Allow me to use a Biblical story to illustrate my point. In the Bible, there is a story of four men with leprosy who were sitting at the entrance of the city gates at a time of famine. In those days, lepers were not allowed to live with other people in the city. In this instance, the lepers were sitting outside the city of Samaria, where a famine was raging. “Why should we sit here waiting to die?” they asked each other. “We will starve if we stay here, and we will starve if we go back into the city. So we might as well go out and surrender to the Aramean army. If they let us live, so much the better. But if they kill us, we would have died anyway.”
This is the situation the Kenyan church finds itself in today. Like the four lepers, they are damned whichever choice they make as far as rewriting our constitution is concerned. Currently, Kenya is going through the process of re-writing its constitution. A committee, the Committee of Experts has been working around the clock with the aim of coming up with a document that they hope will be acceptable to the majority of Kenyans when it is finally brought to them for voting and adoption in a referendum that is due some time next year.
There are various contentious issues that are yet to be agreed upon by the majority whether they should belong to the constitution or not. Among the many issues being considered, there is a general agreement that we need to have a system of government where we have a President and a Prime Minister leading side by side. The only snag is how much power each should wield and their relationship within the whole executive arrangement. The other contentious issue is what has been pointed out by the churches – the position of the Kadhi’s court in the constitution.
To put things in perspective, it needs to be understood that the Kadhi’s court have existed in the Kenyan constitution since independence. But the church’s contention is that since our constitution purports to be secular, there is no way one religion can be elevated above the other religions by being entrenched in the constitution. This to them, is a case of discrimination against other religions. Another argument is that even if, as the Muslims say, that the courts have been in the constitution since time immemorial, that is no good reason for them to be retained if people of other religious feel uncomfortable about their being in the constitution.
The other point they are raising is that the courts will have to be funded by taxpayers’ money. This to them is totally unacceptable and therefore calls for the funding of all religions and their activities. The Muslim have vowed to fight tooth and nail to see that they have the courts in the constitution and have said that they will not accept anything less than what they already have in the current constitution.
With the above in mind, it seems that the church now finds itself in a catch 22 situation. If they reject the proposed document, they will remain with the current constitution which already has the Kadhi’s courts in them. If they accept the proposed document, they will have what they don’t like. In other words, they are damned if they accept it and damned if they reject it!!!
As a church sympathizer, I find this situation very tricky. The churches have even threatened to ask their members to vote against the proposed document when the time for referendum comes. I may be wrong, but I really doubt if they will be able to marshall enough support to shoot down the proposed document. I draw my argument from the fact that many of the so-called 80% Christians in the country are Christians just in name. Many of them are nominal Christians and I really doubt if they will listen to the church leaders and vote against the document.
I believe that many people will listen to the political leaders, many of whom are just tribal leaders, and vote the way the politicians will ask them to vote. Many of us, even those in church, still pay allegiance to the tribe first before we pay allegiance to the church leaders. It is so because even the so called church leaders owe more allegiance to their tribes than the cross of Christ! Therefore, their members will just follow them to their tribes.
The church leaders may be of the opinion that their refusal to support the draft constitution in 2005 helped to bring down the proposed document at that time. But they need to remember that their opposition only bore fruit because powerful political forces were on their side. This time round if all the political players come to a compromise and agree to support the document, the way it seems they are doing, the church will have a Herculean task of convincing the rest of Kenyans to vote with them.
The church really needs to think seriously about this situation because I believe it is a situation that will either build or damage the image of the church in the eyes of the public. If they suffer ‘defeat’ it will be a condemnation of the church as an institution that is no longer reliable and relevant in the lives of many people, and an institution that is out of touch with the reality. And this will just act to remind the world of the shame the church suffered in 2008 after the politically motivated clashes, which left thousands dead in the country. The church was seen to have been compromised and that is why the church leaders could not be trusted to be objective reconciliators in the differences that emerged among the politicians. That is why Koffi Anan and other Eminent Africa personalities had to come in and save the situation.
The Kenyan church is wounded and still limping from the events of last year. Suffering a ‘defeat’ in the constitution-making process will be a bad omen for the standing of the church in the nation. Lord have mercy on the church!
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