State should engage religious stakeholders

It would appear that in its attempt to bring order and accountability to the religious sector, the government could be doing the right thing but perhaps in the wrong way. It is an undeniable fact that all is not well in the House of God, and especially with us who are supposed to represent Him. Scandals of various types have been a serious blight on the already scarred body of Christ, and have caused some of us to walk with heads stooped. But even worse, our society is degenerating rapidly – especially in matters of values, ethics, and morality. That which was an abomination only a few years ago, is now peddled as the progressive way of life. Matters we had difficulties discussing even in private, we now sing and laugh about in public. The government therefore has both the divine and social mandate to ensure that order and sanity obtains.

However, as the various arms of government have sought to exercise this mandate, they have either sidestepped or deliberately ignored critical processes for effective social transformation. Key stakeholders have either been ignored or ridden roughshod in favor of apparent predetermined positions. The result: the very people who could have been allies of government in its transformational agenda, have risen up in near adversarial opposition. And hence the current standoff between the government and the Church on the proposed religious society rules and the broadcast code.

One of the key tenets of the new Constitution is its provision for participatory approach to policy making. Unfortunately, on matters affecting the Church, this has been blatantly breached. Whereas the Church is often invited to present its views on various proposed pieces of legislation; and whereas on several occasions the Church has also been invited to the discussion table to deliberate on such issues; the authorities often proceed to implement their own proposals as if no consultations ever happened. Even in the case of the constitution review process, the Church views were simply trampled upon by the relevant government agencies in favor of other social, political, and religious interests. But, the trend has continued, for example, in the formulation of the Education Bill, the Marriage Bill, the Marriage Guidelines, the Broadcast Code, and now the Religious Societies Rules. Consequently, the perception is that all that the government is interested in is to have it on record that they held “wide consultations” with the Church.

Some have even wondered whether some policymakers hold the false notion that the church is comprised of mere dimwits who have neither the capacity nor the ability to engage with matters affecting them or the wider society. This would be unfortunate because such approaches to social transformation have almost always failed. For example, the 1980s were painful years for much of the developing world. The developed world almost forcefully required them to institute economic reforms, or structural adjustment programs (SAPs), implicitly driven by the Big Brother syndrome. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) made SAPs a pre-condition for access to loans and grants. Unfortunately, because national governments were not freely involved, it is documented that in many cases, the SAPs miserably failed to yield expected results, especially in Africa.

The hard truth is that human nature is inherently rebellious and will therefore reject even that which is good when perceived to have been served with the wrong hand or heart. That is why in organisational development, the Argyris Intervention Theory has provided an effective approach to leading social or organisational transformation. Developed by the late Havard University professor, Chris Argyris, the theory provides that for an intervention to be effective, three basic processes must be fulfilled: the generation of valid information about the situation, the making of informed free choice by the members, and the independent internal commitment by the members to the proposed course of action.

Sad to say, but there appears to be a deficiency of all three in the formulation of the proposed Code and Rules. First, they seem not founded on valid information about the situation in the Church. Second, there was no informed free choice by the Church fraternity. Third, the independent internal commitment to the implementation of the proposed rules has not been secured from the Church. Argyris reasoned that when any or all of these processes is ignored, the intervention is bound to fail. Kenyan examples abound. The good professor may as well have been a prophet – hear ye him.