Church Erred in Hosting Ethnic Caucus

Post by Jesse Masai

I read a story appearing in today’s Daily Nation with great dismay.

In the piece, a new council of elders for the Kalenjin community had been assembled at the Reformed Church of East Africa’s conference center in Eldoret.

But I must, first of all declare my interest in this subject.

My father is an ordained minister with the RCEA, and has served with it in various parts of Kenya since the mid 1970s.

Am also as Kalenjin as anything else I might be, owing to my blurred ethnic heritage and command of some Kalenjin dialects.

I grew up in the RCEA, and remain committed to its confession of the Christian faith, even when am part of faith communities outside the North Rift, where the Church’s presence is strong.

In the late 80s and early 90s, I attended RCEA’s youth conferences, including one at which the late Bishop Alexander Muge challenged us to review our cozy relationship with the repressive Moi state.

And when I came to faith in August 1992, it was not difficult for me finding resonance with John Calvin – the Church’s forerunner – and Abraham Kuyper, a fitting intellectual descendant, on Church-state relations, among other issues.

Yet I remained surprised at the RCEA’s ambivalence on the pressing issues of the 90s, particularly the ethnic cleansing that would follow remarks and actions by some of the high and mighty in the Moi state.

The prolonged domination of vital positions in the Church’s leadership by the Kalenjin community then, as in the first Kibaki state, would be seen as key to understanding the RCEA’s shaky prophetic witness under both regimes.

When the RCEA, under the National Council of Churches of Kenya (NCCK), acquiesced to the excesses of the Kibaki state prior to the disputed 2007 polls, few were surprised.

As an aspirant for the Cherangany parliamentary seat in the polls, I followed the Church’s reaction after the polls with even greater interest.

At the height of the post-election violence, the Church’s leadership – including my father – met in Eldoret to determine a united response: predictably, the meeting resulted in an ODM vs PNU and Kalenjin vs the rest retreat.

When, after 2007, the NCCK apologized for having failed the nation, I was among those who thought my own RCEA had also seen some light.

But apparently the celebration was premature, for their decision to host an ethnic caucus barely 24 months after the nation’s ethnic bloodbath smirks of nothing close to repentance.

Councils of elders of the kind the Kalenjin have assembled, as indeed other communities also are putting together, are no way to heal this nation.

I witnessed the truism of this in the 2007 campaigns, when in the multi-ethnic Cherangany various councils would be bought off day and night by the over 10 contestants.

I was, therefore, not surprised when houses began going up in smoke and people maimed, killed or evicted when competing ethnic interests felt betrayed by the overall poll outcome.

Even in areas where it was believed the violence had not been spontaneous, the organizing for power around ethnic identity was still pretty much the staple food.

In the weeks and months following the fall-outs between Prime Minister Raila Odinga and Agriculture Minister William Ruto in the ODM power-games, preliminary indications are that ethnic polarization in relation to the Kalenjin community have increased, not waned.

It’s not for nothing, therefore, that reports have recently emerged about various individuals and communities arming themselves ahead of the 2012 polls, whose violence is in some quarters expected to make the 2007 one appear like a Sunday school picnic.

While ethnic chauvinists across the political divide are busy romancing their final solutions and post-2012 power structures, the sober-minded among us remain concerned about prospects not just for the region but also the country.

From where I sit, one would expect a Church headquartered in such a region to be alive to these realities.

From where I sit, one would expect a Church headquartered in such a region to know that when tribe replaces party and common charity as a tool for political mobilization, then our road back to 2007 becomes very short indeed.

From where I sit, one would also expect a Church headquartered in such a region to know that the use of Church facilities in the manner reported on Monday can be as damning or glorious afterwards depending on the unpredictable political winds of our times, as it was for the Lutheran Church in Nazi Germany.

Make no mistake: Am saying all this for the RCEA, as I would for any denomination or faith community playing lap-dog to the high and mighty of our times.

It is still not too late for the RCEA, as indeed every other person of goodwill, to re-discover the transformative power in becoming the moral conscience of this nation.

Jesse Masai is the President and CEO of Jesse Masai. http://www.jesse-masai.com