
other words, was it church ministry that he was doing? Or was it a mat-
ter of inviting both Jews and Gentiles to build the wall (cf. Nehemiah
2)? By the heavy attendance of oppositionist politicians in his “political
ministry,” could he have been implying that the gospel is with the oppo-
sition and not with the government, and was taking sides between two
warring factions rather than reconciling them. Nevertheless, through his
all-inclusive approach, the high-handed KANU yielded to the demands
of the vast majority of Kenyans who had Gitari and a few church leaders
to speak for them as the real voice of the people.
At this juncture, it is critical to appreciate that Gitari’s prophetic min-
istry is not in isolation, as history is replete with stories of church leaders’
152 Julius Gathogo

involvement on matters to do with the governance of their respective

countries. In Nicaragua, pressure from the Roman Catholic Church
led to the collapse of the Sandinista regime. The church was so strong
that Cardinal Miguel Obando Bravo, Archbishop of Managua, was a
signatory to several peace accords during the 1990 transition. He also
influenced the new education system that replaced the Sandinistas. The
Roman Catholics also kept the new regime under surveillance. Several
times, church leaders complained that the new government tolerated
corruption and usurped the cause of justice.
In the Philippines, the Roman Catholic Church hastened the depar-
ture of the dictator Ferdinand Marcos in 1987. Interestingly, it is two of
Marcos’ generals who requested Cardinal Jaime Sin to help topple their
iron-fisted ruler, forever reducing the dictator’s status from being one of
the most powerful of men. Amid rising opposition both from within and
outside the government, the national assembly ruled that Marcos had
won the 1986 elections. Two of his top generals led a plan to oppose the
government. That very night they learned that the government’s security
services were after them, they called Cardinal Sin, who immediately
asked all parishes to support the rebel solders. Counting on U.S. support,
Marcos staged his own installation ceremony as President, but he got it
wrong. The message to the Roman Catholics had sunk in and the protest
had become mighty and defiant. He had to leave the country, and yet
another repressive regime succumbed to a faith-inspired movement. But
Cardinal Sin would not take credit for the regime’s collapse. He said sim-
ply: “The people cried, and their voice was heard in high heaven” (Sin,
quoted in Gathogo 2001:95). A similar case in January 2001 of a popular
uprising removed President Joseph Estrada allegedly for being corrupt,
when Cardinal Jaime Sin also organized the protests.
To this end, it is critical to appreciate that due to Gitari’s consistency
in confronting the social injustice besetting the nation, he left an example
among the Kenyan churches, which can be referred to as Gitari’s model. This
is a prophetic ministry where all sins of commission or omission are con-
fronted by church leadership, irrespective of who, or which party, is ruling the
country. This was conspicuously missing during the post-Moi era (2002–).
Sadly, after Gitari’s retirement in 2002, the once vocal church became silent,
thereby leaving a huge gaping hole as the likes of the fiery, erstwhile General
Secretary of the National Council of Churches of Kenya, Revd Mutava
Musyimi, resigned to join the government and is now an MP for Gachoka
constituency on a ruling party—People’s National Union (PNU)—ticket.
Protestant church leaders went secular by becoming all manner of adminis-
trators and state functionaries. Indeed the church was now seen as support-
ing the government of President Mwai Kibaki in total disregard of Gitari’s
 Meddling on to 2008 153

model. But following the unprecedented post–27 December 2007 election

violence in a country that has been relatively peaceful in a region that is
characterized by conflict, various questions have cropped up.
First, if the church maintained its prophetic voice, as Gitari, Okullu,
and Muge, among others, had set as a precedent, would they not have
spared the tension that visited the country after the disputed December
2007 elections? Was Gitari’s message unheeded by his succeeding church
leaders and the nation at large? Is there anything that he failed to do
during his time? Or were they expecting the old man to wake up from
retirement and revive his model? Or were they waiting for directions
from a certain church leader, somewhere?
Nevertheless, following the belated admission on 14 February 2008
by the once vocal Kenyan church leaders, through the umbrella of the
National Council of Churches of Kenya, that “we erred as we did not
speak with one voice” and “in fact, took sides on the basis of ethnicity”,
it is critical to appreciate that Gitari’s model cannot be put away in Kenya
without consequences. Gitari, in his heyday, would always advise his
fellow church leaders not to “go very close or very far from the govern-
ment of the day,” as the middle course was “the sure” way of serving the
society. In his view, when church leaders “get very close” to the govern-
ment, their prophetic voice weakens, since they lose their moral authority
to challenge injustices in the society, especially where the government
was involved. The claims by the Orange Democratic Movement that
the government rigged the elections in favor of the incumbent president
is such an example, as the post-Gitari church found itself unable to
speak either for or against the government. In view of this, Gitari’s good
news of freedom and social justice could easily be remembered. Thus,
the failure by the Kenyan churches to uphold Gitari’s model, by being
vocal on matters in which politicians misled the nation culminating in
the mass displacements after the general elections nearly rendered them
irrelevant. One can imagine the outcome if Gitari were still serving as
an Archbishop, as he would have continued with his stinging messages,
which always called the nation back to its conscience. Gitari’s example is
thus still relevant in Kenya.

Conclusion
The church in Kenya and Africa at large must thus learn to allow religion
to play its prophetic role, as this is one way of avoiding malpractices and
extremes such as genocide, which took a million people in Rwanda in
1994. As President Paul Kagame of Rwanda cautioned in early 2008,
genocide does not start with a million deaths. It starts with five, then
154 Julius Gathogo

ten, then fifty, shortly it grows to hundred, then it goes to thousands. By

the time you realize what is happening, it has gained a momentum that
is wiping out life in villages and communities and is quite out of control.
Indeed this drives us to realize the relevance of Gitari’s model in post-Moi
Kenya, as he would not have watched silently as the nation went tribal.
In sum, this chapter has tried to demonstrate that Gitari’s life and work
are relevant to modern Kenya for several reasons. First, Gitari himself was
a product of interethnic marriage that worked very well. Second, they also
show that the post–December 2007 Kenya violence, which is engineered
by ethnicity, can be overcome. In adopting Mutaa and her son Mukuva in
the family of Gituku, and subsequently becoming a member of the local
clan, these Kenyans have shown that they can adapt. Subsequently, Gitari
grew up as a Kenyan first rather than being a Kamba or a Gikuyu. In
turn, it helped him to appreciate himself as a citizen of the world. Third, a
silent church does not buttress modernity. If the post-Moi and post-Gitari
church was vocal enough, perhaps the country would not be the way it is
today. Fourth, the family is useful for the nation, as its example concurs
with the old adage, whcih says that “if one wants to make a great nation
she or he has to focus on families first.” Jessie and Samuel played their
role exceedingly well, for they introduced Gitari to the God and Father
of Jesus and cautioned him not to fear superstitious beliefs or the demons
of Karumba valley among other things.
Gitari was inspired to exorcize the demons of Kenyan politics, which
he did not fear even when he was threatened with dire consequences. If
we strive to make good families that do not exalt ethnicity, the nation can
have honest and courageous men and women who would always strive
to work for the kingdom of God without “fear or favor”. As we surge on
towards the new challenges of the twenty-first century, we need to reflect
on Gitari’s ministry, as a valuable way of understanding the reality of
Christian leadership in Africa today. Gitari’s model has not been bettered
in East African politics.

Notes
∗
Dr Julius Gathogo may be contacted at PO Box 72584 Nairobi, Kenya. His
email addresses are: jumgathogo@yahoo.com and jgathogom@yahoo.com.

1. By 2007, it had over an hundred parishes and over a hundred clergy.

Chapter 6

The Church and

Islam: Vyama Vingi
(Multipartyism) and
the Ufungamano
Talks
John Chesworth

Introduction
Islam and Christianity have contested with each other in Kenya since
Ludwig Krapf ’s arrival in Mombasa (1844). Krapf was sent by the
Church Missionary Society, with a letter of commendation from the
Sultan of Zanzibar to the governor. During the British colonial period
(1895–1963), Christianity was regarded as having been favored by
the colonial authorities and as having gained the ascendancy. Initially,
because of their literacy and the decision to use Swahili as the language
of administration, Muslims were employed by the British. However,
they were superseded by those who had been educated at the Christian
mission schools. At independence, Muslims felt that they were regarded
as second-class citizens (Kheir 2007:158). On the coastal strip, which
was under the control of the Sultan of Zanzibar until 1892, Muslims
maintained their own legal system, Kadhi’s courts,1 throughout the
colonial period. These were expanded under Jomo Kenyatta, the first
president (1964–1978). He signed an agreement with the government
of Zanzibar, for the continued existence of Kadhi’s courts on the coastal
strip. After independence Kadhi’s courts were also established in all of
156 John Chesworth

the provinces. Their existence became entrenched in the constitution of

the Republic of Kenya. It is of interest to note that Julius Nyerere, the
first president of Tanganyika, later Tanzania (1961–1985), also signed a
similar agreement to keep Kadhi’s courts on the coastal strip. After inde-
pendence, all the Kadhi’s courts on the mainland were closed, a current
cause for dissent in Tanzania.
Under the first president, single-party rule was introduced, and from
1969 only members of Kenya African National Union (KANU) could
become members of Parliament (MPs). Daniel arap Moi, the second
president (1978–2002), became increasingly autocratic, but interna-
tional pressure in the early 1990s forced the reintroduction of multi-
party politics (Swahili, Vyama Vingi), by the removal of clause 2A of the
current constitution in December 1991, allowing for the registration of
opposition parties and multiparty elections in 1992. Moi and KANU
retained power following elections in 1992 and 1997, but pressure was
put on them by civil society and the churches as well as by international
organizations to carry out a review of the constitution. This process was
started in 1998 with the passing of the Constitution of Kenya Review
Commission (Amendment) Act. Religious groups were not convinced that
the government would carry the process through with impartiality and
continued to speak out. They began the Ufungamano Initiative in 1999,
when a coalition of religious groups, meeting at Ufungamano House in
Nairobi, agreed to work together to help in the process of forming a new
constitution for Kenya.
This chapter examines the attempts by one group of Muslims to
register a political party, the Islamic Party of Kenya (IPK) and the
actions of one of its major figures, Khalid Balala, and his interac-
tion with the then archbishop, David Gitari, in 1997 at the service
to cleanse All Saints’ Cathedral, Nairobi. It also examines an aspect
of the constitutional review concerning the place of Kadhi’s courts
in the constitution. The Constitution of Kenya Review Commission
(CKRC) and the Ufungamano group were brought together and
worked on a draft constitution, but the Muslims withdrew their
participation in the process following the objections by Christians to
the continued “entrenchment” of Kadhi’s courts in the constitution.
Archbishop David Gitari’s involvement in the Ufungamano process,
as well as in the National Constitutional Conference (NCC) held
at the Bomas of Kenya, and his responses to the courts “crisis” are
also examined. In conclusion, the situation following the contested
results of the 2007 elections is examined, especially the purported
Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between Adullahi Abdi
and Raila Odinga, its possible impact on relations between the church
 The Church and Islam 157

and Islam, and the renewed attempts to create an inter-religious

group, the Kenya Thabiti Task Force to examine the elections in the
pursuit of truth.

Vyama Vingi (Multipartyism)

Following the gaining of independence in December 1963, the first
government caused the opposition party, Kenya African Democratic
Union (KADU) to merge with KANU in 1964, making Kenya a de facto
one-party state. However, in 1966 Jaramogi Oginga Odinga formed the
Kenya People’s Union (KPU) after losing the vice-presidency of KANU,
returning Kenya to multipartyism, but KPU was proscribed by the gov-
ernment in 1969. Then on 10 June 1982, changes to the Constitution
of Kenya were made resulting in a single political party, KANU and
it became illegal to stand for the post of president or to be an MP
unless you belonged to the party. These changes were enshrined in the
Constitution as Section 2A, as well as Sections 5(3)a and 5(5)a, requiring
that presidential candidates be KANU members and nominated by the
party, and Section 39(1), requiring MPs who left KANU to vacate their
seats (Sabar 2002:245).
During the term of the first president, Jomo Kenyatta (1964–1978),
and for the first few years of the second president, Daniel arap Moi
(1978–2002), the church generally supported the government, or was
silent in the face of injustices. However, during the late 1980s, the
Anglican Church, then called Church of the Province of Kenya (CPK),
found a voice and several bishops, notably David Gitari, Henry Okullo,
and Alexander Muge began to speak out. One of the areas that the
church spoke out on was electoral procedures and the reintroduction
of multipartyism. The 1987 elections had been conducted with voters
standing in line behind a picture of their candidate, which was seen as
neither free nor fair.
In 1990 under the chairmanship of Prof. George Saitoti, the Vice-
President, KANU held an inquiry into multipartyism, the KANU
Review Committee, and both Bishop Gitari and Bishop Muge appeared
before it to make the case for multipartyism. The committee reported
that there was no need for a change to the status quo. Within weeks
Bishop Muge was dead due to a road accident and it was suspected that
the government had undertaken a political assassination. I heard this
accusation made in the presence of the Attorney-General by Mutava
Musyimi, General Secretary of NCCK in 1993, on the occasion of the
First Annual Muge Memorial Lecture, given by Archbishop Desmond
Tutu at Ufungamano House.
158 John Chesworth

In 1991 the National Council of Churches of Kenya (NCCK)

published a document, Kairos for Kenya—The Right Time for Kenya;
Sabar reports that this document

presented as the organization’s “reflection” on the KANU Review

Committee’s recommendations, called among other things for political
pluralism and democracy, an end to detention without trial, restricting
the president’s power to dissolve parliament, limiting his tenure to two
terms, speeding up the pace of political reform, and holding a national
convention to discuss the future of Kenya . . . the “reflection” refrained
from calling explicitly for a multiparty political system. The text notes that
all the Anglican members of the NCCK committees who discussed and
produced the document did call for multipartyism.
(Sabar 2002:240)

Sabar demonstrates that the Anglicans were still actively agitating for
multipartyism, while other member churches of NCCK were not. The
multi-ethnic identity of the Anglican Church may well have propelled
them into taking this stronger stand.
The relevant sections of the Constitution were deleted on 10 December
1991. This decision was forced on KANU following the outcry of the
church, together with international pressure, notably the decision of the
Paris Club (consisting of the leaders of major Western countries), which
in August “deferred consideration of Kenya’s request for financial sup-
port for six months pending the introduction of economic and political
reforms” (Sabar 2002:245).

The Islamic Party of Kenya’s Attempts

at Registration2
Following the legislative change, many groups attempted to register as
political parties. The Registrar’s office was dilatory in processing many
applications and in some cases turning them down. Parties that seem-
ingly had an ethnic, religious, or geographical basis, were consistently
rejected, as they were perceived to go against the ethos of a secular
nation-state.
One group that has never been registered is the Islamic Party of Kenya
(IPK), which was started in Mombasa in January 1992, following the
return of multipartyism. The founding members included Omar Mwinyi
(a primary school teacher), chairman; Abdulrahman Wandati (a madrasa
teacher), secretary; and Taib Ali Taib (a lawyer), a member, all from
Mombasa. Esha Mwinyihaji reports that:
 The Church and Islam 159

it was a popular movement in Mombasa island, especially in areas like Old

Town, Majengo, Mwembe Tayari. That is in areas with [a] large popula-
tion of Arab-Swahili descent. Especially in 1992, we had da‘wa groups
of men and women moving from one sub-location to another, or [in]
mosques da‘wa that were meant to sensitize people on the course of IPK.
(Mwinyihaji 2008)3

The committee applied to the government for the registration of the

IPK, but this was refused; according to Adams Oloo, it was “denied
registration on the grounds [that] it was espousing religious fanaticism
in Kenya’s secular state” (Oloo 2007:99). In May 1992, members of IPK
attended an assembly of opposition parties and gained support from
leaders, such as Oginga Odinga, who publicly supported their registra-
tion as a political party (Oded 2000:150). However, many Muslims
viewed this public wooing of the IPK as a ploy to elicit Muslim votes
for the opposition.

Khalid Balala and the IPK

It was around this time that Shaikh Khalid Balala, a Muslim street
preacher, began to be involved with the IPK. As it is Balala’s connection
with Archbishop Gitari that is examined in this section, it is helpful to
know something more about Balala. The following is drawn from Arye
Oded who studied Balala in his book Islam and Politics in Kenya (2000)
and from discussions with Kenyans who were present in Mombasa in
the early 1990s, as well as an eyewitness account from the Service of
Cleansing at All Saints’ Cathedral, Nairobi in 1997.
Khalid Balala was born in 1958 in Mombasa, the son of Salim ibn
Ahmad and Fatuma Sadik bin Salim. His father was originally from
Yemen and ran a butcher’s shop. Balala grew up in Madaraka, on
Mombasa Island, and between 1965 and 1973 attended Serani Primary
School and then Allidina Visram High School. In 1975 he went on a
pilgrimage to Mecca and stayed in Saudi Arabia for the next ten years.
While there he studied Islam at the University of Medina and made a
living by selling religious books. In 1985 he left Saudi Arabia and trav-
eled, first to Britain and then to India. In Britain he took a business
management course and when he went on to India, he studied for a
course in Islam and comparative religion. It seems that he then decided
that he wanted to use the knowledge of business and Islam that he had
acquired to “sell” and disseminate Islam (Oded 2000:149; Oluoch The
East African 1 November 2005). Fred Oluoch further reports that in the
years that Balala was away from Kenya, he
160 John Chesworth

worked out of the country, mainly in Yemen and Saudi Arabia, where he
held various positions—as a salesman, an administrator and a preacher. But
because of his rapport with Islamic teachings, Sheikh Balala in between
got the chance to travel to other countries such as Japan, Germany and the
US as a preacher, though he maintained that he used to visit his extended
family in Kenya every year.
(Oluoch The East African 1 November 2005)

It should be noted that Oluoch’s claim that Balala worked in the Yemen
disagrees with a statement by the Yemeni ambassador to Kenya, made in
June 1997, that Balala had never visited Yemen (Weekly Review 13 June
1997:11).
In 1990 he returned to Kenya and became a street preacher based at
Mwembe Tayari on Mombasa Island. Initially, very little notice was taken
of him. His preaching included the following themes:

● Strict observance of Islamic practices, especially daily prayers

● Islamic education and the setting up of Muslim Schools
● Tourism corrupted the morals of Muslims, who were imitating
foreign attire and frequenting bars and discotheques
● Women should dress modestly and keep themselves “pure”
● The importance of shari’ah, but only for Muslims
● Islam does not differentiate between religion and state
(Oded 2000:150)

With the advent of multipartyism, Balala argued for the registration of

IPK and his preaching became more political and critical of the govern-
ment. He also criticized Muslims who involved themselves with KANU.
It was around this time that he joined the IPK. Oded regards his
arrival as having sidelined the party’s founders as Balala becoming the
focus, his charismatic presentation bringing him many followers (Oded
2000:150). The IPK became more radical with its supporters, especially
the youth, clashing with security forces. Oded suggests that Balala exer-
cised control through threats and violence and that he received financial
and moral support from Sudanese and other Arab sources as well as from
Iranian sources (Oded 2000:152). In August 1992, Balala and the IPK
youth were involved in protests during the President’s visit to Mombasa.
These protests were vigorously put down by police and General Service
Units (GSUs). Multiparty elections took place in December 1992, and
IPK’s support for the opposition was seen in the results in Mombasa.
IPK publicly backed the Forum for the Restoration of Democracy-
Kenya (FORD-Kenya), who subsequently won two seats out of the four
 The Church and Islam 161

constituencies on and adjoining Mombasa Island, while KANU and the

Democratic Party won only one seat each.
In 1993 the government began a strategy to woo Muslims back to
KANU and in May the United Muslims of Africa (UMA) group was
founded. Its leaders were black African Muslims and included Shaikh
Swalih Ali and Omar Masumbuko from the KANU Youth League and
Emmanuel Maitha (Oded 2000:159). The response from Balala and the
IPK was to call a general strike in Mombasa, which is reported as having
been largely effective.
During this time it seems that most Christians were suspicious of
Balala and his activities. However, Kenneth Maina,4 who was working
as an evangelist, with the Presbyterian Church of East Africa (PCEA)
in Mombasa during this period reports that when the government was
applying particular pressure on Balala, he received support from a PCEA
pastor in Mombasa. This has not been substantiated from Muslim
sources in Mombasa, who regarded the churches as being suspicious of
Balala and IPK, and thought that the churches saw IPK as an attempt
at “Islamizing” Kenya (Mwinyihaji 2008). During 1993 Balala became
more extreme in his pronouncements and began to issue fatwas against
people including KANU MP Sharif Nassir and Emmanuel Maitha of
UMA (Nation 17 May 93). Maitha went into hiding, but both he and
Balala were arrested and held for questioning for a few days (Oded
2000:156). This was followed in June and July 1993 by unrest between
members of the IPK and UMA and a further demonstration against the
planned visit of the president to Mombasa. Tensions mounted and the
Weekly Review reported that Balala had announced that he had recruited
suicide bombers (Weekly Review 4 June 1993:13–14). Oded reports that
IPK youth threw petrol bombs at the KANU branch in Mombasa and
that the UMA youth demonstrated and threw petrol bombs at Balala’s
house (Oded 2000:156).
Balala became increasingly outspoken against the President and “the
only person to give the president nightmares” (Oded 2000:149). In May
1994 a planned demonstration to remember the May 1992 riots was
banned by the District Commissioner. However, despite the ban, 200
activists attended, and were dispersed by rubber bullets (Nation 25 May,
1994). In June 1994, Balala was expelled from the IPK and in September,
the IPK supported a fatwa issued by the UMA against Balala.
In late 1994, Balala traveled to Germany where, in April 1995, he
presented himself at the Kenyan Embassy to renew his passport. He was
informed that his passport was canceled by the Kenyan government as he
held a Yemeni passport, and dual citizenship was illegal in Kenya. Balala
appealed against the decision but this appeal was rejected.
162 John Chesworth

With elections due at the end of 1997, Balala wanted to be in Kenya.

In early 1997, having been given documents by the German government
(Oluoch The East African 1 November, 2005), Balala flew to Nairobi.
However, he was recognized at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport and
was deported to Germany. Balala took legal action and the High Court
raised doubts over the cancellation of his passport. This was supported
by a statement from the Yemeni ambassador to Kenya in June 1997 that
although Balala’s father was from the Yemen, Balala himself had never
visited the country (Weekly Review 13 June 1997:11). Mounting interna-
tional publicity and increasing public disorder may have been factors in
the government’s allowing Balala to return in July 1997.
Groups in opposition to the Moi regime called for a rally at Uhuru
Park in central Nairobi on 7 July 1997.5 When they tried to meet, despite
all such rallies having been banned, the police and GSU attacked them,
firing rubber bullets and beating people with their batons. Many people
fled for sanctuary to All Saints’ Anglican Cathedral on the edge of the
park, but the GSU then went inside the cathedral, fired tear gas, and
continued to beat people.

Police threw tear gas canisters inside the Cathedral and then moved in
wielding truncheons. An elderly opposition MP and several dozen other
individuals bled profusely as other victims groaned with pain in the pews.
The provost of All Saints, Peter Njoka, who was conducting a prayer
service when police stormed the Cathedral, described the police action as
“the height of moral degeneration.”
“This is hardly the action of a government that professes Christianity,”
he said.
Altogether, it has been reported that ten people died, including one
policeman, and scores of others were injured in various parts of Kenya
as police using tear gas, truncheons, rubber bullets and live ammunition
broke up demonstrations calling for democratic reform.
(Anglican Communion News Service [ACNS] 11 July 1997:1285b)

Images of the violence inside the cathedral were shown by media

throughout the world and caused an international outcry that brought
about widespread condemnation.

Canon Enos Ashimala, the Provincial Secretary of the Church of the

Province of Kenya, said that as a result of the attack, the Cathedral had
been desecrated, and all services [were] suspended until Sunday 13 July,
when a ceremony of cleansing will be held.
(ACNS 11 July 1997:1285b)
 The Church and Islam 163

When the “cleansing service” was held at All Saints’ Cathedral on Sunday
13 July 1997, it was reported by Jonathan Njeru,6 who was present at the
service, that Khalid Balala was in the congregation and that Archbishop
David Gitari acknowledged his presence to applause.
At that point in July 1997, following the brutal suppression of anyone
in opposition to the government, it could be said that Balala and Gitari
were in accord as to the need to unite against a common foe. That is to
say that both Muslim and Christian activists saw a greater danger in the
corrupt nature of the state and the abuses of power by the President than
in their mutual antipathy.

The Ufungamano Initiative

Resulting from the pressure that the church and civil society had put on
the government, during the 1997 election campaign, which led to con-
cessions being made. Following the elections of 1997 the Government
of Kenya announced that the Constitution of Kenya would undergo
a comprehensive review. The new parliament subsequently passed
the Constitution of Kenya Review Commission (Amendment) Act of
1998. This established the CKRC, with a membership appointed by a
Parliamentary Select Committee. As the process was parliament-led, the
establishment of CKRC was viewed with suspicion by many organiza-
tions in civil society (Andreassen & Tostensen 2006:1).
The President was defensive about the Constitutional Review process
and in February 1998 attacked church leaders.

The Kenyan head of state was addressing a public meeting in Eldoret on

20th February, . . . he said the churches had been on a smear campaign
against the government and were now “curiously joining the many shady
and illegal groups opposed to the formation of a Constitutional Review
Commission”. He said that that this was a betrayal of Christian doctrine.
President Moi’s attack came closely after several church organisations had
issued a hard-hitting statement which criticised the Kenyan government.
(ACNS 10 March 1998 1545)

In December 1999 various civic organizations initiated the Ufungamano

Initiative. This was a “faith-based” group, named after the building where
the initiative was launched, Ufungamano House (the Christian Students’
Leadership Centre), which is jointly owned by the NCCK, the umbrella orga-
nization for the Protestant churches, and the Kenya Episcopal Conference
(KEC), the umbrella organization for the Roman Catholic church. The
membership of this group was drawn from different faith groups, including
164 John Chesworth

the Catholic Church, member churches of the NCCK, the Supreme

Council of Kenya Muslims (SUPKEM) and the Hindu Council of Kenya.
In June 2000 they announced the formation of a People’s Commission,
which would draw up its own proposals for the Constitution.
It could be said that the establishing of the People’s Commission
impelled the government to start the long-expected process of establish-
ing an official commission. The Parliamentary Select Committee on
Constitutional Reform guided an Enabling Act through Parliament in
October 2000, the Constitution of Kenya Review Act, under which the
15-member Constitution of Kenya Review Commission headed by Prof.
Yash Pal Ghai was established (CKRC 2002b:2).

South “B” Riots and Archbishop David Gitari’s

Intervention
At the end of 2000, there was an outbreak of violence in a suburb of
Nairobi. On Thursday 30 November, fighting broke out when Muslim
youth objected to hawkers (street traders) setting up their kiosks too close
to a mosque. In the ensuing fight, the mosque was burned down. On
Friday 1 December, Muslim youth from all parts of the city arrived in the
suburb and surrounded a Roman Catholic church, Our Lady of Peace,
and attacked it and then burnt it down. As this confrontation developed,
Archbishop Gitari visited the site together with other religious leaders in
an attempt to calm things down. When the visitors were identified, they
were pelted with rocks and the Archbishop was injured; at this point the
Muslim leaders surrounded him in order to protect him and allow him to
be taken to hospital for treatment (ACNS 4 December 2000, 2319).
The government was implicated in supporting the violence. Cathy
Majtenyi reported it as follows:

The conflict in South “B” actually started when Muslim officials and
youths attempted to put a fence around land they owned near their
mosque, telling traders from the nearby slum, who had built their kiosks
in the area, to vacate the land. The traders, in turn, claimed that the
government land office had allocated the plots to them. A mob of traders
and slum-dwellers gathered and surrounded the Muslims, and threatened
to burn the mosque. But police blocked the youth attempting to guard
the mosque while traders broke into the mosque and started the fire, says
[Zein] Abubakar [Ufungamano commissioner]. “When the mob burned
the mosque the police were watching and laughing.” And [the next day],
when the driver of Gitari’s car ran to police standing nearby to tell them
that the mob was going to kill the Anglican archbishop, a police inspector
said, “What did he come to do here? Let him be killed,” reports Abubakar.
 The Church and Islam 165

“We think there was a third force,” says Abubakar. “This third force was
organised by the Kenyan Intelligence.” He says he recognised one of the
main inciters of violence on the Muslim side as being a policeman attired
in Muslim dress. At first, government and political party leaders appealed
for calm and told people not to interpret the conflict as a religious war.
However, several days later, Cabinet Minister Shariff Nassir told Muslim
youth to “hit back with greater force if they are provoked.”
(Majtenyi 2000)

This incident did not develop into further violence, showing that
the Muslim leaders, in protecting the Archbishop from further injury
were showing unity in the face of violence and attempts to disrupt the
united front of the religious groups. Two weeks after the violence, the
Archbishop issued a clarification, emphasizing that the violence had been
between the hawkers and Muslim youth and that Christian youth had
not been involved as had been originally claimed (ACNS 14 December
2000, 2328).

Joint Process between CKRC and the People’s

Commission
Yash Pal Ghai, as head of CKRC, insisted on a joint process with the
Ufungamano Initiative’s People’s Commission. In March 2001, agree-
ment was reached on the merger of the commissions, and in June 2001,
the Constitution of Kenya Review Act was amended to increase the
membership of the CKRC by including ten members from the People’s
Commission and two nominees of the Parliamentary Select Committee
on the Constitution (CKRC 2000a:2).
The report of the CKRC published in September 2002 explained
the processes of public hearings held throughout Kenya from December
2001 to August 2002:

The Commission began Listening to the People public hearings in Nairobi

and provincial capitals in early December 2001. Hearings continued in
Nairobi until the end of July 2002. From late April to early August 2002,
the Commission visited every constituency for hearings, in panels of five or
three commissioners, spending two days in every constituency and three days
in the larger constituencies. Altogether 35,015 submissions were received,
many from organised groups, like political parties, religious communities,
professional organisations, trade unions, NGOs, and ethnic communities,
so that through formal hearings and memoranda, millions of Kenyans,
throughout the country and overseas, have spoken to the Commission.
(CKRC 2002b:4)
166 John Chesworth

David Kanyoni, now an Anglican priest in the Diocese of Nyahururu,

whilst undertaking research for his Master of Arts in Islam and Christian-
Muslim Relations at St. Paul’s University, Limuru, made an examination
of the submissions made by Muslims and he reports:

During the constitutional review process, the CKRC received a number of

submissions expressing the need for the expansion and reform of the juris-
diction and structures of the Kadhi’s courts, primarily from the Muslim
communities. Muslims claimed that they should be properly integrated
into the national legal system. Most specifically, the Muslim Communities
asked the review commission to ensure that there were enough Kadhi’s
courts; and that the jurisdiction be extended to civil and commercial mat-
ters. These recommendations received considerable opposition from some
Christian quarters.
Regarding their proposals to expand the Kadhi’s courts, the Muslims
cited a number of inadequacies in the current constitution, which
needed redress. They felt, for example, the role of the Kadhi or the Chief
Kadhi as an assessor in the High Court is not given the weight that their
contribution deserves. The procedure of appointment of Kadhis was
also questioned. The Muslims also expressed the need to codify into
legislation the Muslim personal law on marriage, divorce, inheritance
and succession. They also disputed the need for the Kadhis to observe
the guidance of the Evidence Act and the Civil Procedure Act, which
according to them contradict the Muslim evidentiary law. The Muslim’s
also advocated the need to legislate relevant terms of service for the Chief
Kadhi and all the Kadhis.
(Kanyoni 2006:6)

The publication of the report and a draft constitution was followed by

a series of National Constitutional Conferences (NCCs) held at the
Bomas of Kenya on the outskirts of Nairobi. Because of the location,
they became known as Bomas I–III. These three conferences produced
the Bomas Draft Constitution.

The Bomas I conference lasted from April to June 2003, Bomas II from
August until September 2003 and Bomas III, which finalized the “Bomas
draft constitutional Bill”, lasted from January until March 2004. Around
630 representatives from locally elected bodies, members of selected non-
governmental organizations and all members of parliament attended the
Bomas conferences.
(Andreassen & Tostensen, 2006:2)

The proceedings became increasingly acrimonious and it was during

Bomas III that some of the members nominated through the Ufungamano
 The Church and Islam 167

Initiative withdrew and Mutava Musimyi, General Secretary of NCCK,

resigned as a commissioner. One contentious issue led to the collapse of
the multi-faith aspect of the Ufungamano Initiative, that is, the place of
Islamic Law within the Constitution of Kenya.

Kadhi’s Courts: A Historical Perspective7

Shari’ah has a long history in East Africa as the system of dealing with
legal decisions, which led to the formalizing of the Kadhi’s courts during
the British colonial period. In the Islamic world-view, religion and poli-
tics are regarded as being inextricably intertwined and inseparable. This
means that from an Islamic perspective, the legal system is closely linked
with both politics and religion. The basis of jurisprudence is known
as usul al-fiqh (the roots of the law). The two primary sources are the
Qur’an and the Hadith, followed by qiyas (analogy), ijma (consensus),
and ijtihad (reasoning). Within Islam, various schools of law (maddhab)
developed. Within Sunni Islam, there are four. These schools of law
developed their own means of interpreting the basis of law. Within East
Africa, most Sunni Muslims follow the Shafi’i School. However, with
numbers of Muslim students studying in Sudan, Morocco, Egypt, Saudi
Arabia, and Pakistan, the ideas of other schools are being introduced into
East Africa, notably of the Maliki and Hanbali Schools.
Increasingly, Wahhabist ideas are being introduced; these have been
drawn from the premise that the schools of law are a late innovation and
that Muslims should follow what the Qur’an and Hadith expound more
closely. In particular, Muslims should observe how Muhammad, as both
a spiritual and temporal leader, lived and dealt with issues. The Kingdom
of Saudi Arabia follows Wahhabi ideas, as do many revivalist or reform-
ist groups such as tabligh and the Taliban, seeking a return to the ideal
Islamic State of Muhammad’s Medina.
In Kenya, the ‘ulama tries to create a conformist society, following
the teaching and practices of the Shafi’i School of Law. The postinde-
pendence government made decisions that were based on retaining the
status quo in certain aspects of law. Arye Oded summarizes the history
of Islamic law in East Africa in colonial times as follows:

As early as the 1895 agreement between the sultan of Zanzibar and

the British government, which laid out the arrangements by which the
British would rule the coastal strip, the British promised to preserve
the “Islamic way of life.” Therefore, during British rule in Kenya, a law
was proclaimed (the East African Order in Council, 1897) under which
a triple court system was set up: common courts, native courts, and
168 John Chesworth

Islamic shari’a courts. When both parties to a dispute were Muslims,

Islamic law was applied, but when the case was between a Muslim and a
non-Muslim, common law was used. In the 1931 Court Ordinance, the
authority of the shari’a courts was limited to matters of personal status
of Muslims—inheritance, marriage, divorce, and waqf affairs. On the eve
of independence, Governor Sir James Robertson was sent to Kenya to
examine the prospective arrangements after independence and, follow-
ing his recommendations, an agreement was signed in 1963 between the
British government and the sultan [of Zanzibar] that would maintain the
authority of the chief qadi and the shari’a courts in independent Kenya as
in colonial times, with Islamic law applying in matters of personal status
when both parties to a dispute were Muslims, and common law when
only one party was a Muslim.
The subject of Muslims and the law was raised at the Constitutional
Conference in London. Muslim leaders feared that in independent Kenya,
under a Christian government, they would not be able to continue to live
under Islamic law. On the coast, a political movement, the Mwambao
United Front, was formed primarily to protect Muslim religious interests.
The movement sent two prominent Muslims to the conference in London,
Shaikh A. Nasir and Q. S. Basadiq. These representatives emphasized in
their arguments before the conference that Muslims should be regarded as
a “distinct social group,” and they even requested that [they] be granted
autonomy or be allowed to join Zanzibar.
(Oded 2000:89–90)

At the time of Kenyan independence, Kadhi’s courts were in operation

on the coast—the ‘ten-mile strip’ that the Sultanate had ceded to the
British in 1895.
A. A. An-Na’im, in Islamic Family Law in a Changing World, summa-
rizes the legal situation of Islamic law in East Africa as follows:

Under the British Protectorate, Kenya had parallel legal systems with
African courts applying customary law, and appeals lying with the African
Appeal Court, then with the District Officer and then a Court of Review.
Muslim personal law was applied by Courts of Liwalis, Mudirs and Qadis’,
with appeals lying with the Supreme Court (renamed the High Court
after independence). The process of integrating the judicial system began
in 1962, when powers of administrative officers to review African Courts’
proceedings were transferred to magistrates. The process was completed
by the passage of two acts in 1967. The Magistrates’ Courts Act 1967
abolished African Courts and the Court of Review and established District
and Resident Magistrates’ Courts and a High Court. The Qadis’ Courts
Act 1967 established six Qadis’ Courts for the application of Muslim
personal status law.
(2002:54)
 The Church and Islam 169

He then goes on to explain the decisions made by the Government of

Kenya since independence. The 1967 Kadhi’s Courts Act established the
present system of courts, extending them to all the provinces of Kenya.

Islamic law is applied by Qadis’ Courts, where “all the parties profess
the Muslim religion” in suits relating to “questions of Muslim law
relating to personal status, marriage, divorce or inheritance.” There are
eight Qadis’ Courts in Kenya, presided over by a Chief Qadi or a qadi
appointed by the Judicial Services Commission. Appeals to the High
Court, [are conducted] sitting with the Chief Qadi or two other qadis
as assessor(s).
(An-Na’im 2002:55)

An-Na’im also refers to the place of Kadhi’s Courts within the Constitution
and the constitutional status of Islamic law in postcolonial Kenya:

The Constitution was adopted on 12 December 1963, and has been

amended several times, most notably in 1964, when Kenya became
a republic, and in 1991, when a multiparty system was restored. The
Constitution does not provide for any official state religion. Article 66(1)
to (5) provides for the establishment of Qadis’ Courts.
(An-Na’im 2002:55)

This sets out the present situation concerning Islamic law in Kenya.
From this, it is clear that much that is proposed in the draft constitution
is already in existence either within the present constitution or under the
1967 Kadhi’s Courts Act.
If this is the case, what is the cause of the discord and concern
within the Christian community? Tracing the relevant paragraphs in the
Constitution of Kenya (1992) and the various drafts that were produced
during the review process, it is possible to see the significance of the
place of Kadhi’s courts as one of the factors leading to the rejection of
the new constitution in the referendum held in November 2005. The
Constitution of Kenya (1992) contains several paragraphs that set out the
place of Kadhi’s courts within the judicial system of Kenya:

Constitution of Kenya—Revised Edition (1998) 1992

66. Kadhi’s Courts.
1. There shall be a Chief Kadhi and such number, not being less than
three, of other Kadhis as may be pro-scribed by or under an Act of
Parliament.
2. A person shall not be qualified to be appointed to hold or act in the
office of Kadhi unless—
170 John Chesworth

a. he professes the Muslim religion; and

b. he possesses such knowledge of the Muslim law applicable to any
sect or sects of Muslims as qualifies him, in the opinion of the
Judicial Service Commission, to hold a Kadhi’s court.
3. Without prejudice to section 65 (1), there shall be such subordinate
courts held by Kadhis as Parliament may establish and each Kadhi’s
court shall, subject to this Constitution, have such jurisdiction and
powers as may be conferred on it by any law.
4. The Chief Kadhi and the other Kadhis, or the Chief Kadhi and such of
the other Kadhis (not being less than three in number) as may be pre-
scribed by or under an Act of Parliament, shall each be empowered to
hold a Kadhi’s court having jurisdiction within the former Protectorate
or within such part of the former Protectorate as may be so prescribed:
Provided that no part of the former Protectorate shall be outside the
jurisdiction of some Kadhi’s court.

The jurisdiction of a Kadhi’s court shall extend to the determination of ques-

tions of Muslim law relating to personal status, marriage, divorce or inheri-
tance in proceedings in which all the parties profess the Muslim religion.

The Ufungamano Initiative attempted to involve the religious com-

munities in the process. It did serve to sensitize the religious community,
although it also encouraged the divisive strategy of the government of the
time, with some religious leaders being recruited by the government to
its cause and others being outspoken in criticism of the government and
the need for constitutional change.

Reactions to the Ckrc Draft

When CKRC began to discuss details of the place of Islamic Law within
the Constitution of Kenya, various church leaders began to question its
presence there. The CKRC draft stated8:

The Kadhis’ courts

199(1) There are established Kadhis’ Courts the office of Chief Kadhi;
office of Senior Kadhi and the office of Kadhi.
(2) There shall be a number being not less than thirty, of other Kadhis
as may be prescribed by the Act of Parliament.
(3) A Kadhi is empowered to hold a Kadhis’ court called a District
Kadhi Court, having jurisdiction within a district or districts as
may be prescribed by, or under, an Act of Parliament.

The appointment of Kadhis by the Judicial Services Commission had

been a point of contention for members of the Law Society of Kenya,
 The Church and Islam 171

as they could not be certain that those who were appointed as Kadhis
were sufficiently trained in the law of Kenya, so as not to infringe on the
rights of people appearing in the Kadhi’s courts. This was addressed in
the CKRC draft in which it was stated that new appointments to the bench
of Kadhis would have to be doubly qualified in both Islamic law as well as
in the law of Kenya and to have practised law for at least five years. This
was seen by some Muslims as being biased against them when compared to
ordinary lawyers who were only required to qualify in one discipline.
Some Muslims had doubts about the presence of Kadhi’s courts in the
constitution. The reason for this is the Kadhis and the courts are funded by
the government, through the Judicial Services Commission, leading to the
view that they must also be controlled by the state. This idea can be taken fur-
ther, arguing that as the state is secular, the courts cannot be truly Islamic.
The amount of detail that the CKRC draft goes into seems to have
been to ensure that the standards of procedure in the courts were raised
by ensuring that Kadhis were doubly qualified in both Islamic and
Kenyan law; it could perhaps be said that the very great detail actually
raised awareness of the existence of Kadhi’s courts in the constitution and
led to the strong reaction by some groups against its inclusion.
When the Constitutional Review process began, the church seemed to
be surprised at the presence of the paragraphs concerning the Kadhi’s court
in the constitution. When they began to make pronouncements on them
they were seemingly unprepared and ill-informed. In early 2003, a meeting
was held for clergy of the ACK, at St Stephen’s Church, Nairobi, as part
of a regular series of meetings organized by Revd Colin Smith, to discuss
the proposed constitution. Speeches raising various issues on the draft con-
stitution, including the presence of the Kadhi’s courts, were made. I had
been specifically invited in order to respond to these concerns. I was able
to do so in general terms, primarily referring to the nature of the function
of the Kadhi’s courts. They deal with family law, that is, cases concerning
divorce, custody of children, and inheritance. I was able to emphasize that
they had no jurisdiction in criminal law and that they were not, in my
opinion, a precursor to the full implementation of shari’ah law as had hap-
pened in the northern states of Nigeria, beginning in 1999. However, I was
also able to raise concerns about the calls for Majimboism (Federalism),
which was being promoted by Prof. Ali Mazrui among others at the time,
as this could lead to a situation where an individual province within Kenya
could opt for introducing a fuller form of Islamic law.
It was also a concern that the NCCK, as the lead player of the
Ufungamano Initiative, did not seek advice from the expert sources avail-
able from institutions connected to them. Neither Johnson Mbillah, the
general adviser of the Program for Christian-Muslim Relations in Africa
172 John Chesworth

(PROCMURA), nor myself as the Islamicist on the staff of St. Paul’s United
Theological College (now St. Paul’s University), Limuru, were approached
for our views or opinions. When I asked him about why advice had not been
sought, Mutava Musimyi, then General Secretary of the NCCK responded,
“How could I be sure?” (that he had not consulted with experts for advice
on the matter). Sadly, the responses made by the churches showed that they
had not been fully briefed, which was surely an opportunity missed.

Collapse of Ufungamano: The Rise of the Kenya

Church and the Withdrawal of Muslims
Christian leaders had become increasingly uneasy about the place of
Kadhi’s Courts within the constitution, and one group comprising
largely of Pentecostal churches, calling themselves the Kenya Church,
published a statement in 2003 attacking the place of the Kadhi’s Courts
in the constitution and making their recommendation to the Kenya
government on this issue. At one point, they said that although these
courts were in existence in the current constitution, they could no longer
be accommodated, as the draft clearly states the relationship between
the state and religion, that there is no state religion (Kanyoni 2004:21).
Christian leaders’ opposition to Kadhi’s courts resulted in the members
of SUPKEM resigning from the Ufungamano Steering Committee and
withdrawing from the Ufungamano Initiative (Nation 23 April 2003).
When the NCC met at Bomas, it reviewed each of the paragraphs
in the CKRC draft and drew up its own draft of the constitution. The
clauses concerning Kadhi’s courts now read:

Kadhis’ Court
198. (1) There is established the Kadhi’s Court.
(2) The Kadhi’s Court shall—
(a) consist of the Chief Kadhi and such number of other kadhis,
all of whom profess the Islamic faith; and
(b) be organized and administered, as may be prescribed by an
Act of Parliament.

Jurisdiction of the Kadhis’ Court

199. The Kadhis’ Court shall be a subordinate court with jurisdiction to
determine questions of Islamic law relating to personal status, marriage,
divorce and matters consequential to divorce, inheritance and succes-
sion in proceedings in which all the parties profess the Islamic faith.

David Kanyoni reports that the discussions on the Kadhi’s Courts held
in September 2003 were heated:
 The Church and Islam 173

There have arisen so many conflicts between the Christians and the
Muslims. As evidenced in The People Daily’s article with a subhead-
ing: “Kadhi’s Courts causes Tension.” This tension was raised high
amongst delegates as the articles on the Kadhi’s Courts got underway
with the majority of them opposing the entrenchment. This went
even to an extent when the convenor of the technical committee Prof.
Kibutha Kibwana warned members against personalising the debate
(People 19 September 2003:24). On the same article, Hon. Kihara
Mwangi, MP Kigumo, fuelled the fire by terming the proposal as dis-
criminatory, confusing and aimed at creating a parallel judicial system.
This made a delegate Mustafa Ali to take him head on accusing him
of misleading the committee as he argued that majority had proposed
the entrenchment.
(Kanyoni 2004:27)

The situation continued to be very tense and on 23 September 2003,

a motion was put before the NCC to have the sections concerning
Kadhi’s Courts deleted from the draft constitution. The motion was put
forward by Hon. Kihara Mwangi that it should be deleted from the con-
stitution and created by Act of Parliament. As he presented the motion
it is reported that he said:

The MP from Lamu and a spiritual leader had threatened him. They told
me that if the Kadhi’s Courts is not entrenched in the constitution then
the country will be plunged into turmoil and I will be put to shame.
(People 23 September 2003:11)

This attitude was seen as provocative and David Gitari interceded to cool
tempers, saying “that Muslims are religious as they pray in parliament but
the fear was the 1990 [sic] Abuja Declaration which planned to make African
countries Islamic by the year 2012” (People 23 September 2003:11).
Following the completion of the Bomas process, David Kanyoni
interviewed David Gitari concerning his views on the Kadhi’s Courts
issue:

He cited that the issue of Kadhi’s Courts is contradictory to Article 10(3).

Stating that the word Muslim, Islam or Kadhi appears in the draft consti-
tution sixty times, Hindu appears once while Christians, Buddhists, Jews,
Sikh, and others appears zero times, though the article 10(3) states that
all religions will be treated equally. He continued, “We Christians have
Christian Marriages and Divorce Act and this is not in the constitution of
1963, it was an Act of Parliament, thus if we are to be treated equally why
not have Kadhi’s Courts dealt with by the Act of Parliament?”
(Kanyoni 2004:24)
174 John Chesworth

The Ufungamano Initiative group caused further contention as the

Bomas process came to a close by publishing an alternative draft constitu-
tion. This removed any specific reference to Kadhi’s Courts and made the
following reference, in Paragraph 111, to Religious Courts:

(3) The jurisdiction of Religious Courts must be limited to matters of

personal law to which the parties are subject.

Following the acrimonious ending of the Bomas III consultation, the

government took back the process and, following meetings held in
Naivasha and Kilifi, an agreement was reached in July 2005.
In August 2005, the Attorney General Amos Wako produced another
draft constitution known as the “Wako Draft,” which was then voted on
by the people of Kenya in a referendum held in November 2005. The
sentiment in the Ufungamano draft concerning Kadhi’s Courts is also
found in the Wako draft:

179. (3) The subordinate courts are—

(a) the Magistrates’ courts, Christian courts, Kadhis’ courts,
Hindu courts and other religious courts

The Wako draft appeared to want to retain the Kadhi’s Courts while
creating other courts for other religions without apparently taking note
of whether there was a tradition of such courts or indeed a need for
them. Paragraph 1959 gave a detailed framework for the workings of the
religious courts, Clause 4 stated the areas of jurisdiction:

To determine questions of their religious laws relating to personal status,

marriage, divorce and matters consequential to divorce, inheritance and
succession in proceedings in which all parties profess the respective faith,
as may be prescribed by an Act of Parliament.
(“Wako Draft” Para 195[4] 2005)

It appears that the government was trying to please both groups: Muslims,
by retaining Kadhi’s courts, and Christians, by the creation of Christian
courts. This pleased nobody and was regarded as an empty gesture.

The Bananas and Oranges Referendum, 21

November 2005
With the publication of the Wako Draft, President Mwai Kibaki
announced a referendum so that the people would have their say. The
campaign was launched using a banana to indicate approval for the new
 The Church and Islam 175

Table 6.1 Results of the Referendum for Each Province

Province Registered voters Yes No % yes % no
Nairobi 961,295 161,344 212,070 42 56
Coast 967,518 64,432 269,655 19 80
North Eastern 237,321 12,401 39,028 24 75
Eastern 1,977,480 485,282 494,624 49 50
Central 1,795,277 1,023,219 74,394 92 7
Rift Valley 2,668,981 395,943 1,218,805 24 75
Western 1,322,604 240,582 358,343 39 59
Nyanza 1,664,401 114,077 822,188 12 87
Total 11,594,877 2,532,918 3,548,477 43 57

Source: Nation 23 November 2005

constitution and an orange to indicate rejection. The debate over whether

to vote “Yes” or “No” became polarized around certain key paragraphs in
the Wako Draft and politicians mobilized their people, mostly on ethnic
lines, to accept or reject the proposed constitution. The Kadhi’s courts’
place in the constitution and the “invention” of religious courts for other
faiths became an issue, among many others, that was used by opponents
of the proposed constitution to urge people to reject it.

Figure 6.1 An Orange rally led by Musyoka Kalonzo, now Vice-President, at

Kapenguria, Transnzoia District, on 10 October 2005
176 John Chesworth

The results of the referendum, issued on 22 November 2005, showed

a resounding rejection of the proposed constitution. Nationally, the “No”
side received 57 percent, and the “Yes” side 43 percent.
When the votes on a provincial basis are analysed, we see that only
in the home province of the president (Central) was there a majority in
favor of the constitution, with 92 percent voting “Yes,” whilst in the home
province of the leader of the “No” campaign (Nyanza), 87 percent voted
against it. This indicates that many people voted on ethnic lines. The two
provinces with a majority of Muslims (Coast and North Eastern) also
heavily rejected the draft constitution, 80 and 75 percent, respectively,
also indicating that Muslims were not in favor of the proposals.
For both Christians and Muslims, the place of Kadhi’s courts in the
constitution were regarded as a significant factor for their rejection of the
Wako draft of the constitution.

The 2007 Elections and the Memorandum of

Understanding between Raila Odinga and the
National Muslim Leaders Forum (NAMLEF)
Following the referendum, the group who opposed the constitution contin-
ued to be identified as being in opposition to President Mwai Kibaki. Calling
themselves the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM), they contested the
2007 elections, with Raila Odinga as their presidential candidate.
In September 2007, an MoU, between Raila Odinga and NAMLEF was
“leaked” by the Evangelical Alliance of Kenya (EAK). This document was
purportedly signed on 29 August 2007. It pledged the support of Muslims for
Raila Odinga and ODM and, among other things, it stated that they would:

(v) (b) Within 6 months re-write the Constitution of Kenya to recognize

Shariah as the only true law sanctioned by the Holy Quran for
Muslim declared regions [Elsewhere identified as being Coast and
North Eastern Provinces].
(g) Within 1 year facilitate the establishment of a Shariah court in
every Kenyan divisional headquarters.
(2007a)

In November 2007, NAMLEF issued an official version of the MoU,

which is very bland and does not include these precise sentiments, rather,
pledging support for Raila Odinga and ODM, in return for the expecta-
tion that he would:

b) ii. Accord NAMLEF both an advisory and partner role in his gov-
ernment on all Muslim affairs.
 The Church and Islam 177

iv. Initiate, within the first year, deliberate policies and programmes
to redress historical, current and structural marginalization of
Muslims in Kenya.
(2007b)

Various groups, including the Anglican Church of Kenya (ACK), were

accused of propagating the earlier version of the MoU (ACK 2008b)
while questions were asked as to why NAMLEF took until the end of
November to issue the official version.
The story of two versions of the MoU are reminiscent of the so-called
Abuja Declaration, when two different statements were circulated. One
containing highly provocative language was issued immediately after
the “Islam in Africa Conference” of 1989, differing radically from the
official version, which was issued as an appendix to the official proceed-
ings of the Islam in Africa Conference, published in 1993. The Abuja
Declaration was being used in Kenya in 2004 by a Christian radio sta-
tion, Hope FM, to create disagreement between Christians and Muslims
in an apparent attempt to alarm Christians about the existence of Kadhi’s
courts that would inexorably lead to implementation of full Islamic law
(Mwakimako 2007:304–306; Chesworth 2007:122–123).
During the 2008 presidential campaign in the United States, the
MoU was used by Republicans and right-wing web-sites to discredit
Barack Obama with claims that he is a cousin of Raila Odinga, and
raising fears that as president, Obama would be pro-Muslim (Jonsson
2008). In January 2008 another Ufungamano Initiative was announced,
the “Kenya Thabiti Task Force,”10 set up by the Inter-Religious Forum
whose membership comprised of Supreme Council of Muslims,
Seventh-day Adventists, Organization of African Instituted Churches,
National Council of Churches of Kenya, Methodist Church, Kenya
Episcopal Conference, Hindu Council of Kenya, Evangelical Alliance
of Kenya, Christ Is The Answer Ministries (CITAM), and the Anglican
Church of Kenya. On 17 March 2008, it released a document that set
out its purpose to:

1. Provide an opportunity for inquiries into the failure of religious

and moral values to avert the crisis and why places of worship were
attacked and destroyed.
2. Provide an opportunity for religious organizations and Kenyans to
develop a common vision of a stable Kenya and define their role
towards it.
3. Identify critical issues facing the country, study them and propose
durable approaches to address them.
178 John Chesworth

4. Provide material that will be used to enrich the ongoing national

reconciliation processes.
5. Prepare a roadmap for construction of a peaceful, united and stable
Kenya where people live in harmony with one another.
6. Map out the different stakeholders involved in similar processes,
highlight their aspirations, critique them and develop a common
way forward.
(ACK 2008b)

This new initiative can lead us to hope that, despite politicians “using” reli-
gion to raise fears, religious groups will be able to co-operate in order to put
pressure on the government to allow freedom of religion in a secular state.

Conclusion
This chapter has looked at how the church has responded to Islam in the
Kenyan political arena, examining Khalid Balala and the IPK the start
of the multiparty era, the political machinations of the Moi regime with
the attacks on a mosque and a church in South B, and the way that the
Ufungamano Initiative began as an interfaith attempt working together to
create a just constitution. The Initative was brought down by factional dif-
ferences among Christians, notably the appearance of the Kenya Church
group, leading to the situation in which some sections of the church con-
tinue to attempt to work with Muslims in order to help in the development
of Kenya as a nation and to educate people that they all share a common
humanity, as is seen in the work being done by the Thabiti Task Force.
Other groups within the church continue to be suspicious of any
display of accord between faiths and see it as a betrayal of the task of
Christian mission to tell others the good news and to raise doubts about
Muslim plans, as broadcasted on Hope FM. These different approaches
continue to cause tensions within the church and reflect similar attitudes
among different Muslim groups.
Disturbances continue between Christians and Muslims, and all too often
these are later found to be disagreements of ethnic origin in which religious
differences have been used as an excuse. The group that benefits from these
internal and interfaith disagreements continue to be those politicians who
use the presence of Muslims or Christians to instigate disturbances.
Different faiths can work together in Kenya, following the example of
Archbishop Gitari, who fought for justice and constitutional rights for
all, regardless of ethnicity or religious beliefs, against the machinations
of politicians. His successors in the church should take his example and
work together for justice for all against the injustices of politicians.
 The Church and Islam 179

Notes
1. Khadi’s courts: the spelling of this term varies in different official docu-
ments and reports. E.G. Qadis’ used by An-Na’im in his 2002 survey
of Islamic Family Law; Kadhi’s (Paragraph 66, Constitution of Kenya,
1992; Paragraph 179, Wako Draft, 2005); Kadhis’ (Paragraph 199,
CKRC draft Constitution, 2003; Paragraph 198, NCC Bomas Draft,
2004; Paragraph 179, Wako Draft, 2005).
2. Details concerning the founding of IPK and Khalid Balala and his
involvement with IPK are partially based on Arye Oded’s Islam and
Politics in Kenya (2000:135–162), and with reflections of people who
were in Mombasa at the time.
3. Esha Mwinyihaji, “Memories of Khalid Balala and IPK,” e-mail corre-
spondence, April 2008.
4. Kenneth Maina, “Experience of being a pastoral assistant in Mombasa in
the early 1990s,” shared in discussions during a lecture on Khalid Balala
and IPK, St. Paul’s United Theological College, Limuru, March 2004.
5. This date, the seventh of the seventh month is called saba saba in
Swahili, literally seven seven.
6. Jonathan Njeru, “Attending the cleansing service at All Saints’ Cathedral,”
shared in discussions during a lecture on Khalid Balala and IPK, St.
Paul’s United Theological College, Limuru, April 2002.
7. The section on the history of Kadhi’s Courts is developed from an
article by the author that appeared in The Voice, October 2004. This
journal was published annually by St. Paul’s United Theological College,
Limuru.
8. The details of the functioning of the Kadhi’s Courts are given in
Paragraphs 200 and 201 of the draft and deal with their jurisdiction and
the qualifications and method of appointing Kadhis.
9. The clause in the Wako draft that gave some explanation on the role is:

Religious courts
195. (1) There are established Christian courts, Kadhi’s courts and
Hindu courts.
(2) Parliament may, by legislation, establish other religious courts.
(3) Christian courts, Kadhi’s courts, Hindu courts and other
religious courts shall respectively—
(a) consist of Chief presiding officers, Chief Kadhi and such
number of other presiding officers or Kadhis, all of whom
profess the respective religious faith; and
(b) be organized and administered, as may be prescribed by
the respective Act of Parliament.
(4) Christian courts, Kadhi’s courts, Hindu courts and other
religious courts shall have jurisdiction to determine questions
of their religious laws relating to personal status, marriage,
divorce and matters consequential to divorce, inheritance
180 John Chesworth

and succession in proceedings in which all parties profess

the respective faith, as may be prescribed by an Act of
Parliament.

10. Thabiti is Swahili for truth.

PART 3

The Churches’
Involvement in
Contemporary
Issues
This page intentionally left blank
Chapter 7

The NCCK and the

Struggle against
“Ethnic Clashes”
in Kenya
Jacqueline Klopp

Recent violence in Kenya left over a thousand dead from police bullets,
fires, and machetes. Around 500,000–600,000 people were displaced
and thrown into poverty.1 Such “ethnic clashes,” as this politics of vio-
lent displacement is sometimes called, are not new; in fact they follow
patterns of police brutality and forced displacements that reach back
into the colonial period. However, Kenya’s ethnic clashes emerged
within the revival of multiparty elections at the end of 1991, peaking
around elections in 1992, 1997, and to a much lesser degree, 2002. Such
violence generated over 400,000 displaced people, even prior to the latest
displacements from 29 December 2007 to February 2008.2 These ethnic
clashes threaten civil society, democracy, moral life, and possibly the very
idea of Kenya itself.
Currently, a culture of impunity dominates and few forces are aligned
that can prevent future ethnic clashes and cater to the displaced and
their traumatized communities.3 The moral leadership and organization
of the National Council of Churches of Kenya (NCCK) is one of the
few key counterforces to this dangerous politics. This chapter briefly
reflects on the nature of Kenya’s ethnic clashes and the link between the
politics of violence and religion. It then examines the role of the NCCK
and its leaders in fighting against violent displacement, providing aid to
its victims, and healing violence torn committees. In doing so, it reveals
184 Jacqueline Klopp

how the moral courage of many of its leaders and its interethnic networks
of faith created a “civil society” where urban NGOs fail to reach. It also
shows how the NCCK helped to create one of the most durable local
relief and advocacy organizations for Kenya’s displaced. Finally, it argues
that the extent to which NCCK and its partners succeed in countering
a politics of violence and displacement will play a key role in whether
Kenya’s future will be peaceful and prosperous.

Recurring Ethnic Clashes

Recent violence follows some established patterns. Human rights
organizations and the government itself through its commissions have
amply documented the fact that throughout the 1990s, a group of key
politicians in the then dominant party, the Kenya African National
Union (KANU), funded and orchestrated violence.4 These politicians
used hate speeches and fear in a campaign of “purification” by expelling
“migrants” from “KANU zones.” The violence also came with opportu-
nities to grab land and other property for those who remained behind.
As in Rwanda, dissenters were threatened as ethnic traitors; fear and
collective guilt bound the rest into loyalty and support for the politi-
cians who organized the violence. These politicians not only pay but
also protect perpetrators from the law, creating cascades of impunity.
In this way, the violence helps the big men consolidate power. They in
turn use their delivery of such violently created ethnic block votes to
gain power at the center. Such strong “big men” are expected to bring
resources to their ethnic zone. Their corruption and self-enrichment
then becomes cleverly masked as redistribution. This is a dynamic that
is not unique to Kenya or Africa.
In the 1990s, the most powerful political opponents of KANU and
President Daniel arap Moi were from among the Gikuyu, Kenya’s larg-
est ethnic community. KANU hawks argued publicly that, under a
multiparty system, minority groups needed protection from “Gikuyu
domination.” These ideas of “domination” were given some force by the
fact that the first (Gikuyu) president and his close associates engaged in
massive land accumulation.5 However, the actual political “threat” lay in
the fact that Gikuyu politicians were leading the opposition at the time.
Another key concern was the Gikuyu diaspora in the Rift Valley, where
KANU had its political base. Besides being vectors for opposition ideas,
Gikuyu residents also represented swing votes in many key “KANU”
constituencies.6
Beginning in 1991, as a counteroffensive against such “threats,”
a constellation of KANU members of Parliament (MPs), ministers,
 N C C K a n d “E t h n i c C l a s h e s ” 185

and local officials associated with the Rift Valley parliamentary

representative to the KANU governing council, Nicholas Biwott,
launched a new counteroffensive against multiparty advocates. In
a series of 1991 rallies in the Rift Valley, KANU stalwarts overtly
threatened multiparty proponents with violence. For example, on
21 September 1991 at the Kapkatet rally, MP Chepkok implied
that being Gikuyu meant being a dissident, and he encouraged the
audience to “take up arms and destroy dissidents on sight.”7 The
cabinet minister Biwott appealed to Kalenjin pride (the president
and Biwott’s ethnic group identification) by arguing, “The Kalenjin
are not cowards and are not afraid to fight any attempts to relegate
them from leadership.”8 The rally participants also countered the
idea of multipartyism by painting it as Gikuyu project of domination
and a plot to control Rift Valley land. By ethnicizing the multiethnic
opposition as Gikuyu and playing on fears of Gikuyu domination in
particular, the speakers asserted that all those Gikuyu settled in the
Rift Valley would have to pack up and go.9
Kenya’s first wave of violence began shortly after the rallies at the
end of October 1991. “Kalenjin warriors” began attacks on multiethnic
“migrant” families on Meteitei farm in the Rift Valley province and this
spread to Western and Nyanza provinces.10 Violent displacements peaked
before and after the elections in December 1992 and 1997 because they
were intimately linked to electoral politics.11 Indeed, this violence by
creating an atmosphere of profound intimidation, displacing and hence
disenfranchising voters and creating “emergency zones” that prevented
campaigning, assisted President Moi and KANU to win elections in 1992
and 1997. The Commonwealth observer group monitoring the election
in 1992 noted that as a result of the violence KANU won 16 Rift Valley
parliamentary seats unopposed.12
Those who experienced these initial attacks in the 1990s pointed to
the rallies and hate speeches as the start of the trouble. Testifying before
parliamentary committees on the “clashes,” witnesses in the 1990s
implicated prominent political figures including the key organizers of
the rallies. They suggested that these MPs had encouraged local people
to fight through “utterances urging the Kalenjin to remove madoadoa
([spots]) from the area”—the exact rhetoric used in 2007, unsurprising
since many of the same people appear to be involved.13 Furthermore,
they claimed that these politicians transported warriors to the area and
paid them for each person from an “outside” community killed. These
accounts would be repeated and corroborated throughout the decade
in human rights reports, parliamentary debates, another government
commission, and an independent study by the Law Society of Kenya.14
186 Jacqueline Klopp

The violent attack on multi-ethnic communities, first in the Rift

Valley, Western, and Nyanza provinces and later on the Coast, consti-
tuted one of the most decisive and dangerous breaks in Kenya’s indepen-
dence politics. In particular, this violence ripped apart communities and
families and strained the social fabric among Kenya’s communities. It also
generated a plethora of informal militias, including the Gikuyu Mungiki.
These militias were never properly de-mobilized or held to account
although some members experienced an acute “crise de conscience.”15
The victims of Kenya’s violence, including in particular the many
displaced, were then rendered politically invisible even with the change of
government in 2002. In the run up to the historic 2002 election, which
at last Daniel arap Moi and KANU, the National Alliance of Rainbow
Coalition (NARC) led by Kibaki made the choice to include many of
the former KANU politicians responsible for the violence in exchange
for their ability to deliver block votes. Some were even elevated to high
positions.
This meant that such a government would not address one proximate
cause of violent displacement, which lay in impunity. No one was ever
punished for the violence and the government for years denied the
existence of the internally displaced within its borders. Most critically,
very little to nothing was done to address the simmering problems linked
to the violence, including multiple claims to land and other property
and recurrent violence continued in many “hotspots” like Kuresoi/Molo,
Burnt Forest, Laikipia.16
The only surprise about the violence in 2007–2008 was that it was
a surprise to so many. Indeed, some of the violence in the Rift Valley
appears to involve the very same culprits in the very same locations as it
did in the 1990s. However, one aspect that did change was the severity
and spread. As former chairman of the Kenya National Commission for
Human Rights, Maina Kiai, remarked, more people were displaced in
the recent two months of violence than in all of the previous cycles of
violence combined since 1991.17 Many of the displaced complained that
it was their third or fourth time experiencing this violence and refused
to return to their old homes. This suggests that, with complete impunity
and amnesia towards the displaced, the problem has very clearly gotten
much worse.
The disputed presidential election on 27 December 2007, was the
immediate trigger of the latest round of violence. Results of a closely
contested presidential election were delayed and manipulated (as were
many local elections and the nominations processes).18 The delay in
the release of the results of the presidential race evoked enormous and
understandable frustration among opposition supporters who were
 N C C K a n d “E t h n i c C l a s h e s ” 187

encouraged to believe that they were the winners even prior to the
election. This resulted in some spontaneous violence and rioting.19
Yet there was a spectrum of political tactics available as a response to
the delay and concerns about rigging. Indeed, many citizens exercized
their rights to peaceful mass demonstrations, although in some noto-
rious cases as in Kisumu they faced severe police brutality. However,
if the violence was contained to this dynamic then the opposition
very well could have prevailed in their demand for transparency in
the election results with the support of the majority of Kenyans and
the world.20
Instead, in line with their campaign tactics and promises, some key
opposition politicians reactivated the old KANU politics of “political
tribalism” in which they were trained in the 1990s. They encouraged and
organized attacks on the property and lives of people considered “traitors”
by virtue of their Gikuyu ethnicity that they shared with the incumbent
President Kibaki. This started the politically motivated ethnic cleansing
of supposed Kibaki supporters out of core zones like the Rift Valley
where key opposition politicians wished to entrench their supremacy. In
response, Gikuyu politicians harnessed Muingiki to organize counterat-
tacks in Central Province and in the South/Center Rift Valley causing the
mass flight of those deemed opposition supporters also by virtue of their
ethnicity. Core parts of the country and the capital Nairobi were in this
way violently torn into ethnically homogenized regions.
Many commentators have pointed to the enormous concentration of
power in the Kenyan presidency that makes competition over the position
such a high-stakes game. For some on the opposition side, the use of
violence against anyone including innocents was a legitimate response
to the perceived shenanigans of an Electoral Commission appointed by
President Kibaki that they perceived as depriving them of power. They
also tried to encourage the sense of grievance against “settlers” from other
ethnic communities claiming their access to land and business success
was achieved immorally through the power of their ethnic leader in the
presidency. Thus, in this view, evicting these “foreigners” seen as moral
impurities or “spots” is a form of land reform and economic redistribution
as well as punishment for what was seen as the unwillingness of a Gikuyu
“mafia” to let go of power.21 Unfortunately, then rather than protest in
a principled and disciplined way, parts of the opposition resorted to this
Machiavellian politics of displacement against people they perceived as
People’s National Union (PNU)/Kibaki supporters.22
In this way, the ethnic clashes are produced by a combination of
deeply flawed constitutional order that generates land inequities, distrust,
and poverty, increased electoral competition within a repressive order,
188 Jacqueline Klopp

the particular moral choice of political strategy on the part of politicians

and a persistent problematic political culture that shapes the way serious
problems are approached. As Bishop Gitari has written:

Now when we come to those priorities of the government poverty,

ignorance and disease, why has the battle been lost? It is because of
selfishness of leaders, it is because they have concentrated on things
which were really not that important, mainly to retain their own
positions. They have destroyed what we call constitutional checks
and balances. Many of them have also concentrated on destruction of
opposition. In other words, instead of really fighting the enemies that
we set to fight, we are fighting other things. As a result the battle has
been lost.23

This big-man “selfishness” and the violence that protects it is reinforced

by public acceptance of the powerful regardless of their past deeds. It
relies on an idea that a big man from an ethnic community somehow
empowers, “protects,” and benefits that community, even when he is
encouraging violence that disrupts community life and leads to great
suffering. This “big man” politics often reinforces the idea of collective
ethnic punishment and purified ethnic territories, an idea that is at odds
with cosmopolitan realities and a dynamic modern economy. It is also,
as we shall see, at odds with the professed religious worldviews of most
Kenyans.

Religion and Violence

The struggle against ethnic clashes is central to prevention of future vio-
lence and perhaps Kenya’s survival. It is a moral struggle that will deter-
mine which principles will dominate as Kenyans attempt to solve their
deep problems, problems made even worse by the violence. As the then
NCCK leadership, Dr Eliud Wabukala, elected Archbishop in 2009, and
Revd. Canon Peter Karanja emphasized after the recent violence:

That the core of this unfortunate development is a wrong value system.

As a people we have not upheld the values that would promote human
dignity and nationhood. This is worrying as it reflects a moral breakdown,
which is beyond the realm of political engagement and current efforts at
resolving issues may be unable to address it.24

Will aggrieved parties on all sides continue to institutionalize infor-

mal militias and perpetrate more violence? If so, they may embark
on a continued chain reaction of injustices against ordinary people,
 N C C K a n d “E t h n i c C l a s h e s ” 189

unraveling the country through violent displacements. Alternatively,

will a new politics of accountability and moral view emerge that will
reconstitute the basis of power and politics? Can the NCCK and
other churches and mosques play a role in this?
As this book emphasizes, Kenya is a self-consciously religious country
and like much of Africa, local “ideas about the moral nature of power are
rooted in a religious world-view.”25 As such the struggles against ethnic
clashes in fact are seen not just as political but of competing moral orders
and differences over the question of what constitutes an acceptable basis
of power. A good example of the tensions between an exclusionary and
ethnic based vision of political authority and Christianity can be seen
in the words of James Bett, the chairman of the Emo Foundation, an
interdenominational Christian organization that also aims at promoting
“Kalenjin” unity.26 The Emo Foundation includes prominent members
of the Kalenjin community including MPs, some of whom may have
supported and organized the displacement of Gikuyu and other “settlers”
in the Rift Valley.27 Shortly after the recent ethnic clashes, in a March
2008 meeting at the Africa Inland Church, the Emo chairman read to
the crowd from the book of Ezekiel 47:21–23:

You are to distribute this land among yourselves according to the tribes of
Israel. You are to allot it as an inheritance for yourselves and for the aliens
who have settled among you and who have children. You are to consider
them as native-born Israelites; along with you they are to be allotted an
inheritance among the tribes of Israel. In whatever tribe the alien settles,
there you are to give him his inheritance.”28

The implication seems to be that the Kalenjin communities are Israel

and the Gikuyu are aliens among them. Bett appears to be attempting
to counter a “majimbo” rhetoric justifying the expulsion of “foreign-
ers” and the appropriation of their land by using Biblical language
that reinforces their right to “inheritance.” However, he raises a serious
problem: “aliens” do not seem to follow community “rules” in sup-
porting the same political authorities as the locally dominant ethnic
community. Hence, he continues by drawing on quite a different book
from the Bible, Numbers 15:13–16:

For the generations to come, whenever an alien or anyone else living

among you presents an offering made by fire as an aroma pleasing to the
LORD, he must do exactly as you do. The community is to have the same
rules for you and for the alien living among you.
(Num. 15:14–15a)
190 Jacqueline Klopp

Bett then follows by asking the question, “Could it be that people cannot
properly integrate as one community because of applying different values
such as political preferences even when they live in the midst of others?”
Retired Archbishop David Gitari might have retorted in regard to the
apparent use of Ezekiel to endorse one of the common justifications for
the violence, “Whoever does wrong has to be challenged, whether that
person is your brother or tribesman.”29 As Archbishop Gitari fearlessly
asserted in a sermon prior to the 2002 election, “Why should there
always be ethnic clashes, especially in the Rift Valley, instigated by politi-
cians? A government that did not protect its people had no reason for
being in power and those who ascend to power through ‘blood votes’
were sinners.”30
As a moral problem the struggle against ethnic clashes cannot but
evoke religion and the involvement of religious allegiances. At the most
basic level, the deepening politics of violence makes a mockery of the
religious principles of love and tolerance that are often preached in the
churches and mosques and professed in public by politicians who are inti-
mately involved in funding, organizing, and encouraging violence in their
mother tongues. Further, many of the church’s flock have become victims
of the violence and supplicants for assistance. Others have engaged in
it. Some were both victims and perpetrators like the marginalized early
members of Muingiki in the early 1990s. They opted out of Christianity
altogether, forming their own religious understanding of their pain-filled
universe and reconstituting their Gikuyu identities that have seemed to
have created so much strife for them in new ways that offer a kind of
coherence.31
This dominance of “political tribalism”—the manipulation of ethnicity
for political ends—over religious principles of love and tolerance came to
a head in the latest round of ethnic clashes. Many within the opposition
utilized an anti-Gikuyu strategy reinforcing in the other political camp
a sense of Gikuyu solidarity. On the other side, Gikuyu chauvinism,
nationalism, and determination to hold onto power reinforced opposition
suspicions about “Gikuyu domination.” There was a tremendous degree of
polarization but, because religious organizations like the Emo Foundation,
the Africa Inland Church, but also the NCCK and the Roman Catholic
Church appeared to play partisan politics, the religious network against
violence was seriously weakened. This was exactly what Archbishop Gitari
had feared and it had enormously negative consequences.32
The clearest sign of this erosion of religious based “civil society” was
that the churches no longer served as places of sanctuary in a number
of cases. This was signaled in the most horrific way imaginable by the
burning of the Kenya Assemblies of God church. Over 35 women and
 N C C K a n d “E t h n i c C l a s h e s ” 191

children who were sheltering there died. This along with the burnings
of the Redeemed Gospel Church and the Miracles Assemblies of God
church, prompted Rt. Revd. Eliud Wabukala and Revd. Canon Peter
Karanja (NCCK general secretary) to note that “even the respect and
fear of God has been lost among some of our people.”33 This happened
in part because of the morally corrosive politics of mass impunity,
but also because civil society, including many of the churches, played
partisan politics and were no longer seen as neutral reconcilers. This was
reinforced in the public’s eyes by the “exodus” of clergy into politics.
A record 23 clergy vied for political office.34
Further, some churches allowed themselves to appear ethnicized and
divided along political party lines. The Roman Catholic Church, the
church of President Mwai Kibaki, for example, was perceived as pro-
Gikuyu and the Africa Inland Church, the church of former president
Daniel arap Moi as pro-Kalenjin.35 One reason that the Roman Catholic
Church and also the NCCK were perceived as pro-Kibaki was that key
members agreed to serve on government task forces (for example, the
Resettlement Task Force) and commissions (the Kenya Anti-Corruption
Commission). Further, when the Roman Catholic Church made a state-
ment against the “majimbo” or federal system, it was slammed publicly
by the opposition as progovernment.36 The NCCK too got implicated in
this partisan politics. The choice by the former general secretary, Mutava
Musyimi to run for parliament under a PNU ticket exacerbated the
perception that it was pro-Kibaki and confirmed to many that the whole
organization at the national level had lost its neutrality. The NCCK itself
acknowledged the failure:

We regret that we as church leaders were unable to effectively confront

these issues because we were partisan. Our efforts to forestall the current
crisis were not effective because we as the membership of NCCK did not
speak with one voice. We were divided in the way we saw the management
of the elections; we identified with our people based on ethnicity; and
after the elections, we are divided on how to deal with the crisis.37

Interestingly, despite the politicization of the churches, the legitimiza-

tion for ethnic clashes seems rarely to have drawn on religious analogy
or text. It has been primarily built around the idea of power hoarding,
economic and ethnic injustice and uses the more secular notion of
rights. Violence has been justified as a means to redress abuse of power
by the Gikuyu, marginalization, the lack of minority or indigenous
rights or, in the case of police violence, necessary for “law and order”.
This has provided a key opportunity for counter voices to tap into a
192 Jacqueline Klopp

Christian worldview and its language to challenge violent political action

as illegitimate. It is thus perhaps not surprising that church leaders
throughout Kenya’s history of ethnic clashes have been at the forefront
of articulating the most powerful case against the destructive politics
of ethnic clashes and the abstract rights that legitimate them.38 These
leaders draw on the formidable power of religion to aid their cause. Sadly,
as the NCCK has acknowledged in a recent soul-searching meeting in the
Rift Valley, the failure to retain a public perception of neutrality particu-
larly through the involvement of NCCK clergy in politics at many levels,
muted its “prophetic voice”. This voice was badly needed during the last
round of violence and once again in its aftermath. A struggle remains to
rejuvenate the former NCCK role in the fight against ethnic clashes.
Despite the more recent ethnicization and politicization of religious
organizations in Kenya, these organizations must continue to form a key
part of a “civil society” or an organized space between the family and
state that can resist tyranny, an old idea that itself emerges from religious
struggles in Europe. In fact, the progressive churches within the NCCK
have the potential to reconstitute themselves as a key bulwark against vio-
lence, perhaps more so than the more secular, suave, and urban civil society
favored by donors. This is because of their potential multiethnic national
organization, strong rural reach, and ability to evoke a powerful religious
language to shame supporters of violence and challenge power-brokers.
They also often have international support for their stance from global
religious networks that can also apply pressure.39
The reach of NCCK church networks is worth emphasizing. In rural
areas, there are few associational forms that generate interethnic trust and
hence can “constrain the polarizing strategies of political elites” that very
often generate ethnicized violence.40 The NCCK, with a constituent mem-
bership of 6 million people can be a key actor in generating interethnic
associational life in rural areas. At the grassroots, in many places like the
South Rift Valley, they continue to play a strong role calling coreligionists
to public discussions across ethnic lines and entrenching peace-building
programs that are themselves positive legacies of the attempt to deal with
violence since the 1990s to which we now turn.

The NCCK and the Struggle against Ethnic Clashes

From the very beginning, the NCCK along with a constellation of other
churches and mosques were thrust into a central role in the struggle
against the “clashes” in the 1990s. The wounded and displaced imme-
diately took shelter in church compounds across the country and the
NCCK secretariat became a prominent voice criticizing the government,
 N C C K a n d “E t h n i c C l a s h e s ” 193

backing its claims with evidence, providing relief, and, in the aftermath
of the violence, promoting reconciliation and peace-building.
It is important to emphasize that in the repressive context, it was
courageous of the NCCK to be the first organization to document the
nature, dynamics, and human consequences of the violence. The first
reports on ethnic clashes as well as those on the politically motivated
violent urban displacements were both done by the NCCK.41 The
NCCK would continue to provide information about the violence in its
Ethnic Clashes Update throughout the 1990s. In the process, it played
a key role in exposing the political dynamics of the displacements to
the press and countering government propaganda about the “clashes” as
tribal warfare.42
Based on strong firsthand evidence and moral courage, the leadership
of the NCCK came out as influential critics of the government’s role in
the violence using prayer as a means to resist. For example, the NCCK
held a special executive committee meeting on 31 January 1992, in
which they decided to draw national attention to the violence through
a countrywide day of prayer for the victims. The organization also set
up a mechanism for an investigation of the violence. By March 1992,
the NCCK roundly criticized the government, demanding in a press
release that “the Government stops forthwith the unnecessary spilling
of innocent blood and the wanton destruction of property.”43 Similarly,
immediately after “the clashes” started, the Roman Catholic bishops,
Zacheus Okoth (Kisumu), Ndingi Mwana’a Nzeki (Nakuru), and
Cornelius Korir (Eldoret) demanded government assistance for the inter-
nally displaced, insinuating that the government was complicit in the
violence. In a March 1992 pastoral letter, the Roman Catholic bishops
urged reconciliation and assistance for the victims and noted that the
government had failed in its responsibilities to protect its citizens: “So far
only the churches and non-governmental organizations have taken care
of the victims of the clashes.”44
Before any official international assistance found its way to the dis-
placed, the NCCK, along with the Roman Catholic Church, were also
thrust into the immediate and central role of directly assisting thousands
of people. Marshaling resources and assistance from local communities,
many of its churches took up the responsibility of feeding and sheltering
people in their compounds, ferrying people to hospitals in their vehicles
and serving as firsthand witnesses to the violence. Without the role of the
NCCK, no doubt the number of deaths from wounds, malnutrition, and
disease in the makeshift camps would have been far greater.45
At the time, few involved in relief thought the violence would persist
past the December 1992 election. When the violence continued and
194 Jacqueline Klopp

even escalated in some areas, and the government by and large obstructed
efforts at reconciliation and possible resettlement, the situation became
desperate. For example, in 1993 the NCCK was spending 16 million
Kenyan shillings ($200,000) each month just to feed the displaced. One
Roman Catholic official involved in these efforts alongside the NCCK
speculated that the government was in fact eager to keep the churches
bogged down in relief efforts to drain their resources and keep them from
fighting for political change.46
When the violence subsided, the government was unsurprisingly
hostile to the displaced and uninterested in providing security in former
“clash areas.” The NCCK and other religious organizations were left to
assist the displaced. In this environment, the NCCK turned towards
peace-building, which was necessary to create enough reconciliation for
the eventual return of some of the victims or at least to allow some of the
victims to use their farms during the day. As the situation of the displaced
became a chronic condition in Kenya, church activists also took a more
vocal role in promoting the rights of the displaced, including their right
to vote.47
In 1992, with some financial assistance from Dutch Interchurch Aid,
the NCCK set up a “Peace and Reconciliation Programme” that began as
a relief program. Over time, as the government and much of civil society
failed to address the issues of the displaced, it moved into reconciliation
and peace-building. Hundreds of “Good Neighbourliness Workshops”
were held and continue to be held in an attempt to promote reconciliation.
These workshops involved influential local elders, leaders, community
workers, government, and local organizations and provided a neutral space
for people to talk about their problems emerging from the conflict. The
philosophy in these workshops, as articulated by North Rift Coordinator
Raphael Lokol’s recent speech, is to “work with communities to build
peace and harmony, not to impose ‘ready made’ peace on the people.”48
These workshops incorporated local government officials and involved
“silent diplomacy” aimed at getting their support for reconciliation and
assistance for clash victims.49
This new peace-building focus did not mean that the basic needs of
the displaced for food, shelter, schooling, and health care were being
met. The displaced continued to live in poverty beyond the means of the
NCCK to address in a comprehensive manner. The Norwegian Refugee
Council described their living conditions as follows:

The majority of IDPs in Kenya continue to live in urban areas in dire

conditions such as streets and informal settlements. Displaced who live
in camp-like conditions in schools or church compounds and abandoned
 N C C K a n d “E t h n i c C l a s h e s ” 195

buildings lack access to clean water, food and sanitation. Over 70 percent
of the heads of households interviewed in the cited UN commissioned
report of 2002 were single mothers with up to eight children by different
men. These women, in addition to the tremendous burden of putting
food on the table for so many children, are often exposed to physical and
sexual violence. Coping mechanisms include petty trade, charcoal burning
and commercial sex work.50

The NCCK helped the displaced to organize into a network to

improve their voice and political clout. On 21 June 2003 at St. Mary’s
Pastoral Center in Nakuru, survivors of ethnic violence in Kenya officially
launched their network with representatives from 11 different zones in
the country and support from the Kenya Human Rights Commission,
the NCCK, and the Catholic Justice and Peace Commission. In a state-
ment on 28 September 2003, a representative of the new clash survivor
network stated his vision:

We as survivors of ethnic clashes have resolved to channel our efforts to

establish a formidable national network of survivors of ethnic clashes. The
network will represent our key organ for articulating matters concerning
us. We anticipate that all related government agencies, intergovernmental
organizations, religious organizations, development organization, human
rights organizations and other stakeholders, will co-operate with us in our
struggle.51

The NCCK moved towards an advocacy role on behalf of the hundreds

of thousands of displaced, a role it has played ever since. Sadly, with
hundreds of thousands newly displaced people, many increasingly mov-
ing into slums or back to their home areas where little reconciliation has
taken place, this role is now more critical than ever, especially as inter-
national humanitarian relief organizations have largely pulled out while
deep problems remain.
Despite this remarkable legacy and the continuing importance of
the NCCK role, one of the sad facts in the 2000s was the failure of the
NCCK along with other churches to play their role as a strong and united
critic of the violence and as a neutral advocate for peace at the national
level. The NCCK was a key partner of the United Nations Development
Programme (UNDP)–funded “Chagua Amani Zoia Amani” violence
prevention program. However, one reason this program failed was the
lack of courage to confront the powerful and counter hate speech.
Further, the lack of perceived neutrality in the churches more generally
might have made the conditions of the displaced worse, since churches
lost some of their force as spaces of sanctuary. The displaced were often
196 Jacqueline Klopp

attacked in churches and instead eventually had to seek protection

at police stations.52 However, throughout the violence various local
NCCK chapters played key roles in protecting and providing relief to
the displaced. Even at the height of the violence, this helped provide a
way for people across sharply divided lines to continue a dialogue. Many
believe that without this mediation and advocacy, the violence might
have been even worse.

Concluding Reflections
As the Kenyan government falters once again in its support for the dis-
placed and as impunity appears likely to persist, the NCCK, the Roman
Catholic Church, and other religious organizations will once again need
to take a key role in reconciliation and the politics of transformation. The
NCCK is trying to rejuvenate its previous strong role as a peacemaker and
position itself once again to intensify the fight against ethnic clashes and
impunity and help repair the “national and social fabric that has been torn
asunder.” Part of this process is a healthy critical self-reflection on what
went wrong and a reassertion of principles, as well as a reformulation of the
rules of engagement with the world of politics.
This time there is no doubt that the fate of Kenya as a peaceful
and prosperous country is hanging on such leadership in civil society.
The struggle against ethnic clashes will require the skilful mobilization
of shared religious sentiment to counterbalance Kenya’s toxic politics
of displacement and support the demand for an end of impunity for those
involved in fomenting violence.53 Of course, the complete impunity of
the powerful and their use of violence can tear asunder networks of peace
on the ground, hence the need for a strong voice to end to impunity. The
strength of that public voice has been weakened, but as this chapter has tried
to show, the NCCK has a formidable worthy legacy of which Archbishop
Gitari’s work and prophetic voice were a critical part. If the NCCK leader-
ship can return to this proud legacy then, moving forward, it will be able
to play a critical role in civil society. In some sense, in the absence of a
strong liberal nationalism it is the shared religiosity of Kenyans that may
help revive the idea of Kenya as a nation tied together by shared history,
economic, and social transactions and identity and bonds of friendship
and love.54 Even with the weakness linked to the loss of NCCK neutrality
in politics, local networks for peace and dialogue existed and were active
even in the darkest moments of violence.55 This alternative politics chal-
lenges the culture of the “big man,” impunity, and violence and provides
hope that, together with serious lobbying against impunity, the politics of
displacement in all its cruelty and inhumanity might yet end.
 N C C K a n d “E t h n i c C l a s h e s ” 197

NOTES
1. See Human Rights Watch (2008); and Republic of Kenya (2008b).
2. Kamungi and Klopp 2007.
3. Klopp 2001; and Kamungi and Klopp 2007.
4. See Human Rights Watch (1993); Kenyan Human Rights Commission
(1996); Kenya Human Rights Commission (1998); Law Society of
Kenya (2000).
5. See Government of Kenya (2004) and Namyaya (2004).
6. See Klopp (2001).
7. Weekly Review 27 September 1991.
8. Ibid.
9. On the historical roots of the idea of “Gikuyu domination”, see Atieno
Odhiambo (2004).
10. The key instigator of the Meteitei violence appears to be Henry Kosgey,
Minister of Tourism and Wildlife at the time, along with other KANU
officials. See Nation 25 February 1999; and Republic of Kenya (1992b).
11. For more details, see Médard (1996, 1998); and Klopp (2001).
12. See Commonwealth Observer Group (1993:18).
13. See Republic of Kenya (1992b:51; 2008:52).
14. See Human Rights Watch (1993); Kenyan Human Rights Commission
(1996, 1998); Law Society of Kenya (2000).
15. See Klopp and Kamungi (2007–2008).
16. See IDP Network of Kenya (2007).
17. See Maina Kiai’s comments (2008).
18. Republic of Kenya (2008b).
19. See Lynch (2008b); and Government of Kenya (2008).
20. Although the opposition party, ODM, had its own issues of transpar-
ency including the well-known manipulation of the party nomination
processes (Lynch 2008b).
21. Lynch 2008b.
22. This use of displacement was also part of Kenya’s violent colonial
experience. Scholars have documented how entire villages were pun-
ished for the acts of Mau Mau supporters or how, in 1954 in Nairobi,
colonial officials evicted Gikuyu wholesale to rid the city of resistance.
Displacement then was part of the British colonial administration’s
counter-insurgency campaign.
23. Gitari and Knighton (2001:252).
24. See National Council of Churches of Kenya (2008).
25. See Ellis and Haar (2004:192).
26. Lynch 2008b:555.
27. See Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (2008:65).
Unattributable interview by author, Nairobi 17 August 2008.
28. EMO 2008.
29. Onyango, Dennis. “Church’s Worrying Slide to Silence,” Standard 27
January 2008:24.
198 Jacqueline Klopp

30. “Anglicans in Zimbabwe and Kenya address upcoming elections.” Episcopal

News Service 4 December 2002. See also LeMarquand (2000: 89).
31. See Wamue (2001a); and Kagwanja (2003). Sadly, the rank and file of
Muingiki once again have been manipulated and bought by some in the
PNU side to attack innocents in the name of revenge, perpetuating the
politics of violence they have suffered and initiated so much themselves.
32. Interestingly, some of the main mosques and churches on the coast
did better at countering politics and violence, and this is one factor
in the dampening of the violence in that region. See Kenya National
Commission on Human Rights (2008:108).
33. “Call to Peace and Political Justice,” NCCK Press Statement 3 Jan 2008.
34. “Kenya Exodus: From Pulpit to Parliament,” Standard 27 July 2007.
35. The AIC was a founding member of the NCCK but broke from the
NCCK under Moi’s influence.
36. “Leaders ask Catholic Church to be Non-Partisan,” Nation 27 October 2007.
37. See National Council of Churches of Kenya (2008).
38. See Gitari (1996b).
39. See Klopp (2008b:309) for an example.
40. Ashutosh Varshney (2002: 4). Compare with Morris MacLean (2004).
41. National Council of Churches of Kenya 1991, 1992b, and later 1995.
42. Many of the newer Nairobi-based NGOs that were seen as most
emblematic of civil society played a role in this resistance, but not always
a key role. Under the auspices of the National Council of NGOs, 120
organizations formed the “Ethnic Clashes Network” in August 1993,
helping to document the “clashes” and assist with creating local capacity
for peace-building. One prominent member, the Kenyan Human Rights
Commission, also played a fundamental role in documenting, analysing,
and publicizing the violence and its cause mostly through site visits.
The impact of most urban-based civil society organizations favored by
donors, however, was much more restricted.
43. NCCK Press Release 12 February 1992. For the results of the investiga-
tion, see National Council of Churches of Kenya (1992b).
44. Kenya Episcopal Conference (1992).
45. Many children and the elderly did die as a result of worsened health
conditions linked to displacement. See the excellent study by Francis
Lelo (1996).
46. Author interview with Revd Murimi, Roman Catholic Diocese of Nakuru,
26 October 2000.
47. For example, the Roman Catholic Church in Mombasa encouraged
the displaced to vote, going so far as to rent 600 houses for them to
avoid the government harassment at the church compound (Kagwanja
2002:108).
48. Raphael Lokol, NCCK North Rift Coordinator, Speech.
49. Interview with NCCK Peace and Reconciliation Coordinator for
Nakuru, Labon Korellach, Nakuru, 25 October 2000.
50. Norwegian Refugee Council 2003:7f; Kamungi 2001.
 N C C K a n d “E t h n i c C l a s h e s ” 199

51. Oyugi et al. (2003).

52. Interview with Dr. Raphael Kinoti, South Rift NCCK, Nakuru, August
21, 2008.
53. See the recently concluded Waki Commission Report (“Waki Commission:
Kenya voices,” BBC News Africa 17 October 2008); Republic of Kenya
(2008a).
54. See Klopp and Kamungi (2007–2008).
55. See Klopp 2008a.
This page intentionally left blank
Chapter 8

Christianity
Co-Opted
Paul Gifford

Since independence, Kenya has been a classic neopatrimonial state,

approaching the level of Abacha’s Nigeria or Mobutu’s Zaire. A neopat-
rimonial state makes little effort to function through legally defined
structures for publicly acknowledged aims, through institutions of
bureaucracy. Subordinate officials do not have defined powers and func-
tions of their own, but are retainers whose position depends on a leader
to whom they owe allegiance. The system is held together by loyalty
or kinship ties rather than by a hierarchy of administrative grades and
functions. Such a system has two particular qualities: corruption and
clientelism. Corruption is the use of public office to achieve private
goals—officials exercise their powers as a form not of public service but
for private gain. (That is, the point of “neo”; in a classic patrimonial
structure, like that of a father in a family, there is of course no distinc-
tion between public and private, the very distinction that underpins
this categorization.) Clientelism is a relationship of exchange in which
a superior provides security for one lower down the line, who as a cli-
ent then provides political support for his patron. In Africa, clientelism
usually functions to mobilize ethnic support, which thus protects ruling
interests, and at the same time effectively prevents the rise of class as a
political factor.
Christianity has been an important element in Kenya’s personalized
patronage system. Around the time of the reintroduction of multiparty
democracy, some Kenyan churchmen did play this role of challenging the
system—the Anglican bishops, Muge, Okullu, Gitari (belatedly, perhaps,
Archbishop Kuria), the Presbyterian Njoya, and eventually the Roman
202 Paul Gifford

Catholic hierarchy. This much-celebrated contribution should not hide

the fact that nearly all branches of Kenyan Christianity have been fairly
easily manipulated, even co-opted, by the political elite.

MOI ERA
During most of his rule, Kenya’s state media continually portrayed Moi as
a God-fearing leader guided by his Christian principles of “Peace, Love,
and Unity”. In the early 1990s, every Sunday evening the first item of
KBC television news (sometimes taking half the time devoted to national
news) was Moi’s attendance at church that morning. Sometimes he was
just shown singing hymns and listening attentively to the sermon; at
other times the exercise was far less subtle. One Sunday in February 1992,
at the height of the debate over the reintroduction of multiparty democ-
racy, Moi attended the Redeemed Gospel Church (RGC), and that eve-
ning KBC news carried lengthy coverage of the sermon of Bishop Arthur
Kitonga, the church’s founder. He was shown preaching: “In heaven it is
just like Kenya has been for many years. There is only one party—and
God never makes a mistake.” He continued: “President Moi has been
appointed by God to lead the country and Kenyans should be grateful
for the peace prevailing . . . We have freedom of worship, we can pray and
sing in any way we want. What else do we need? That is all we need.”1
Kenya has always had an institution of community mobilization
called harambee (let us pull together). In a much-quoted speech delivered
around the time of independence, Kenyatta urged: “We must work harder
to fight our enemies—ignorance, sickness, and poverty. Therefore I give
you the call Harambee! Let us all work harder together for our country.
Harambee!” In the following years, communities came together to work
on projects like schools and clinics, or to raise funds for communal proj-
ects, in a spirit of self-help. However, before long the practice came to be
abused. In rural areas, some chiefs would call harambees every week and
force people to contribute and then treat the funds raised as their own.
More significantly, candidates for political office would use the occasions
to flaunt their wealth and effectively buy influence. During the Moi years,
harambees became the embodiment of the patronage system.
I have just mentioned Bishop Kitonga preaching in support of Moi.
In return for such preaching, Moi attended an RGC harambee a few
weeks later. An enormous Kenya African National Union (KANU) flag
flew over the platform, dwarfing the Kenyan flags elsewhere around the
ground. The church leader again delivered the standard KANU denun-
ciation of Kenya’s radical clergy. According to the party daily, the import
was that “some churchmen masquerading as bishops and reverends had
 Christianity Co-Opted 203

turned into rebels and were preaching their own Gospel and not that of
Christ. Some churchmen were drunk with the spirit of evil politics.”2
The bishop told his flock to stay out of politics, to shut up, accept the
present leadership, and prepare to go to heaven.3 Moi then spoke for
15 minutes, stressing the freedom of worship he allowed in Kenya, and
noting that some of the newly formed opposition parties would not allow
this because they believed in witchcraft: “Others visit witchdoctors, while
we in KANU believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Other
gods do not appeal to KANU.”4
After the politicking came the fundraising. Moi contributed 400,000
shillings (then $13,000), and—from the entourage he brought with
him—the Vice President and Minister of Finance George Saitoti gave
20,000, four cabinet ministers and the Nairobi KANU chairman and the
Nairobi police chief each gave 10,000, and three assistant ministers and
the Attorney-General, 5,000 each. Few seemed to question how robust
was the rule of law where the police chief and attorney general could
regularly contribute thousands of shillings to “good causes”; or how the
nation’s finances were controlled when the minister of finance could
make similar contributions.
Bishop Kitonga became a cheerleader for Moi. Just after Moi had
threatened to ban the National Council of Churches of Kenya (NCCK)
for advocating political reforms, Kitonga issued a statement lambasting
religious leaders “ganging up” in “a conspiracy against the political leader-
ship.” He stated that “church leaders should not use the house of God to
hatch rebellion and scheme.” He criticized them because they had “devi-
ated” from the original teachings in the Bible and the practices of the
early church. Their agenda seemed “to have changed from winning souls
for Christ to a fight for materialism,” and he detected in them “a spirit
of rebellion” and found a large part of the church “embroiled in political
controversies that have no spiritual or theological basis at all.” He threw
in Romans 13:1, “Let everybody be in subjection to authority.”5
Under Moi, harambees became an unavoidable and fixed instrument
of manipulation. For example, Moi gave 270,000 shillings at a Taita/
Taveta harambee where he took the opportunity to denounce the opposi-
tion: “Who are they to tell me to resign? They should understand that
power is derived from God.”6 At an Africa Inland Church harambee in
1990, he took the opportunity to denounce “people preaching human
rights” and churches “overstepping their bounds and propagating evil,”
donating half a million shillings of the 4.6 million raised.7 At a special
interdenominational service in Nyahururu, Moi must have been gratified
to hear the pastor preach that “the devil was behind the introduction of
a multi-party system in Kenya.”8
204 Paul Gifford

Co-option became the order of the day. Support for Moi was forth-
coming from a wide sector of churches. Independent churches, lacking
the resources of mainstream churches, were particularly prone to manipu-
lation. In the crucial years of the multiparty agitation, the Africa Church
of the Holy Spirit held a special service in Nairobi to pray for the gov-
ernment. During the service, over 1,200 followers registered as KANU
members, and the leader, Bishop Kisanya, registered as a KANU life
member. The church resolved to support KANU and President Moi.9
The newer American implants, needing government goodwill to
establish themselves, were just as vulnerable. At the same time, amid the
agitation for multiparty democracy, the pastor of the Potter’s House10
received great publicity for preaching: “As an American citizen who has
lived in Kenya, I do not believe that a multiparty political system will work
at this time in Kenya.” Claiming that Kenya was the fastest developing
of the many developing countries he had visited, he continued: “I believe
that this is the result of good leadership. I want to thank President
Moi, Vice-President Saitoti and the rest of the leaders of Kenya for the
outstanding job they have done.”11 The President of the Seventh-Day
Adventists (SDAs) visited Kenya, and paid a courtesy call on Moi (to
considerable publicity). Moi took the opportunity to thank the SDAs
for preaching the gospel and contributing to peace in the country (at
the time, that was the standard, coded attack on Muge, Okullu, Gitari,
Njoya, and the NCCK). In his reply, the SDA president commended
Moi as a champion of religious freedom, a renowned world mediator, and
peacemaker, and assured Moi that the SDA would continue supporting
the government.12 Around the same time, in November 1992, the United
Evangelical Churches of Kenya (UECK), a group of about 250 pastors
affiliated to the Revd Charles Hardin of Georgia, held a convention.
Hardin and his colleagues paid the usual courtesy call on Moi, when Moi
took the occasion to advise them to avoid ungodly behavior, to defend the
faith without compromise, to have no antagonism to the state, and to stay
out of politics (the usual coded message against the mainstream church
leaders). Moi went so far as to say how the World Council of Churches
had betrayed the full gospel message by accommodating to the world, and
then spontaneously promised six buses from his Nyayo bus company to
ferry participants to the UECK convention. Not surprisingly, the ensuing
convention became something of a promotion of Moi, even leading to a
UECK declaration challenging statements of the NCCK.13
Crusades were equally co-opted. Korea’s Paul Yong-gi Cho came
to Nairobi for a crusade during 23–31 March 1993. He had a well-
publicized reception from Moi at State House, where Moi praised his
preaching as “a blessing for Kenya.” The media printed pictures of Moi
 Christianity Co-Opted 205

and his entourage attending the closing day of the crusade. A report noted
that Cho preached on “the blind man healed by Jesus (Mark 10:46–52)
and called on Kenyans to have faith in God in order to be delivered from
the economic crisis facing the country. He said that Kenya was a blessed
country, because it had a God-fearing leader. The South Korean preacher
urged Kenyans to trust in Jesus in order to prosper . . . The President who
acknowledged the preaching with an occasional nod, listened attentively
as the preacher told the crowd that with God all things are possible . . . [Dr
Cho said] that God gave the President wisdom to lead the country.”14
To appreciate just how supportive that was, recall that this was at the
height of the economic meltdown caused by the Goldenberg scam.15
Precisely that week Moi had had to reverse Kenya’s economic program,
showing, according to London’s Financial Times, “the stranglehold cor-
ruption has over” the Kenyan economy and “the power wielded by a
handful of politicians who have stolen millions of dollars by manipu-
lating economic controls in their personal favour.”16 At a time when
foreign and even the Kenyan press were pointing out that the root cause
of Kenya’s parlous economic situation was the unbridled corruption of
the ruling clique, a visiting “man of God” was preaching to thousands,
broadcast by the state, that Moi was ruling with wisdom given by God
himself, and that it was only the deficient faith of Kenyans themselves
that was preventing a glorious and prosperous future for Kenya.

Kibaki Era
When Moi stepped down and KANU was voted out in 2002, Kibaki,
especially after his moving inauguration speech promising a clean break
with the past, was given an extensive honeymoon. However, it eventually
became evident that fundamentally little had changed. Kenya’s political
system persisted, with Christianity still a key element. As Moi did, Kibaki
visited churches on Sundays and used the opportunity to burnish his
image as a Christian statesman; visiting the Nairobi Pentecostal Church
at Karen, he told the congregation that he would continue to lead Kenya
according to the teachings of the Bible, insisting, “All we [are required]
to do is let the Word guide us and we will be blessed and happy.”17 As
Moi did, he continued to give out public land; when he visited the head-
quarters of the African Brotherhood Church in 2005, he turned to the
Minister of Lands in his entourage and directed him to give the church
five acres.18 As Moi did, he continued to appoint senior clerics to the
commissions that in Kenya seem little more than a conduit of govern-
ment funds to the elite.19 Anglican bishop, Bernard Njoroge, sat full-time,
for years, on the commission drawing up the new constitution, earning
206 Paul Gifford

as the other members, a reported 600,000 shillings a month ($10,000),

housing, a vehicle, fuel, entertainment and responsibility allowances, and
8,500 for every day he traveled out of Nairobi.20 Anglican bishop, Horace
Etemesi, was a member of Moi’s Commission into Devil Worship as well
as Kibaki’s commissioner into the exploits of two dubious Armenian
brothers, who in 2006 flouted the law with seeming impunity. Neither
of these reports was ever released to the public or acted on.
Politics continued to be carried on at church functions, not least
funerals. It was still politically advantageous to be seen at high profile
crusades (Uhuru Kenyatta and Raila Odinga were conspicuous at the
TD Jakes crusade in 2005). Above all, the political use of the harambee
continued, though with less prominence. The Roman Catholic bishops,
citing pressing needs to fund their seminaries, staged a big harambee in
April 2006, at which Kibaki was the guest of honor and where he con-
tributed one million shillings ($16,000).21
His wife, Lucy, was a regular at harambees in all sorts of churches; at
a Presbyterian harambee in late 2006 she donated 500,000 shillings out
of 800,000 raised; at a Roman Catholic AIDS orphanage harambee a
few months later she gave another 500,000, all the time politicking in
favor of her husband.22 More colorfully, Mary Wambui (widely regarded
as Kibaki’s second wife) was just as bountiful: for example, she raised
3.8 million shillings at a Roman Catholic harambee in Limuru, giving
400,000 shillings herself, with her daughter providing another 60,000.23
Other prominent figures operated in the same way. Kibaki’s Vice-
President Moody Awori gave 150,000 shillings (of a total of 720,000
raised) for a proposed Roman Catholic church (while urging Kibaki’s
reelection).24 Presidential hopeful Kalonzo Musyoka gave 100,000 at
an Africa Inland Church where the pastor lauded him as the “anointed
President in waiting” and “the fund raising was turned into a forum to
drum up support for (his) presidential ambitions.”25 Another presidential
hopeful Raila Odinga, later to be Kibaki’s main challenger in the 2007
elections, donated 100 bags of cement and 100 iron sheets at an Anglican
harambee, which he was permitted to turn into a political meeting.26
On such occasions—indeed on ordinary Sundays—politicians took the
opportunity to further their interests. At a Nairobi Pentecostal church,
Raila Odinga was allowed to promote his cause, and was anointed by
the bishop, who announced that it was now time for a born-again and
a Luo to lead the nation.27 In his own heartland in Nyanza Province,
over 50 senior clerics from various religious organizations (including the
Anglican bishop) declared a “divine anointing” on Raila Odinga at a day-
long rally, and he had the opportunity to declare those causing trouble in
his party to be like those Israelites opposing Moses.28
 Christianity Co-Opted 207

Such practices are widely accepted, abuses commonly overlooked.

In a famous case, William Ruto, another 2007 presidential hopeful,
widely viewed as tainted through land-grabbing, was the principal
guest at a harambee for a Roman Catholic church at Mumias; the
clergy refused to accept the 231,000 shillings he raised (with 120,000
as personal contribution), only to have the congregation insist that
they would boycott church offerings until the politician’s money was
accepted.29 This attitude is lamented by social commentator Barrack
Muluka:

Even in the church of Christ the moths have eaten our values . . . The holy
father greets the looter of public coffers with an outstretched arm. He
even leans forward and lowers his head before the looter in respectful and
humble obeisance. The looter is given a special seat at the front of the holy
shrine of Christ. The flow of events in the shrine is hurried and rushed
so that the looter “greets the people”. The looter “greets the people” with
his mouth and with his pocket. With his mouth, he mumbles assorted
abracadabra. Then comes the moment everyone has been waiting for. The
looter doles out more solid “greetings” from his pocket. And the whole
congregation goes up in an uproar of clapping and praise for the looter.
With that the moral and ethical pillars of society are shaken at source and
with the total and conscious complicity of and express encouragement by
the guardians of Christian ethics and morals . . . The church is simply in
love with money, like everyone else.30

Church services and Christian rhetoric are thus an integral part of the
political system. Christianity is one more element in the neopatrimonial
structures.

NATIONAL PRAYER DAY

Significantly, Kibaki reverted to Moi’s use of Christianity when in 2006,
with floods, insecurity, ethnic clashes, and then a plane crash in which
prominent community leaders died, he declared a holiday for a “National
Prayer Day.” Prayer services took place in all main centers on Friday 21
April. The Nairobi ceremony illustrated a mixture of themes. Prayers were
said for the victims of the plane crash, for the floods, decrying the corrup-
tion exemplified in scams like Goldenberg, and the lack of trust among
leaders. However, overall, the motif was that the people of Kenya had to
repent. This is the logic of Psalm 51, David’s contrition after his sin with
Bathsheba (read by 2002 presidential contender Uhuru Kenyatta). The
message was that the nation must turn to God. Among the scriptural
readings was II Chronicles 7:14, which calls on the people rather than
208 Paul Gifford

their leaders to repent.31 In a lengthy prayer of repentance read by the

senior pastor of the Nairobi Baptist Church, four areas for confession and
repentance were named: recourse to “witchdoctors,” broken covenants
(from Kibaki’s broken promises to the partners of his victorious 2002
coalition, to unfaithfulness to spouses), neglect of the poor (evidenced in
scams like Goldenberg), and—more remarkably—showing disrespect for
President Moi when he left office: “We humiliated your servant . . . We
needed to give him honor. Father forgive us . . . forgive us our humiliation
of our former president.” On all these scores, “Father we are guilty . . . we
deserve your judgment.”32
Kibaki took the chance to play the role of father of the nation standing
before his people in relation to God. In his ritual condemnation of cor-
ruption, he took the opportunity to defend the government’s record. This
theme was furthered by Presbyterian Moderator David Githii, represent-
ing the NCCK, choosing to read from Romans 13:1–13 (“All authority
is from God and must be obeyed”).
There was wide coverage of the occasion in the media. A few realized
that religion had been manipulated. So many of the nation’s problems
were government responsibility: even air accidents could be avoided if
the right planes were bought and they were adequately maintained, and
landed on properly maintained airstrips.33 The impression of manipu-
lation was reinforced when reports from other venues were added. In
Iten in Keiyo District, Nicholas Biwott, Moi’s close associate, read II
Chronicles 6:24–31, because, “We are a praying nation and I know
that Kenyans are God fearing people. Let us do like the Israelites did.
Seek God in every difficulty.”34 Moi had been out of the country on the
day of prayer, but on his return expressed the view that the continuing
calamities were evidence that the country “had completely forgotten
God,” and he reminded all that Kenya had no solid base without God’s
guidance and protection.35 A few observers were sharply critical. Gabriel
Dolan, Catholic Justice and Peace activist, wrote to the papers declaring:
“On Friday, the only prayers I could mutter was for our country to be
rid of looters who pose as leaders.” He hinted, however, that the prayer
day might be “an inspirited moment when we began to believe that we
could be rid of crooks, looters, con-men and gangsters.”36 The most
telling comment was by a figure in a cartoon in the Nation: a couple
of ordinary citizens are observing the leaders exhorting the huge crowd:
“Kenyans should ask God for forgiveness . . . Kenyans should ask God
for forgiveness.” The man remarks to the woman: “What have we done?”
And the woman replies: “This is the only country where leaders steal,
loot, grab from you and kill . . . and then come to you and tell you to ask
for forgiveness!”37
 Christianity Co-Opted 209

Why So Little Prophetic Christianity?

The question is unavoidable: why have the churches, at least some of the
time, been so uncritical of the dysfunctional system of which they are
such pillars? Some reasons suggest themselves.
The mainstream churches are essentially service providers. Their role
in education and health is well-known, and is in fact increasing. One esti-
mate gives 64 percent of all Kenya’s educational institutions as church-
based.38 Now, crowning the acknowledged contribution in primary and
secondary education, is the opening of Christian universities. In Kenya
there are seven public universities, but they are now outnumbered by
private ones, nearly all Christian. Involvement in health is diversifying
too. The Roman Catholic Church alone had over 700 AIDS projects in
Kenya in 2006. In recent years, too, we have the added phenomenon
of Christian NGOs proliferating in Kenya. These vary from the giants
like World Vision, Catholic Relief Services, and the Lutheran World
Federation, to small, almost private bodies like the Rafiki Trust for edu-
cating poor Kenyans, founded by the Methodists of the London suburb
of Wimbledon. The contribution of the mainstream churches in Kenya
is virtually incalculable, but it is in such development work that their
efforts are concentrated. Also, their leaders sometimes resemble chiefs
protecting the interests of their tribal church, in comparison with which
issues of good governance are rather subsidiary.39 This became very evi-
dent in the run-up to the 2007 general elections, and was the primary
reason why church leaders had so little credibility to provide leadership
in the chaos after the 2007 elections.
Kenya’s countless missionaries likewise are not given to speaking up.
Their position is rather paradoxical. On the one hand, they bring in
enormous resources that enable the churches to function as they do, yet
on the other they are aware of the resentment toward them that they keep
their silence. The resentment stems from a dominant attitude in Kenyan
Christianity, indeed among the Kenyan intelligentsia more widely, that
their plight is caused by the West. This view is pervasive in Kenyan theol-
ogy. Let Mugambi’s Christian Theology illustrate this. Africa has suffered,
after colonialism, from institutionalized racism, and ideological manipu-
lation during the Cold War, and economic strangulation.40 According to
Mugambi the countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation
and Development and the Bretton Woods institutions have deliberately
exploited Africa; globalization is another ploy to dominate Africa,41
and the whole democratization movement is yet another attempt to
keep Africa subservient.42 In fact, everyone and everything Western
seems bent on this, even NGOs and the promoters of Millennium
210 Paul Gifford

Development Goals.43 Western Churches, too, since they now get most
of their funds from their exploitative governments, are an integral part of
this onslaught.44 All these Western institutions are responsible for the
subjugation of Africa; in fact, there are no references to what might be
considered African contributions, apart from one allusion to African
“shortcomings,” which is immediately followed by the qualification:
“even though those shortcomings were the result of policies imposed
on Africa by multilateral and bilateral institutions.”45 Most of Kenya’s
theologians are so convinced that the reason for the plight of the
nation is exploitation on the part of the West that they direct little
attention to Kenya.
The Pentecostal churches, too, with their stress on success, supports
this uncritical attitude to the political elite, because in Kenya real success,
status, and wealth come from politics; Kenya’s politicians are the ultimate
symbols of the success the Pentecostal churches aspire to. Hence, the
political ambitions of Pentecostal pastors like Bishop Margaret Wanjiru
of Jesus is Alive Ministries and Pastor Pius Muiru of Maximum Miracle
Centre, both of whom stood in the 2007 general elections, the former
successfully.
Sociopolitical analysis can be seen as simply irrelevant to the one
thing necessary. Bishop Kitonga and his RGC exemplify this. Kitonga
has always been involved in relief work, especially in Mathari Valley with
help from World Vision and his North American networks, but has little
interest in anything further. We have already mentioned Bishop Kitonga
offering Moi unconditional support. For him, Moi’s depredations were
not important: “There is no country which is better than the other . . .
There is joblessness everywhere. It is only in heaven where there are
no poor people.”46 This continued with Kibaki. When Kibaki visited
Kitonga’s Redeemed Gospel Church, Kitonga attacked Kibaki’s critics:
“Those opposed to your leadership might not even get eternal life.”47
Two of his RGC pastors visiting victims of politically-inspired tribal
clashes, told them the devil was their only adversary: “Don’t even blame
the government for failing to act swiftly to avert the skirmishes if you
want God to be on your side.”48 Wilson Mamboleo, a senior RGC cleric,
can see nothing but “divine direction” in Kenya’s post-independence
history; he now sees signs of “spiritual decay,” but this is attributable
to Muslim and Hindu prayers on public occasions.49 For that mindset,
sociopolitical structures are simply irrelevant.
The African Instituted Churches (AICs) have their own reasons for the
lack of a prophetic dimension. Padwick has argued that the Roho churches
share the same gulf between those with access to the benefits of office
and those without, and patronage and clientelism characterize relations
 Christianity Co-Opted 211

between the two groups. Accountable bureaucratic administration is less

important than personal influence and persuasion. Hence the emphasis
on skills like oratory, cultivation of patron-client relationships, organizing
and motivating supporters, “building a name,” mobilizing clan solidarity,
and displaying loyalty to a leader (evidenced by attendance at major
public functions). Equally influential are postcolonial political models.
The increase in the power of the executive that took place under Kenyatta
and increasingly under Moi, legitimated a form of leadership that became
standard in the Roho churches, with leaders frequently ignoring their own
constitution. The common talk of a “life president” in the 1980s certainly
led many church leaders to think of themselves as leaders until death.
Thus, challenging structures does not come easily to AICs.50
There is another form of Christianity in Kenya, one that sees spiritual
forces at work everywhere. Without doubt Kenyans are confronted with
all sorts of ills: corruption, institutional decay, mass poverty, AIDS, AIDS
orphans and street children, insecurity, ethnic clashes, domestic violence,
carnage on the roads, and rank indiscipline. Confronted with all this, of
course many see Satan unloosed. In the words of a Nation editorial: “Can
they be blamed for seeing the devil abroad when they ponder the ambi-
ence of greed, criminality and amorality which surrounds them?”51 This
conceptualization of evil actually gave rise to a Presidential Commission
of Inquiry into the Cult of Devil Worship in Kenya.52 The church now
most associated with this “spiritual causality” is the Presbyterian Church
of East Africa (PCEA), especially through its Moderator David Githii.
In Githii’s Christianity, the causality is exclusively spiritual.53 Kenya’s
plight no less than the state of the church is caused by spiritual forces.
The country is under satanic control, through symbols and ancestral
covenants. Satan controls the economy (the national crest inscribed with
“harambee” on the banknotes has ensured that the economy has been
handed over to the Indians, because the word is an invocation of the
Hindu goddess, “Ambe”). Satan controls legislators through the symbols
adorning the walls in parliament; the snake makes politicians twist the
truth; the tortoise makes them lazy; the frog makes them croak mean-
inglessly; the crocodile leads them to attack each other; the rhino makes
them sexually promiscuous; witchcraft drawings makes 60–70 percent of
them pursue witchcraft.54 These symbols were put there deliberately by
the colonial authorities (the colonial powers no less than the missionar-
ies were determined to keep Kenya enslaved and prevent development).
Every aspect of national life is affected; even hospitals display the sign of
caduceus, which is satanic and acts to prevent healing. Githii is undoubt-
edly concerned with ills within Kenyan society and seeks to cure them.
He claims Kenyans are poor because “Harambee” is inscribed on their
212 Paul Gifford

currency; by contrast, the United States prospers because Americans have

“In God we Trust” written on theirs.55 It is on this spiritual level that
Githii focuses, not Kenya’s sociopolitical structures.
Even the “spirit-Christianity” that sees lesser spirits as pervasive seems
to divert attention from more mundane causality. I attended the German
evangelist Reinhard Bonnke’s Mathari Valley crusade in March 1991.
Bonnke finds spirits responsible for all ills: cancer, heart disease, ulcers,
skin disease, fevers, lung complaints, paralysis, and countless others. The
fact that this Mathari slum lacked toilets, drains, resources, and education
was never mentioned. The realities of life in this slum were completely
obscured by the persistent attribution of every sickness to spiritual forces.
One of the books on sale at this crusade drew what might be considered
the logical conclusion. After explaining at great length that everything
evil was to be explained by spiritual agency, it concluded: “[Those] who
do not know the cause . . . blame the government and their leaders.” In
other words, no Christian who properly understood spiritual causality
could possibly blame Kenya’s ills on the government. It is quite in keep-
ing with my argument here that the preface to this book was provided by
“Daniel T arap Moi, President of the Republic of Kenya.”56
One other comment can be made about the lack of “prophetic
Christianity” in Kenya. In giving an interview about his missionary tech-
niques, comparing them with North American techniques, Pastor Oscar
Muriu of Nairobi Chapel, one of the biggest of Kenya’s new middle-class
Pentecostal churches, distinguished the American from the African per-
sonality: “Americans are problem solvers . . . The rest of the world, even
Europe, isn’t so intent on solving inconveniences. We tend to live with
our problems.” Another distinguishing mark of the American personal-
ity arises from education. “Your educational system teaches people to
think and to express themselves. So a child who talks and asserts himself
in conversation is actually awarded higher marks than the one who sits
quietly.” He continues: “Those two things that are such great gifts in the
home context become a curse when you go into missions. Americans
come to Africa, and they want to solve Africa. But you can’t solve Africa.
It’s much too complex for that.” When pressed to say how Americans
could communicate with Africans, he continues:
When we communicate in Africa, we are very guarded in what we say. We
don’t want to offend . . . From our perspective, every engagement between
two people always has the potential of leading to a lifelong relationship, or
preventing a lifelong friendship. Africa is a very relational continent. It’s the
relationships that make society work. In the US things work irrespective
of relationships; in fact, if you have a relationship, it can sometimes work
against you. In Africa it’s the opposite. So we are always guarded and gracious
 Christianity Co-Opted 213

in our communication. We want to guard the relationship . . . I cannot

tell you the total truth until I am secure in this relationship with you,
until I know that the truth will not hurt this relationship. You do it differ-
ently. Speaking the truth has a higher premium in your context, so you are
unguarded. You speak the truth, call a spade a spade, at whatever cost. And
if the relationship suffers, well, that’s too bad, the important thing is that the
truth was spoken. We never do that.57

That interview sheds some light here. Africans “live with their prob-
lems,” because “you can’t solve Africa”—engendering what some might
call fatalism. Africans do not express opinions, especially if they might
offend. So things tend to be accepted as they are, and leaders who plun-
der, brutalize, and destroy are often left unchallenged.

Christianity-Induced Impunity
When Kibaki replaced Moi there was some talk of a South African-style
“Truth and Reconciliation Commission” to investigate abuses of the past,
but the elite soon stopped that. Moi, far from being tried at The Hague
for human rights abuses, easily slipped into a new role, using Christianity
to rehabilitate himself as a Christian elder statesman. He continued to
use the harambee; in December 2006 as chief guest at a harambee for
a radio project of the Roman Catholic diocese of Nakuru, Moi gave
600,000 shillings (nearly $10,000) of the 3 million he helped raise.58 He
never missed a chance to flag up his profound Christianity. Dispensing
diplomas at the Africa Inland Church Bible College, he told the Maasai
to be warriors of God: “I myself fully benefited from the missionaries’
work, and I accepted Jesus Christ as my personal savior in 1934.”59 After
a car accident, he was quick to thank God for saving his life: “Now that
I am alive, I will continue serving God.”60 This image is promoted by his
Africa Inland Church. A booklet produced for a service to commemorate
the life of a woman who protected Moi when young comments: “It is
possible that Moi’s subsequent deep spiritual faith owes its origin to that
time.”61 Even Mary Wambui, perhaps Kibaki’s second wife, has claimed:
“God gave Moi the blessings to lead the country for all that time. Some
say he messed up with the economy, but if those close to him messed, the
blame should not be on Moi.”62
He has never missed a chance to urge others to live up to his own
high Christian standards. He told 3,000 delegates at an international
conference that Christ needed “to transform our thinking as Africans.”63
Likewise in an Africa Inland Church, he claimed it was time for politi-
cians to turn to God for help.64 Again, he appealed to parents to bring
up their children in a Christian and responsible way.65 Again, he urged
214 Paul Gifford

faithful to turn to God to have “stronger faith to distinguish between

good and evil.”66 He lamented the decline of morality: “Many Christians
have abandoned the right path and are pursuing wayward lifestyles that
do not please God.”67 He even created his own private Christian univer-
sity in his home town, and continued his Christian rhetoric, as on the
first graduation day: “I established Kabarak University with the intention
to create a private institution where young people could access quality
and holistic university education, an institution that would inspire its
students to adopt a way of life characterized by fear of God, humility,
honesty, hard work, quest for knowledge and high moral and academic
standards.”68 The next year he repeated: “My prayer to our graduands is
that you move into a Christ-centered future, prepared to keep God first
in every sphere of your lives.”69
These professions of and exhortations to godliness seem accepted by
the general population. At one church service he stressed the importance
of the constitution that “ensures the government does not trample on
the rights of the citizens but caters for their interests and property.”70
No-one brought up his own record in relation to the rights, interests,
and property of his fellow citizens. He was even asked to launch the
new Africa Bible Commentary, where he took the opportunity to cel-
ebrate Africa’s faith and spiritual dynamism, citing the continent’s fast-
growing churches to show that Africans believed people mattered more
than material wealth: “We believe things are made for the benefit of
people and not vice-versa. When Jesus said the Sabbath was made
for man and not man for the Sabbath, he was speaking as an African.”71
No one suggested that if he and his sons had plundered $1,500,000,000
of the nation’s resources, it was rather inappropriate to claim that people
mattered more than wealth.72 He, at the very least a close associate of
the architects of ethnic cleansing, could tell Kenyans to shun tribalism:
“Let us be like Christ who loved everyone while he was on earth regard-
less of race or creed.”73 When he declared his support for Kibaki in the
2007 elections, he gave the reason that “I am a Christian and believe in
peace . . . (I am not angry with anyone because) I am a Christian and
love is blind.”74 The collective amnesia reached its peak when Kibaki
appointed Moi as special envoy of peace to the war-torn Sudan. Only
ex-dissident Koigi wa Wamwere publicly questioned the appropriateness
of appointing a beneficiary of intra-ethnic violence as a peace envoy and
drew fire for his remarks.75
Many other controversial politicians similarly use Christian rhetoric
to their advantage. George Saitoti, the Vice-President and Minister of
Finance at the time of the Goldenberg scam, when finally declared by
the courts unprosecutable for the offense, stated: “It is indeed the hand of
 Christianity Co-Opted 215

God that has guided the judges through those proceedings to make this
verdict . . . I wish to firmly thank the Almighty God for giving the judges
wisdom.” Shortly afterwards, Saitoti gave thanks at a Presbyterian church
in his constituency, proclaiming: “O God I worship you because you have
saved me, and because you did not leave my enemies to finish me.”76
A cabinet minister implicated in, and forced to resign over, the
Anglo-Leasing scandal, began his eight-page defense with Ecclesiastes
9:12: “Like a fish in a cruel net, like birds in a snare, so the sons of
men are snared in an evil time when it falls suddenly upon them.”77
When after nine months he returned to the cabinet, religious leaders
from his Meru area staged an interdenominational service in a stadium
to celebrate his return, and to pray for a similar return for the other
minister to lose his job over Anglo-Leasing; the religious leaders present
urged them both to forgive those who “unjustly” condemned them and
prayed that the minister still out in the cold would soon be reinstated
to his “rightful place” (who somewhat spoiled it by condemning the
whistle-blower who exposed the scam as a liar “who cannot be forgiven
by anyone on earth”).78
William Ruto, another serious 2007 presidential hopeful always pres-
ents himself as a devout Christian, one of the Fathers of Milimani Africa
Inland Church, close friend of the Africa Inland Church bishop, Silas
Yego, and a pillar of the Nairobi Pentecostal branch church in the elite
suburb of Karen. He attributes it all to a father “up there” who made him
the figure he is, both materially and politically. However, the Ndungu
report into land grabbing lists him as one of those who came into wealth
and power through illegitimate land-grabbing under Moi.79

Conclusion
Prominent churchmen in the early 1990s led the struggle for political lib-
eralization, and the churches won considerable moral authority from this
involvement, as several articles in this volume show. Even then, though,
the protagonists of multiparty politics did not represent all branches of
Kenya’s Christianity. Since then, the mainstream churches have tended
to involve themselves in development rather than continue their chal-
lenge to the political system. This concentration of focus has facilitated
their co-option by politicians, and they have frequently been viewed as
succumbing to the ethnic power-plays that characterize Kenya in general.
This became obvious in the November 2005 referendum for Kibaki’s
proposed new constitution; the proposed constitution was rejected by
every province except Kibaki’s Central Province heartland, with ethnic
considerations preventing any united Christian voice. Between the
216 Paul Gifford

referendum and the December 2007 general elections, co-option of

churches by political factions continued apace. The elections took place
peacefully, but gross anomalies were evident in announcing the results,
and after Kibaki was declared the winner, the opposition began mass
protests that swiftly escalated into destruction, displacement, and death
(in the next two months, over 1000 dead, and 300,000 displaced). The
response of church bodies was delayed and halting. As the violence took
hold, however, all came to issue statements advocating reconciliation.80
Some churchmen offered themselves as mediators and clearly expected to
perform such a role. As international mediators like Desmond Tutu and
Kofi Annan flew in, some veterans like Gitari and Njoya lamented that
Kenya no longer had locals who could play the role they themselves had
played in the early 1990s.81
Kenya’s public intellectuals, on media talk-backs, in newspaper articles,
in letters to the editor, roundly condemned religious leaders for their
complicity in the social fragmentation, and made it clear that the churches
had forfeited their authority to perform any such function. Editorials
appeared with titles like “When the Shepherds led their Flock astray,” and
“Church embedded [i.e., partisan] long before Elections.”82 Many com-
mentators included church authorities among the nation’s failed institu-
tions generally, but other contributions singled them out specifically.83 A
cartoon actually showed John Cardinal Njue in the confessional, confess-
ing to Wanjiku (the cartoonists’ common woman): “Forgive me, Wanjiku,
for I took sides during the last elections” (and the cartoon showed media
and business and other faith leaders lining up to confess in their turn).84
Attempts on the part of church bodies to assume some role in the escalat-
ing chaos were frequently given short shrift; another newspaper editorial
stated: “The Church’s current attempt to reinvent itself is part of a danger-
ous trend where leaders and institutions fail to read the signs or to accept
that their time is up, because citizens have lost faith in them.”85 The com-
mon perception that the churches had allowed themselves to be co-opted
foreclosed any role like that of the early 1990s.

NOTES
1. Service covered in Kenya Times 3 February 1992:1.
2. Kenya Times 24 February 1992:1.
3. Nation 24 February 1992:1.
4. Standard 24 February 1992:1.
5. Kenya Times 29 June 1991:1. Obedience and respect constitute almost a
refrain in the RGC. Thus Josephine Kitonga preaches: “The Bible tells us
we must give our masters full respect, so the name of God and teaching of
God may not be slandered by those who know us. I’ve seen in the Christian
 Christianity Co-Opted 217

world today there is that feeling of equality . . . We don’t respect . . . In the

nation today you can hear a little man talking evil against the Head of
State, with no respect whatsoever” (“Grace Hour” 24 March 2006; the
same theme Kenya Times 9 June 2006).
6. Nation 18 February 1992:1.
7. Standard 2 December 1990:1; Kenya Times 2 December 1990:1. His
Vice-President Saitoti likewise worked the harambees, donating 193,000
shillings (out of 1.9 million raised) at a Methodist church in Meru
(Nation 25 July 1994:1).
8. Nation 10 February 1992:26. Illustrating the same thinking, Bishop
Bonifes Adoyo of the Nairobi Pentecostal Church was clear that those
who had “joined the bandwagon of economic and political freedoms”
played into the hands of the devil worshipers, so those pushing for politi-
cal reform were linked to Satan (Observer 8 Oct 1996:22).
9. Standard 30 March 1992:4; for Moi’s buying independent churches, see
Gideon Githiga 2001:134.
10. The Potter’s House is a denomination founded by Wayman Mitchell of
Prescott, Arizona.
11. Nation 2 July 1991:3.
12. Kenya Times 1 December 1990:2.
13. Referred to in Target 15–31 January 1993:4.
14. Nation 1 April 1993:26.
15. A scheme whereby a Goldenberg company was granted a monopoly to
export diamonds and gold, with a huge government subsidy. It appears
no gold or diamonds were exported, but the sums paid out in the period
1991–1993 to Goldenberg and other beneficiaries were so huge that
they almost wrecked the economy.
16. Financial Times 24 March 1993:6.
17. Standard 30 July 2007:4.
18. Nation 4 April 2007:14. The churches were major beneficiaries of “land
grabbing” during the Moi years. The Ndungu Report recommended that
all such land be returned. The Anglicans expressed willingness to com-
ply, but the Catholics claimed that all land given is still public land, for
colleges and hospitals serving the public, so refused (Standard 13 March
2006:5; Standard 9 April 2006:2).
19. “The inescapable conclusion is that apart from being conduits for legally
passing on public funds to a select few, all the commissions are not
intended to achieve anything” (Nation editorial, 3 August 2006:8).
20. Nation 8 January 2006:7; Nation 10 January 2007:3–6.
21. Nation 30 April 2006:2.
22. Nation 23 Oct 2006:7; Nation 26 March 2007:7; Standard 10 April
2006:4; Nation 6 August 2007:44; Nation 31 August 2007:4.
23. Nation 18 June 2006:13.
24. Nation 3 Sept 2007:6.
25. Standard 3 April 2006:5.
26. Standard 24 April 2006:9.
218 Paul Gifford

27. Nation 2 April 2007:7.

28. Nation 29 July 2007:52; Standard 29 July 2007:3.
29. Standard 2 Oct 2006:5; Standard 5 Oct 2006:5; Nation 21 August
2006:6.
30. Standard 9 June 2007:6.
31. “If my people called by my name will humble themselves and turn from
their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin
and will heal their land.” This is a common text in all sectors of Kenyan
Christianity, except Catholicism and Anglicanism. It was used at the Fourth
National Parliamentary Prayer Breakfast (27 May 2006); Presbyterian
Moderator Githii used it in his address to the Eighteenth General Assembly
of the PCEA, and three times in his Exposing and Conquering Satanic Forces
over Kenya, Nairobi; the author 2007:51, 71f; see also retired Moderator
George Wanjau, Missioner 6 2005:6; Lucy Muiru (see Maximum Miracle
Times, February 2007:27f); Prophetess Joyce Mugambi in her “Prophecy
for Kenya” (Nation 30 April 2007:28f). The text can be understood in
different ways, but almost invariably it seems to be understood to mean
that Kenya’s woes are the people’s fault, not the leaders’. Thus, Wilfred
Lai of Mombasa’s Jesus Celebration Centre says: “Listen and don’t ever
forget this: the healing of this land will not come from politicians. The
healing will come from the Lord.” Citing this text, he “rebuked believers
for pointing accusing fingers to politicians for the things that go wrong in
the nation” (Revival Springs, Oct 2005:7; he also uses the text in Revival
Springs, November 2005:20 and in God’s Army, October 2005:7).
32. Few “new” pastors were involved at all, with the possible exception of
Mark Kariuki of the Deliverance Church, who gave the final prayer.
It may be that as they had proved instrumental in the rejection at the
referendum of Kibaki’s constitution, he ignored them to fall back on
his faithful mainstream leaders, who had “firmly put their lot with the
Government” (Nation 23 April 2006:9).
33. See, for example, Nation 24 April 2006:8; Standard 21 April 2006:12;
Standard 21 April 2006:13; Standard 24 April 2006:13.
34. Standard 22 April 2006:2.
35. Standard 24 April 2006:4. Moi also noted he had forgiven those who “dis-
honored” him when he handed over power (Standard 23 April 2006:32).
36. Nation 26 April 2006:10; Standard 26 April 2006:14.
37. Nation 22 April 2006:8. Another such prayer meeting took place in
Nakuru in June 2007, at a time when insecurity reached its peak, when
Christians wearing sackcloth spent a weekend imploring God’s forgive-
ness, addressed by politicians, civil servants, and pastors. The theme was
Hosea 6:1: “Come let us return to the Lord for He has torn us, that He
may heal us. He has struck us down and He will bind us up” (Nation 7
June 2007:3). The Second National Prayer Day took place in September
2007, with Kibaki taking the opportunity both to thank God and to
outline his government’s achievements (Nation 9 Sept 2007:14f ).
38. National Mirror, July 2006:10.
 Christianity Co-Opted 219

39. Thus, the leaders of the Africa Inland Church during the Moi years. The
former Methodist leader, Lawi Imathiu, in 2006 led a delegation to get
two cabinet ministers, who had lost their jobs over a scam called Anglo-
Leasing (similar in kind to Goldenberg, in which money is paid out for
nonexistent services), reinstated. He claimed that the Meru people felt
slighted, and that they would be totally forgotten if the two were not
reinstated or replaced with any two other MPs from the region (Standard
18 June 2006:10). In other words, issues of corruption were simply
immaterial when compared with ethnic interests narrowly conceived. For
the tribal nature of individual Anglican bishops, see Githiga 2001:152.
40. Mugambi 2003a:27, 28, 29, 37, 54, 163.
41. Mugambi 2003a:127, 145.
42. Mugambi 2003a:163f.
43. Mugambi 2003a:193; also 2004:28, see also 24–28; 1995:164; and
2006:5–8.
44. Mugambi 2003a:160, 181, 193, 195, 197ff; also Mugambi 2003b:141.
See also Mugambi 2004:28.
45. Mugambi 2003a:216; there is one other passage where the Western
responsibility has the qualifier “largely” (Mugambi 2003a:79). Mugambi
distinguishes between liberation and reconstruction theology in that
the former tries to find blame, whereas the latter does not (Mugambi
2003a:48, 74, 176). However, his own theology lays the blame for
Africa’s situation insistently on the West.
46. Nation 24 February 1992:1.
47. Nation 30 Oct 2006:3.
48. End Time Christian News, Oct 2005:12.
49. End Time Christian News, Nov 2005:6.
50. Padwick 2003:232f. Maurice Onyango (1997:10–11) makes the addi-
tional points that, if before they had been characterized by resistance
to colonialism, after independence African Instituted Churches tended
to regard politicians as their own people; also, since their chief concern
was to relate their Christian faith to their own traditions, they tended to
neglect issues of modernization.
51. Nation 22 July 1994:6.
52. Government of Kenya nd. The report was never published, though
copies have become available through unofficial sources.
53. Githii 2008. See also 2006.
54. One commentator praises Githii’s raising the “archaic, dangerous,
harmful and retrogressive beliefs” of witchcraft, without realizing that
at least from one perspective, Githii’s spiritual causality is perpetuating
that mindset (Ngovi Kitau, “The Belief in Witchcraft widespread in
Continent,” Standard 25 Sept 2006:13).
55. Nation 10 April 2006:3, and Githii 2006.
56. Mamboleo 1991:22.
57. “The African Planter; an Interview with Oscar Muriu,” Leadership
Journal, Spring 2007.
220 Paul Gifford

58. National Mirror December 2006:1.

59. Nation 23 July 2006:4.
60. Standard 28 August 2006:5.
61. Standard 28 December 2005:8.
62. Standard 28 April 2007:3.
63. Nation 30 December 2006:2.
64. Standard 12 December 2005:4.
65. Standard 4 June 2007:3.
66. Standard 25 May 2006:3.
67. Standard 5 August 2007:3.
68. Standard 22 December 2005:3.
69. Standard 17 Nov 2006, supplement.
70. Standard 3 April 2006:5.
71. Standard 6 July 2006:10.
72. A leaked report by Kroll Associates, a forensic investigation firm, has
claimed that Moi, two of his sons and two acquaintances had plundered
Kenya to the tune of $2 billion. See Guardian 31 August 207:1; Nation
1 Sept 2007:1.
73. Standard 7 April:2007:3. For another example of his deploring the
advent of tribalism, see Nation 26 August 2007:44.
74. Standard 29 August 2007:4; Nation 29 August 2007:1.
75. Standard 29 July 2007:2.
76. Also Psalm 23, saying he always believed that he would be vindicated one
day (Standard 1 August 2006:1); Standard 14 August 2006:2; Nation 14
August 2006:1.
77. Nation 15 February 2006:6.
78. Standard 11 December 2006:9.
79. Government of Kenya 2004; Nation 11 May 2007:11; Nation 15 August
2007:11; “Herdsboy from Kamagut who Rose to Fame,” Standard 12
August 2007:22f.
80. Some of these revealed a partisan stance: the Anglican bishops of Nyanza
produced a statement very close to the position of the ODM (Standard
9 January 2008:11).
81. Standard 24 February 2008:15; Standard 20 February 2008:5; Standard
27 January 2008:24f.
82. Nation 15 February 2008:10, Standard 15 February 2008:12. The for-
mer concluded: “The religious leaders (have turned) a blind eye to evil,
and by so doing, they have lost the moral ground to preach about God’s
Kingdom. It is encouraging that NCCK, and hopefully, all other reli-
gious groups, now appreciate this and are seeking forgiveness for leading
the sheep astray.”
83. See, for example, Erick Wamanji, “Ethnicity in the Church comes of
Age,” Standard 27 February 2008:1 & 5 supplement; Dennis Onyango,
“Church’s worrying Slide to Silence,” Standard 27 January 2008:24f;
Henry Makori, “Is the Catholic Leadership facing a Credibility Crisis?”
Nation 12 March 2008:10; Elias Mokua Nyatete, “Political Bishops
 Christianity Co-Opted 221

betraying the People,” Standard 23 January 2008:7; Edwin K. Too, “To

resolve the Crisis the Church must tell the Truth,” Standard 25 January
2008: 13; Evelyne Ogutu, “Kenyan ‘Prophets’ who won no Respect,”
Standard 5 March 2008:6; Okech Kendo, “Clerics are caught in a
Partisan Time Warp,” Standard 27 March 2008:6.
84. Nation 20 February 2008:10. Njue had even been publicly denounced
for “supporting Kibaki” by priests in the ODM heartland (Nation 4
February 2008:7).
85. Standard 23 February 2008:6.
This page intentionally left blank
Chapter 9

Muingiki Madness
Ben Knighton

David Gitari and the generality of the mainstream Protestant churches

in Kenya hold modernist assumptions and ideals. They see the future
in terms of strengthening modern institutions, including of course
the church that the missionaries had overwhelmingly presented to
the Kenyans as a modern alternative, one associated with Western
education, modern medicine, bureaucratic work practices, democratic
citizenship, and generous roles in worldview and practice for con-
temporary science and technology. Combined with the conservative
Gikuyu achievement-oriented and accumulative work ethic, it is easy
for this position to become thoroughly middle-class. Indeed in the rural
areas, though the bonds of sub-clan and extended family still persist, if
atrophied, there is little provision in either society or church for those
who do not fit in the social structure built around the central axis of
kin and land, mbari and githaka. However densely populated the ridges
are, there is no land, no property, no permanent home for those who
do not have a place with their kin. All they can do, assuming they have
not the capital to buy property from the minority who will sell, is to
rent a concrete walled room in a town or move to Nairobi or the large
commercial centers.
Gitari’s social conscience is alive to the needs of his culture, and
so fulminates to effect against land-grabbing and would have local
government allocate its unoccupied land to squatters and the landless.
Yet, he works with the dominant social structure rather than trying
to overturn it to provide for the poor. He has even succumbed to the
utility of encouraging the young to go to the West and find employ-
ment there so that they can make remittances back to their family in
Kenya, rather than for sons and brothers to stay at home and fight
224 Ben Knighton

over diminishing plots for agriculture. He would like to see industry

and commerce thrive within the law to provide more employment and
thus improve the infrastructure to enable growth as well as personal
opportunity and mobility. Not to be so oriented, to baulk at Western
education as the means to progress, is for many church people to be
backward, primitive, and several other such terms that Gitari would
not himself use.

The Issue: Categorizing a Dissident Group

Modern progress has been Gitari’s social goal, and for many respectable
Gikuyu as well, Muingiki is a madness best avoided and not spoken
about. Muingiki (or the Anglicized “Mungiki” used in the media) is
a militant politico-religious movement that has grown from 5,000
members in 1998 to between 500,000 and 2,000,000 in 2008. Muingi
in Gikuyu means the masses, the public as a whole, and ki means,
ambiguously, brimful or hush, complete silence, both these involving
the complete solidarity of membership and suggesting a socio-religious
force with an undeniable political potency. It is a secret association
attempting to co-opt the Gikuyu as a whole to attend to the values and
interests of its members, who are mostly marginalized males under 30
years of age.
As Archbishop, Gitari simply “dismissed the Mungiki threat, saying
his church would not want to engage in petty politics with a violent
and unregistered group” (“Religious Bodies trade Accusations over
Devil-Worship” Panafrican News Agency 3 October 2000). He is all
too aware that modernity has been inadequately realized, and he puts
this down in a well-worked Gikuyu way to the selfish corruption and
nepotism of those who have temporal power. If people made good
use of their time, were prudent and generous, and were indubitably
Christian in faith, then progress would be achieved. Economic growth
of over 6 percent a year under President Kibaki’s first term has given
a glimpse of at least the economic aspect of that vision, and tantaliz-
ingly, much more could be realized with just marginal reductions in
public corruption.
The fact is that the wide-bottomed bell distribution of Kenyan demo-
graphics,1 which pours out ever more youth on to a fragile labor mar-
ket that typically does not value or invest in skills, means that modern
progress has failed to deliver its promises to many.2 Worse than that,
it is felt that ethnic identity and solidarity have been prostituted
in the process. In colonial times, Nairobi, as the urban creation of
the Europeans, was seen to be somewhat beyond the pale of moral
 Muingiki Madness 225

economy, the home of vagrancy and women who could dubiously

find a way to economic and social independence (White 1990).
Presently, Nairobi is an obvious economic necessity for the landed
and landless to achieve accumulation. Therefore, masses both live
there and commute to work there, at least for many years. It is the
pursuit of the West and of the occidental that is seen by the losers in
a world of socioeconomic development as morally destructive of the
social and agrarian bonds that they idealize, because they have been
denied them. The marginalized do not see the vision of progress, for
there are many of each generation who have tried climbing the lad-
der of schooling or labor to success and it has failed them (Kagwanja
2005:106).
To have to admit that what is local is bad is to overturn the axis
between kin and land, and as yet there are too few to take this step into a
detribalized proletariat. If the route to augmented social status is blocked,
it is preferable to be poor with dignity and purpose than without them.
This is why the turn away from a gospel of social progress, or of magical
personal wealth accumulation of personal wealth, is not merely a mate-
rial reaction here but also a spiritual one. Just as pragmatic Gikuyu of
colonial times mediated their social and political changes through their
church adherences (Lonsdale 1999), so it needs to be asked whether a
comparable situation is not occurring now. This is not just an academic
question, for the churches themselves—as potent actors in society—need
to address it if they are to embrace and minister to the poor for whom
bourgeois and transnational dreams have no real place.
Dr Grace Wamue was commissioned by the National Council
of Churches of Kenya (NCCK) to research Muingiki. When it was
discovered that her research led her, despite being a highly educated
middle-class professional herself, so far from their allegiance to the
mainstream Gikuyu churches as to appreciate some of the movement’s
efforts, she fell out of their favor (Wamue 2001b). The NCCK initially
promoted her report in 2002, “Mungiki Movement in Kenya: Religio-
political analyses,” which commended its conservative Gikuyu values of
self-reliance, hard work, and independence (as in Wamue 2001a:466),
but this coming less than four months after the formal banning of the
movement was too much for the media and the churches (Mathangani,
Patrick “Church Report Praises Some Mungiki Ideas” Nation 29 July
2002; Ayieko, Francis “Americans got it All Wrong on Mungiki”
Nation 28 December 2003). Although church leaders over the years
have frequently ministered, and given platforms, to professional
politicians of varying repute, Muingiki appear to have had a leprous
uncleanliness for the mainstream churches. Despite a common resort
226 Ben Knighton

to prayer, both their social premises and religious beliefs are headed in
opposite directions.
It is easy for the social scientist or historian to see only the materialism
and opportunism in Muingiki, but given their persistence and growth
over a decade, the question now has to be asked whether the secular
approach is sufficient to understand them. David Anderson (2002)
and Peter Kagwanja (2003), a Kenyan working in South Africa, like to
categorize them as urban vigilantes and racketeers. However, Kagwanja
(2005:106) sees a constructive side: “The road to democracy in the
future lies in strengthening the social movements of the youth and a
break with the prevailing powerlessness and marginality of the youth
in politics.” Listening to his Kenyan contacts Kagwanja prefers to see
Muingiki benignly as a potential source of youth mobilization, but this is
still set in a standard politico-socio-economic framework. Grace Wamue
(2001a; 2001b), a Christian Gikuyu, researches them as a religion, so
zeroes in on their sacred places, rituals, and leaders. As often in Africa,
and hence the need for this volume, the key is to see how religion and
politics intertwine. Africans may often claim that all human issues must
be approached as a whole, but this leads to dogmatic and unsubstanti-
ated assertions that hardly look as though they will stand up in the
complexity of life.
It must be acknowledged that it is only when there are differ-
ent religions to compare, or religious-secular polarity,3 that religion
becomes a necessary concept to distinguish. In the traditional soci-
ety imagined by those never fully enculturated into them by dint of
their very education, all aspects of culture formed a seamless whole.
A holistic approach is more suitable than a compartmental one, yet
it is more constructive to differentiate the various aspects of culture
to appreciate the particular concatenation of factors, pressures, and
motivations at play. To dismiss the economic motive as the religious
one is an equally one-eyed product of the Kantian university, but to
assume that they are motives of identical or indistinguishable nature
is a categorical error.
It is true that Kenyans have questioned Muingiki as a religion in the
media. Like the church, the media’s starting-point for viewing Muingiki
is its “madness,” for spurning the decencies and sophistications of moder-
nity and progress. It was, in short, defined as a “craze” (“Police Lethargy
and the Mungiki Craze” Nation 29 October 2000).
Thus it is possible to say that no sane Kenyan can sympathize with
or admire the Mungiki cult, given that many of its activities are so
unhealthy.
 Muingiki Madness 227

Okay, so members of the Mungiki movement were arrested as they

invaded a police station to release colleagues. Such derring-do can only
be described as lunatic, given that the perpetrators are familiar with our
policemen’s gun-happiness . . .
Between the Mungiki men who raided the police station and the
prison warders who raided the hospital, who is more mentally deranged?
You would say that their degree of madness is the same. Both are
gung-ho.
(Ochieng, Philip “Mungiki and Police: Who is more Insane?” Nation 24
April 2000)

The nation is dying and our youths contracting a madness we must cure.
What person who is not mad or thoroughly dehumanised will behead and
skin the head of another or kill an innocent citizen he is paid to protect?
(Wamwere, Koigi wa “Mungiki Deaths: The Hard Questions” Nation 1
July 2007)

For the state-persecuted Koigi wa Wamwere to label a dissident Gikuyu

movement as “madness” is serious business (Wamwere 1997).

Methodology
Between 23 September 1999 and 3 July 2008 I have collected 585 media
articles referring to Muingiki, 262 of the 459 pages (57 percent) being
published in the last two years of that period. The Anglicized term,
“Mungiki,” was named 2,646 times, a mean of 4.5 times an article.
Despite the anathema and the repetitious police crackdowns, Muingiki
had increasingly engaged the attention of the media, both because of
government attempts to suppress it and because of Muingiki’s capacity
not only to survive these but to bounce back, thus making it an ever-pres-
ent factor in those parts of the country on which the media report more
frequently. About 100 media organizations report out of Nairobi (World
Association of Newspapers 2007:424). Reports were chosen because they
mentioned Muingiki and added information to the existing stock.
In 2003 the Daily Nation had a daily circulation of 184,000 as against
the second most popular newspaper, the East African Standard,4 with
54,000 (Obonyo 2003). Both publish subsidiary print-media and interests
in television and radio. In 2008 the Daily Nation’s daily circulation had
extended to a range of about 180,000 to 230,000 and the Sunday Nation’s
to as much as 250,000, with most literate Kenyans only being able to gain
access to a newspaper once a week. More advertising expenditure went the
228 Ben Knighton

way of newspapers than any other sector of the media at least until 2000,
demonstrating an unusual prominence of print-media (World Association
of Newspapers 2001). Moreover, 75 percent of people surveyed consid-
ered newspapers as a source of credible information (World Association of
Newspapers 2001), though I am told that Kenyans are now treating radio
as their main source,5 which is a tribute to the penetration of new FM and
radio channels broadcast in their mother tongues.
The Nation claims that its total readership is now about 7.6 million,
rising from 3 million in 1999 (World Association of Newspapers 2001),
and that 90 percent of all newspaper readers in Kenya read the Nation.6
The Nation Media Group had 62 percent of the print-media market to
the Standard’s 25 percent (Nairobist 2008), but its 2006 survey claimed
a greater dominance in the daily market.
The Nation was the source of 75.73 percent of my selected reports,
which very slightly exaggerates its claimed share of the market for national
newspapers. There are two main reasons for depending to this extent
on The Nation. First, no media institution has lent Muingiki so much
attention, or sent so many reporters to investigate it; I have counted
90 different reporters and commentators who have had copy published
as well as 32 reports written by a “Nation Team.” A disproportionate
38.9 percent of those cited had Gikuyu names, when the proportion of
Gikuyu in the Kenyan population is put at not more than 22 percent
(Yin & Kent 2008). Journalists would communicate better when talking
to uneducated Muingiki in their mother tongue, though that is hardly a
strong feature in any of the reporting, but the involvement of non-Gikuyu
would at once temper ethnic solidarity with the subjects. Second, the
Nation is the newspaper of choice in Central Kenya, even when the oth-
ers are freely available. Hiding the fact that it was founded by two British
newsmen in 1959, it benefits from the Standard being associated with
the colonial government, and latterly a business group associated with
former President Moi. A single copy of the Nation will be read by several.
None of the media sources, though perhaps a few of the reporters or

Table 9.1 Market share of Kenyan national newspapers

Daily title Percentage Sunday title Percentage
Daily Nation 74.2 Sunday Nation 74.6
Standard 23.4 Sunday Standard 23.4
People Daily 1.6 People on Sunday 1.6
Kenya Times 0.8 Sunday Times 0.4
Total 100 Total 100

Source: Adapted from: Nation Media Group cited by World Association of Newspapers 2007:424
 Muingiki Madness 229

commentators, have reason to be sympathetic to the movement because

of the civilized-primitive polarity that will continue to become apparent.
No reporter can communicate the movement’s rituals from the inside,
but instead the universal media interest in allegations of crime and
violence. Therefore their external views will be balanced by an insider’s
experience of an initiand taking the movement’s secret oath. In this
way, politics and religion are counterbalanced. The media are of course
never entirely neutral intermediaries, for their staff hold on to their own
enculturations, educations, positions, and interests; moreover they write
for an ownership and a readership. Media discourses have to be analysed
carefully, for all that is in popular daily print is not the unvarnished,
multifaceted truth. In fact, what was said about racial stereotypes in the
Sun may fit like a glove for a very different subject here.

Its narrative structure privileges and silences certain “voices” in the narra-
tive, and uses what these voices say to support its key thematic template.
The discourse of the story is schismatically organised around this tem-
plate, which deals in long-established binary conceptions of civilisation
and primitiveness.
(Pickering 2008:363)

There are East Africans too who like to oppose “civilization and primi-
tiveness,” if from unlikely quarters, like former Member of Parliament
(MP) Shem Ochuodho (Khisa, Nancy “A-G Orders Arrest of Mungiki
Followers” Standard 22 August 2002), and now such terms are more
often used in oral discourse than in the politically correct West.7 Terms
like “primitive Mungiki thugs” go down well (Abdulatif, Yusuf “Eternal
vigilance is the only way to beat agents of terror” Nation 24 May 2007),
indicating their “primitive, barbaric and heinous activities” (“Fury at
Attacks against Women” Nation 24 October 2000). This is mainly
because of its stance against modernity and the churches, against schools
and Western progress. The general bias of the media must always be
taken into account when interpreting its reports.

Origins, Beliefs, and Evil

Understanding the origins of Muingiki is a minority pursuit, evidenced
by the continual Anglicization of the very name, yet its beginning is
understood as having originally contributed to its power. Thus, there
were posters on a Mau Mau march stating, “Mungikis are real daughters
and sons of Mau Mau” (Kadida, Jillo. “Police Arrest Rowdy Members of
Banned Sect” Nation 5 October 2003).
230 Ben Knighton

We had even been “adopted” by former Mau Mau fighters who had seen
in us a bit of themselves,” he recalls. “they started coaching us, instilling
in us the ideals that they stood for, and slowly by slowly, we became even
more defiant.
(“We Lost Control of the Group, Ndura says” Nation 15 May 2005)

It is typical, however, that contemporary politics is seen as having a

greater causative effect than historical factors. Though for radicals, Mau
Mau has all the appeal of the anticolonial freedom fighter, there remains,
as in early independent politics, great hesitancy about lauding Mau Mau,
tainted as it still is with primitive images of shedding of blood. Ngonya
wa Gakonya’s Tent of the Living God was a small politico-religious move-
ment with which Muingiki became entwined in the 1990s and so should
be included in any account of its early history (“Mungiki: Tracing the
roots of a mysterious sect” Nation 19 February 2006). However, as one
of Kenya’s major political parties in power, the Kenya African National
Union (KANU) has been more reported in terms of day-to-day political
interaction with Muingiki.
Religion is a term that has long had very positive associations for
Kenyans, both as regards their African heritage and as progressive
Christians, but the high valuation of religion means that the media can
be loath to ascribe it to Muingiki, however much they see them pray.
Even the churches recognize Muingiki as a religion when exercised by
Islam, “Some of the placards read: ‘No religion is above others, why
Muslim and not Mungiki’” (Nation 9 March 2004). As Kenyan profes-
sionals, media personnel tend to belong to urban churches, or mosques
for a small minority. A word that carries a strong flavor of religion, but in
a pejorative sense, is one that fits the bill. By far the most common cat-
egorization of Muingiki is as a “sect” to the extent that the movement has
become the prime example of one to Kenyans. Muingiki are not regarded
as a political party, or even as a political movement, however hungry
they might be for involvement; rather they are portrayed by the media
as a disreputable religion. However even this signifies a more substantial
entity than their more newsworthy attributes might imply. As such, it is
a religion comparable to others. Referring to the Shorter Oxford English
Dictionary, “sect” is primarily religious (Onions 1983), and is wholly so
following the typologies of Ernst Troeltsch and Max Weber, as English
thought has done so. First and last, “religion” is defined as the obligation
of an oath, while a belief system is not mentioned, only a system of faith
and worship, which involves cultic ritual rather than creed.
Traditional religions and New Religious Movements are known
for not articulating doctrinal systems, as these are a feature of world
 Muingiki Madness 231

religions when depending on scripture and literacy (Sutherland,

Houlden, Clarke, & Hardy 1988; Knighton 2005a). Even in mod-
ern Christian religion, doctrine may not be emphasized above all.
The widely followed systematic theologian, Friedrich Schleiermacher,
emphasized in The Christian Faith (1928) the primacy and centrality
of a feeling of dependence, not a belief system. In regard to African
religion, even the word belief has been deconstructed as a Western term
with a Christian history (Ruel 1997; James 1998; 2000). African reli-
gions in particular and religion in general then should not be expected
to be primarily characterized by belief systems. Despite the attempts
of David Anderson to trounce Grace Wamue (the select media reports
mention both their names four times) with a materialist representation
of Muingiki, it is freely granted by Kenyans that Muingiki have beliefs,
there being no dispute on this score.

Waruinge is not new to contradiction, spiritual or otherwise. He persis-

tently fought the state, for example, but he is also the same man who has
numerously said that Cabinet ministers, civil servants and police officers
subscribe to the doctrine of his sect.
(Namwaya, Otsieno “Mungiki Sect Leader Sees the Light” Standard 29
March 2003)

Of course this report is based in Muingiki self-representation, yet the report-

ers are not skeptical, even if they would not dignify them with the term
“doctrine.” A police raid captured “literature on the sect’s beliefs and items
used in oathing’ (“Police Arrest Mungiki Sect Leaders” Standard 16 April
2004). Whenever government is not courting Muingiki, they ask church
and media to denounce it because of the nature of their beliefs, not because
they had none. When Muingiki leaders sought tactical support from Islam,

Joseph Kamotho renewed calls for the Church to help counter Mungiki . . .
The Local Government minister added: “The time has come for the Church
to condemn the practices of the sect which has been promoting outdated
cultural beliefs.”
(“Exposed, Terror Gang of Kayol” Nation 25 October 2000)

Yet plural religious belonging has been a feature of African practice

since the beginning of modern Christian mission, however contradic-
tory. If the back-to-the-roots creed seeks traditional authority, no-one
should be surprised if it is anti-modern in tone:

The quarrel they say they have with modern society is, well, about just
that: modernity, westernisation, ‘‘aping foreign ways’’ which can be quite
232 Ben Knighton

an elastic term. They like to advocate a retreat back to traditional lifestyle,

traditional beliefs, traditional ways of doing things.
(“Police Lethargy and the Mungiki Craze” Nation 29 October 2000)

The discomfort felt by the educated is that Muingiki is not good reli-
gion, at best it is “backward,” at worst “Satanic” or “devilish.” Simply
because a religion and its adherents have political, military, or criminal
expressions or consequences does not in itself disqualify it as a reli-
gion. The religious motives of the Spanish Inquisition, Assassins, sati,
and Thuggee are taken for granted, even when their taking of life is
condemned. Many a murderer has had a Christian name, or even con-
fession. “Bad” religion should not be confused with irreligion when
it appears as a rival, as Muingiki certainly is for the hearts and minds
of the mass of Gikuyu youth when they construct placards saying,
“Mungiki Most High, Enemies of the Wicked” (Orlale, Odhiambo
“Police Disperse, Arrest ‘Mungiki’ Members,” Nation 12 September
2004). Unlike the mainstream and Pentecostal churches’ commitment
to modernity, Western education, and development, the Muingiki
believe strongly that these have let them down badly, so should be
opposed. This dichotomy means that most Christians find what the
Muingiki stand for deeply threatening to their own values, so tend to
demonize it.

VigilanteS, Gangs, Extortion, and Crime?

“Vigilantes” has certainly caught on as a concept, one often encountered
in Africa and so-called “weak states” that cannot enforce a monopoly
of violence. Sen and Pratten (2007:12–19) are correct in noting that
vigilantism is a function not merely of the fragmentation of state
sovereignty, but also of a relationship between state institutions and
vigilantes. In Nairobi it must be remembered that the term not only
includes references to Muingiki but also to their rivals, such as the
Luo “Taliban.” What makes the news stories is their rivalry rather than
Muingiki’s inherent nature. The gaps in the state machinery leave that
kind of role to be filled by an organization that wants to maintain some
kind of discipline and control, as well as one highly alert to the pos-
sibilities of opening an income stream by doing so. If they contributed
only to a violence that filled a space left by the state, however, Muingiki
would disintegrate every time there was a police “crackdown” and their
income stream was shut off. This is by no means the case, as they have
their own “culturally specific logics of being a vigilante” (Atreyee &
Pratten 2007:12).
 Muingiki Madness 233

A trend in designation is the rising media use of the term “gang” and
its cognates. In the two years preceding July 2008, this usage has increased
223 percent. Some Muingiki members are often associated with gangs
involved with vigilante work and extortion or protection activities. In this
they are not alone and many references are to other groups.8 “Gang” is a
far more pejorative word in Kenya, having a history in the British propa-
ganda used to saturate Mau Mau. They thought they had platoons like the
British Army, but in the media they were all gangs. It is a readymade term
to encompass every shade of evil atavism that British propaganda used to
paint Mau Mau (Corfield 1960:52f ). As security forces have raised the
stakes, Muingiki has put its roots down deeper still, the chattering classes
like to vituperate against their gangs, which Muingiki consider platoons.
“Ordinary members in one area are organised in groups of 10, called pla-
toons” (“Kangaroo Courts that Order Death” Nation 5 April 2004).
Muingiki are dubbed as archetypal criminals, because they often pit
themselves directly against the state and its law enforcement agencies.
The criminal law is the first tool of the modern state for social control,
and this is deliberately countered. The state is threatened with impo-
tence and the media is usually only too willing to respond by notion-
ally criminalizing the threat and designating Muingiki as responsible
for all violent offenses in Nairobi, Nakuru, and Central Province. The
only drawbacks are that prosecutions of Muingiki, according to the
law, are relatively few, not least because of Muingiki’s penetration of
the state itself. Muingiki regard themselves not as criminals, but as
the shock-troops of a new order that will sweep away the degenera-
tion, economic theft, corruption, and two-timing of the West that has
afflicted Africa. One person’s criminal is another’s political hero of a
religious vision.

State Authorities: Politics, Police,

Government, and Law
The leaders of Muingiki would have a much securer bastion in politics
than they are allowed. It is not because they are politically powerful that
they can organize people; political parties in Kenya have seldom been
effective in such a way. Rather it is because they are able to organize and
mobilize their membership that they have a potency immediately recog-
nized by politicians, cabinet ministers, the Luo Prime Minister himself
despite his previous longstanding enmity, and in Moi, even a president.
Yet the politics are always divided and ambiguous when it comes to
Muingiki. The attraction of a new youth wing to elicit a mass vote is
balanced by the moral opprobrium generated by other politicians not in
234 Ben Knighton

a position to benefit from their support, by the media, and the churches.
Members of the Moi and Kibaki governments have toyed with Muingiki
as an electoral tool, but when the election has drawn near, these lead-
ers decided that it was too hot to hold. The consequent passionate
complaints from within and outside Kenya would be unmanageable,
it is felt in high places, a rare tribute to the power of the press, whose
tone against Muingiki is encouraged. Thus, much of the politics around
Muingiki is not about their participation, but what to do about them
so as not to alienate the middle class or non-Gikuyu voter. As with their
Mau Mau grandfathers, it is easy for Muingiki to underestimate their
ethnopolitical isolation.
The reason why the religious element of Muingiki is obscured in
the public space is that they hit the news for reasons not normally
compatible with quiet professions of faith. The term “police” occurs on
about 200 occasions more than “Mungiki” itself. It must be noted that
the media reports draw far more from police sources than Muingiki.
Except where the police are portrayed as not doing their duty by the
public, they and Muingiki are positioned as mutual enemies, with not
the slightest love lost between them. They are rivals for the allegiance
of a certain public: one supposed to uphold law and order, the other
dedicated to anarchy and lawlessness; one the agent of the state, the
other the enemy of the state.
The government is cast as a major actor, because the disorder that
Muingiki represents sets up an agenda that the government is expected
by its citizens to resolve: why should they be obliged to anyone, except
those who are given constitutional powers? The latter form a sufficient
problem on their own. The government is emphasized, because it is
a political player, and ipso facto interesting, while the state is a more
abstract concept. The legislators are not half, even collectively, as
important as the President. Muingiki is not to be dealt with by com-
plex or long-term policy, but by executive action. Already the media
mindset appears, which proved so reluctant to condemn the police’s
shoot-to-kill policy effected by government and enjoyed by the main
opposition.
Many of the reports involve the criminal justice system, and even the
British mantra of the “rule of law” is mentioned 15 times. Muingiki are
seen as a direct threat to the rule of law and those who administer it,
and as such are paradoxically subject to arbitrary, sometimes mass, arrest
and incarceration: “And Internal Security minister, Prof George Saitoti,
differed with Raila on how to deal with the Mungiki sect. He told the
followers of the banned sect to respect the rule of law or be dealt with
ruthlessly. (Ochola, Abiya, Ombati, Cyrus, & Ratemo, Hames “Debate
 Muingiki Madness 235

on Amnesty for Poll Chaos Rages On” Standard 30 May 2008).

However such high-handed official responses are not sustainable in
Kenya. Perceptions of official corruption and the intimidation of wit-
nesses and even security forces mean that the term “arrest” outnumbers
“prosecute” more than 22 times. The judiciary, for good reasons of
law, may frustrate police action, where evidence is seldom objective, so
“bail” and “bond” occur five times more often than the term “sentence.”
“Escape” and “release” occur nearly 11 times more often than “sen-
tence.” Justice is seldom seen to be done by an angry Nairobi public,
which gave a political reason for Kibaki’s government to become really
tough with Muingiki before the general elections of 2007.

Relations with World Religions

Muingiki are also counterpoised against the two main world religions in
Kenya. The contrast is not so marked, because they have no responsibility
for the security forces and are not themselves an arm of the government.
Also the natural antipathy between them on issues of modernity and
globalization is moderated by the Muingiki leadership’s thoroughly oppor-
tunistic refuge by conversion into Islam and then Pentecostalist churches
when government suppression made life too difficult for them. However,
these moves do not hide the fact that, as with the police, Muingiki is a rival
operating in the same space, this time the market for souls, spiritual alle-
giance, and unitive symbols. Should Gikuyu be worshiping Mwene Nyaga,
Ngai, or Allah? When it seemed police shot Njenga's wife dead, Gikuyu
church leaders welcomed dialogue between government and Muingiki:

“When the Prime Minister Mr Raila Odinga said that he was ready to
dialogue with the Mungiki and other youth militants, there was a sigh of
relief but a few days later, some of these youths were assassinated on their
way for a meeting in Naivasha,” said Bishop David Kamau, Auxiliary
Catholic Bishop Archdiocese of Nairobi.
“This killing was a betrayal of trust from the people that are searching
for a ray of hope and a peaceful solution,” said Bishop Kamau in a state-
ment signed by the head of Catholic Church John Cardinal Njue [sic] and
Rev. Timothy Ranji ACK Mount Kenya South Diocese among others.
(Ombati, Cyrus “Mungiki Set to Storm City as Talks Collapse” Standard
29 May 2008)

These churchmen and the Religious Leaders Consultation Group

urged sincere talks based on Muingiki leaving criminal activity, and the
government prosecuting them, rather then summarily executing them.
236 Ben Knighton

Violence and Force

Now it is revealed why Muingiki attract so many column inches. They
are pictured, often literally in photographs, as violent. They force their
own people and members of the public to do things without their per-
sonal consent. The authorities need to use force against them. Violence
meets violence, sometimes sensationally so. The greater force wins, and
it does not have to be the security forces. However, as Muingiki continue
and as reflection deepens, the shallowness of sensationalist reporting and
its political responses are exposed, interestingly by television rather than
the press:

The KTN documentary on the origins of the Mungiki sect aired last week
was well researched and insightful . . .
The documentary was also a wake-up call to the political leadership,
making it clear that force alone will not solve the myriad problems that
the youth face.
(Wanderi, Collins (Letters) “Mungiki Film was Brilliant” Standard 27
June 2008)

Of course injuries far outnumber deaths, especially when the panga

(macheté) and the simi (Gikuyu sword) are the common weapons, but
words implying fatalities outnumber those that indicate the wounding by
a factor of 4.3. Nothing is seen as safe from Muingiki, neither business
nor body, home nor property. People’s nameless or subconscious fears
are, rightly or wrongly, projected on to Muingiki, for they are depicted
as a threat to order and a menace to society, perhaps more than any
other social institution or movement. Kenyans do not think that religion
should be this. Muingiki acts are often considered evil in the media, or
just plain wrong. Professional reporters try not to pass judgment, but
they may quote those who do, while comment and letters to the press
may be much more forthright.

Secret Mysteries
Secrecy is a dominant feature of Muingiki belonging, especially its sac-
ramental behavior, so that hardly any eye-witness accounts of members’
rituals have been reported, just the police displaying the remaining
paraphernalia left behind when a rite has been interrupted. Secrecy
means that there is not much that the outsider can say about Muingiki
rituality, and the insider will fear, being oathed on pain of death, to dis-
close anything. To give away the secrets of the tribe is to act as a traitor.
Vigilantism connotes a “concept that is veiled in secrecy and serves as a
 Muingiki Madness 237

cloak of deception” (Sen & Pratten 2007:12), but Muingiki are more
than borderland shadows, for their secrecy is a deliberate instrument to
gain power. The term “mystery” has almost doubled in frequency in the
last two years, showing that Muingiki has become increasingly mysteri-
ous in the public forum as its persistence invites questions to which there
are few known answers.
Being dubbed as destructive masks a very serious Muingiki intention:
to bring discipline to a rough life, even if some of their actions are incon-
sistent with it. Kagwanja (2005:97) points to a highly successful “crusade
against drunkenness, drug addiction, broken families, prostitution, Sexually
Transmitted Diseases, and HIV/AIDS”. There is an ideal vision of putting
right a society broken by Western modernity. References to peace have more
than doubled from 61 in the last two years, reflecting perhaps the feeling
that all-out war against Muingiki has not worked and will not. Moreover,
there is a recognition that Muingiki does hold the religious value of peace,
even if, like the state security forces, it goes an odd way about it.
It is a commonplace that Muingiki emphasize and appear to practice
traditional Gikuyu prayers, for they will do this in their mass demonstra-
tions. The media might not want to dwell on this too much due to the
very high valuation and emphasis given to prayer in all Kenyan religions.
Muingiki are not known generally as youths, vigilantes, men of violence,
or rogues, or even criminals, but simply and consistently over the last
decade as “members”. Of what are they members? A sect, that is, a reli-
gion gone wrong, one that does not draw together the whole community,
even if this be the Muingiki vision.

An Oath of Initiation on Pain of Death

Kenyans recognize initiation as highly significant to becoming one with
a community, and therefore of great social benefit. However “oath” is the
more sensational and historically significant term for initiation in Kenya,
because with Mau Mau and the Kenyatta oathing controversy (Knighton
2008), the Gikuyu earned a wide notoriety for secret oathing. Again, its
occurrence in reporting has more than doubled in two years. Interest in
the technicalities of the oath, perhaps because it is secret and swears to
secrecy, is on the increase, which cannot help but to categorize Muingiki
in Kenyan minds as a new movement of traditional religion.
Though reports of some Muingiki events were highly sensational
accounts of a threat to forcibly cut women’s genitals in certain localities,
it is interesting that Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), the pejorative
Western term, is used much less than circumcision, including “female
circumcision”, the common English term in Kenya. This shows that it
238 Ben Knighton

is not just some outlandish Gikuyu who stress the practice, and that the
media have not completely adopted the impassioned Western reaction to
the practice. The primitive-civilized dichotomy begins to break down here.
Circumcision is no bad thing in itself for the majority; it being forced on
unsuspecting passers-by may just prove the Muingiki to be uncouth.
That Muingiki have adopted “baptism” certainly aligns it with well-
known religious practice in Kenya, but here it is the media’s term for ritual
bathing in the river before circumcision. Either way, it connotes a highly
religious act. Sociologists of religion normally like to emphasize belonging
over believing in religious adherence and identity (Davie 1994). Thus, the
usual discourse is to say that one is a “member of Muingiki.” Such mem-
bership is defined in terms known well to both traditional African religions
and world religions, namely initiation, ritual forms of oathing, and partici-
pation in meetings or assemblies. The following report refers to a Muingiki
defector from Githurai who was reported missing: “One of the rules of
the outlawed sect, they said, was that one does not leave once he/she joins,
otherwise they would be killed, on the pretext, ‘it is God who has given us
courage to do so’” (“Six ‘Mungiki’ Defectors Arrested” Nation 9 February
2004). The Christian sacraments perform entry and allegiance to the body
of Christ. Membership is constituted thus for probably hundreds of thou-
sands of Gikuyu, while joining in a gang for the purposes of protection
and extortion is at most an ancillary activity of a minority of those initi-
ated. Were it otherwise, the movement would have folded in the enforced
periodic absence of these income-generating activities. Every member is
expected to pay an individual subscription, which is not very different from
the expectation on church members to give to their local congregation.
In sum, Muingiki are often credited with having the usual features,
dimensions, and activities of a religion, despite the media’s lack of sympa-
thetic and internal perspective: a “Holy Priest” sprinkles water and oil on
member’s heads, raises his arms to face Mount Kenya in prayer, and sings,
“I place my hope under your wings [God].” Only God has the power to
ban the movement, which they claim is 3.5–4 million strong, irrepress-
ible, and redemptive (“Kenyan Sect Banned by State but Defiant” Nation
19 April 2002). The salvific flavor of such a trust in God and the destiny
of the movement are not characterized here by politico-legal facts.

Political Significance in 2008

Even without this analysis it is clear to students of religion, if not secular
political scientists, that Muingiki is a politico-religious movement in suc-
cession to many others in Kenya over the last 60 years.9 Indeed they were
called dini (religion) by the British administrators and their leaders were
 Muingiki Madness 239

often incarcerated for their subversion (Mahone 2006)! Most Kenyans

refer to Muingiki as a sect, a religious category, accepting its religious
attributes, if with disapproval. Another Christian Gikuyu tells me that
unless people see the spiritual aspect of Muingiki, they will never be able
to deal with it politically. Such politico-religious movements, with many
others, are part and parcel of Africa’s response in history to the invasions
of the modern West. In Africa, there is seldom any Enlightenment sepa-
ration between religion and politics, which in Europe anyway is a matter
of glass walls. All religions, if vital, are politically potent.
Muingiki members are able to infiltrate the police or local centers of
authority, since Muingiki is the current expression of a “true Gikuyu,”
even if this is contested by zealous churchmen and bourgeoisie. Since
it enjoins the secrecy of the oath, its underground, metamorphosing
structure is hardly visible for long and little more can be said definitively
about it, but where there are Gikuyu, there are potential Muingiki and
more who can be pressurized by Muingiki through kinship or exchange
networks. If a Gikuyu has taken an oath, then there is a deep bond to
keep solidarity and assist fellow jurors, even if strangers, just as intended
in Mau Mau and in the 1968–1969 oathing crisis (Knighton 2008).
Very little has been published about the contents of the oath, for media
reports give an almost entirely external view, passing on police discoveries
of oathing paraphernalia after the event.
Prosecutor Raymond Malele told the court that the three suspects were
found with paraphernalia associated with Mungiki at Mgongeni Village
in Mombasa last Saturday.
The court heard that the three were arrested after police received infor-
mation that they had performed a ritual the previous night and smeared
the walls of their house with the contents of animal intestines.
“Upon searching the room, items associated with the Mungiki sect
were found, which included one kilogramme of snuff (tobacco), nine
packets of incense, three fly whisks, and green plant leaves in a black poly-
thene bag,” the court was told.
(Kibirige, Amina “Three in Court over Links to
Mungiki Sect” Nation 21 May 2008)

Muingiki pride themselves on their traditional African snuff with its

rejection of Western-style manufactured tobacco products. The incense
here is unusual, so is probably a local religious borrowing from Hindu
Asians in Mombasa. Holding a flywhisk was one of Kenyatta’s charac-
teristic symbols of power when in office. Herbs are used in the concoc-
tion consumed in oathing ceremonies. A nocturnal oathing in Nairobi’s
Omega estate in was curtailed by police at 9:00am.
240 Ben Knighton

“They have confessed that they were brought here from Murang’a and
Maragwa for the event,” he said.
In the house, they slaughtered seven sheep,10 whose blood they used in
the oath-taking event.
Also recovered were several paraphernalia, 37 pangas, literature that
showed where they planned to attack, five knives, sheepskins, sufurias11 full
of fresh blood and seven head of sheep whose eyes had been gouged out.
Some of the youth confessed that they were brought there to take an oath.
(Ombati, Cyrus “37 Mungiki Suspects Arrested”
Standard 18 February 2008)

This is a very different collection, due to immediate political purposes,

but there are similar connections to certain Gikuyu traditions: blood is
usually the main constituent of the oathing concoction (“Man Jailed for
Taking Mungiki Oath” Nation 7 August 2002; “Kenyan Jailed for Taking
Mungiki Oath” BBC Africa News 7 August 2002), and Mau Mau oaths
could involve pricking a goat’s or sheep’s eyeball seven times, or the biting
of raw goat’s meat and drinking the concoction seven times, while taking
seven vows. This was probably an additional, special oath for commis-
sioning lethal activity.
Cyrus Ombati added points of considerable political import for
the post-election crisis in Kenya; three weeks later Gikuyu, using
Muingiki, hit back at those who had been targeting them ethnopoliti-
cally in Nairobi and the Rift Valley. Oathing of youths aged 14 to 28
had been going on for two days with the purpose of taking them to an
undisclosed “event” in the Rift Valley. A youth confessed that the pan-
gas, chopping tools commonly used in a range of everyday labor from
forestry to horticulture, were for arming, forced by the chaos “witnessed
in parts of the country.” Each of the youths arrested had a panga, and
over 200 escaped.
Similarly, in Muranga District police interrupted an alleged Muingiki
ceremony with a gun battle against 50 participants: along with oathing
paraphernalia they recovered a G3 rifle, an AK-47, a pistol, three pangas,
and an axe (Njagi, John & Njeru, Mugo “Seven Muingiki Members
Shot Dead by Police” Nation 7 February 2008). Again, each oath-taker
had an arm at the ceremony, suggesting its ritual consecration. At the
same time, the Kwekwe Squad, formed by an Assistant Commissioner of
Police based at the Nairobi area CID headquarters in 2007 to crack down
on Muingiki, had been disbanded “in unclear circumstances” (Ombati,
Cyrus “37 Mungiki Suspects Arrested” Standard 18 February 2008).
The Kenyan reader would take from this that there had been a deal with
Gikuyu in government: protection of “our people” in danger in return for
the removal of police harassment.
 Muingiki Madness 241

Taking the Oath

Despite its frequent political failures and extreme treatment meted out
by the police, Muingiki persist due to factors others than worldly success,
prime among which is religion. Even after the police shooting more than
400 Muingiki leaders and followers, oath-taking as a means of recruitment
was continuing in houses in Muranga North and South Districts. The oath
requires not only loyalty and obligation, but also secrecy, thus enabling it
to expand even in the midst of the worst that the security forces can do.

In Nyandarua where the Mungiki spiritual leader Maina Njenga’s rural

home is, young men occasionally avoid police roadblocks and patrols to
attend ritual baptism and oathing to bind them to the movement.
(“Ritual Baptism and Oathing Still go On” Nation 4 February 2007)

“It is only the leaders who are supposed to administer the oath who knows
[sic] about it and they will never disclose it to any one. Even those going
to take the oath are never informed what they are going to do,” the 33-
year-old man, who deserted the sect this year explained . . . And it is hard
for one to resist taking the oath given the force and coercion used by those
administering it.
“The new recruit must first be caned and warned of death if he resists
the move to take the oath. And since most of them are young people in
the village, they usually comply,” the man explains.
However, those who defect or disclose the oath are the ones who are
beheaded.
“This is the danger that I am facing today,” the man laments.
(“Mungiki Targeting Students and Pupils to Ensure Oath-Taking
Continues” Nation 16 July 2007)

An oathing ceremony is surrounded by a ring of scouts a kilometer in

radius with 500 meters between each group. They appear innocuous,
while cultivating or herding, but by the time the police arrive at the
ceremony the participants will have dispersed. The coercion12 is similar
to the oathing using in Mau Mau13 and the 1968–1969 oathing, with the
expectation that the taker will be transformed by the oath as his status
and identity is changed by the sacramental ritual. Whether the takers are
completely convinced or not, the ceremony is most effective in binding
them to complicity and secrecy, which is why the defector speaking to
the press is very rare.14 He claimed he was in a predicament, believing
that he would be killed by both police and Muingiki15 if he fell into
their hands.
One of the people embroiled in Muingiki, with whom I have com-
municated, gave me the vows that she was required to swear on her
242 Ben Knighton

own initiation into Muingiki in Thika District in 2001 (R1, telephone

interview, 5 June 2008).16 I asked her to write down the oaths just as she
was required to say them. She admitted voluntarily that she was not sure
of the spelling of the Gikuyu language,17 which is quite natural as most
contemporary Gikuyu have little call to write their language.18 So the
spelling has been corrected where it is obvious, and the accents added.
Then her translations into English (second line) are compared with
those (third line) of a consortium of female Gikuyu of similar age to the
contributor, who are much more educated than her, but have not been
initiated into Muingiki.

1. Ngũtũra nũmı̃tie ũhinga wa Gı̃kũyũ na Mũumbi nginya tũkanina

ũkombo wa cieko na meciria ma nyakerũ.
(I will stay determined to end white domination and exploitation)
I will remain faithful to the secrecy of the Gikuyu Adam and Eve,
until the end of the slavery of the white man’s thoughts
2. Ingekanahikira mũfuu ndothũrwo ni ariũ a maitũ a rũrı̃rı̃.
(may I be killed if I marry an uncircumcised)
If I get married to .......,19 may I be hated by all generations!
3. Ingikehuumba cumeka kana migutho ndothũrwo ni rũrı̃rı̃.
(may I be punished if I wear short skirts or trousers)
If I ever dress in …… or trousers, may I be hated by all generations!
4. Ingikanarega kũhingia watho wa njamba cia rũrı̃rı̃ ndothũrwo ni
ariũ a kiama.
(may I be punished if I fail to deliver on a mission)
If I ever fail to fulfill the rules of the warriors of all generations,
may I be hated by the sons of the clan!
5. Ingigatiga mı̃tugo ya Mũumbi ndothũrwo ni tı̃rı̃ ũyũ.
( ... if I divert from the ways of my culture and tradition)
If I ever leave the ways of the Gı̃kũyũ Eve, may I be hated by this soil!
6. Ingikaruta thirı̃ cia njamba cia rũrı̃rı̃, ndothũrwo ni thakame.
( ... if I disclose the secrets)
If I ever let out the secrets of the warriors of all generations, may I
be hated by blood!
7. Ingikagarũrũka kana ndiganirie kiama kia njamba cia rũrı̃rı̃ ndorio
ni muma ũyũ.
( ... if I ever defect or turn back)
If I ever turn back or abandon the council of the warriors of all
generations, may I perish by this oath!
 Muingiki Madness 243

8. Ingikagarũka na thutha njokere mı̃tugo ya nyakerũ ndironinwo ni

muma ũyũ.
( ... if I ever follow West way of life—drinking, smoking, religion etc)
If I ever turn back and follow the ways of the white man, may this
oath finish me!
Such vows have never before been revealed in print. As the sixth vow
makes plain, secrecy is invoked on pain of death wrought by the blood
that the initiand drinks—to her damnation if she breaks it.
The vows are rarer still, being for female Muingiki, specifically at
least numbers 2, 3, and 5. They are highly reminiscent of the Mau Mau
oath that I have researched in the field, especially vows 4, 6, and 7, and
the self-imprecations. Indeed the first vow has no self-imprecation, and
in her first version in English (given in brackets) has been expressed as
number 5 out of seven oaths. If originally separate, it was probably an
assertion required in the introduction to the vows proper, which all have
a self-imprecation involving being cut off, excommunicated, outlawed,
killed, or cursed that amount to the same thing in African cosmology.
The accursed become marginal in every sense to the land of the living,
so that it would be better not to have been born, hence the general
reluctance to set these things out, when that itself involves invoking the
curse of the oath. After each of his vows Mohamed Mathu (1974:11) had
to say, “If I violate this sacred pledge, may this oath kill me.” Swearing
seven vows mirrors ritual practice in Mau Mau oaths. Karigo Muchai
(1973:19f ) records the seven vows of the batuni oath in detail, each fol-
lowed by a fourfold imprecation:

And if I fail to do so:

May this oath kill me
May this thenge [sacrificial he-goat] kill me
May this seven [vows] kill me
May this meat kill me

Furthermore the language is not ordinary Gikuyu, but antiquated and

stylized, just as might be expected from a sacred ceremony. There were
two words the educated could not translate at all, and others which
they struggled to put into English, such as rũrı̃rı̃. The use of nyakerũ
(European) is as Mau Mau used it, instead of muthungu.
Given the unique evidence presented above, it is beyond doubt that
the contributor has been inducted into the secrets of Muingiki. Her
responses to my requests were quick and spontaneous enough to come
from her own memory. She has transgressed by revealing the secrets of
her people, and worst of all to Europeans, so is susceptible to the curses
244 Ben Knighton

of the initiatory oath of Muingiki, but had already broken it in various

ways, immediately and supremely by escaping their required sacrament
of Gikuyu initiation, FGC. In Muingiki eyes, she is therefore liable to
punishment by the oath and, if identified, by those that would enforce
it, whether by social pressure, threats, or violence. The most significant
content of the oath concerns the self-imprecation. The first five (num-
bers 2 to 6) invoke hatred from society, soil, and blood. All imply a
slow death by excommunication, starvation, and sickness. The last two
emphasize a more direct death caused by the oath itself for disobeying
the due authorities in Muingiki, who are made to stand for the whole
tribe, and for following Western ways, as many Gikuyu do. It is not
surprising that Gikuyu, who have undertaken the oath, do not let out
the secrets of their people and are susceptible to leverage by Muingiki
to assist them. The calls to ethnic solidarity in such a ceremony can be
sovereign and do much to explain the persistence, influence, and fear
of Muingiki.

Muingiki Penetration of the State

It is easy to conceive of many local police being implicated with
Muingiki, just as many “Loyalists” were implicated with Mau Mau dur-
ing the Emergency.

Elements within the Police Force are allegedly supporting the Mungiki
sect members in their nefarious acts. That chilling revelation from [sic]
the Nairobi Provincial Commissioner Francis Sigei, in his capacity as the
provincial security committee chairman.
(“Police-’Mungiki’ Ties Chilling” Nation 18 June 2004; “Turncoat Police
Slow Down War on ‘Mungiki’” Nation 17 June 2004)

It is interesting to note that most of the police action against Muingiki

has been in Nairobi under two successive Luo police commissioners and
now under a Somali one. In fact, Kiambu police had advance knowledge
of Muingiki hacking to death a carpenter in Githunguri while on their
way to bury a 17-year-old member of their sect who had been killed by
villagers over a week before.

Mr Cheserek said that police in the area had been warned of impending
violence during the burial of the sect member at his father’s home, and
were on stand-by but it was not immediately clear why they did not avert
the violence and arrest more raiders.
(“Police Chief Warning over Mungiki Sect Menace” KBC 17 December
2002)
 Muingiki Madness 245

Police complicity, usually due to ethnic solidarity or the desire for a

quiet life or a bribe, makes the normal press polarity between police and
Muingiki more complex.
A common complaint of Kenyans has been the lack of control of Muingiki.
Such media pressure has led to many arrests at select moments when a per-
ceived atrocity or public disorder has been blamed on Muingiki, but in most
cases the police have not been mobilized either to prevent, or even stop, the
meetings of an unlawful society. Police and the provincial administration are
said to be involved with Muingiki (Kihali, James O “Firm Action Needed to
End Emerging Cycle of Violence” Nation 19 November 2006).
Politicians are repeatedly tempted by the powerful mobilization of
people that Muingiki represents, capable as it is of providing many a
cause with youth-wing militants at the drop of a hat. Two Thika MPs
patronized a Muingiki March for Uhuru Kenyatta before the 2002 gen-
eral elections (Khisa, Nancy “A-G Orders Arrest of Mungiki Followers”
Standard 12.8.02). Eleven Army officers, one top official still in the
Office of the President, and the security team of former President Moi
had ten army landrovers reconditioned and fitted with high-tech com-
munications equipment, registered to the National Security Intelligence
Service, handed over from Kahawa Barracks to the “Presidential Escort”,
and then to Muingiki one week before the election. Afterwards one
was seized at the home of Ndura Waruinge, again acting as a leader,
but the investigation was blocked by senior army officers, despite the
change in government (“Army Given” Nation 1 February 2003; Kihali,
James O “Firm Action Needed to End Emerging Cycle of Violence”
Nation 19 November 2006). Cabinet ministers consorted with Ndura
Waruinge over the constitutional referendum (Njenga Karume) and a
Parliamentary nomination for the general election (Norman Nyagah,
whose own constituency result had to be declared null and void in 2008
due to indefensible irregularities) (Kihali, James O “Firm Action Needed
to End Emerging Cycle of Violence” Nation 19 November 2006).
The government knew it had a problem within when it arrested the
Deputy Mayor of Nairobi on a demonstration in support of Muingiki:
according to the state prosecutor, “Mr Chacha said the deputy mayor had
already demonstrated his association with, and support for, the banned
Mungiki sect, which was behind cases of violence in Nairobi and other
areas” (“City’s Deputy Mayor in Court after Demo” Nation 9 January
2007). Even after the return of President Kibaki, who has had little sym-
pathy for Muingiki, they succeeded in taking over a school fund-raising
event from the Cabinet Minister Uhuru Kenyatta, proclaiming their
agreement to support the ruling party (Maina, Mohammed “Rag-tag
Group backs Kenyatta” Nation 4 March 2008).
246 Ben Knighton

The powerful leader of the Orange Democratic Movement, Raila

Odinga, used to complain repeatedly of the “godfathers” of Muingiki in
government and of the former leader, Ndura Waruinge, who speaks for
rather than denounces Muingiki as being a “Government project.” The
government then had a political incentive to charge him without bail yet
again (“Violence was Sponsored by State, claims Langata MP” Nation
18 December 2006; “Stop Creating a Tiger out of a Pussycat” Nation 19
December 2006). This was not an idle accusation when senior politicians
such as Daniel Moi, Uhuru Kenyatta, and Chris Murangaru, as well as
several MPs were implicated in covert agreements n the past.20 It is even
less idle when the Prime Minister in the Grand Coalition himself makes a
complete u-turn, opportunistically mollifying Muingiki at a press confer-
ence by announcing that talks with Muingiki would commence. Some
Gikuyu politicians, whom Odinga had regularly denounced before as
godfathers, also called for the release of the Muingiki chairman, Maina
Njenga (Ombati, Cyrus “Mungiki Set to Storm City as Talks Collapse”
Standard 29 May 2008).
Thus, Odinga was using Muingiki and their political supporters to
drive a wedge into President Kibaki’s block Gikuyu vote in Central
Province. Given such political space, Muingiki’s political wing, the Kenya
National Youth Alliance (Kenya), has suddenly become a founder-member
of the Progressive Parties Alliance, launched at Ufungamano House,
and its Secretary-General, Gitau Njuguna, has been photographed in
the news with longstanding lawyer and politician, Paul Muite. “‘We
want all the young people of Kenya to unite and take over the leader-
ship through the ballot’ Mr Njuguna said” (Njuguna, Michael “Act on
Ndung’u Land Report, Orengo Told” Nation 4 September 2008). With
their two founding leaders in prison, Muingiki at last has a formal foot-
hold in mainstream Kenyan politics, which they mean to use to the full.
They have few models of electoral ethics to constrain their revolutionary
religious drive for power.

Conclusion
Quite aside from the police and politicians, who have their price, it can
never be assumed that Muingiki are excluded from government. The
Gikuyu are omnipresent in the offices of state at every level in Nairobi
and around the country. It can never be guaranteed that any particular
government officer has never taken a secret and secretive Muingiki oath
and so is not susceptible to intense social pressure and the threat of
blackmail, curse, or force to assist the movement at least once. In this
same way, Mau Mau had extremely good and immediate intelligence
 Muingiki Madness 247

and an amazing capacity to absorb from the system, as by osmosis, a

proportion of the arms and ammunitions intended to be used against
them. This means that the state is compromised not only in its capac-
ity to protect a person under the threat of Muingiki, but government’s
internal information and communications could actually alert them to
what they did not know about the person. Thus, to use Chabal and
Daloz’s (1999:5) terms, the Kenyan state is unable to emancipate itself
from the Gikuyu society to which it has been so often close, whether it
be the material privileges of their elite, or the hunger for autonomy of
the marginalized Muingiki masses propelled by a ritual potency.
Mainstream Christian religion has been wrong-footed by these sud-
den moves, having sided with the middle-class and ethnic outrage against
Muingiki in the media. Compromised in the public eye, because of
the churches’ party political affections in the run-up and outcome
of the 2007 general elections, the media have chosen to be the sole
bearer of the nation’s standards, and cold-shouldered those who would
be prophets.21 Churchleaders have attempted to join in the call for rec-
onciliation, indeed prayer, with Muingiki, but this has only confirmed
their ethnically biased image.22 The Anglicans’ offer of the high kudos
All Saints’ Cathedral as a venue to talk with the Kenya National Youth
Alliance had to be embarrassingly withdrawn because of resistance within
and police opposition (Shiundu, Alphonce “City Church Distances Itself
from Mungiki” Nation 5 June 2008). Gitari pronounced afterwards, “We
must realise that something is very wrong in our collective conscience
when Church leaders begin to associate with illegal and criminal gangs
like Mungiki” (Thatiah, Peter “Archbishop Gitari: The Conscience of
Society is Wounded” Standard 8 July 2008). Now Muingiki can talk with
politicians as they bid for ethno-religious power in Kenya. Meanwhile the
mass media continue to try to imagine the nation of Kenya constructed
against its shadow of Muingiki (Anderson, B 1999). It will need a new
generation of leaders to shoulder the modernist mantle passed on to
David Gitari, when dealing with a secret politico-religious movement is
more unpredictable than with government or media, and the contest this
time is direct rivalry for spiritual allegiance.

Notes
1. A massive 42 percent of the whole Kenyan population is estimated to
be under 15 years of age, compared with only 2 percent over 65 (Yin &
Kent 2008).
2. The mainstream Protestants of the NCCK were well aware of the problem
of unemployment among primary school leavers, for in 1966 the Council
248 Ben Knighton

started the Village Polytechnic movement. The movement was formulated

after the NCCK undertook an extensive research on the future of children
who finished primary school, which led to the publishing of a report titled
“After School What?” Under the leadership of the late Rev. Andrew Hake,
Village Polytechnics offered school leavers an opportunity for training in
technical fields enabling many young people set up [sic] their own busi-
nesses. The concept was adopted by the government and in 1973, the
government took over the management of all Village Polytechnics.
(Musyimi 2006)

The NCCK was also early into the approval of Cottage Industries in
1980, when it promoted the idea of small-scale industrial ventures.
This is now widely recognized as the Jua Kali sector.
3. Cannell (2006) argues convincingly that the secular only makes sense in
its Christian history, but of course the greatest oppositions may occur in
families of ideas.
4. Not to be confused with Nation Media Group’s weekly, The East African.
5. Graham Mytton, personal communication, 17 October 2008
6. Information direct from Nation Media Group: Kyaka, Kenneth. E-mail,
29 August 2008.
7. Muranga district security team led by area District Commissioner.
Obondo Kajumbi, “described the sect followers as ‘primitive and mili-
tant’” (“Mungiki Followers Arrested” Nation 30 September 2000).
8. Ruteere and Pommerolle (2003:600) found that the police are capable
of operating “an extortion racket”: “The monthly average bribe expendi-
ture per person paid to the Kenya police is Ksh.1270 (about US$17)”
(2003:602).
9. I was invited by Prof. Peter Clarke (2005) on his initiative to submit
an entry for Muingiki to the Routledge Encyclopedia of New Religious
Movements alongside Maji Maji, Karinga, the African Orthodox Church,
and Mau Mau.
10. According to the court report these were goats:

Also produced before the court were items including roasted meat, 15
goat hooves, five goatskins, and four goat heads, a bunch of bananas
and blood in sufurias . . . The prosecution also produced before the
court tobacco, 15 pangas, cooking fat, animal waste, lotions and
literature allegedly belonging to the group.
(Kilagat, Sam & Mwaniki, Mike “Mungiki Suspects Charged”
Nation 19 February 2008)

11. A sufuria (Swahili) is a handleless saucepan.

12. “While administering oaths to members, the leaders are said to mete out
savage beatings to the converts” (Kinyungu, Cyrus “Group Could Be
LRA in the Making” Nation 6 April 2004).
 Muingiki Madness 249

13. An 87-year-old man witnessed the similarity: “Just like in Mau Mau
days, the oathing ceremony takes place in hidden valleys or isolated
river banks” (Maina, Waikwa “Mungiki Catches Them Young” Nation
6 July 2007).
14. “Mr Mwangi, a former member who is now a preacher-musician, said he
feared for his life as the sect’s penalty for desertion was death. When one
took an oath to join the sect, he was expected to be a member for life,
the witness said” (Kadida, Jillo “Witnesses in Mungiki Case get Security”
Nation 29 October 2004).
15. Muingiki were said to have their own courts to deal with errant members:

Offences include refusing to pay regular contributions, breaking the

oath, defying orders from superiors and betraying the sect by col-
laborating with government officials. Former insiders say sentences
vary from a day’s confinement without food or water to death for the
more serious breach.
(“Kangaroo Courts that Order Death” Nation 5 April 2004)

16. Initiation, when it is called kuhagira, which confers the change of identity,
is not the only occasion for an oath. Others oaths are more functional:
horohio for repentance; mbitika to prepare for combat; “exodus” for a vic-
tory; and “Valentine” to protect couples from HIV and strengthen their
marriage (John Ngirachu and Casper Waithaka “How Mungiki Became
‘Most Serious Internal Security Threat’” Nation 11 March 2009).
17. (“Please forgive my kikuyu [sic] spelling, I don’t know how good yours
is but am better at talking than I am reading and writing.”) For obvious
reasons the contributor’s name is withheld (R1, e-mail 6 June 2008).
18. I found it impossible in the Text Book Centre in Nairobi in December
2007 to buy a children’s book printed in Gikuyu.
19. The two blanks indicate that Muingiki are generating terms unknown to
educated Gikuyu. It is to be expected that a secret society mostly com-
prising youths would construct their own language-game, so there is no
alternative but to accept the initiate’s translations of an uncircumcised
boy and (in point 3) short skirts.
20. Kigumo MP, Mwangi Kihara (NARC), admitted that 15 MPs from
Central Province were abducted by Muingiki and he was himself taken
to a room, but denied reports which quoted him saying they were forced
to take an oath (“Raila Links Officials to Mungiki” Nation 22 June
2007)
21. The NCCK has tried to tackle Kenya’s ethnicization in 2008 by issuing
press statements (Oliver Simuyu, personal communication 29 September
2008), but the media had little time for them.
22. Roman Catholic, Anglican, and Presbyterian churches under the
umbrella of the Religious Leaders Consultation Group had declared
support for the prayers.
250 Ben Knighton

“Our intention is to expose the youth’s social, religious and economi-

cal needs to the general public. Observers may challenge us; that is
why we shall be ready,” said Bishop David Kamau, Auxiliary Bishop
of Nairobi.
“Mungiki and other annoyed youth militias are also our children,
children of God and citizens of this nation,” added Kamau.
Quoting from the Bible, the prelate said, “Even to the fight for the
truth, and the Lord your God will battle for you.”
“As religious leaders, we shall see to it that the churches we serve
offer a solution to the youth’s problem. They (youth) are the pre-
ferred people of God and some of them need rehabilitation, which
the church is capable of spearheading.”
(Ombati, Cyrus “Police land in Park to Bar Mungiki
from Prayers” Standard 1 June 2008)
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National Newspapers, Weeklies, and Monthlies

Cited from Nairobi
East African Standard Abbreviated to Standard
End Time Christian News
 Bibliography 279

Sunday Standard Abbreviated to Standard

Daily Nation* Abbreviated to Nation
Sunday Nation* Abbreviated to Nation
The East African*
Business Daily*
God’s Army
Leadership Journal
Maximum Miracle Times
Newsweek*
Kenya Today*
Kenya Times
Missioner
National Mirror
Observer
People Daily Abbreviated to People
Revival Springs
Target Suppressed
Weekly Review
* Titles published by the Nationmedia Group owned by the Aga Khan. It
also runs Daily Metro, Taifa Leo, Nation TV (NTV), Nation FM, and Easy
FM radio stations, as well as the mass media in Tanzania and Uganda.

Elsewhere
Christian Century Chicago, IL
Christian Today London
Daily Telegraph London
Financial Times London
The Guardian London
The Namibian Abbreviated to Namibian

Other Media
Radio

British Broadcasting Corporation Abbreviated to BBC

Kenya Broadcasting Corporation Abbreviated to KBC

Internet

Anglican Communion News Service Abbreviated to ACNS

Panafrican News Agency
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Index
Page numbers in bold indicate an Archbishop 18, 20, 28, 30–2,
especially relevant passage for the 36, 38, 41, 52–3, 62, 71–2,
subject 74, 110–11, 115, 127, 131,
140–1, 143–4, 147, 153,
Abubakar, Zein 164–5 156–7, 159, 163–5, 178,
accountability 127, 189, 211 190, 196, 201, 224, 247
Africa Inland Church 24, 49, bishops 33, 36, 38, 40, 50, 61,
119, 189–91, 203, 206, 213, 93–4, 97, 99, 101–2, 106,
215, 219 110–11, 114, 116, 126,
Africa Inland Mission 21 128, 130, 140–2, 144, 157,
African Independent Pentecostal 201–2, 219–20
Church 49, 131 Church of the Province of Kenya
African Instituted Churches 3–7, 18–19, 23, 27, 30–1, 39,
12, 17, 41, 44, 49, 52, 65, 51, 94, 118, 120, 140–1,
118, 140, 177, 193, 198, 204, 157, 162
210–11, 217, 219 clergy 2, 7, 31, 42, 48, 51,
constitution 211 103–4, 111, 120, 124, 129,
African Orthodox Church 41, 248 136, 138–41, 144, 148, 154,
AIDS 62, 77, 206, 209, 211, 237 166, 171, see also Christian
alienation 2, 25, 28, 46, 49, 58–9, religion in Africa; clergy
74, 77–9, 86, 101, 136–7, 160, constitution 24, 38, 48
187, 189, 231, 234 Justice and Peace
All Saints’ Cathedral, Nairobi Commission 73
84, 162 lay readers 31
alliance 31, 68, 70, 108, 118–9 liturgy 5, 27, 147, 218
of “big men” 14 and politics 28, 35, 38, 41, 50–2,
of Protestant missions 3, 33 62, 64, 73–4, 94, 97–100,
Alliance High School 43, 48, 102–5, 108–13, 115, 118,
71, 76 123–6, 128–32, 134–5,
Anglican Church of Kenya 2–3, 138–9, 141–2, 149–50, 157–8,
24, 31, 38, 41, 48, 52–3, 64, 201, 206, 217, 220, 235, 249
99, 112, 115, 118–19, 140, priesthood 18–19, 37–8, 51, 73,
147, 150, 171, 177–8 92, 102, 133, 146, 166
Anglican Communion 32, 60, synods 32, 48, 110, 120, 140
97–8, 116 youth 130
282 Index

Anglo-Leasing 37, 96, 215, 219 Old Testament 4, 19, 60, 65–6,
assassination 19, 23, 48, 73, 157, 83, 86, 141
232, 235 politics 20, 28, 53, 59–60, 85–6,
Attorney-General 20, 131, 137, 98, 101–2, 105, 107–9,
157, 174, 203 112–4, 128, 134–6, 148,
Awori, Moody 36, 206 189, 203, 205, 216, 250
Society of Kenya 19–20, 146
Balala, Khalid 156, 159–63, as story 4, 23, 30, 38, 51, 82–7,
178–9 93, 98, 113, 125, 135,
ballot 24, 152, 246 150–1, 223, 229
secret 26, 31, 74, 129–30 translation 3–4, 19, 43, 59, 80,
Baptist Church 49, 131 82–5, 87, 91, 108, 148–9,
Nairobi 19, 108, 208 151
BCMS 18, 97 Biwott, Nicholas 130, 142, 185,
Beecher, Leonard 18, 72, 94 208
Bible 4, 16, 24, 44–6, 65, 70, 76, Britain 33, 45, 62, 96–7, 100–1,
80, 82, 87, 144, 149 159
Books of, Acts 117, 120; Buddhists in Kenya 41, 173
Amos, 32; Chronicles 144; bureaucracy 23, 82, 201, 211, 223
Corinthians, 88, 117; Daniel administration 19, 26, 74, 96–7,
23, 27, 33, 134–6, 141; 100–1, 140, 152, 160,
Deuteronomy 66; Ephesians 201, 245
115; Exodus 37, 64, 83,
97; Ezekiel 28, 30, 189–90; capitalism 58, 68, 72, 77–9, 86,
Galatians 6, 115, 119; 223
Genesis 117; Hosea 218; change 59, 75–80, 124
Isaiah 60, 117; James 117; political 9, 29, 31–3, 39, 43–4,
Jeremiah 27, 114, 133; John 49, 52, 59, 105, 108, 124,
117; Joshua 85, 92, 134; 131, 134–9, 147, 157–8,
Kings 120, 148; Leviticus 66, 170, 186, 194, 225, 245
117; Luke 48, 83, 117; Mark religious 3–5, 8–9, 24, 39, 51,
14–5, 94, 205; Matthew 28, 59, 75, 89, 110, 113, 203,
48, 74, 117, 132; Nehemiah 205, 225, 241, 249
151; Numbers 189; social 3–5, 9, 44, 59, 75, 89,
Philippians 115; Proverbs 66; 113, 225
Psalms 76, 117, 207, 220; Christian religion in Africa
Revelation 9, 150; Romans 9, as appropriation 5, 9, 87
68–9, 149, 203, 208; Ruth beliefs 2, 9–10, 21, 48, 58, 60,
144; Samuel 144 64, 66, 71, 80, 87–9, 100–3,
exposition 24, 27, 36, 47, 51, 110, 113, 120, 139, 146,
82, 107, 114–5, 125, 132, 154, 178, 214, 226, 231, 238
148–50 clergy 9, 22, 26–7, 30, 36, 38–
hermeneutics 64, 84 9, 41, 45, 51–3, 65–6, 104,
New Testament 82–3, 86, 109, 110, 119, 129, 131, 137–9,
115, 119, 148 142, 191–2, 202, 207, 238,
 Index 283

see also Anglican Church of 172, 177, 189–98, 203–19,

Kenya; clergy; priesthood 223–6, 229–31, 234–5, 249–50
evangelism 2, 8, 24–5, 69–70, prophet 40, 51
72, 115, 117, 147 see also under individual churches
evangelists and catechists 15–18, citizenship 39, 57–8, 60–1, 63–4,
47, 70, 82, 84, 133, 144–5, 66, 71, 73, 78, 92–3, 100, 112,
161, 212 154–5, 161, 187, 193, 204, 208,
as foreign tradition 2, 25, 58–9, 214, 216, 223, 227, 234, 250
74, 136–7, 223, 231 clientelism 47, 58–9, 92–3, 111,
mission 3–9, 15, 21, 43, 44–6, 201–2, see also patronage
49, 51, 68–9, 71–2, 77–8, CMS 2, 4, 6, 8–9, 14–6, 25, 43,
81, 83–4, 88, 90–2, 99–100, 45, 68, 91, 97–9, 145, 155
102, 106, 133, 151, 155, coast, the Kenyan 2, 63–4, 68–9,
178, 231 75, 80–2, 86, 90, 95, 145,
missionaries 2–6, 13, 15–8, 155–6, 167–8, 186, 198
22, 33, 43–7, 59, 64, 66, Coastal Province 31, 46, 106, 175–6
68–71, 74–5, 77–8, 81–4, colonialism 4, 10, 18, 31, 44, 59,
89–91, 93, 97–100, 108, 66–72, 77–8, 80, 90–2, 97–8,
110, 118–19, 126, 145, 155, 102, 125, 129, 136, 155, 183,
209–13, 223 197, 211, 219, 225, 230
mission education 44, 71, 76, colonial administration 1–2,
82–4, 87, 97, 155 5, 16–7, 42–3, 82, 97, 108,
Christians and politics 4, 10, 155, 168, 197, 238
13–16, 22–7, 35–6, 43, 47, colonial government 5, 66, 71,
49–51, 73, 82, 95, 99–100, 75, 91, 228
102, 112, 128–9, 138, 149, colonial institutions 7, 167–8
154, 192, 203, 210. See also colonial rule 6, 19, 69, 72, 74
politics and the churches colonial state 2, 13, 47, 57, 70, 86
church and state 14, 25–6, 29, 31, Communism 50
33, 38–40, 50, 58, 65–7, 70–1, conscience 23, 40, 93, 186, 247
75, 90–1, 100, 102–3, 123, see conscientized 7, 23
also politics and the churches national 36, 40, 53, 128,
compliance of 58, 60–2, 65–8, 144, 153
72–6, 80, 86, 92–3, 118, social 38, 126, 223, 247
138, 207–16 consciousness 6, 9
confrontations of 27, 29, 33, colonized 87–8
40, 52. 59, 73, 89, 99, 104, political 44
123–42, 152 prophetic 27
failure to confront 51, 66, 110, consent 26, 236
118, 191, 195 consensus (ijma) 167
churches 5–9, 19–29, 33–5, constituency 28, 64, 108, 184
38–45, 49–52, 59–60, 64–7, church 4, 22, 28, 103, 192
70–78, 84, 86, 88, 90–3, 96– Muslim 64
100, 103, 107–9, 112–3, 116, parliamentary 31, 35, 38, 45, 47,
124–42, 150–4, 156–8, 161–4, 149, 152, 161, 165, 215, 245
284 Index

Constitution of Kenya 7, 16, 46, devil 61–2, 66, 72–3, 92, 203,
49, 67, 97, 156, 169, 179, 182, 206, 210–1, 232
187–8, 214, 234 Satan 9, 45, 92, 94, 114, 211,
amendments 29, 105, 111, 127, 217–8, 232
131–7, 148, 157–8, 169 worship 66, 94, 217, 224
constitutional review 31–3, 37, dignity 21, 64, 66, 94, 117, 188,
49, 60, 63, 74, 131, 156–7, 225, see also freedom; dignity
163–76, 178–9, 205 dini (religion) 4–6, 8–9, 238
Islamic Law 168–80 displacement 153, 183–9, 193–8,
NCC 17, 156, 172–3, 179 216
referendum 169, 174–6, 215–6, dissent 5, 125, 127, 148, 156, 184
218, 245
Review Commission 156, 163–5 education 2, 4, 16, 68, 100, 118
corruption 26, 31, 63, 77, 124, civic 65, 74
211 political implications 22–3,
Anti-Corruption 35, 96, 191 42, 44, 49, 61, 71, 75, 82,
churches against 37–40, 50, 97, 107, 126, 139, 150–2,
99–100, 110, 118, 128–31, 155, 209, 212, 214, 225–6,
134, 136, 207, 224 228–9, 232, 242–3, 249
Islam against 83, 160 religious education 75, 117,
state 68, 92, 96, 127–31, 136, 145, 160, 178
152, 163, 184, 201, 205, Western 223–4, 232
208, 219, 224, 235 Eldoret 49, 130, 163, 193
Western origin of 50, 77, 233 election 33
courage 21, 29, 35, 37–8, 58, 71, campaigns 36, 47, 163, 190,
102, 105, 107, 109, 114, 119, 234, 245
144, 184, 193, 195, 238 church 20, 22, 24, 147
criminality 116, 211, 229, ethics of 30, 234, 246
232–7, 247 free or fair 157
criminalization 233 institutions 31, 44, 187
criminal law 171, 233–5 parliamentary 47, 60, 85, 116,
185, 245
democracy 93, 128, 131–2 presidential 96, 119, 139,
Biblical 60 186–7
and churches 39, 48, 66, 74, procedures of 7, 130, 133,
113–4 137, 157
culturally relative 13, 74, 204, by queuing 26, 28–9, 74, 93,
226 129–31, 137
democratization 31–2, 51, 158, rigging 105, 119, 137–8
123–4, 202, 209 tension of 60, 67, 187
Western 23, 92 epistemology 45, 47
Democratic Party 48, 161 equality 71, 115, 217
detention 29, 128 inequality 79
Emergency 17, 19, 83 establishment 3, 23, 98, 102
political 31, 39, 45, 51, 127, 136 ecclesiastical 2, 70, 89, 97–9,
without trial 31, 128, 148, 158 101–2, 118, 125–6, 140, 204
 Index 285

political 3, 23, 93, 124–5 prayers for 47

social 88, 98 religious 101, 178, 202–4
ethnic 77, 79, 88, 96, 104, 108, from slavery 68, 70, 81
165, 201 of speech 132, 137, 149
clashes 31, 106, 114, 137–8, spiritual 5–6, 44, 106, 109,
183–98, 207, 210–12 114, 119
cleansing 52, 67, 145, 187–8, of thought 60
214 wiathi 119
coalition 23, 41, 108 freemasonry 66, 115
crisis 35, 46–27, 60, 118, 145,
191, 240 Ghai, Yash Pal 164–5
discrimination 49, 175–6, 247 Gitari, David 14–53
identity 125, 158, 224 as archbishop 31–3, 38, 52, 62,
partiality, church responses 110–11, 115, 120, 147, 153,
to 38, 46, 49–46, 50, 156, 163–4, 196, 224
64, 66, 74, 76, 84, 105–6, background 14–18, 144–6
109–12, 115, 119, 145, 154, as bishop 21–31, 115, 117, 119,
245, 249 146–50
religion 6, 80–1, 95–6, 98, 106, diocese 7, 16, 22, 24, 26, 29,
108–12, 115, 178, 191, 220 35, 43, 47–8, 51–2, 95,
solidarity 224, 228, 244–5 105–6, 110, 117, 119–20,
state 107–12, 158, 165 123, 141, 146–50
ethnicity 14, 42, 46, 80, 90, 98, early ministry 18–21, 146
104, 108–9, 114, 144, 153–4, leadership model of 143–54
178, 187, 190–1, 220 and modernity 223–4, 247
Evangelical 51, 61, 65, 74, 97–8, on politics 17, 36–8, 40, 45, 51,
100, 116–7, 130–1, 136, 147, 91, 109, 119, 128, 148, 157,
see also theology 188, 190
EAK 36, 40–1, 47, 49, 176–7 praying 21, 29, 47
Fellowship of Kenya 49, 65–6 preaching 23–4, 27–8, 30, 51,
executive 58, 74, 148, 211, 234 73, 85, 94, 105, 114, 120,
123–42, 148–50
FORD 31, 160 prophesying 27–8, 47, 50, 134,
-Asili 142 143–4, 151-2, 196, 201, 216,
-Kenya 33, 142, 160 224
forgiveness 149, 208, 215–16, and religions 151, 159, 163–4,
218, 220 173, 178
freedom 5, 64, 68, 71, 217 and tribalism 106–10, 120, 141,
and dignity 60, 64, 68, 94, 139 154, 190
ecclesiastical 5, 20, 25, 45, Githii, David 208, 211–12, 218–19
81, 111, 119, 129, 131, Githongo, John 35, 37, 92, 96
140–1, 153 God 9–11, 15, 38, 84, 113, 238
fighters 102, 137, 230 commands of 37, 83
lack of 51, 127 Creator 60, 117
political 6, 29, 39, 57–8, 73, and Devil 9, 45, 65, 92
114, 144, 217 fear of 191, 202, 205, 208, 214
286 Index

God—continued INFEMIT 25
judgment of 19, 26, 65, 113, 215 international pressure 29–30, 51,
of Kenya 19, 21, 23, 38, 53, 60, 127–9, 137–8, 156, 158, 162,
63, 72, 74, 93, 142, 202–3, 192–3, 216
205, 207–8, 250 reports 194–5, 220
kingdom of 95–120, 123, 154, 220 Inter-Religious Forum 40, 157, 177
love of 70, 148 Islam in Africa 4, 10, 45, 59,
Mwene Nyaga 235 63–4, 66, 70, 75–6, 80–4, 87,
Ngai 101 89–90, 92, 95–6, 103, 113,
political implications of 13, 20, 155–79, 210, 230–1, 235
26, 28–9, 36–8, 60–1, 88, 91, beliefs 83, 87–9
94, 107, 111, 112, 117–8, imam 59, 90, 101, 103
125, 130, 134, 138, 145, 149, Khadi’s courts 101, 167–74
202–3, 205, 208, 210, 212–20 political implications 13, 32–3,
praise of 35, 76, 106, 215, 218 41, 67, 90, 155–78 see also
protection of 8, 64, 70, 82, 114, Muslims and politics
117, 120, 208, 213 Shafi’i 167
righteousness of 19, 35 shari’ah 63–4, 96, 160, 167–8,
word of 27–8, 85, 114, 132, 150 171, 176
godliness 91, 112–3, 214 Shi’a 63, 66, 90, 167
ungodliness 105–6, 204 Sunni 63–4, 66, 160
gospel 6, 14, 17, 52, 99, 116, 145, youth 164–5
149, 178 Islamic Party of Kenya 156,
gospels 15, 83 158–61, 178–9
of the Kingdom 26, 113–5
missionary 4, 69, 145 Jains in Kenya 41, 95
political 100, 150–1, 202–4 Jesus 27, 37, 46, 64, 73, 76, 115,
prosperity 65 132-3, 151, 154, 205, 214
social 98, 100, 111, 115, 119, Christ 6, 9, 25, 42, 45, 48, 61, 73,
153, 225 78, 88, 97, 99, 109, 113-15,
government 234, 246 117, 119, 207, 213-14, 238
guns 2, 70, 227, 234, 240–1 gospel of 145, 203
Jews in Kenya 41, 173
harambee (pull together) 48, 91–2, judiciary 148, 215, 235
126, 202–3, 206–7, 211, justice 6, 11, 17, 19, 26, 35, 46–7,
213, 217 52, 62, 64–5, 73, 101–2,
Hindus in Kenya 4, 41, 95, 164, 105–6, 117, 139, 153, 178,
173–4, 177, 179, 210–11, 239 195, 198, 208, 234
human rights 39, 112, 128, 134–6, injustice 7, 17, 20, 25, 43–4, 134,
184–6, 195, 197–8, 203, 213 152, 157, 178, 188, 191, 235
hymnody 65, 76, 125, 149–50, 202 social 60, 63, 150, 152–3

ideology 10, 23, 72, 100, 209 Kabare 7, 15–6, 25, 48, 133,
impartiality 18, 35, 156 145–6
impunity 77, 183–4, 186, 191, St Andrew’s College/Institute 25,
196, 206, 213 27, 50, 52, 94, 120, 141
 Index 287

Kabete 3, 36, 47, 98 Leakey, Harry 5, 98

Kahuhia 36 liberalism 12, 18, 35, 196
KANU 28–31, 33, 38, 49, 51, 85, liberalization 46, 215
105, 119, 127, 129–42, 149, see also theology; liberal
151, 160–1, 205, 230 liberty 60, 63–4, 68, 74, see also
in church 202–4 freedom
reviews 29, 156–8 Limuru 206
in Rift Valley 184–7, 197 St. Paul’s 17, 17, 78, 146–7,
youth wing 29, 133–4, 136, 161 166, 172, 179
Kamau, David 235, 250 literacy 3, 52, 76, 78–9, 82, 100,
Kamau, John 49, 131 136–7, 145, 151, 155, 227,
Kamotho, Joseph 52, 231 230–1, 240, 248
Karanja, Peter 188, 191 love 25, 43, 50, 52, 70, 126–7,
Kariuki, Josiah Mwangi 19, 145, 148, 190, 196, 198, 202,
37, 109 207, 214, 234
Kariuki, Obadiah 16, 19, 43, Lutheran 2, 209
72, 146
KENDA 53, 142 Maathai, Wangari 96, 116, 119
Kenya Assemblies of God (KAG) 49, Maitha, Emmanuel 161
57, 190 Maseno 43, 91
Kenya National Youth Alliance Matiba, Kenneth 7, 29, 31, 36, 48,
(Kenya) 246–7 131, 142
Kenya People’s Union 45, 73, 157 Mau Mau 6, 17–8, 57–8, 67, 71–
Kenyatta, Jomo 6, 16, 19–21, 24, 3, 83, 101–2, 115, 118, 197,
44, 48, 50–1, 72–5, 77–8, 83, 229–30, 233–4, 237, 239–41,
91, 94, 106, 126–9, 148, 155, 243–4, 246, 248–9
157, 202, 211, 237, 239 Maximum Miracle Centre 36,
succession 73, 126 210, 218
Kenyatta, Uhuru 206–7, 245–6 Mboya, Tom 37, 50, 73, 108–10
Kiambu 3, 16, 23, 43, 94, 244 media 20, 27, 35–7, 40, 42, 50,
Kibaki, Mwai 7, 63, 174, 176, 63, 97–8, 104, 119, 128–9,
224, 234–5, 246 132, 136, 150, 162, 202, 208,
and churches 33–5, 53, 75, 216, 224–39, 245–9
126–7, 147, 152–3, 191–2, BBC 29, 84, 199, 240
205–8, 210, 213–16, 218, KBC 49, 202, 244
221 Nation 63, 228, 248
confronted 40–2 newspaper 63, 85, 104, 125,
election as president 37, 74, 96, 132–3, 136–7, 141, 216,
119, 142, 151, 186, 216, 245 227–8
unpopularity 186–7, 216 press 79, 126, 136, 227–9, 243
Kisumu 23, 187, 193 radio 19–20, 24, 84, 128, 177,
Kitale 33–4, 52 213, 227–8
Kitonga, Arthur 202–3, 210, 216 television 27–41, 128, 202,
Kobia, Samuel 25, 46, 49–51 227, 236
Kuria, Manasses 24, 30, 41, 127– Methodist Church 9, 64, 69, 93,
31, 141, 201 119, 209, 217, 219
288 Index

Majimboism, 171, 189, 191 youth 226–7, 232–3, 235–7,

Moi, Daniel arap 6, 116, 228, 240, 245, 247, 249
233–4, 245–6 violence 42, 229, 232–3, 236–7,
and churches 21–4, 27–35, 38– 244–5
9, 48–51, 61, 73–5, 91–3, Muiru, Pius 36, 210
102, 113, 118–19, 124–138, Muite, Paul 37, 47, 246
148, 156–7, 178, 191, 198, Muriu, Oscar 212, 219
202–8, 210–15, 217–9 Muslims and politics 4, 13, 32–3,
and coercion 125, 127, 129–30, 36, 41, 46, 49, 59, 63–4, 80–3,
133–4, 136, 148, 162–3, 178 155–6, 159–78, 230
and economy 61, 66, 96, 156, Memorandum of Understanding
205, 210, 220 (MoU) 36, 49, 156, 176–7
and elections 7, 126, 129, 138, riots 161, 164–5
142, 185–6 SUPKEM 164, 172
and Islam 81, 178 youth 160–1, 164–5
Mombasa 14–5, 20, 81, 96, 116, Musyimi, Mutava 33, 35, 52, 152,
145, 155, 158–61, 179, 198, 157, 191, 248
218, 239 Musyoka, Kalonzo 53, 206
moral authority of the Mutira 132, 149
churches 111, 153, 215, 220
moral economy 70, 72, 86, Nairobi 3, 16–7, 19, 43, 50,
91–3, 224–5 61–2, 64, 66, 68, 81, 83, 86,
morality 11, 37, 40, 78, 211, 89, 104, 116, 162, 164–6, 175,
190, 211 187, 197–8, 223, 224, 227,
Christian 10, 83, 65, 98, 109, 232–3, 235, 239–40, 244–6,
113, 124, 140–4, 183–4, 249–50
193, 214–5, 225 bombings 96
Muslim 83, 87, 90, 160 Chapel 212
personal 60, 80, 112, 140 churches 19, 76, 108, 203–8,
political 30, 44, 58–9, 72, 124, 215, 217
162, 177, 187–9, 191, 225 Diocese of 18, 24, 62, 111, 147,
public 28, 80 171, 235
moral order 44, 55, 58–9, 62, 70, University of 18, 51, 62, 72, 77,
77–9, 183, 189, 207 94, 146
change 5, 77–8, 88, 90, 188–9, Nakuru 74, 94, 195, 198–9, 213,
214, 225 218, 233
imagination 80, 85, 87–9, 94 NAMLEF 176–7
mosques 86, 89, 91, 94, 159, NARC 186, 249
164, 178, 189–90, 192, 198, Nassir, Sharif 161, 165
230 NCCK 3, 8, 141, 147
Muge, Alexander 27, 102, 104, advocacy 184, 193–5
128–31, 153, 157, 201, 204 communication 128, 157–8,
death 30, 73, 141, 157 193, 198, 225
and Kalenjin politics 49–50, 73 conferences 130, 137–8
Muingiki 42, 116, 186–7, 190, constitutional review 31, 158,
198, 223–49 163–7, 171–2
 Index 289

ministry to the nation 50, 52, ODM 49, 153, 176, 197, 220–1,
67, 73, 183, 188–9, 196, 248 246
national repentance 19, 40 Okullu, Henry 23–4, 27, 30, 50,
partisan 147, 153, 177, 190–2, 70, 73, 102, 104, 112, 128–31,
195–6, 208, 220, 247 153, 201, 204
relief and rehabilitation 31–5, oppression 25, 58, 117
183–98 political 70, 73–4
rivals 49, 65–6, 130–1, 198, spiritual 83, 92–3
203–4 Ouko, Robert 23, 37
youth 128, 165 Owen, Walter 3–4, 43, 91, 98
neopatrimonialism 201, 207 Oxford Centre for Mission
NGO 11, 38, 165, 184, 198, 209 Studies 25
Ngotho, Titus 51
Njenga, Maina 241, 246 PAFES 18, 47
Njiru, James 51, 133, 135 parliament 32, 47, 73–4, 93, 101,
Njonjo, Charles 20, 23–4, 94 127, 131, 139, 158, 163, 169–
Njoroge, Bernard 28, 205 74, 179–80, 211, 218
Njoya, Timothy 50, 64, 87, 89, on the church 142
94, 107 members of 29–30, 36–8, 42,
battered 32 47, 92, 112, 137, 142, 156,
famous four 27, 51, 104, 128, 166, 184–5, 191, 229, 245
201, 204 select committees of 163–5, 185
isolated 45, 119, 216 patronage 9, 12, 40, 49, 57,
Njue, John 35, 41, 216, 221, 235 60, 87, 92–4, 108, 111,
Njuno, Nahashon 29, 51, 149 201–2, 210–11, 245. See also
Nyagah, Jeremiah 22–3, 35, 43, clientelism
49, 119 Pattni, Kamlesh 53
Nyagah, Norman 35, 245 peace 48, 67, 73, 153, 187, 216,
Nyamweya, George 37 235, 237
Nyayo 50, 91, 96, 126, 133, 148, -building 192–4, 198
202, 204 -making 106, 112, 118, 196,
House 27 204, 208
Nyeri 5, 15, 23, 35, 45, 48, 131, religious contribution to 6, 11,
134–5, 191 21, 36, 43, 50, 52, 62–3, 97,
Nzeki, Mwana’a 31, 104, 193 124, 126–7, 139, 148, 152,
Nzimbi, Benjamin 41, 53, 147 164, 178, 184, 192–9, 202,
204, 214
oaths 49, 101, 118 Pentecostalism 3, 7, 41, 45, 49, 51,
Kenyatta’s 20, 73, 109–10 65–6, 103, 107, 118, 205–6, 232
Mau Mau 16–17 Neo-Pentecostalism 7, 12, 36,
Muingiki 229–31, 236–44, 246, 49, 53, 149–50, 172, 210,
248–9 212, 215, 217, 235
Odinga, Raila 36, 40, 85, 119, People’s Commission 164–5
156, 176–7, 206, 235, 246 pluralism 93, 96, 158
Odinga, Oginga 6, 44–5, 112, plural religious belonging 2, 67,
131–2, 157, 159 90, 231
290 Index

PNU 152, 187, 191, 198 ethnic 22–4, 27, 46, 59, 84,
police 83, 85, 234–5 111, 142, 151, 184, 190,
brutality 6, 17, 32, 187, 191, 192, 215, 234, 240, 246
227, 240–1 independent 4, 13, 19, 21–4,
Commissioner of 63, 240, 244 28–9, 31, 33, 36, 44, 50,
and churches 75, 162, 164, 203 59–60, 64, 71–2, 75,80, 87,
ineffectiveness of 226–7, 231, 91, 97, 100–2,108, 118, 137,
239–41, 244–6, 248 155–7, 168–9, 186, 201–2,
and Islam 160, 164, 165 211, 219, 230
and Muingiki 225–8, 229–36, local 23, 29, 44, 50, 59, 68, 70–
239–41, 244–8, 250 3, 84, 86–92, 100, 101, 103,
political use of 127, 160, 162 105, 108, 111, 117, 119–20,
protection 85, 196 127, 133–4, 137, 148–51,
shootings 32, 183, 234–5, 240–1 184–6, 189, 193–8, 223–5,
policy 11–2, 26, 50, 70, 114, 234 231, 239
political multiparty 7, 29, 31, 39, 60, 66,
arena 138, 178 74, 114, 124, 132, 137–8,
assent 101, see also consent 149, 156, 158, 160, 169,
demonstration 187 178, 183–5, 201–4, 215
forum 133 national 19, 27, 30, 40, 42, 46–
office 191, 202 7, 52–3, 61, 64, 67, 80–6, 92,
platform 132 95, 103–5, 108–9, 111, 113,
rally 138, 185 119–20, 130–1, 135, 137,
space 131, 246 141, 150–1, 156, 158, 166,
political science 11–13, 20, 45–6, 178, 191–8, 207–8, 211, 218
108, 238 nationalist 19, 20, 23, 71, 77,
politicians and religion 8, 33–5, 81, 83, 90–1, 98, 108, 116,
50, 52, 103, 106, 119, 131–4, 190, 196
149, 178, 203–6, 215 one-party 20, 29, 37, 50, 52,
politics 1–14, 45–7, 230 59, 73, 92, 96, 111, 127–8,
accountable 127, 189, 211 130–1, 133, 137–8, 148,
African 12, 45–6, 154 156–7, 202, 247
church 52, 111, 140–1 opposition 27, 33, 60, 65, 73,
clan 4, 16, 22, 43, 90, 96, 98, 124, 127, 130–1, 137–8,
108, 110–12, 114, 118, 120, 149, 151–2, 156–7, 159–60,
148, 154, 211, 223, 242 162–3, 176, 184–91, 197,
colonial 16, 44, 57, 96 203, 216, 234
of displacement 183–8, 196 party 6–7, 9, 14, 21, 24, 28–9,
dissident 6, 16–7, 44, 55, 127, 35, 37–8, 44, 50–3, 67, 73–
136, 148, 160, 185, 214, 5, 85, 92, 95, 103, 129–30,
224, 227 138–9, 148, 156–60, 165,
electoral 59, 92, 185, 187 184, 190–91, 197, 202, 206,
elite 3, 14, 22–3, 43, 57, 60, 220–1, 230, 233, 246–7
66, 72, 78, 97, 103, 107–8, radical 6, 32, 49, 128–9, 141,
192, 202, 205–6, 210, 213, 160, 202, 230
215, 247 secessionist 63–4
 Index 291

siasa 6, 8–9, 45 80–1, 89, 96–8, 112–6, 118,

of transformation 92, 98–9, 120, 123, 126, 129–30, 132,
117, 124, 126, 139, 196 139–40, 142, 152, 192, 195,
tribal 187, 210 203, 229, 238–9, 246–7
vernacular 4, 59, 81–7, 98, poverty 40, 57, 66, 72, 75, 93,
108, 151 183, 187, 202, 211, 225
violent 2, 6, 42, 57, 67, 105, and churches 40, 42, 68, 72–3,
138, 151, 160, 183–93, 75, 93, 100, 107, 112, 188,
197–8, see also violence 194, 208–211, 224–5
youth 42, 160, 226, 233–4, 246–7 prayer 8, 19–21, 28–9, 35–7,
politics and the churches 7–10, 22, 40, 47, 52, 84, 98, 115, 120,
28, 33, 36–7, 39, 43, 49–51, 125, 133, 142, 149, 162, 193,
65–7, 70–72,74, 103, 107–8, 202, 204, 207–8, 214–5, 218,
118–19, 124–8, 130–1, 134, 237–8, 247
136, 138–9, 150–1, 190, 196, book 15, 17
195, 203–7, 210, 215–6, 224, for cash 62, 93
247, see also Christians and Islamic 160, 173, 210
politics Muingiki 225, 230, 237, 247,
politics and Islam 4, 10, 80, 156– 249–50
60, 165–8, 178 Presbyterian Church of East
politics and New Religious Africa 9, 19, 23, 45, 64, 74,
Movements 3, 5–8, 13, 16, 87, 94, 97, 104, 128, 142, 161,
42, 116, 219, 224, 230, 235 201, 208, 211, 215, 218, 249
politics and religion 90, 127, 167, presidency 16, 21, 29, 31, 35–8,
229, see also Christians/Muslims 58, 61, 72, 102, 113, 127, 129–
and politics 32, 138, 142, 147, 152, 156–8,
politics and traditional African 184–7, 202, 211, 233–4, 245
religions 2, 6–7, 9–10, 13, authority 20, 32–3, 58, 124,
23, 46, 63, 75, 78–9, 95–6, 138–9, 160–1, 208
98–101, 104, 109–12, 116, Office of the President 20, 133,
124, 230–2, 237–9 135, 245
power 1, 3, 10, 12, 62, 80, 86, Vice-Presidency 34, 36, 50–1,
184, 211, 234 32, 126–7, 137, 142, 157,
abuse of 39, 49, 93, 134–6, 203–4, 214, 217
163, 191 Progressive Parties Alliance 246
ethnocratic 110, 184, 187–90, 215 prophet 26–8, 50–1, 116, 123–4,
political 5, 8, 12, 21–2, 26–7, 128, 132
33, 44, 50–2, 58–60, 63, 66, calling of 26–8, 32, 48, 134,
67–9, 71, 73–4, 80, 86, 93, 143–4, 148
112, 125, 137, 140, 148, and churches 7, 26–7, 111, 114,
152, 156, 158, 168, 184, 128, 151–3
187, 189, 196, 201, 205, decline of 33–6, 39, 42, 73,
211, 215, 218, 226, 230, 152–3, 192, 196, 209–13,
233–4, 237 221, 247
religious 3–5, 21, 26, 38, 44–5, Old Testament 19–20, 26–7, 30,
47–8, 50, 52, 58, 63–5, 73, 33, 47, 60, 65, 113, 128, 133
292 Index

protest 47, 125, 187 194, 196, 206–7, 209,

church 5, 39, 73–4, 91, 98, 109, 213, 249
128–30, 152, 216 pastoral letters 107–8, 127, 193,
Muslim 160 198
Protestant 2, 7, 9–10, 12, 41–2, ruling party 301, 35, 74, 118, 129,
45, 52, 64, 70, 112, 119, 131 138, 152, 245
ecumenism 3, 10, 116 Rubia, Charles 131
leaders 43, 77, 99, 116–7, 137, Ruto, William 207, 215
152, 163, 223, 247 Rwanda 67, 153, 184
Mission 8, 24
Qur’an 59, 80, 82–3, 90, 167, 176
Saitoti, George 53, 142, 157,
reconciliation 25, 203–4, 214–5, 217, 234
political 37, 178, 195, 213, 247 salvation 5, 7–10, 13, 16, 44, 65,
religious 2, 6, 106–7, 115, 117, 70, 85, 89, 98–9
149, 151, 191, 193–6, political implications of 25, 44,
198–9, 216, 247 60, 64–5, 103, 117, 215
Redeemed Gospel Church 49, 191, schools 18, 30, 47–8, 62, 75, 91,
202, 210, 216 128, 133, 146, 158–9, 194,
reform 37, 39, 78, 92, 96, 158, 202, 225, 229, 245, 247–8
187, 203, 217 independent 6, 44
constitutional 60, 63, 74, 92, mission 3, 14–7, 25, 43, 61, 71,
164, 166 75–6, 83, 91, 97–8, 117, 155
democratic 32–3, 42, 139, Muslim 90, 159–60
162, 183 sermons 7, 17, 25, 110, 114, 125,
Islamic 167 140–1
party 28–9 political 19–20, 23, 27–9, 36,
Reformed tradition 9, 25 48, 50, 73, 85, 87, 94, 105–
religion and politics 10, 13–14, 7, 114, 119–20, 124, 128–9,
16–17, 47, 58–61, 67, 70, 76, 132–7, 141, 144, 148–9,
80, 85, 87, 90, 96–7, 101, 103, 190, 202
119, 123–8, 167, 226, 229, settlers 2, 6, 67–8, 70, 78, 91, 98,
232, 239, 241 101, 187, 189
repression 31, 48, 124, 131, 152, Seventh-day Adventists 177, 204
187, 193 Sikhs 4, 41, 95, 173
Revival, East African 5–6, 8, socialism 72, 128
10, 16–18, 44, 70, 99, 103, society 3, 11–12, 14, 18, 23, 26,
115–6, 118 29, 33, 38–40, 46, 48–9, 70,
Roman Catholic Church 41, 61, 72, 75, 87, 89, 89, 98–102,
75–6, 84–5, 104, 152 104–7, 109, 112–13, 115–18,
bishops 33, 64, 66, 77, 127, 124, 126, 130, 134, 137, 139,
163, 177, 193, 198, 206, 221 150, 153, 207, 211–12, 223,
and other churches 2, 5, 8, 10, 225–6, 231, 236–7, 244, 247
23, 31, 33, 51, 61, 64, 66, civil 39, 50, 59, 70, 74, 139, 156,
72, 97, 147, 164, 190–1, 163, 183–4, 190–4, 196, 198
 Index 293

sociopolitical 8, 25, 125–6, 210, 212 theory 77, 93

spirit 5, 6, 72, 96–8, 125–6, 202– political 20, 92–3
3, 225, 235, 239 thought 12, 47, 104, 108,
churches 6, 212 230, 242
Holy 9, 208 political 12, 78, 108, 113,
spirits 15, 44, 86, 211–12, 219 148, 210
state 3, 12, 20–3, 26, 30, 33, 47, see also theology
50, 58–9, 63–5, 67–70, 73, 84, torture 17, 27, 44, 148
86–93, 96–8, 100–5, 115, 129– trade unions 44, 50, 129, 165
30, 147–8, 163, 234, 244–7 traditional society 1, 23, 77, 99–
African 12–14, 53 101, 104, 116, 118, 120, 226
institutions 12, 82, 100, 171–2, transparency 31, 66, 187, 197
192, 201 tribalism 41, 66, 108, 120, 134,
and Muingiki 233 145, 154, 187, 190, 220, 225
nation- 46, 158 anti-tribalism 23, 26, 114–5,
and society 49, 76, 139–40 120, 190, 193, 214
Western 12, 46 tribal Christian religion 64, 66,
see also church and state; 84, 110, 112, 141, 209, 219
colonialism; corruption; tribal jurality 101, 109
ethnic; politics; and violence tribal morality 77
succession 12, 24, 27, 35, 47, tribal society 46, 100
52–3, 58, 73, 97, 102, 143, tribal story 84
153, 178 tribes 3–4, 12, 108, 109, 110, 114,
suppression 163, 227, 237 236, 244
of Israel 83, 189
Tanzania 58, 80, 89, 139–40, 156 tribespeople 57, 78, 190
territoriality 5, 9, 31, 59, 64, 66,
70, 81, 90, 108 Ufungamano House 32, 156–7,
theological education 18, 35, 40, 163, 246
45, 47, 52, 87–9, 120, 140–1, Initiative 35,155–6, 163–7,
146–7, 172, 179, 213–4 170–2, 174, 177–8
theology 8–9, 42, 47, 62, 140, Uganda 2, 24, 37, 43, 67, 69,
209, 231 91, 116
African 25, 68, 88, 112, UN 195
209–20, 219 United Evangelical Churches of
Conservative Evangelical 9, Kenya (UECK) 204
24–6, 45, 65, 117–8 United Muslims of Africa
emancipation 59–60, 65, 68, (UMA) 161
70–1, 75, 86, 91–2 USA 33, 147, 177, 160, 212
liberal 8–10, 24, 44–5, 59–60,
64–5, 98, 117 value 11, 77, 93, 96, 103–4, 126,
liberation 24, 59, 67–8, 112 177, 190, 207
political 8, 12, 23, 25, 46, 49, 58– ethnic 10, 13, 96, 116, 224–5,
9, 64–7, 70, 74, 77–8, 92–3, 232, 237
112–3, 116, 124, 128, 140, 203 system 78, 188
294 Index

violence 7–8, 58, 75, 106, 183–99 Wanjiru, Margaret 36, 210
church responses to 39–40, 47, war 4, 40, 135, 138, 165, 214,
52, 67–8, 112, 162, 183, 237, 244
188–99, 224 civil 58, 67, 83, see also Mau
ethnic 106, 110, 154, 183–92, Mau
195–8, 214 Cold 50, 209
Muslim 64, 160, 164–5 tribal 4, 70, 193
postelection 39–40, 42, 57, World 57–8, 70, 81, 91, 99
60, 62, 67, 74, 106, 119, Waruinge, Ndura 231, 245–6
143–54, 177, 183–99, 218, women 57, 62, 71, 75, 77–8, 106,
230, 249 116, 119, 195, 213, 225, 229
territorial 31, 184, 186 and church 5, 69, 99, 109,
security forces 32, 42, 191, 237 114, 117, 125, 128, 154 ,
sexual 195, 211, 237 191, 208
state 48–9, 57, 74–5, 96, 164, and FGC 3, 62, 89, 94, 99, 116,
184–98, 232, 236, 245, 237, 244
see also Muingiki, violence; Gikuyu 5, 78, 89, 146, 216,
politics, violent 242–3
and Islam 159–60
Wabukala, Eliud 188, 191 priests 51, 99, 147
Wako, Amos 174, 229, 245 World Council of Churches 25,
Draft of the Constitution 52, 204
174–6, 179
Wanjau, George 19, 142, 218 youth 106, 224–6, 250, 235–6