Nzimbi Fiddles While Kenya Burns

Kenyan Archbishop Benjamin Nzimbi leading an anti-Gay forum in Rochester, Minnesota one year ago this week. He claims the Kenyan Church is growing madly, but this talk attracted all of 40 souls.

It’s been a month now since the elections in Kenya, and so far the violence is unabated. This is a particular tragedy felt all over Africa and all over the Anglican Communion. Lives are being lost and hopes are being dashed all over the continent, because up to now Kenya has been a particularly bright spot. It is a large and prosperous country which successfully moved from one-party rule to democracy. Now it appears the government has stolen the election, leading at first to mass street protests, then a government crackdown, and finally violence, which has degenerated into tribal hatred. And somewhere near the middle of it all stands the Anglican Archbishop Benjamin Nzimbi, heretofore best known as a Gay-hating wedge-driver splitting the Episcopal Church in America.

He should have stuck to his own knitting. He should have concentrated on his own country instead of conducting border raids in the United States.

But the same can be said of many Anglican Archbishops in Africa. They’ve been so busy conducting anti-Gay campaigns in the West they’ve neglected their own countries and their own churches.

But wait, it gets worse. Several weeks before the late December elections, Nzimbi was appointed the head of a special religious peace commission to hold the country together through the electoral process—to bless it, if you will. Here’s how the Anglican Church of Kenya’s website described it:

Religious organizations in Kenya have launched a peace campaign to ensure a peaceful and secure process as the December 2007 general elections approach.

The campaign whose slogan is “Chagua Amani Zuia Noma” (Choose Peace Avoid Chaos) was launched recently by President Mwai Kibaki at a colorful ceremony at the Kenyatta Conference Centre grounds.

The Chairman of the inter-religious forum, The Most Rev. Benjamin Nzimbi had this to say during the launch:

It is my great pleasure to welcome all of us to this grand occasion. Today, we join hands with the rest of the world to celebrate peace and remind ourselves of the immense negative effects of conflict and violence.

Your Excellency, Ladies and gentlemen, peace is so important in our lives that we should not allow the transient activity of holding elections leave us beholding each other as enemies. We are one nation: Our differences in language, race, religion and economic power are just a flavour that makes living together interesting and worthwhile.

The “Excellency” he refers to is, of course, President Mwai Kibaki, the one who stole the election from opposition leader Raila Odinga.

So there was Nzimbi in September, receiving his “peace coronation” from the current President in the absence of the opposition leader. They must have all felt pretty good about what they were doing that day, ensuring peace and all.

Here’s what Kenya looked like yesterday.

Of course, since the riots broke out, Archbishop Nzimbi and his peace commission are nowhere to be found. They sided with the status quo back in September and now have no credibility at all with the average Kenyan.

So the Anglican Church is ducking undercover to save its skin. Other international friends have had to go to Kenya to faciliate negotiations, including former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and retired Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa. As the violence gets worse, the peace prospects dim.

Interestingly, the next news story on the Kenyan Anglican website carries these two worthies: schismatic American priests Bill Atwood and Bill Murdoch, who were recently ordained Bishops of Anti-Gayville by Nzimbi:

Don’t these White guys just look precious in their lace and finery? This stuff would be funny if it weren’t so tragic.

The one thing they all have in common—Nzimbi, Kibaki, Atwood, Murdoch and their American enablers—is that they really don’t care who gets hurt, as long as they get their way.

As we’ve seen over and over in nation and after nation, fake religious leaders define morality in personal, sexual terms to enable governments to act immorally, thus enriching those in power. We see it in America, in Nigeria, in Kenya, in Europe, in Central and South America, in Russia, in the Middle East; we see it everywhere.

How long, oh Lord, how long?

Pray for Kenya. Pray for the Church.++