In Kenya, youth protests against planned tax hikes have served as a wake-up call for the church.
They have shaken up a powerful institution in a country where more than 80% of the population, including the president, is Christian.
The young protesters accused the church of siding with the government and took action against politicians who used the pulpit as a political platform.
Recently, Catholic leaders took up the challenge on a Sunday afternoon.
They organised a special mass for the youth of churches in and around Nairobi, in memory of those killed by the police during the anti-tax protests.
Hundreds of young people gathered in the Basilica of the Holy Family to pray for the dead.
Just a few weeks earlier, Sunday Mass had been interrupted by chants from the basilica’s altar.
It was an unprecedented protest by young people – the digitally savvy generation known as Generation Z or Gen-Z.
They felt that the church was not supporting their campaign against major tax increases.
Bishop Simon Kamomoe tried to convince them that they had been heard.
“I know that as young people you sometimes feel disappointed, even in church,” he said.
“We want to renew our commitment to your service. We may be mistaken… May the Lord forgive us as a Church, where we have disappointed you even before God.”
He also admonished them to be patient in pursuing their dreams, to be guided by the Church and to repent for the sins they committed during the protests.
“We don’t want to lose you, we don’t want to lose our young people,” he said with remarkable candor. “The Catholic bishops are so concerned about losing this generation,” he said, urging them to remain peaceful and protect their lives.
The mass was accompanied by exuberant singing and ended with wild cheers as people waved Kenyan flags.
Several attendees indicated that the service was a welcome first step, but that it was a late step.
“I feel like for the first time the church is realizing that the young people are serious,” said Yebo, who attended the protests before they turned violent and asked to remain anonymous.
“And I also feel like the church is not really on our side. They’ve been sitting on the fence for a long time.
“The youth have actually been more persistent, they have achieved more results than the church with the current economic change. We hear that the president takes the youth more seriously than the church.”
Church organizations did lobby against the tax law, but it was the youth who took to the streets in overwhelming numbers that forced the president Willem Ruto pull back.
Not only that.
The Gen Z protesters are now condemning what they see as the intimate relationship between Christian and political institutions.
During the mass, suspicions about visits by church leaders to the State House, the presidential residence, including during the protests, were repeatedly raised.
“We believe the president is buying the church,” said Meshack Mwendwa.
On social media, “the church leaders are seen with envelopes (alongside) the executive leaders and the permanent members of the government,” he said. “And that is not what we as young people want, now is the time for change.”
One change they demanded, and got, was an end to the ostentatious practice of “harambee” – politicians donating large sums of money to the church.
With such donations you can buy political influence on Sunday morning.
The protest movement wanted to put an end to that and called it #OccupyChurch.
Some even protested against President Ruto’s presence at a church-sponsored event. But he supported their position.
“When it comes to political issues in the pulpit, I stand behind the statements 100%,” he said during a nationally broadcast media roundtable.
“We should not use the pulpit in churches or other places of worship to persecute politics. That is not right.”
Days later, he banned government officials and other public servants from making public charitable donations and ordered the attorney general to develop a mechanism for structured and transparent contributions.
But the president himself is also part of this political culture, turning the pulpit into a campaign platform.
“His political message was actually carried within the church,” said Reverend Chris Kinyanjui, the secretary general of the National Council of Churches (NCCK) of Kenya.
“So people feel like they have a Christian government.”
Mr Ruto’s Christian narrative has made it difficult for many pastors to hold him accountable, Reverend Kinyanjui said. They are rather behaving like “shareholders of this government,” he alleged.
“Our president speaks from the pulpit. Do you know what the pulpit means? He cannot be questioned. So he has become a very powerful figure in Kenyan politics and church circles. Generation Z is asking questions and saying: we don’t know the difference between the government and the church.”
The BBC asked the Kenyan government for comment, but a spokesman said he could not comment at this time. He spoke amid sweeping cabinet and security changes that Mr Ruto has made in response to the protests.
The backlash from Kenyan youth could change the way power relations function in Kenya.
They constitute the vast majority of the population and fall outside the predictable political dynamics.
The President is listening now, and so is the Church.
“We are the Church,” said Mitchelee Mbugua outside the basilica as Mass ended.
“If the church shows that they don’t support us, we will withdraw from them. If there is no us, there is no church. So they have to listen to our grievances. Because we are the church.”
Rev Kinyanjui goes further, underlining what he sees as the fragility of the social contract with Kenya’s youth. He acknowledged that the NCCK leadership was concerned that Kenya would follow the path of Sudan.
There a youth uprising was crushed by a military coup, eventually leading to a civil war.
“We were glad that the president was able to defuse this crisis,” he said, “because if he had signed that financial bill, who knows what would have happened to us.”
Rev Kinyanjui said the NCCK was “too silent” against the financial law. In the future, they will adopt a strategy of “being proactive, being visible, being the voice and the consciousness of society… by asking questions, by correcting the regime.”
“In a way, we see Gen Z as doing the work of the Lord, and I think that’s something that has awakened a lot of pastors.”
More about the anti-tax protests in Kenya:
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