Have churches considered that they may be abetting crime?

At about this time last year, I had a long chat with a Catholic priest in the Archdiocese of Nairobi. Among the many things we discussed was that the Catholic Church in Kenya was undergoing a crisis of legitimacy, a credibility gap that it was trying very hard to bridge, as it hoped to shake off the “illegitimacy” tag, but was really struggling in its endeavours.

It has a wobbly leadership to begin with: the Kenya Conference of Catholic Bishops (KCCB). The conference of bishops pretended to speak in one voice, “but the truth of the matter is it had ceased speaking in one voice,” said the priest. “In public, they will put on a show of togetherness, quickly read their pastoral letter and then as quickly disband. For keen observers, their body language, when they are together, would tell you a lot; it is always asymmetrical.”

The bishops, said the cleric, are diametrically divided on ethnic lines, hence their ethnic-based political alliances. This, he had told me, was not a well-kept secret. The near irreparable damage was done during the 2007 general election and the aftermath of the post-election violence.

PROPERTY TUSSLE

The church has a cardinal who is embroiled in a property tussle within the church’s institutions with some American missionary over a mission hospital: St Mary’s Hospital in Lang’ata, Nairobi, and another, in Elementaita, Gilgil, in Nakuru County. This, he said, had become a public embarrassment. The cardinal is looked down on by a section of the clergy, who are ashamed of his entanglements with the ownership of the hospital and cannot countenance his insistence on wanting to “grab” the hospital from Father Bill. They wish he would redirect the energies he spends fighting to acquire the hospital to leading the church’s flock in doctrinal and spiritual matters.

Yet, what has led a section of the clergy to treat him with utmost disdain and utter contempt is his open ethnic political affiliations. “In the lead-up to the 2007 general election, he openly took sides, as indeed other bishops and priests and that’s why over and above everything else, the church lost its credibility and legitimacy (among) the laity and the rest of Kenyans of Christian faith, since 2007,” said the priest. “It’s unforgivable that the most influential and powerful church in the country took political sides, resulting in the deaths of many innocent Kenyans, including a parish priest.”

Why am I recounting this? Days after Deputy President William Ruto made his infamous claim in a Catholic church (St Benedict’s in the Ngoingwa suburb of Thika Town, Kiambu County) that his contributions of huge amounts of money to churches was tantamount to investing in heavenly bliss, the leadership of the church has been eerily mute. Is it that the Catholic Church’s leadership in Kenyan does not find anything spooky with that sinister statement? Is it that it long lost its moral gravitas to even attempt to correct sinful and wrongful notions about the heaven-bound sojourn and more particularly, on Christian ethics and teachings? Is contributing humongous amounts of money to the church’s coffers what will take Christians to heaven?

TOOLS FOR POLITICIANS

My priest friend told me, “You’ll notice that today even when the bishops attempt to pen pastoral letters, they’re weak and directionless, they don’t have the lustre and weight that past pastoral letters used to carry, especially the ones that used to be written in the 1990s.” I raise this issue particularly with the Catholic Church in Kenya, because Ruto said these words in one of its churches. This does not exonerate the other Christian churches: They have ubiquitously become tools for politicians to spread doctrinal fallacies about spiritual matters largely because they have pocketed the respective church leadership.

Months before the August 8, 2017 general elections, “pastoral letters” from one of the richest governor aspirants used to be crafted by a coterie of clergymen, who would fight for his attention, come every weekend. He never let them down: He would properly and thoroughly grease their “anointed hands” for them to pen even more saucy “heavenly missives”. Five days after Ruto claimed he was “investing” in heavenly bliss, the religious leaders who create doomsday scenarios with so much fervour to the gullible, manipulable and vulnerable believers of the hell-fire awaiting them in the hereafter, if they do not invest in the heavenly kingdom, are surreptitiously quiet on Ruto’s unmitigated heavenly aspirations.

UNSPIRITUAL MESSAGES

Pastor Dennis White of the Nairobi Pentecostal Church (NPC)-Valley Road (for those of you who can remember him) was a missionary pastor, who in the fullness of time, became adept at navigating the complex web that is Kenyan politics, especially during the reign of the “professor” of politics – President Daniel Toroitich arap Moi. In the 1990s, Moi would occasionally “appear”, Bible and all, in White’s church, especially when he was the one preaching. White would tell Moi: “Mr President, thank you for paying our church a visit. You’re always most welcome. We’ll pray for you, as you continue ruling this country, but if the opposition leaders come, we shall equally welcome them and we’ll pray for them also. Everybody is welcome to the church of Christ.”

Why do some of the Catholic churches – and the rest of the churches – allow politicians anywhere near the pulpit? Indeed, why are churches allowing these willy-nilly politicians to subvert the teaching of Christ with their toxic and unspiritual messages? Why are these churches allowing politicians to contribute harambee money in churches? For what? The 2011 Electoral Act expressly states that harambees anywhere should not be conducted within eight months preceding a general election. The churches may argue that it is not in their province to tell anyone not to conduct harambees, and that is all true, but have they considered they could be abetting a crime?

Mr Kahura is a senior writer for 'The Elephant', a Nairobi-based publication. Twitter: @KahuraDauti