By Njojo M
The church in Kenya today, as in many places around the world, has made common cause with the powerful and corrupt political and business elites. It has lost its voice to speak up for the least of these and to speak prophetically on issues of social justice, non-violence, inclusivity and simple living. It has instead become obsessed with status, money and power. Below, Fr. Richard Rohr explains where the rain started beating the church:
“The last great formal persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire ended in 311 CE. In 313, Constantine (c. 272-337) legalized Christianity. It became the official religion of the Roman Empire in 380. After this structural change, Christianity increasingly accepted, and even defended, the dominant social order, especially concerning money and war. Morality became individualized and largely focused on sexuality….
Before 313, the church was on the bottom of society, which is the privileged vantage point for understanding the liberating power of the Gospel for both the individual and for society. Within the space of a few decades, the church moved from the bottom to the top, literally from the catacombs to the basilicas. The Roman basilicas were large buildings for court and other public assembly, and they became Christian worship spaces.
When the Christian church became the established religion of the empire, it started reading the Gospel from the position of maintaining power and social order instead of experiencing the profound power of powerlessness that Jesus revealed. In a sense, Christianity almost became a different religion!”
Jesus is calling us back to stand up, live and if necessary die for the cause he lived and died for. Won’t we hearken to his call?
Meanwhile Onyango Ochieng Jnr had this to say:
MAKMENDE amerudi! What’s happening here is just a facade, lift the veil, and the filth beneath would make the eye go blind. Deep in the bedroom of my mind, am convinced the church is just a deceptive silhouette; beneath lies drugs, gun running,moneylaundering, pussy-peddling among other moral ills and criminal adventures. Why would a third rated backstreet bible-hustling preacher carry such a crowd as ‘security’. I mean, her audience is often smaller than the number of teeth in an ordinary human being. Her crusades only attract a handful of horny men out to nourish their optics…Govt should probe this shadowy girl, else something more stinking could be boiling beneath her feet….But again, I could be wrong. Maybe they are protecting her from male enemies of Sonko.
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