The devil hiding in the Church 

Chapter Four of the 2010 Constitution provides for superior rights in Kenya’s legal architecture. Article 32 of the Constitution’s anchor chapter protects the “freedom of conscience, religion, belief and opinion”.

But as profound as that provision sounds, nowhere does it permit any individual, or institution, within the borders of Kenya to radicalise, enslave, or reprogramme anyone for nefarious purposes. But that’s what has been happening all too often with dire consequences.

The framers didn’t intend for those freedoms to be interpreted as allowing the indoctrination of feeble minds, leading to mental enslavement and mass murder. And yet that’s where Pastor Paul Mackenzie Nthenge’s twisted mind has led us. Many people have met their untimely deaths under his tutelage. 

The country is gripped by the macabre scenes of mass death akin to what Prof Kithure Kindiki has called genocide. While that term isn’t legally accurate to describe what has happened there, it’s certainly mass murder, the likes of which we haven’t seen in this country since the pogroms of the 2008 post-election mayhem.

But we will miss the forest for the trees if we focus on Pastor Mackenzie as a sick and demented monster. My view is that we need to interrogate religious institutions — and the Church in this particular case — if we are to get a handle on what’s happened. In my view, the problem is the proclivity of the Church to abuse the freedom of religion.

Equally important, we cannot let the state off the hook for the Kilifi catastrophe. In the recent past, the state has more or less fused itself with the Church.

The Church has become a handmaiden of the state and one of its key apologists. As a consequence, the Church has lost its way and gone rogue.

It acts with impunity and arrogance when it should be humble and stick to the teachings of the Bible. When the Church becomes openly political and biased, then it ceases to be the shepherd of the flock.

That’s partly why the Church has lost its once commanding moral voice. Today, the Church’s voice is diminutive precisely at the very moment it’s needed the most.

It boggles the mind that Pastor Mackenzie could lure so many people to their deaths with the eyes of the statewide open. I’ve even seen some images of Pastor Mackenzie in the company of senior members of the state in public functions as though he were a normal human being.

It’s not credible that the police and the entire apparatus of the state were unaware of what was going on in Mr Mackenzie’s killing fields. 

Conspiracy of silence 

Equally appalling is the complicity of the relatives of the departed and the villagers around Shakahola. Why the conspiracy of silence? How could a person who appears to have been illiterate, or barely educated, brainwash so many to their cruel deaths?

I’ve heard the press and public figures describe what Mr Mackenzie was running in Shakahola as a cult. I disagree. The language of cultism isolates Mr Mackenzie as one bad apple from the rest of the Church.

Yes, Mr Mackenzie is a rotten apple, but the tree from which he springs is the one that’s poisonous. The Church itself is a poisoned tree. That’s why if we see Mr Mackenzie in isolation, we will not cure the problem that he presents for he’s a symptom, the tip of a huge dangerous iceberg.

How Mr Mackenzie was allowed by the broader Church and the state to run a thriving killing machine in full public view demands serious answers from the state.

During the last election period, including the campaign season, the Church had rented itself like a spiritual harlot to the political class. I remember one senior pastor even standing up at Bomas to chastise Azimio and later even said that Azimio shouldn’t challenge the election results.

The pastor obviously forgot that Azimio was simply using the predicates of the same constitution that allows him to preach and speak. It was a shameful day for the Church.

This is the question — is the Church capable of self-reflection and criticism to course correct, or is it ridden with so much moral decline that it needs the hand of the state to steer it back to the moral centre?

Can we stop more Mackenzies?

The Church enjoys the largesse of the state through tax exemptions and other perks. I have seen many “prosperity” churches that exist for nothing else except preying on hapless congregants to “steal” piles of money.

The poor troop to highly charged but slick Sunday “services” to enrich the coffers of the conmen pastors. Not much worshipping is going on in those Sunday “services” but highway robbery. The hoi polloi is putty in the hands of such “clergy”. 

Methinks we must as a society now regulate religious institutions to weed out the devil in the Church. Otherwise, the Mackenzie phenomenon will continue to dog this country.

Makau Mutua is SUNY Distinguished Professor and Margaret W. Wong Professor at Buffalo Law School, The State University of New York. @makaumutua.