Kenya’s church leaders in January protested against strict new regulations for religious societies announced by the Attorney General’s Office, the Registrar of Societies and the Communications Authority of Kenya.
The rules ‘are aimed at gagging and muzzling the church in Kenya’, wrote church leaders in Nairobi in ‘A Message to Christians in Kenya’ on 11 January.
The new regulations dictate that pastors must submit a certificate of good conduct and must have a theological degree in order to preach.
Under the new Programming Code for the Free to Air Broadcasting, pastors are banned from making appeals for listeners to accept Jesus and for viewers to donate funding. But, ‘the church is in the business of spreading the gospel’, protested Mark Kariuki, chairman of the Evangelical Alliance of Kenya. ‘It is offensive to tell us we cannot invite people to make [a] decision for Christ (on TV).’
Government registration
Church leaders in Kenya believe the new measures are being justified by the few cases in which religious leaders have broken the law. They argue, however, that the Penal Code already exists to deal with offenders and is sufficient to deal with the problem without the need to introduce more legislation.
Leaders insist that the new regulations are, in reality, a form of government persecution against churches. In the message released on 11 January, leaders from various denominations said that the government had frozen over 7,000 church registrations lodged in 2014 and that not one church had been registered in 2015.
Under the new rules gazetted at the end of January and to be put in force after a year, all religious societies are required to submit a statement of faith and they must all be registered under an Umbrella Religious Society, a body which must comprise at least 2,500 registered churches. Each umbrella body is to be registered for a two-year period, and if, by the close of the two years, it does not comprise at least 5,000 registered churches, its registration will lapse.
