The culpability of the Church in Kenya’s ethnic violence by Dr Mark Faulkner

Dr Mark Faulkner teaches at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. His book, Overtly Muslim, Covertly Boni: Competing Calls of Religious Allegiance on the Kenyan Coast, was published by Brill in 2006.

In early 1985, with the oil of ordination barely dry on my hands, I arrived in Kenya’s Diocese of Ngong to serve as a missionary amongst the nomadic Maasai. I was quickly introduced to the ‘Maasai Apostolate’, the ministerial priority of reaching out to these unevangelised pastoralists while affording the Catholic members of other ethnic communities, who had migrated into the area, the pastoral crumbs that fell from this top table. I witnessed efforts at inculturation which, for example, saw the abandonment of white altar linen (white being the colour the Maasai associate with death) in favour of black drapes which were intended to be redolent of the sacred Maasai colour: the hue of thunderclouds that brought the rain that caused the grass to spring up and upon which their cattle grazed and which, in turn, the Maasai relied upon for food, wealth and prestige. Black was the colour the Maasai were understood to associate with their god, E’Ngai.

Bead-encrusted liturgical vestments served as a badge of honour and conferred status – the wearer was understood to be exempt from the daily drudge of pastoral care to the non-Maasai Catholic community committed, instead, to the rarefied task of planting a Maasai church. One missionary had devoted much of his life to the study of the Maasai language and had published a dictionary and grammar. The Bible and liturgical texts were being translated into Maasai; hymns composed that respected Maasai musical sensibilities; development projects initiated for the exclusive benefit of the Maasai.

Twenty-two years later and Kenya erupts into bloodshed after an election that is widely considered to have been fundamentally flawed. Ethic violence spills onto the streets of Nairobi and other towns and cities across the country. Church leaders wring their hands and pastoral letters are hurriedly written condemning the violence and calling for peace. But how far have the pastoral policies of the Church in Kenya, the legacy of the missionary enterprise and the interference of Rome contributed to the current crisis?

In his book Africa: A Biography of a Continent John Reader posits that “Tribalism is the most pernicious of the traditions which the colonial period bequeathed to Africa.”  Tribalism has a distinctly African flavour (the conflagration in the Balkans was never expressed in terms of a ‘tribal’ conflict, nor that between the Israelis and the Palestinians) and was invented by the colonial authorities as part of their divide and rule policy. Previously boundaries had been porous and languages and identities shaded into one another. The new narrative saw communities such as the Maasai and Kikuyu - who had a long history of trade, intermarriage and shared social and religious practice - fictionalised in the colonial discourse as being sworn enemies.

Subsequent colonial administrations acquiesced in this construct, identifying clearly demarcated and discrete boundaries between various ethnic communities even if the situation on the ground did not warrant such a concise definition or was more fluid than the line on a map would suggest. As Allen points out in his Swahili Origins: Swahili Culture and the Shungwaya Phenomenon, the British administrators ‘liked their Africans to be racially “pure”’ and the construction of ‘native reserves’ facilitated such a conceit.  However, as Stiles makes clear in his The Past and Present of Hunter-Gatherers in Kenya,

…there is no such thing as a ‘pure’ tribe. Except for the most recent immigrants, it is safe to say that all tribes in Kenya contain a mixture of Bantu, Kalenjin, Eastern Nilotic and Eastern Cushitic elements, with a small amount of Southern Cushitic and Hadzan thrown in. Linguistics and comparative ethnography bear this out, as historical evidence of language and cultural borrowings from one group to another is unmistakable. This process is still going on today, and it is a normal one that happens everywhere in the world.

 

One of the aftermaths of independence in many African countries was the effort on the part of the newly installed government to try to instil a sense of national identity in the face of the ‘tribal’ motif advanced by the colonial authorities. So, in countries crying out for money to be spent on the better provision of health care and education, vast sums were earmarked annually to celebrate Independence Day and other national commemorations in the hope of forging an identity that transcended the ‘tribal’ appellations designated during European rule. However, although the Church interpreted independence as a need for white missionaries to assume a somewhat lower profile and consequently elevated a few black faces to the ranks of the ecclesial hierarchy, for the most part it was business as usual and the Church continued to labour away, enjoying great numerical growth, within the ‘tribal’ mindset.

Indeed, it is true to say that the Church had taken ‘tribal’ identities to heart (Alfons Eppink’s otherwise excellent piece, “Kenya’s Great Rift” The Tablet, 12^th January 2008, is still couched in the language of ‘tribalism’). Missionaries were appointed to a given ‘tribe’ where they frequently laboured away for years, learning the local tongue and often being the first to commit the languages to paper, writing the histories of the local communities, introducing a regional flavour into their religious practice.

In Kenya, the original three ecclesiastical administrative areas (coinciding with the missionary groups that first established themselves in this part of Africa – the Holy Ghost, Mill Hill and Consolata missionaries) were gradually subdivided, imposing a checkerboard pattern on the map that correspond to the ‘tribal’ boundaries established by the secular authorities. As dioceses became smaller, frequently one language and culture came to predominate in each, diocesan priests were recruited from this ethnic community and the bishop, too, was likely to have been drawn from its ranks (with the exception of the more remote dioceses where missionary bishops were still appointed since these were expected to have access to financial support from their home countries).

The dreams of a local church had been unwittingly reduced to a tribal church. As people became more mobile, they abandoned the ‘reserves’ of the colonial era and settled elsewhere in the country but the Catholic Church they encountered was one in which they felt themselves to be outsiders, not able to understand the language and idiom of the liturgy. Local priests and bishops frequently assumed a mantle of cultural as well as religious leadership (often having been installed as chiefs at the time of their ordination), championing local issues, enjoying a respect that was not accorded to politicians who were frequently viewed as merely pursuing their own selfish interests. Such ethnic sentiment could easily polarise into an “us and them” mentality, especially during times of upheaval.

The ‘tribal’ mentality that informed the operation of the ‘Maasai Apostolate’ finds echoes throughout the country. The Church’s social teaching is frequently expressed in a manner that articulates the interests and concerns of the local ethnic community to which both priest and congregation belong. Injustices suffered are identified, policies that are against ‘tribal’ interests denounced. Alfons Eppink’s article demonstrates how this thinking has penetrated even the hierarchy with Archbishop Okoth of Kisumu involved in a public contretemps with Cardinal Njue of Nairobi over issues that reflect the vested interests of their respective ethnic communities. The public display of unity manifested by the Kenya Bishop’s Conference during the Moi dictatorship has given way to a body fractured along ethnic lines.

The events of the last few weeks should serve as a wakeup call to the Church in Kenya and, perhaps, to other local churches on the continent. While respecting and preserving local culture and language is laudable, it can also have the effect of bolstering narrow local self-interest over and against the national good. Ethnic violence has blighted much of post-colonial Africa and, after the orgy of bloodletting that was a feature of Kenya’s neighbour, Uganda, during the Amin years, Kenya has had to acknowledge that it is not impervious to such developments. Interestingly, the one country of the former East African Community that has escaped descending down such a route is Tanzania. Is it just coincidental that one of the policies advanced by President Julius Nyerere in the early years was to promote the use of the Swahili language? As a consequence, all citizens of that country can talk to one another, people can work wherever they choose, celebrate Mass in a language accessible to all. It served to foster a sense of national identity.

Rome needs to consider abandoning the policy of establishing dioceses that are contiguous with ethnic boundaries, to reconsider the appropriateness of appointing bishops who, given the feudal trappings of the episcopacy, readily assume the position of tribal chiefs. The promotion of fidei donum priests, which has witnessed priests from Britain serving the Kenyan Church for a set number of years (to the benefit of both sending and receiving churches) could be extended to allow diocesan priests in Kenya to serve outside of their home area.

Finally, the edition of The Tablet that carried Fons Eppink’s report of events in Kenya, also serves to remind us in the Church in England and Wales that we are confronted with similar issues. The debate over the place of the newly arrived Polish community concerns the appropriateness of establishing the structures of a ‘tribal church’ in these lands.