Political evangelism

Not everyone that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.
- Matthew vii: 21

Since the Pre-trial Chamber II of the International Criminal Court comprising Judges Ekaterina Trendafilova, Cuno Tarfusser and Hans-Peter Kaul confirmed charges against William Ruto and Uhuru Kenyatta, among others, the pair has been on a whistle-stop tour of the nation, men of the cloth in tow praying loudly for their salvation from the clutches of the ICC Prosecutor. The images of William Ruto and Uhuru Kenyatta on their knees with preachermen laying hands on them in prayer have been on the front pages of our newspapers for the past few weeks. Absent from the pages of these same newspapers, even inside the papers, are images of the men, women and children living in abject conditions in makeshift camps, all but forgotten by the people of Kenya.

Traditionally, as the Archbishop of Canterbury found out in the past few months, the church has always been a refuge for the weak and the downtrodden. In Kenya, this tradition is all but forgotten; the church is the refuge of the high and mighty, a place for 'networking' and entrenching the overlordship of the ruling classes. It explains why the Kenyans living in Internally Displaced Persons' (IDP) camps have faded from our memories, while the men accused of causing their plight receive the red-carpet treatment from bishops and reverends wherever they set foot. 

It is why the vocal church leaders of Kenya find it easier to hobnob with the members of the reviled political class and persistently shun the 'others'. I am yet to see images of John Cardinal Njue or Archbishop Eliud Wabukala, or the leaders of our megachurches visiting with the IDPs or offering them the comfort of their coffers. The IDPs are left to organise what spiritual and material solace they can find, with what resources they can scratch together. In the midst of their suffering, forgotten by the majority of Kenyans, they have taken extraordinary steps to organise worship amongst themselves, while the leaders of the visible church in Kenya lay hands on the high and mighty.

Perhaps we have misjudged the major churches in Kenya. Perhaps what they do to offer comfort and solace to the IDPs is done away from the glare of the media cameras and they have made extraordinary sacrifices for the sake of the IDPs and we are being uncharitable when we suggest that they are blind to their plight. Perhaps it is the proliferating evangelical churches, seeing an opportunity to get closer to the powerful of the land, that are taking advantage of the legal plight of the ICC accused. But it still fails to account for why they see the ICC duo as more important, in need of divine intervention, than the Kenyans living in the IDP camps.

The men of the cloth that have taken it upon themselves to inject a dose of religion into the political process by coat-tailing after the ICC duo have decided that the fate of the particular sects rests in the hands of the pair more than it does in the hands of the Almighty. They represent a change in evangelism that was initiated when KANU finally lost its iron grip on the nation and was cemented with the bloody 2007 campaign and its equally blood-soaked aftermath. Their role is no longer to offer moral and spiritual leadership to the parched masses, but to participate robustly in determining the political future of the country. They have wandered so far from the straight and narrow that they will need binoculars to find their way back. Many of their comrades have decided to join active politics, using the rhetoric of politics to beguile their congregations to elect them to political positions. It is the weak and downtrodden that are paying the price for this change in mission statement. It is a sad time for the Christian faithful and one day soon they will realise just how much they have lost.