The Trumpet Tabernacle Church in Kisii, which Bishop Otieno pastors.
Should the church be regulated by the state?
by Eric Bosire • 3 August 2023
Recent events1 have sparked a debate on whether the church should be regulated by the state. The Catholic Church released a statement on April 25,2023 through the chairman of The Kenya Conference of Bishops, Archbishop Martin Kivuva2 of their displeasure on how the Pentecostal churches are running their affairs, therefore calling for their regulation3.
On the other hand, a rejoinder4 from the Second Lady, Dorcas Rigathi, suggested that anybody caught practicing cultic activities should be held responsible as an individual and not put blame on a certain denomination. She warned of blanket prosecution of the church and discouraged the state on regulating the Church saying matters church cannot be regulated since they are spiritual in nature and based on God’s calling. She commented on this matter because she is the Patron of Association of Pentecostal and Evangelical Clergy(APECK), and also a pastor of a church called House of Grace in Nairobi.
Weaknesses in the law have been cited as the reason why the State has failed to reign in religious groups that run afoul of the law. Attorney General Justin Muturi told a Committee of the Senate1 on Wednesday May, 10th 2023, that Societies Act, which regulates the sector, is old and mundane, pleading with Parliament to work with the executive to fast track the law. “The Act that allows for registration of such groups is loose. It was enacted over 50 years ago and it is not fit for purpose because there have been major developments ever since then,” said AG Muturi.5
Attempts on regulating religious grouping by the state will be a difficult task, a case in point is the recent occurrence where we saw the court suspend a commission that was set up by the president to do an inquiry on the Shakahola massacre.6 Article 32 of the Kenyan constitution7 provides that everyone has freedom of conscience, religion, belief, thought, and opinion. It strongly discourages any discrimination against any religious affiliations. Freedom of worship, therefore, means that people have a right to worship as they choose and that the government cannot penalize one because of their religious beliefs. I asked a lawyer about what this provision means in practice. According to him, this statement is straightforward and that the law is very clear. So in his opinion, the constitutional provision on freedom of faith is taken quite seriously in Kenya.
After the initial attempt to do something politically about the Shakahola massacre had failed for legal reasons, President Dr. William Ruto instituted a 17-member task force committee to review legal and regulatory frameworks governing religious organizations in Kenya.8
The task force has been going round the country collecting views from stakeholders and the public at large. On the 21st June 2023, the task force was in Kisii County. They held a stakeholders meeting at Kenya Institute of Highways and Building Technology - Kisii Training Centre located on the outskirts of Kisii Town. The meeting was in conjunction with the office of the Kisii County Commissioner. Archbishop Maurice Muhatia9, a member of the Task force, chaired the meeting.
The auditorium was full to capacity with church leaders and members of the public. I was also in attendance to catch a glimpse of what was being said. After opening prayers, the meeting was brought to order by the chairman who after introductions, gave questions to help the stakeholders with their presentations. The questions were, has religion been abused? Are laws governing religious organizations enough? What should the government do? What are the recommendations by the stakeholders? The chairman randomly picked speaker after speaker to give their views concerning the issue at hand about church regulation. Most of the church leaders had a written memorandum that comprehensively addressed these issues. They presented them to the chairman of the meeting.
Among the church leaders who caught the eye of the chairman was Bishop Joseph Otieno10, the founder and presiding Bishop of Trumpet Tabernacle Church Kisii. He is also a member of the advisory board in Kisii County Pastors and Clergy Forum which covers the entire Kisii county drawing members from various denominations.
Bishop Otieno presented their memorandum for the Kisii County Pastors and Clergy Forum. On whether religion had been abused, he said that indeed it had indeed been abused, “no need of reiterating the Shakahola case, there are several indicators that religion has been abused,” said Bishop Otieno. On whether there are enough laws governing religious organizations Bishop Otieno said that it is not because of the absence of laws that bad things happen, for instance the case of Shakahola did not happen because we don’t have laws, it is the existence of gaps in the laws which should be addressed. “If the laws are enforced well, we will have a good legal framework,” said Bishop Otieno.
As far as registration of religious societies is concerned, the registrar of societies, according to Bishop Otieno, has registered over 40,000 churches, it is really overloaded. “It baffles me that politicians through the political party’s act have been honored to have a registrar of political parties. Politicians are given special treatment in this country. It is my wish that churches and religious societies should be given a registrar of their own,” said Bishop Otieno. He further noted that registration of churches should be devolved to the county level for easy access. “Religion is the fabric of Kenya, Kenya is predominantly a religious community having to travel all the way to the headquarters in Nairobi to file returns is quite cumbersome and it weakens the framework if it exists. Just as the function of registration of births, deaths and marriages is devolved, registration of churches should also be devolved.”
Pastor Stephen from the Seventh Day Adventist Church said that there is no regulatory framework to help with the problems we have in the church. “Pastors are exploiting their members through giving, we need a clear guiding principle on matters to do with church leadership. A clear leadership structure like that of the Seventh Day Adventist Church whereby pastors from various churches are answerable to the authority they have set.” He continued and said that minimum academic standards should be set and a clear financial and asset accountability on church members’ contributions.
Most of the Seventh Day Adventist leaders present in the meeting were of similar viewpoints that religious organizations should be regulated by the state basing their arguments on the Shakahola incident.
By contrast, almost all pentecostal church leaders expressed views similar to what Bishop Otieno had said. From among the presentations in the auditorium, I found Bishop Otieno to be the most articulate among them. I therefore asked him for an interview after the meeting to further get his views as a member of the Kisii County Pastors and Clergy Forum concerning church regulation by the state.
According to him, the state has raised some genuine concerns in regards to expression of faith for example the Shakahola incident where people were massacred is arguably attributed to religion because the culprit used religion to brainwash his followers. The state response to this is that there is a need to regulate religion. The church does not oppose regulation per se because the church is a law abiding institution, the church and the state are like Siamese twins. The word of God teaches that the authority, the sword carried by the state is God given. The church uses the sword of the spirit and the state uses physical armory, both are agencies of God. However, matters of faith should not be subjected to the state law, they can be subjected to the law of faith which is contained in the scriptures.
The state should make laws that deal with crime in general. “A criminal is a criminal despite the profession or religion. There are enough laws to deal with criminals no matter their religious pretentions,” said Bishop Otieno. He said that as Kisii County Pastors and Clergy Forum, they tend to smell a rat when the state wants to come up with regulatory mechanisms to regulate matters of faith. The church did not begin yesterday; Christianity is almost 2000 years old. Over the years there have been practices that have been documented as to how the Christian faith should be professed that did not stop newer ways of expressing faith to come.
According to Bishop Otieno, church history shows that every time a newer way of expressing faith came, the former persecuted the newer way, case in point is Protestantism from Catholicism. We are smelling a new desire by the established religion to want to sneak into our penal code and into our laws mechanisms that they will use to come up with newer persecution of the emerging faith.
Bishop Otieno said that faith finds newer expression every time as the days go by and over the years Pentecostalism has made great strides worldwide since inception in the early 20th century. To legislate against people's ways of expressing their faith, Bishop Otieno finds that as an infringement of people's right to worship.
It has been proposed that every preacher should possess some formal training in theology. “That requirement flies in the face of the authentic foundational growth of the church that the church's mandate and commission is to make disciples, not to make theologians. Disciple making is like starting a family and passing on values to the children,” said Bishop Otieno. Faith began with Abraham who then passed it on to his son Isaac, Isaac passed it on his son Jacob and so on.
We have a history and a tradition that matters of faith should not be subjected to scholarly requirements. Having said that Bishop Otieno noted that The Kisii County Pastors and Clergy Forum is not opposed to people learning, people who want to expand their knowledge should freely pursue scholarism so that they can enlighten others. “The early apostles discipled those who came to faith as they were being persecuted. It is on record in the book of Acts that those believers who were just expressing their faith are the ones who went everywhere spreading the message and converting people.” Passing the law of academics for preachers will gag the people who don't possess the qualifications but are zealous for God. They will not be able to disciple people and bring them to Christ hence affect the growth of the church.
Bishop Otieno also condemned the proposal that church leaders should have a certificate of good conduct. “That is laughable because the faith of Christianity is a redemptive faith, the word of God teaches that God foreknew people and those that he foreknew He called, then those He called, He justified.”
Justification theologically means that these people were offenders when God found them. He cleared them of all the offenses and gave them a clean bill of life and on that basis they can now profess their faith and even propagate their faith. A classic example is the apostle Paul, formally he was a persecutor of the church and even killed church people. “So many people who have criminal backgrounds have converted and have become great promoters and builders of the church. We cannot turn a blind eye on that historic fact of Christianity and demand that church leaders should have a certificate of good conduct in order to register and run a church God separates us from our sins whoever who is promoting the idea of certificate of good conduct must be serving some interests that are antichrist,” said Bishop Otieno.
Bishop Otieno concluded by saying that they are law abiding citizens and are not opposing genuine legal regulatory framework. To solve the problem, he pointed out that if there is any legal framework let it be done within the faith itself so that people of faith know what goes beyond and what is within the acceptable limits. If there is any regulation, there should be no formation of a council, because there is no council that can preside over the so many faiths that we have. We can have people with the same ideological foundation clustered in one umbrella organization.
What I have learned is that regulating the religious groupings by the state will be an uphill task. However, I will make a follow up to see what the task force came up with.
Next: What do Kenyans think about missionaries?, by Bosibori Osusu.
Notes:
1 See https://missionfield.news/2023/8_Massacre A cultic massacre in Malindi, Kenya back
2 the catholic archbishop of Mombasa, Kenya back
3 https://web.archive.org/web/20230502072939/https://www.k24tv.co.ke/news/catholic-bishops-speak-out-on-shakahola-deaths-101613 back
4 https://www.pd.co.ke/news/shakahola-massacre-gachaguas-wife-speak-178828/ back
5 http://www.parliament.go.ke/node/19623 back
6 https://nation.africa/kenya/news/court-freezes-commission-of-inquiry-after-azimio-petition-4250576 back
7 https://www.klrc.go.ke/index.php/constitution-of-kenya/112-chapter-four-the-bill-of-rights/part-2-rights-and-fundamental-freedoms/198-32-freedom-of-conscience-religion-belief-and-opinion back
8 https://www.citizen.digital/news/president-ruto-appoints-taskforce-to-review-religious-organisations-n319221 back
9 the catholic archbishop of Kisumu, Kenya back
10 A bishop in the pentecostal churches of Kenya is an administrative term denoting a senior church leader. back
About the author:
Eric Bosire is a Kenyan Journalist. He is based in Kisii.
About the image:
Photograph taken by Eric Bosire.
Suggested citation:
Eric Bosire: Should the church be regulated by the state?, MissionField News (ISSN 2813-2270)
https://missionfield.news/2023/12_Regulation
2023-08-03.