The banal side of the religious State

By Mugambi Nandi
Twitter@MugambiNandi

Farmer Oak is a character in Thomas Hardy’s Far From the Madding Crowd. He, like a majority of Kenyans, had a Christian name. His was Gabriel. On working days Gabriel was a young man of sound judgment, easy motions, proper dress, and general good character.

On Sundays he was a man of misty views, hampered by his best clothes and umbrella (which was an essential part of a gentleman’s accessories in those days). Farmer Oak occupied morally that vast middle space of Laodicean neutrality, which lay between the Communion people of the parish and its drunken section. (To jog your memory, Laodecians were the folk who were said to be neither hot nor cold).

He went to church, but yawned privately by the time the congregation reached the Nicene Creed.

He thought of what there would be for dinner when he meant to be listening to the sermon. (By a show of hands, let us see how many have this habit of daydreaming in church). And so the story goes….

This little story describes an average Kenyan — neither indifferent to religion nor too enthusiastic about it. It is fair comment to say that majority of Kenyans go about their business in a secular manner during the week. On their days of worship, they adorn themselves with the pick of their wardrobes and head out to fulfil a religious, or perhaps social, obligation. The commitment of many is skin deep. The lack of common courtesy on our roads, the poor service in offices, the dishonesty common in business dealings, the quality of our politics and wanton theft of public funds do not paint the picture of a country whose statistics indicate that over 90 per cent of the residents adhere to one form of religion or another.

That is not to say that the secular among us are supposed to be morons, but at least they do not subscribe to a scripted moral code by which we may evaluate them. Religion does not allow you to always do as you please. Neither does the State. In this respect, they both seek to control how you live your life.

The State has granted itself the power to determine which movies you may watch, what magazines you may read, who you may love and marry and the sort of things you are not allowed to say against religion without falling afoul of the law. If it were up to us, offences like blasphemy and those related to expressions of sexuality would not be in the law books.

It is unjust to punish someone here on Earth and at the same time assure them of eternal damnation in their after-life, when they have done no harm to anyone or to property. It is unfair to codify religious matters into secular laws. As Rita Mae Brown says, morals are private; decency is public.

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This cozy relationship between State and religion might have informed the intervention of Archbishop Nicholas Duncan-Williams, General Overseer of the Christian Action Faith Ministries, in matters of economics. The good Archbishop recently decided to come to the rescue of his country’s currency, the Ghana Cedi, which has been rapidly depreciating against the dollar. The man of the cloth “commanded” the currency to “rise”. As we write this, the command has not been heeded. Hopefully, it has not been ignored altogether. Here in Kenya, we have a committee of wise men and women that intervenes when the currency behaves contrary to expectations. We would hope that they use conventional economic methods to do their job, leaving out magic and prayer.

We could not help noticing the pragmatic name of the Ghanaian church. We hope the Bank of Ghana will take care of the action part and leave the faith aspects to the well-meaning Archbishop.