Hopes were dashed again in Kenya on Tuesday as former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan suspended mediation talks between presidential rivals Mwai Kibaki and Raila Odinga. The power-sharing agreement that appeared within reach last week is proving elusive, and it’s not hard to understand why. Kenya’s elections, like those in many other developing democracies, can be an effective mechanism for imposing majority rule. But that doesn’t necessarily translate into equitable divisions of power, wealth, economic opportunity or natural resources. Elections have destabilized such countries as Ivory Coast, Pakistan and Ethiopia, and the Palestinian territories. In Kenya, they have historically been winner-seizes-all contests that have been marred by violence and have left an increasingly bitter taste in the hungry mouths of the losers.

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The Anglican Church has failed the people of Kenya by not speaking with a “prophetic voice” in the wake of the disputed Dec 27 elections, the former Archbishop of Kenya has declared.

“We did not need Tutu to come all the way from South Africa to solve this crisis. We did not need Kofi Annan…

The Church should have been able to solve this problem.

But they are seen as partisan,” Archbishop David Gitari told the East African Standard.

Kenya’s post-election violence has led to the deaths of over 1,000 people and forced over 350,000 from their homes.

Last week the National Council of Churches of Kenya (NCCK) apologised to the nation for the partisan political divisions within the churches, which had muted its prophetic voice. “Religious leaders failed to stay on the middle path, they took sides and were unable to bring the unity needed when the crisis arose,” NCCK secretary-general Canon Peter Karanja said on Feb 13.

In an interview with the Standard, Dr Gitari recounted the church-led campaign to end one-party political rule in the 1990s. “The Church is a reconciler and a reconciler does not take sides unless he is completely sure the side he is taking is the right one,” he said.

However, we are called “the light of the world and salt of the earth. Whoever does wrong has to be challenged, whether that person is your brother or tribesman,” the retired archbishop said.

Kenya’s Anglican bishops either were “not courageous enough or have taken sides,” he charged. The church’s bishops were split down the middle along tribal lines in the current dispute and “it is wrong.”

They were “failing to be prophetic,” and had lost the public’s trust, Dr Gitari said.

Following a meeting in Limeru last week, the NCCK’s executive council released a statement acknowledging that “Church leaders have displayed partisan values in situations that called for national interest. The church has remained disunited and its voice swallowed in the cacophony of vested interests.”

Kenya’s Christian leaders called for a fresh start. “All have failed, including the church leaders.”

In a statement published on the NCCK’s website, church leaders called for the arrest of those involved in inciting violence as well as the disciplining of police officers who had used excessive force in responding to
the unrest.

They also called for the strengthening of the judiciary, Parliament and the Electoral Commission, and a ban on political parties that pandered to tribal interests and sectarian passions.

–This article appears in this week’s edition of the Church of England Newspaper

This is a terrific piece, and do watch it all but be forewarned the content involves quite upsetting material.

Riot police have arrested the Harare deputy sheriff trying to open the Anglican cathedral for a Sunday service, the cathedral church warden Sekai Chibaya said Monday.

The cathedral had been illegally occupied by a renegade pro-ruling party ex-priest and baton-charged parishioners waiting for the church to be opened and to begin a service, witnesses said.

Watched by a group of about 20 parishioners on Sunday, a locksmith accompanying the deputy-sheriff – whose name was not immediately available – had just used a bolt cutter to open the padlock on the gate to the cathedral when a squad of riot police drove up, Chibaya said.

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Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is in Kenya for a day of talks with political protagonists and leaders. She’s delivering a message from President Bush: Stop the violence and return to democracy. Bush is in Tanzania on the second leg of a five-nation African tour that is focusing on U.S. humanitarian efforts on the continent. Rice’s trip to Kenya girds former U.N. chief Kofi Annan’s mediation efforts there.

Listen to it all from NPR.

THE Archbishop of York has appealed for funds for humanitarian relief in Kenya.

Dr Sentamu, addressing the General Synod on Wednesday after his visit to Kenya last week, said that there had been progress in talks between the two main parties, at odds since the disputed December election. But after more than 1000 people had been killed, and 300,000 forced from their homes by the fighting, humanitarian relief was a top priority.

As part of the response, Dr Sentamu told Synod that he and the Archbishop of Canterbury were setting up a special fund, together with the Church Mission Society.

“In the many camps, I saw people with broken limbs and other physical injuries, and many who had been terribly traumatised. One woman had lost her mind, because she saw her husband hacked to death in front of her children.”

he Church was seen by President Kibaki and the Opposition leader, Raila Odinga, as vital in humanitarian relief, peace-building, and reconciliation, he said.

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T

George G. Mbugua is a 42-year-old executive with two cars, a closet full of suits and a good job as the chief financial officer of a growing company.

His life has all the trappings of a professional anywhere. He recently joined a country club and has taken up golf.

But unlike anywhere else, this executive has to keep his eyes peeled on the daily commute for stone-throwing mobs. When he gets home after a long day, he has to explain to his daughters why people from different ethnic groups are hacking one another to death. Even his own affluent neighborhood has been affected. Some of the Mbuguas’ neighbors recently fled their five-bedroom homes because of the violence that has exploded in Kenya since a disputed election in December turned this promising African country upside down.

“Nobody’s untouched,” Mr. Mbugua said.

Of all the election-related conflicts that have cracked open in Kenya ”” Luos versus Kikuyus (two big ethnic groups), The Orange Democratic Movement versus the Party of National Unity (the leading political parties), police versus protesters ”” none may be more crucial than the struggle between those who seem to have nothing to lose, like the mobs in the slums who burn down their own neighborhoods, and those who are deeply invested in this country’s stability.

Read it all from the front page of yesterday’s New York Times.

THE Archbishop of York, Dr Sentamu, was due to fly out to the troubled country of Kenya last night for a four-day visit, with the encouragement of the Archbishop of Kenya, the Most Revd Benjamin Nzimbi. The trip has two purposes: to be a fact-finding visit, and an expression of solidarity with, and prayer for, the Kenyan people.

The visit was arranged after a long phone conversation with Archbishop Nzimbi, when it was agreed that it would be helpful. Church leaders in Kenya still appear to be at odds about the best way forward in the conflict.

The Bishop of Mbeere, the Rt Revd Gideon Ireri, in eastern Kenya, told Ecumenical News International on Tuesday that he had serious concerns that the Church was not speaking with one voice.

A delegation from the World Council of Churches in Kenya said this week that political leaders in Kenya believed that the Church there had taken a partisan approach, and were not keen that it should be involved in the mediating process.

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UGANDA’S rebel outfit, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), has been angered by a new US proposal urging rebel leader Joseph Kony (pictured) and his other indicted colleagues to surrender to the government of Uganda and give up themselves to the national judicial process, largely to shake off the International Criminal Court (ICC).

The proposal, circulating to negotiators in the South Sudan regional capital Juba, has prompted Kony to accuse US President George Bush’s administration of exerting pressure on the rebels and using underhand methods. The US and EU last week joined the South Sudan mediated talks in Juba as observers.

In a document; Scenario For Peace and Justice in Northern Uganda, Mr Timothy Shortley, senior adviser to US Assistant Secretary for African Affairs, Dr Jendayi Fraser, who has been in Juba as a US observer to the peace talks, says his proposals are meant to expedite the negotiations.

In the paper, the US representative proposes that Joseph Kony and his colleagues who are wanted by the ICC, place themselves in the custody of the Ugandan authorities. This, he says, would ensure they are safe and a peace agreement signed in Juba.

Read it all.

Most Kenyans have a strong faith. The majority are Christian with a considerable Muslim minority. But, some Kenyans are becoming increasingly upset with church leaders and are criticising them for letting their ethnic allegiances get in the way of promoting peace.

Listen to it all.

The road from Eldoret to Kericho used to be one of the prettiest drives in Kenya, a ribbon of asphalt threading through lush tea farms, bushy sugar cane and green humpbacked hills. Now it is a gantlet of machete-wielding teenagers, some chewing stalks of sugar cane, others stumbling drunk.

On Friday there were no fewer than 20 checkpoints in the span of 100 miles, and at each barricade – a downed telephone pole, a gnarled tree stump – mobs of rowdy young men jumped in front of cars, yanked at door handles and pulled out knives.

Their actions did not seem to be motivated by ethnic tension, like much of the violence that has killed more than 800 people in Kenya since a flawed election in December.

It was much simpler than that.

“Give us money,” demanded one young man who stood defiantly in the road with a bow in his hands and a quiver of poisoned arrows on his back.

Read it all and remember to pray for peace in Kenya.

The top American diplomat for Africa said Wednesday that some of the violence that has swept across Kenya in the past month has been ethnic cleansing intended to drive people from their homes, but that it should not be considered genocide.

Jendayi Frazer, the assistant secretary of state for African affairs, who visited some of the conflict-torn areas this month, said she had met with victims of the violence who described being ordered off their land.

“If they left, they were not attacked; if they stayed beyond the deadline, they were attacked,” said Ms. Frazer, while attending an African Union meeting in Ethiopia on Wednesday. “It is a plan to push people out of the area in the Rift Valley.”

The Rift Valley, one of the most beautiful slices of Africa, has been the epicenter of Kenya’s postelection problems and is home to ethnic groups that have long felt others do not belong.

The violence, fueled by decades-old tensions over access to wealth and power, exploded on Dec. 30, after the electoral commission said the incumbent president, Mwai Kibaki, won an election that observers said was deeply flawed. Ethnic groups like the Kalenjin, who were supporting Kenya’s top opposition leader, Raila Odinga, burned down homes and hacked to death Kikuyus, Mr. Kibaki’s ethnic group.

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Two of the Anglican Communion’s pivotal leaders have expressed their outrage and concern following reports that church services in Harare, Zimbabwe have been disrupted by state officials.

A January 14 statement from Lambeth Palace said that Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams “condemns unequivocally the use of state machinery to intimidate opponents of the deposed bishop of Harare, Nolbert Kunonga.”

Williams is appalled by the recent reports of Zimbabwean police “forcibly stopping Sunday services in several churches in Harare where clergy have publicly and bravely refused to acknowledge Kunonga’s Episcopal authority.”

Read it all.

(ACNS)

The situation with respect to the Anglican Church in Harare is a matter of grave concern to all in the Anglican Communion. Bishop Kunonga’s close ties with President Robert Mugabe is of deep concern to many and the resort to violent disruption has been widely deplored.

His unilateral actions with respect to the Diocese of Harare and his own status within the Province of Central Africa are, to say the least, questionable and have brought embarrassment to many. Above all, I am concerned for the well-being of faithful Anglicans who seek to practice their faith in peace and free from violence.

We assure Bishop Sebastian Bakare of our prayerful support in this difficult situation, and it is my firm hope that the Province of Central Africa will be enabled to find a way forward at this anxious time.

The Revd Canon Kenneth Kearon, Secretary General

The Anglican Church of Kenya has expressed fears of violence during the countrywide mass action called for next week by ODM leaders.

Consequently, the Church appealed to would-be demonstrators to avoid violence and police to shun use of live bullets to avoid loss of lives.

“We are not against the idea of mass action but our fear is that some people may use the event to engage in violence and to loot property,” the ACK Archbishop Benjamin Nzimbi, told a press conference at the church headquarters in Nairobi.

“The law enforcers should provide security without excessive force. They should not use live bullets on the people and must avoid being partisan,” said Archbishop Nzimbi who read the statement the bishops had prepared after their two-day meeting.

Read the whole article.

Kenya’s bishops have called for an investigation into claims of malpractice in the country’s recent disputed elections in a strongly worded statement that was apparently strengthened under pressure from the religious community.

The original document, sent on 2 January, expressed “deep sorrow and concern at the outbreak of violence and the breakdown of law and order”, and appealed to Kenyans to pray and “to refrain from violence and from the senseless killing of our brothers and sisters”.

Hours later the Catholic Information Service Africa (CISA) sent out a revised version that contained five more paragraphs and was prefaced with an apology for having sent out “a mutilated copy” of the bishops’ letter. “One full page was missing! Our only excuse is that this is an emergency service. Our journalists, who went home for Christmas and voting, are still stranded in their home areas.”

In the added paragraphs the bishops call for restraint among the security forces, dialogue and “independent mediation if need be” between the election winner, President Mwai Kibaki (a Catholic) and his opponent, Raila Odinga. The bishops also call for an investigation into claims of electoral malpractice, which, they said, could merit the establishment of an independent commission “to audit and review the tallying of the Parliamentary and Presidential polls”.

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The leadership of the Anglican Church of Botswana will spend the first months of the New Year at the High Court in Lobatse following the withdrawal of licenses for seven pastors late last year whom the church accused of misconduct.

The pastors are from the congregations of Lobatse, Molepolole, Mahalapye, Broadhurst, Mogoditshane, Selebi-Phikwe and Tonota. They are Father Patrick Ncaagae, Father Essau Mosima, Father Paul Beleme, Father Botshabelo Beleme, Father Mooketsi Mokgatle, Father Aubrey Molatlhwe, and Father Moreri Leteemane.

The pastors dragged the Church and Bishop Trevor Mwamba of the Diocese of Botswana to the High Court in Lobatse on December 21 last year challenging their suspension.

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There was chaos as the Anglican’s St Mary’s and All Saints Cathedral in Harare yesterday after ousted controversial bishop Nolbert Kunonga held a rival service under heavy police presence.

Kunonga, who is a vocal supporter of President Robert Mugabe, is refusing to leave office as archbishop of Harare after he arbitrarily pulled out the diocese from the Province of Central Africa.

The Province of Central has since appointed the retired Bishop Sebastian Bakare to take over from Kunonga.

On Saturday, Father Morris Brown Gwedegwe claimed Kunonga was still in charge of the diocese.

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The United Kingdom pushed for a repeat presidential election as President Kibaki and Orange Democratic Movement’s Mr Raila Odinga, appeared to edge closer to the dialogue table, on the eve of the arrival of Ghanaian President Mr John Kuffuor.

Monday night, Kibaki ”” in a dispatch to newsrooms by the Presidential Press Service ”” invited Raila and five other members of his party to a meeting on Friday at 2.30pm “to dialogue on the stoppage of violence, consolidation of peace and national reconciliation”. Also invited are nine senior clergymen.

Earlier, Raila had raised expectations for a quick political settlement when he said ODM was ready for negotiations and dialogue to break the post-election impasse.

In the same vein, the party called off countrywide protest rallies planned for Tuesday to allow mediation talks to be conducted in an atmosphere of peace.

The party dropped preconditions it had earlier set ”” which included that President Kibaki steps down ”” as a prerequisite for the talks.

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This thing called Kenya is a strange animal. In the 1960s, the bright young nationalists who took over the country when we got independence from the British believed that their first job was to eradicate “tribalism.” What they really meant, in a way, was that they wanted to eradicate the nations that made up Kenya. It was assumed that the process would end with the birth of a brand-new being: the Kenyan.

Compared with other African nations, Kenya has had significant success with this experiment. But it has not been without its contradictions, though they had never really turned lethal until now.

Our Kenyan identity, so deliberately formed in the test tube of nationalist effort, has over the years been undermined, subtly and not so subtly, by our leaders – men who appealed to our histories and loyalties to win our votes.

You see, the burning houses and the bloody attacks here do not reflect primordial hatreds. They reflect the manipulation of identity for political gain.

Read it all.

Update: The local paper has an editorial on Kenya also.

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His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI has followed with deep sorrow and concern the violence which has broken out in your country, and he has asked me to address this letter to you, in your capacity as the President of the Kenya Episcopal Conference, in order to express his unity and solidarity with your Brother Bishops and all your countrymen, and to assure you of his prayers that this great tragedy will soon come to an end.

The Pope is close in spirit to all the victims of this violence: the many persons who have lost their lives, often atrociously, the grieving members of their families, the wounded, those who are dispossessed or had to abandon their homes, and all those who are threatened and living in fear. Entrusting those who have died to the Lord’s mercy, he invites you to reach out generously to all those in distress and need.

It is His Holiness’s heartfelt hope that this beloved Nation, whose experience of social tranquility and development represents an element of stability in the entire troubled region, will banish as quickly as possible the threat of ethnic conflict which continues to result in so many crimes in certain parts of Africa.

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The international community flunked its first genocide prevention test in Rwanda. It failed again in Darfur. Now comes another chance at redemption — in Kenya, where, mercifully, there is still time and opportunity to keep one of the few peaceful, stable and prospering countries in Africa from jumpingover the precipice of ethnic warfare. It will require a swift and concerted effort to help the Kenyan people and institutions eager to save their own nation. It can still be done, but only if we learn the lessons of ethnic cleansings past: The longer the killing goes on, the harder it will be to stop the cycle of atrocities and revenge.

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The murderous tribal violence that has spread through Kenya in recent days would be horrifying anywhere. It is particularly tragic to see this happening in a country that seemed finally to be on the path to a democratic and economically sound future. There may still be a chance to retrieve some of these hopes. That will likely require stepping back from the suspicious and hastily declared election results that sparked this ugly upheaval.

Officially, those results gave a second term to President Mwai Kibaki, despite independent reports of egregious irregularities. Even the chairman of Kenya’s national election commission now says that he was pressured into an early declaration and cannot say who won.

Kibaki should renounce that official declaration and the embarassingly swift swearing-in that followed. He should then meet with his principal challenger, Raila Odinga, to discuss a possible vote recount, election re-run or other reasonable compromise.

That isn’t likely to happen without outside prodding.

Read it all.

January 3, 2008

Dear Kenyan Friends and Friends of Kenya,

You may have heard that there is a terrible outbreak of violence in Kenya in the wake of the most closely contested election in Kenya’s history. So far probably 300 have been killed. In Eldoret, about fifty were burned to death when an Assembly of God church containing people seeking refuge was set on fire.

I was able to speak with the Archbishop. He and Mama Alice were in good spirits despite the fact that they were unable to leave the house because the streets are so dangerous. He has also been battling malaria, but is feeling better today.

Bishop Murdoch and I are asking that you please re-double your prayers for the Archbishop and for Kenya that peace would prevail. ABp Nzimbi confirmed that the overwhelming majority of Kenyans want peace.

The Rt. Rev. Dr. Bill Atwood

Suffragan Bishop for International Affairs

All Saints Cathedral Diocese, Nairobi

Anglican Church of Kenya

Dozens of people seeking refuge in a church in Kenya were burned to death by a mob on Tuesday, according to witnesses and Red Cross officials, in an escalation of ethnic violence that is threatening to plunge the country into chaos.

Up to 40 people died inside the church, a few miles from a town called Eldoret, after young men from a different tribe poured gasoline on it and set it on fire, the witnesses and officials said.In Nairobi, the capital, tribal militias squared off against each other in several slums. Witness reports indicate that more 200 people have been killed in the past two days in violence connected to a disputed election Kenya held last week.

The European Union said there was clear evidence of ballot rigging, and European officials called for an independent investigation. Kenya’s government, which won the election by a razor-thin margin, has refused. Government officials said they would crack down harshly on anyone who threatened law and order, and they banned political rallies for the foreseeable future.

A knot of rage seemed to be moving across the country, from the slums of Nairobi, the capital, to the cities along the Indian Ocean, to usually tranquil towns on the savanna. Many people were furious that President Mwai Kibaki was declared the winner on Sunday in the country’s most fiercely fought election, despite widespread evidence of fraud.

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Watch it all and note carefully the man who says Christianity is not a religion but is instead something else.

At an hour when most people here are sleeping or sinning, the worshipers of the Spiritual Warfare ministry gather in the cold sanctuary of a neighborhood church to battle evil.

The students, taxicab drivers, homemakers and entrepreneurs, all Christians, mostly from French-speaking Africa, attend a midnight service four nights a week to seek deliverance from lust, anger, fear and sadness.

They sing. They pray fervently. Finally, they kick and shadowbox with what they contend is the real force behind life’s problems: the witches and devils whose curses they believe have ground down their families, towns, entire nations in Africa and that have pursued them to a new country, making it hard to find work, be healthy and survive.

“Some situations you need to address at night, because in the ministry of spiritual warfare, demons, the spirits bewitching people, choose this time to work,” said Nicole Sangamay, 40, who came from Congo in 1998 to study and is a co-pastor of the ministry. “And we pick this time to pray to nullify what they are doing.”

Founded by a Congolese couple, Spiritual Warfare is one of many ministries and congregations in the growing African diaspora in the United States and abroad grappling with witchcraft. In most other churches, Mrs. Sangamay said, you could not even raise the issue, let alone pray to combat its effects.

Those other churches might argue that such a focus on witchcraft is a relic of Africans’ old beliefs, a dangerously pagan preoccupation. But scholars say this is Christianity made profoundly African. Spiritual Warfare considers itself Pentecostal, and like many other Pentecostals, worshipers see the battle between God and Satan, or what they also call the Bible against witchcraft, shaping the world.

“Religion for them is not like in the West,” said Jacob K. Olupona, professor of African religious traditions at the Harvard Divinity School. “It’s not simply seen as meaning and reference to a transcendental order. Religion is seen as something that works. It has a utilitarian view, and people are looking for solutions in different angles and different ways.”

Read it all.

Stephen Crittenden: Welcome to the program.

The great early 20th century sociologist, Max Weber said there were three pure types of leadership and authority. There were traditional leaders, legal or bureaucratic leaders, and charismatic leaders. I don’t think there’s much doubt that the most charismatic religious leader on the world stage today is the Ugandan-born Anglican Archbishop of York, John Sentamu who we interviewed on The Religion Report earlier this year. You may have seen him on the News earlier this week cutting up his clerical dog-collar in protest against the oppressive regime of Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe.

John Sentamu surprised his host and audience during the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show, when he pulled out a pair of scissors and cut up his dog-collar, vowing not to wear it again until Mugabe is ousted.

John Sentamu: This is what I wear to identify myself that I’m a clergyman. Do you know what Mugabe has done? He’s taken people’s identity and literally, if you don’t mind, cut it to pieces; this is what he’s actually done, and in the end there’s nothing. So as far as I’m concerned, from now on, I’m not going to wear the dog collar until Mugabe’s gone.

Andrew Marr: My goodness. Archbishop, that is a dramatic gesture and everybody will observe it. Are you going to carry on talking to the Prime Minister here, are you going to go and talk to the South Africans and continue to make these points?

John Sentamu: I have been writing and I’ve been talking, and in the long run, we need a world voice, and I hope that what Gordon Brown has done by not going, pressure now will be put on Mugabe. See, there was an expectation that humanitarian United Nations group would visit every part. The areas, a friend of mine has just returned from there, and he said it’s just so awful. People don’t know where their next meals will come from. But of course Mugabe and his clique are living wonderfully. I’ve suggested the Prime Minister doesn’t understand why Britain doesn’t have a intra-section Instead of having an embassy; why all the world don’t do the same thing, what they did to Libya at one point. Is it because this happens to be a black person? Because what is going on for me there is this pernicious self-destructing racism. A white man does it, the whole world cries; a black person does it, there is a certain sense, ‘Oh this is colonialism’. I’m sorry, I don’t buy this. Africa and all the world have got to liberate Africa from this man to slavery, and this colonial mentality whenever there’s anything, you blame somebody else instead of yourself.

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THE ARREST OF a British school teacher in Sudan last week–amid demands for her execution–had all the earmarks of a Samuel Beckett play, a theatre of the absurd that is attracting sell-out crowds in many parts of the Islamic world. The latest source of Muslim rage: a teddy bear.

Gillian Gibbons was arrested and convicted of insulting Islam because her class of seven-year-olds innocently named a teddy bear Muhammad. Initially sentenced to 15 days in jail, she could have spent six months rotting in a Sudanese prison and gotten 40 lashes or worse, courtesy of Sudan’s shari’a law. After an international outcry, President Omar al-Bashir granted her a pardon and kicked her out of the country earlier this week. The private school in Khartoum where she taught, which educates Christian and Muslim students, has been shut down.

The saga of Ms. Gibbons has hardly been more stupefying than the reaction of media elites and others desperate to avoid charges of “Islamophobia.” The BBC’s Amber Henshaw, for example, euphemistically dismissed the protestors as “a small group of hotheads.” Jeffrey Gettleman of the New York Times similarly downplayed the intensity of incensed locals. “Aside from a large gathering outside the presidential palace, most of Khartoum was quiet,” he reported. Sure, imams “brought up the case” in sermons–New York Times doublespeak for a fiery call to jihad–but not to worry, since “few of them urged violence.”

Read it all.