08634
September 3, 2008

African ecumenical leader says church helped end Kenyan violence

by Pat Cole
Associate, Mission Communications

LOUISVILLE —  From his home in Cameroon, the Rev. Nyansako-ni-Nku, president of the All Africa Conference of Churches (AACC), closely followed the post election violence that engulfed Kenya late last December.

The Rev. Nyansako-ni-Nku
Photo credit: Joe Williams

As 2008 dawned, Nku received a call that he and other church leaders were wanted in Kenya to help begin negotiations between the opposing sides.  He had no ticket and no visa, and government offices were closed for the holiday. 

Soon a ticket arrived by e-mail and a diplomatic visa was issued. The next day he was in Kenya as part of a delegation that included Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, the Rev.  Mvume Dandala, general secretary of the AACC, and Brigalia Bam, chair of South Africa’s Independent Electoral Commission and a prominent African church leader.

The voting in Kenya had gone smoothly, but the tabulation of the results brought controversy that resulted in widespread violence.

“The early indications were that the protagonists in the conflict were prepared to speak to a third party that was faith-based and not a political organization,” said Nku in an interview during a late August visit to the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Center in Louisville.

The delegation met with leaders on both sides of the conflict, but first they spoke with Kenyan church leaders and politicians with close ties to the church. “We listened to the Kenyans and told them we had not come to do their work,” said Nku, moderator and former general secretary of the Presbyterian Church in Cameroon. “We’d only come to support them and remind them that it was their responsibility to bring the strength of the global church, its ecumenical and spiritual energy, to effect peace and reconciliation.”

The delegation was able to get both sides to call off the violence and agree to begin dialogue.

“We convinced them that it was better to go into dialogue and dispose themselves to mediation efforts with people with credentials and moral standing than to continue as they were doing,” Nku said. “In the process we insisted that the election results were confused. The only way forward was to share power.”

Eventually an agreement that would share power was brokered by former United Nations General Secretary Kofi Annan, a native of the West African nation of Ghana. “The work we did facilitated the mediation work of Kofi Annan and there was a public acknowledgement of that,” Nku said.

The role the AACC played in Kenya illustrates the respect afforded to churches in sub-Saharan Africa, an influence that promises to increase as Christianity continues its explosive growth on the continent.  According to the Center for the Study of Global Christianity, church membership has climbed from 8.8 million in 1900 to more than 423 million today.

About 120 million Christians belong to the 175 churches and Christian councils that comprise the AACC, the largest ecumenical group on the continent.

Nku said he believes church leaders are called to use their standing to pursue honesty and fairness in governments.  “Greed is the worst pollution in life,” Nku said. “Many of the power struggles that bring about civil strife are the result of greed.”

He also wants Christians to be known for their advocacy of peaceful conflict resolution. “God gave us the ability of speech so that we should not settle disputes like animals by brute force,” he explained. “There is power in dialogue and God speak to us through it.”

Why is the church in Africa growing?  “Some people have described Africans as incurably religious,” Nku said. “Religion is so much embedded in Africans’ culture and way of life, and so when missionaries came they didn’t introduce the worship of God. They were not saying something that was very, very new to Africans.  What was new was the kind of worship and definition of God.”

In addition he emphasized that the African commitment to community and sharing “fits into the Christian message.”

Despite the growth of the African church, Nku said his church in Cameroon and others on the continent still need and want mission personnel.  “There are so many areas where the churches don’t have local people with the needed expertise or the churches aren’t able (financially) to hire the expertise even if it is available locally,” he said. Some overseas churches, he added, give African churches money to hire local people instead of sending mission people.

However, he noted that mission personnel enrich African churches  by bringing a strong faith commitment in addition to the technical and professional skills that they are sent to perform. Nku said he has been privileged to work with mission personnel from the PC(USA) and other groups who embody that commitment.