US conservatism funds churches in
The continent’s gender phobias are legitimised by money from narrow American churches
For most of his life, in addition to being a staunchly religious man, Peter Gichira was also staunchly homophobic. “I used to be homophobic, yes ... definitely,” comes his candid, yet almost apologetic, confession.
A Kenyan Presbyterian reverend, Gichira’s prejudice was challenged when, in 2009, someone he had known all his life — or thought he’d known — came out as gay.
“I saw him as a father figure, so it was … I saw it as a disappointment. But I couldn’t tell him, because of that, because he was a father figure to me. But he could see from the expression on my face,” he says, trailing off.
For three years Gichira clung to his belief that the father he once loved was now a sinner in his eyes. “We never communicated at all in those three years. Then one day, in December 2012, as part of the International Symposium of Faith Leaders, which was put together by the All Africa Council of Churches and held here in Kenya, Archbishop [Emeritus] Desmond Tutu came to speak to us.
“He likened the way the church treats LGBTIQ [lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and questioning] people to the way black people were treated during apartheid.”
The conference was attended by more than 160 faith leaders representing 120-million Christians across the continent, but its leadership “did not like what [Tutu] was saying”, says Gichira. “But it spoke to my heart when I looked at him and saw the honesty in his face when he asked the leaders to trust him one more time; to trust that he would not mislead them and that they had trusted him on so many issues before. He said the church had always been at the forefront of struggles and that we couldn’t sit back and watch God’s people being discriminated against and persecuted.”
Tasked with taking minutes, Gichira had to compile a report on the conference. “After presenting my report, I was told by the conference’s leadership to delete that part of Tutu’s speech. But I refused. I just couldn’t do it. I felt as though, in doing that, I would somehow be erasing my father figure. So I removed my name from that report.
“Refusing to do that,” he says, “was the beginning of my journey.”
After speaking to fellow religious leaders “to see what we could do to find a platform for these issues to be discussed, slowly, slowly a group started forming.”
Today that group is the Pembizo Christian School, of which Gichira is the acting general secretary. With nothing in the way of funding (“for two years we got not a cent from anybody”), the fledgling organisation set about conducting workshops “with faith leaders who have never been exposed to LGBTIQ people or the issues they face to show them why LGBTIQ rights are human rights”.
The minimal resources to conduct this work contrast sharply with the levels of influence conservative religious groups exert over African religious leaders and institutions.
The 2009 report Globalising the Culture Wars: US Conservatives, African Churches and Homophobia by the Reverend Dr Kapya Kaoma of Political Research Associates (PRA) shows how, “over the past decade, Africa has become a key theatre in yet another conflict — the US culture wars” and that “US conservatives have organised African Protestant leaders to protest against any movement towards LGBT equality”.
The report notes: “US conservatives have successfully recruited a significant number of prominent African religious leaders to a campaign seeking to restrict the human rights of LGBT people … As a direct result of this campaign, homophobia is on the rise in Africa — from increased incidents of violence to anti-gay legislation that carries the death penalty.”
Key to ensuring the success of this campaign is throwing money behind it.
“US conservatives have little true interest in the marginalised in Africa. Yet they are running orphanages, schools and universities there, as well as providing loans and other social services under the auspices of