The 2009 Kenyan Census
In 2009, the Kenyan government conducted its latest national census, which is carried out every ten years. The census covered various topics related to household demographics, ethnic affiliation , education , and assets. Also appearing in the census questionnaire was the question, “what is your religion?” Respondents were to choose between eight options and were confined to one answer only. The census data thus concluded that, out of a population of 38.6 million, the country has about 18.3 million Protestants , 9 million Catholics,1 4.6 million “other Christian,” 4.3 million Muslims , 900,000 “no religion,” 650,000 “traditionalists,” 550,000 “other religion,” 53,000 Hindus, and 60,000 “don’t know” (Kenya’s Minister of State for Planning National Development and Vision 2030, 2010).2
The census, while being the most extensive recent source on religious affiliation in the country as a whole, nonetheless raises a number of questions. For one thing, it fails to take into account that these eight categories of religious identification may not be exclusive and could overlap. Given the exclusion of multiple answers, what might be, for example, the self-classification of a Born Again adherent to charismatic Catholicism , or of an affiliate of an African Independent Church that brings together traditional and Christian elements? Moreover, the census fails to distinguish between de facto degrees of commitment . A staunch Catholic, who attends Mass and prayer sessions on an almost daily basis, and who is highly active in the church, is not the same as a passive affiliate, who may consider him- or herself Catholic for the purposes of the survey, yet may have not attended Mass since confirmation . Here, Kenyan social norms, which tend to stigmatize the non-religious and those with a highly diffused religious identity , might influence the respondent to select a religious classification that conveys little in terms of actual practice.
Yet another challenge has to do with defining affiliation , recognizing that—as I will develop later on—the notion of institutional religious membership often conceals more than it clarifies. Looking more closely at the data, additional questions can be raised concerning particular categories. What should we make of the large group of “other Christians,” who see themselves as neither Catholic nor Protestant ? Do those who maintain “no religion” regard themselves as atheists or seculars—a group whose number, as we discuss in Chapter 4, appears to be on the rise—or simply as unaffiliated believers? Who is represented by the half a million or so who subscribe not to Christianity, Islam, or African Traditional Religions (ATRs), but to “other religions ,” when affiliates of various Asian religions such as Hinduism , Sikhism, and Jainism are known to comprise a minority of no more than several tens of thousands of believers (Adam 2010; Herzig 2006)? Lastly, what are we to make of the strange-seeming “don’t know” group, presuming it indicates something other than missing data?
Scholars have been reminding us that “in many countries in Africa, religious statistics are highly politicized” (Wijsen 2007, 34n45) as they are associated with rival, contending powers, as communities may seek to inflate their advertised rate of adherents in order to boost their influence. In this respect, we may consider the contested number of Muslims in Kenya , which is often entangled with allegations of systemic ethno-religious marginalization of Kenyan Muslims and underconsideration of the real number and fast growth rate of the country’s Somali population.3 Alongside allegations of data politicization, we should also consider data-gathering hurdles as acknowledged by the Kenyan Ministry of State for Planning. According to the ministry, in conducting the census it had faced multiple challenges, such as limited financing and logistical difficulties in reaching and mapping pastoralist communities, but also unexpected turmoil in the form of the outbreak of the 2007–2008 post-election violence and the later resettlement of IDPs, as well as famine and drought (Kenya’s Minister of State for Planning National Development and Vision 2030, 2010, 13). Notwithstanding such shortcoming, it would be rash and probably unfair to discard the census—the most comprehensive source of such data—out of hand.
I opened with the 2009 census data to illustrate the problem of imagining clear-cut, straightforward, and exclusive religious identities.4 Other quantitative studies, such as those conducted by the Pew Research and Afrobarometer, may offer a more refined set of questions, but are similarly limited in their engagement with the minute complexities of de facto practice (Pew Research Center 2006; Afrobarometer 2005, 2008, 2011). Like the 2009 census, most studies touching on questions of religious identities and mobility—quantitative, but often also qualitative—are based on an assumption of religious exclusivity. One could be “either” Christian or Muslim, Catholic or Anglican, etc. How are we to conceptualize the growing body of evidence, which shows that such a perspective, if ever truly applicable, is simplistic at best?5 Indeed, when examined from the perspective of individual actors, one encounters a world of composite, mobile, and dynamic everyday mobility, largely taken for granted by practitioners while going under the scholarly radar. Moreover, as I came to learn, past religious practices , more often than not, are complemented, rather than overridden, by new religious engagements . While one may seek to single out a single dominant religious engagement as an exclusive identity marker, my findings in Kenya , and the model that I have developed as a result, are grounded in the conviction that religious identity, as actually lived, tends to overflow any single affiliation .
Before outlining the structure of the work and detailing the approach taken, I wish to offer a counter-illustration to that of the national census, using five brief case studies from among my Kenyan interviewees . By contrasting their stories with the census data, we can begin to understand the challenges that this work seeks to address.6
Example Interviewees
Judy
A thirty-year-old single woman, Judy was brought up in a strict Anglican family upcountry in Central Province, a middle child among five. Both her parents have been active in the Anglican Church, in which her eldest brother is “almost like a bishop,” to use her own words. Her mother was originally from an independent Pentecostal church , but shifted to Anglicanism after marrying Judy’s father.
Having arrived in Nairobi five years prior to our interview in search of employment , Judy shares an apartment with her sister, alongside whom she also works as a roadside salesperson. In the absence of an Anglican Church in their immediate vicinity, Judy and her sister are obliged to go downtown for Sunday services. However, while her sister is a staunch Anglican, and would never miss a service, Judy is more flexible. Trying to eke out a living, she spends some Sundays at work, while on others she might attend one of two nearby Pentecostal churches . One of the two, Cornerstone Church, she attends often, having first been invited there by an aunt. While she appreciates the presence of her aunt, she would sometimes attend the church even when her aunt is away. Having no single, fixed congregation , Judy does not tithe,7 but contributes her offering every Sunday, depending on the church she happens to be attending. At the same time, Judy insists that she remained Anglican, claiming that she only visits other denominations insofar as their teachings correspond to Anglican teachings. When I asked if she considers herself Born Again, she responded with a hesitant affirmation, explaining that simply by following Christ she believes herself to be Born Again.
Working on the roadside, Judy and her sister receive frequent visits from passing evangelists and are routinely proselytized by affiliates of Jehovah’s Witness . Judy is skeptical of these evangelists and their motivations, and is concerned with rumors she has been hearing about up-and-coming churches such as Winners ’ Chapel , which she says she would be wary of visiting. In the same vein, she was disturbed by a tragic story that came out shortly before our interview, involving a married Pentecostal pastor who had murdered a woman with whom he was having an affair upon finding found out that she was pregnant with his child for the second time.8 Aside from her visits to church on most Sundays, Judy’s religious life is quite solitary. She keeps her Bible within reach and reads it at work from time to time, partially to prepare herself with responses to unrelenting street evangelists.
Steve
I met Steve in a home fellowship associated with CITAM (Christ Is The Answer Ministries ), an established, popular middle -class Pentecostal church , in Kisumu, Kenya’s third largest city located on the shores of Lake Victoria. A stylishly dressed man in his early 20s, Steve described his religious heritage as “Pentecostal from great-grandparents.” Son of a pastor mother and a non-practicing father, Steve told me of his unruly teenage days, w...