We should not believe blindly or trust without questioning

Prophet David Owuor addresses his followers at a past function. [File, Standard]

Have Gospel preachers David Owuor of Kenya and the late Jim Jones of the United States performed in a three-layered moral theatre with President William Ruto and – before his demise – ODM leader Raila Odinga?

Each of these notables has sold hope, but lacked solid delivery. Collapsed promises, unfinished journeys, and failed eschatology tantalise the wretched earth; who are their chief clients. In less than a decade, Kenyans have experienced wreckage of promise, with Raila Odinga; and tragic burst paradises, with sundry prophets of the calibre of Owuor and Jones.

Today, there is the pacifying Singapore of William Ruto. The intersection between Raila, Ruto and Owuor is the merchandise of hope. It is usually a forlorn hope, born out of desperation.

Jim Jones was a self-proclaimed American messiah, who was in his element in the 1960s and ‘70s. He led his cultic followers to mass suicide in November 1978, when his “ascent gospel” began falling apart.

Owuor is today wading his way through similar dicey gospel spaces and doubtful “miracles.” His invitation of medics to validate these “miracles” could prove to be his Pandora act.  

For their part, Raila and Ruto have operated in civic, rather than ecclesiastical spaces. Yet, their promissory coordinates define them in the same spaces as the preachers’. Their merchandise is hope. Ruto is promising a here-and-now other-worldly “paradise of Singapore,” just like the self-proclaimed prophets and messiahs have promised heaven. Raila did the same. He promised to take Kenyans to a fabled Canaan.   

From Jim Jones in Guyana to Kenya’s spiritual death traps of Kilifi, the big lesson is that theologies of paradise can be chilling. They don’t just tranquilise. They kill. They are, however, beautiful while they last.

They promise heaven to believers. They keep them calm with sweet abracadabra, and sundry “spiritual drugs.” When followers begin to doubt, paradise is enforced. Can Ruto’s war against drugs be extended to cover spiritual and political drugs, too?  

Prophet Owuor preaches with the doomsday urgency of Jim Jones. In both instances, there are promises of paradise in the Hereafter; a monopoly of miracles; and moral absolutism.

Attending all these is contempt for established institutions. The law, medicine, political leadership, and even other religious platforms are bastardised and derided.  

The prophet assumes a larger stature than God Himself. Roads are cleared for him, red carpets rolled out. There is an overflow of curtsies and a super-abundance of offerings. To sustain these, faith must be total. There is no other way to be happy in Jesus but to trust and obey the prophet. Yet, even Jesus is subordinated to the prophet. “When we walk with the Lord...” is subordinated to “When we walk with the prophet... ” 

Partial faith is intolerable. The mission to Singapore, for its part, calls for discipline. However, the Kenyan journey does not require the Lee Kuan Yew discipline that made Singapore. President Ruto’s Singapore is an allegory. It is fashioned in the style of George Orwell’s Sugar Candy Mountain. It is not accessible. It does not require struggle. Patience is all, as Ruto keeps telling Kenyans. Just be patient, for ten years. Pay five trillion shillings. Kenya will become Singapore.  

Is Ruto peddling Singapore without the moral costs of civic discipline and elite sacrifice? Is he pitching a pacifying fantasy? Or will he, like Yew, embrace growth without justice, and order without judicial accountability?  

From Raila to Ruto, and from Jones to Owuor, the faithful appear to be in the grip of a barrage of frustrating promises. In politics, they teach people to hope.

They normalise promises, hope, and compromise. When Canaan does not happen, they invoke narratives of crocodiles overrunning them in the River Jordan. Yet, when President Uhuru Kenyatta (the alleged crocodile-in-chief) becomes Raila’s ally, the Canaan metaphor dies. Paradise is lost. The liberation metaphor is lost with it. 

The Kenyan worshipper and the voter alike, have been trained to embrace cocktails of promises without questioning. What meaning should they derive from idioms like “hope, deliverance, miracle, promise, and transformation”, in a sea of failed salvation and developmental narratives?  

The great German-American political philosopher Hannah Arendt taught us that evil thrives not in wickedness, but in unthinking loyalty to individuals who assume they are institutions. When you disagree with them, you are seen to be unpatriotic, and blasphemous.

When the political leader is above the law and due process; and the religious leader is above both the law and medicine, society is doomed. Their prophecies, promises and unfinished journeys remain just that; false hopes. 

-Dr Muluka is a strategic communications adviser.