From: Ayuaya Masira

The Kenyan church is spoiling for a grand fight. While the bible remains the ultimate constitution among Christians, it beggars belief what the so-called Kenyan church is up to with her opposition to the draft constitution. The church’s moral fibre is in tatters going by 2005 referendum and the bungled 2007 elections. You do not need a constitution to fight sin/s.

The Njue-Karanja axis of spiritual deceit is destined for a lose-lose Waterloo. Scuttling the review process will only lead to the mother of all PEV come 2012 (courtesy of the current constitution). No prizes for who will take the exclusive blame. Njoya has already warned them on loosing the residual credibility they begged Kenyans in forgiveness after near-Armageddon 2007 violence.

Both Njue and Karanja miss the boat by a whole river when they refuse to acknowledge the fact that it is the flock who makes the church and not the other way round. These two entrepreneurs better stop digging while seated at the bottom of the moral pit. The present religious brinkmanship leaves you asking where is justice when the church fails to protect the minority (Muslims) but instead seek the me-too cheap route to self righteousness.

Put differently what do you do when a person starts offering you advice to improve on something without being specific or giving you any specific ideas? They simply tell you that this is wrong and that “they don’t like it.” Do you ignore all the other readers you have and change the blog to suit the personal preferences of this single person and his minority supporters? Or do you just ignore them?

This is the situation that I have found myself in, in recent times and the similarities this personal situation has with the position of the churches in Kenya where the draft constitution is concerned are very similar.

Let me start with the personal drama. Those who have been with Kumekucha for a long time will know that I have an open mind and am very eager to listen to constructive criticism about the blog and especially ideas on improvement. However recently I have found myself in a very difficult situation from a person and indeed people whom I respect who have chosen to criticize for the sake of criticizing. I have taken time from a very busy schedule to answer the criticisms that have reached me via email and to the best of my ability I have explained my position and the vision that I had when I was launching Kumekucha 5 odd years ago.

Now a member of “this group” or somebody sympathetic with them left an anonymous comment a few hours ago in our latest advertising section informing me that the new advertising section will make Kumekucha lose readers and can even get the blog into trouble with our hosts blogger.com over violations of users terms of service. When I saw this comment and knowing what I do, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

The facts are that our new advertising section has gained us new readers and has also proved to be very useful to many Kenyans out there, some of whom were trying to advertise in the comments section prior to our launching Kumekucha classifieds. It is free and therefore a service that I am sure will grow to be valuable with time. The blogger rules have nothing against bloggers selling advertising on their blogs (especially if the ads are not an excuse to link to other sites, and that’s why we DO NOT allow links). Indeed Kumekucha has been carrying advertising on a regular basis for a long time now from a blogger sister service called Adsense and one other unrelated affiliate advertising program. What blogger is against are links aimed at enhancing traffic and Google ranking of another site. They also discourage selling links to other sites and pretending that they are natural links. Another closely related no no is turning a blog into a spam blog.

What I would really like to know are the real motives driving the behaviour of this human being. People never do things for no reason.

Spiritual promiscuity

But having said that let me tell you a story that applies both to the church in Kenya and my good friend and his supporters.

Once upon a time in some African village there were two brothers. One brother did very well in his exams and ended up becoming a medical doctor. The other did terribly but was gifted in carpentry and so ended up being a village carpenter.

One day a snake entered their parents’ house during the Christmas holidays when both brothers were home with their families. The carpenter rushed and brought out a big Rungu (club) that he had crafted in his woodworking workshop. The doctor could hear nothing of it. He reminded everybody that he was the most educated person in that homestead and therefore the family had no alternative but to make use of his “excessive” brains. Without being specific, he suggested that they use a more scientific method to deal with the snake. While they were arguing they heard the doctor’s 2 year old baby screaming very loudly from one of the rooms in the house. They rushed in only to find that the snake had bitten the youngster. The good doctor knew that the snake was very poisonous and he had only about 10 minutes to do something or his only son would die. It would take hours to get to the nearest district hospital. And so he froze in panic and couldn’t move an inch.

The uneducated carpenter brother was more quick-thinking and used his club to kill the snake. He then tied the child with a cloth above the snake wound and rushed the baby to a nearby dispensary (on foot) where they had an antidote for the dangerous snake because it was fairly common in the area (information which the doctor did not have).

The moral of the story is that the common enemy almost defeated the two brothers and rather tragically too, all because one of them felt superior to the other.

Quite a number of church leaders have made their intentions known early that they will urge their flock to reject the draft constitution. The reason is that the constitution has failed to meet their expectations. Meaning that all the other groups (whose expectations were not met) should also reject the document.

In all this the church has failed once again to take a leadership position that is expected from it and at the very least suggest some compromise. They have not until this 11th hour when they have loudly started protesting even before the civic education program has been launched.

Now let us for a minute imagine a situation where all the demands of the church were met to the letter. It would mean that another group would be greatly disgruntled and so we would be back to square one with another group strongly against the document. In short we would never hope to get a new constitution in 100 years.

The church leaders should try and hear themselves talk because the first thing they would notice is that they sound very ridiculous. The current constitution which the vast majority agrees is terrible has Khadi courts and the much better draft constitution which will help the people of Kenya take back their country also has the Kadhi’s courts. So which one should Kenyans go for? The bad constitution with kadhi’s courts or the new constitution that gives Kenyans a fighting chance but also has Kadhi courts? You tell me.

To be very blunt I think the church has totally lost it. We saw the church take sides during the 2007 elections which led to serious blood shed in Kenya. One prominent church organization in Kenya openly supported PNU while most evangelical churches openly sang the praises of ODM. In retrospect the people who came out wisest were the Muslims. Wasn’t it funny the way both Raila and Kibaki kept on rushing to mosques? The Muslims accepted both with open arms but NEVER took sides. Actually they played both sides into thinking they were fully with them.

Me thinks that the church is making a big mistake. In trying to flex their political muscles I predict that they will be defeated and Kenyans will vote YES for the draft constitution. Have they thought of the kind of damage that will do to the church?

The wise thing to do is to let the people decide and remain silent if they have run out of ideas. In fact the church should be busy on the ground helping to heal the wounds they helped create in 2007. Not playing politics with a document that will be the first step towards a new Kenya. Besides the thing is not written in stone. Church leaders can move the changes they want later (which will be a lot easier than getting changes with the current constitution).

As it is the church leaders are sounding very much like the Pharisees during the days when Jesus walked the earth.

Well folks I have reported my position early I am going to vote YES for the new constitution. What about you?