Religious Kenya struggles to reform its politics, ethics

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Over 90 per cent of Kenyans across multiple surveys confess to be religious. A plurality claim to attend religious services every week. Yet our public life does not reflect this degree of general religiosity in our population. Consider the question of generalized trust. In a recent survey hosted by Bajeti Hub, almost 90 per cent of respondents expressed distrust of their fellow Kenyans.

The same survey also tackled the question of religion, money and politics. The result suggest that Kenyans are deeply divided and personally conflicted over these matters. Overall, around 60 per cent of respondents agreed that there should be a constitutional separation of state. In addition, 64 per cent believe that politicians’ financial contributions to religious organizations come from proceeds of corruption.

These stated positions are contradicted by other responses in the survey. About 50 per cent disagree with the idea of barring religious leaders and organizations from participating in politics. Fifty-Eight per cent oppose restrictions on politicians’ ability to contribute to religious organizations. At the same time, about 80 per cent agree with the idea that religion should inform the conduct of public life in Kenya.

These contradictions raise interesting questions and have implications of how, as a country, we ought to think about religion, money, and politics. First, there is no running away from the fact that we are a religious people who want to see certain values expressed in public life and policy outcomes. The trick, therefore, is not to completely box religion out of public life, but to ensure that we balance constitutional separation of church/mosque/temple and state, against the fact that many of the aspiration values underpinning our public life will be religiously inspired.

Second, it is interesting that in the survey respondent seem to have a general tolerance of politicians giving money to religious organizations (despite the admission that these are proceeds of corruption), but an aversion of having religious organizations dabble in politics. This might reflect a general fear that politics corrupts, and so religion should be shielded from such. However, intense monetization of politicians’ relationship with religious organizations appears to be corrupting the latter, and eroding their general moral standing.

Finally, the survey evidence also raises questions about the extent to which religious organizations can influence our politics. Ideally, given our levels of religiosity, one would expect us to espouse and practice values-based politics. Instead, what we see is that religious organizations are vulnerable to abuse as mere electoral machines for politicians.

This state of affairs calls for introspection and a re-examination of the role of religious organizations in civic life. To reiterate, the goal should not be to box religious out of our civic lives, but to ensure that it forms us as individuals, serves as an anchor of specific values, and helps us hold each other accountable.

The writer is professor at Georgetown University