A Liberating God For The Poor in Kenya
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Date
1998-02
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Tangaza University College
Abstract
The yearning for happiness and life necessarily takes the form of pursuit of liberation.
Liberation from any kind of misery is the first condition for happiness. This brings me to the
three important reasons why I chose to write about a liberating God for the poor in Kenya.
The first is because the gap between the poor and the rich people in Kenya is growing:
many people are becoming poorer. The second reason is my belief that the glory of the
majority of Kenyans lies in their sufferings. The Kenyan history is full of struggles of
ordinary people against the forces of nature and the cruelty of other people. The third reason
considers the faith of the Kenyans emerging from the liberating potential contained in the
Christian faith and how it can be integrated in the peoples' daily lives.
The liberation of a country and its people takes varied paragons. My starting point is
the social experience of poverty. My main aim is to see the country transformed in the
interests of the poor. I consider this work to be my active personal involvement in the process
of transformation without which my participation in the shared liberating movement becomes
abstract and ineffective.
It is essential for me first, to explain the social, political, economic and cultural
setting in which I seek to establish the need for a liberating God for the poor in Kenya. I will
do this in the first chapter. Taking this historical reality with theological seriousness, I will
move on to show how the insights emerging from this chapter prove the hypothesis I have
formulated and will expound in the succeeding chapters. The hypothesis is that the liberating
action of God can achieve its purpose in the national life of the country through its diligent
attempts to live an authentic and African Christian life.
In chapter two, I analyse God the liberator in the Kenyan context. It should be borne the Kingdom of God on earth consists in the efforts of the Christians to transform society into
a more just sphere of existence. God as liberator thus serves like a call that awakens us from
the usual, ordinary ways of looking at reality, reminding us that Christian discipleship means
not only individual betterment but also intervention in social reforms as well.
I have highlighted the importance of contextualizing theology so that it can be a more
liberating praxis. Since the poor are a privileged hetmeneutical locus, I have rejected the
version of God or church that does not encourage the liberation of the poor. I see God as a
God who saves and does not tolerate oppression or injustice. A contextualized theology will
encourage clarity of vision (in the political and religious spheres), commitment to democratic
ideals, and pursuit of policies for sustainable development as the hallmarks of good leadership
that Kenyans yearn for desperately.
After describing and analysing the past and contemporary history of Kenya, I have
used scripture as my fundamental source to be the light and the nourishment of the people
of God in the midst of their struggles and hope. This has encouraged me to search for and
suggest some prophetic response to the afflictions of the poor in Kenya. In the last chapter
therefore, I propose the future pastoral praxis in explicitly primary evangelization in a typical
parish setting.
In treating poverty and liberation pointing the injustice, the bad, the evil, in this work
is inevitable. The only way to go beyond simplistic condemnation or arrogant triumphalism
is to transcend categories of defeat and see the beginning of a new Kenya. The year 2000
calls for a new creation! It calls not for breast-beating nor (unrealistic) celebration but for
deliverance. It calls for rupture - a cutting away of the umbilical cord from the Western world
of civilization to authentic Christian citizens of Kenya.
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Keywords
Concepts of God, Poverty in Kenya, Advent of Christianity in Kenya, Christianity in Independent Kenya, God the Liberator in the Kenyan Context, The Poor as the Priority of God, Irruption of the Poor as a Challenge to Kenyan Christianity, Future Pastoral Praxis, Church and Development in Kenya, Voluntary Solidarity with the Poor, Empowerment of the Agents of Liberation