The church's hand in collapse of the national dream

But the larger section of the church was either concentrating on the preservation of its influence or perpetuated State atrocities through silence.

As British historian Daniel Branch notes in his book Kenya: Between Hope and Despair; 1963-2012, a greater concern for expanding influence and the rise of Pentecostalism meant clergy even in the established churches became more interested in personal morality than the Constitution, and in the threat of Islam and Satan than the dangers of authoritarianism.

"There can be no clash between church and State when both are using the same methods to arrive at similar ambitions-the conversion of souls and governance over the people," Nyairo argues. Both the State and the church bribe when they want to; they reward and dish out favours; they don't listen to what the people need, and act on collective engagement.

To understand how the church in Kenya has facilitated collapse of the national dream, we need to look at two things. One, its urge to put tribe above value; what this teaches us, as Nyairo notes, is that the church exploits tribe in the same way that the political class does.

Two, the habit of putting profits before people. The gospel of prosperity is no different from government's practice of taxation without service, which benefits the political elite with bloated allowances and salaries.

During the 2017 presidential election, a section of religious leaders authoritatively declared that God had chosen UhuRuto-the alliance between the incumbent President Uhuru Kenyatta and his deputy William Ruto-and prayed away the possibility of a Raila presidency-the opposition candidate.

A separate group of religious leaders took the liberty to remind Kenyans that Jubilee administration was a curse that God was determined to do away with sooner rather than later. Both arguments were strange and lacked objective remise and moral freedom, but that doesn't mean they didn't achieve their purpose.

Many Kenyans, lost in what political analyst Nanjala Nyabola calls political schizophrenia, voted for Uhuru because their pastor advised so. Many others voted for Raila because he had not only promised, like the Biblical Joshua, to take them to Canaan, but because their pastor insisted that he was the choice of God, and therefore voting for him was the right thing to do, as Christians.

Generous contributions

Like President Moi who used his "generous nature" to extract personality worship from a citizenry that was grounded in social and biological poverty, Deputy President William Ruto's generous contributions to the church in recent years - which he often describes as an investment in heaven-in anticipated exchange for political support is a perfect case of how political benevolence morphs into poverty of alternative truth.

**The relationship between the church and the State during President Kenyatta's reign has been a complicated one.** [iStockphoto]

But how did the church end up being captured? The history of the church as a money-making enterprise dates back to its inception. Theologians draw the relevance of monetary contribution to the church from the bible. "A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which she had to live on."(Mark 12:44)

That might be legitimate, but to a limited extent the commercialisation of the gospel has made the capture of the church easy and profitable for politicians across the world.

If President Trump was a man of easy virtue during his time at the White House to whom honesty is almost an alien idea, American white evangelicals is an assembly of malicious Christians to whom orthodoxy is sacred.

"Trump was hired by evangelicals to defend their institutions, implement pro-life policies and appoint conservative judges... and the president has kept his side of the bargain," Michael Gerson wrote in the Washington Post in 2020.

By bringing in more money to the church, politicians earn special recognition and treatment. An unofficial contract soon emerges between the church leadership and the political class that steadily evolves into a latent political statement.

When the church is deep in bed with the State, it loses its truth, and its position on national issues cannot be taken seriously. In South Africa, for instance, the Dutch Reform Church and the Lutheran Mission Church publicly supported apartheid as a way of preserving their relationship with the State.

Mr Ouma is a freelance writer