Nairobi, Kenya • When missionaries for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints arrived on this largely Christian East African nation 44 years in the past, they have been met with suspicion and a few hostility. Whereas many Christian church buildings urge their devoted to evangelize, Latter-day Saint missionaries have been extra aggressive, going door to door and even approaching folks on the road.
Different Christian teams shunned Latter-day Saints as cultic and anti-Christian. Specifically, they disapproved of the religion’s rejection of the doctrine of the Trinity, wherein God the Father, Jesus and the Holy Spirit are believed to be three individuals in a single deity.
“Their mode of evangelism and doctrine have been seen by mainstream church buildings as veering away from the evangelical mainstream doctrine,” mentioned the Rev. Martin Munyao, a senior lecturer on the Daystar College in Kenya.
However whereas the Rev. John Gatu, an educator within the Presbyterian Church of East Africa, agreed that Christians thought of Latter-day Saints to fall outdoors the religion due to its non-Trinitarian doctrine, he mentioned, “there’s a era which is on the lookout for one thing totally different.”
Certainly, the Utah-based church, which gained authorized approval from the Kenyan authorities to function as a faith in 1991, is discovering broad acceptance and now has 57 congregations and two missions within the nation.
On Sunday, apostle Gary E. Stevenson ended a go to to Africa with a information convention in Kenya, the place he mentioned church membership had handed 20,000.
After a surge in membership by means of the Nineteen Eighties, the church maintained double-digit proportion progress in a number of African international locations previously decade, throughout which era the membership has greater than doubled, in line with church sources. Nigeria has produced probably the most converts in that point, and within the western a part of the continent as a complete, the church now counts greater than 450,000 members.
“Missionaries who serve in Kenya (are) having converts into the church,” Stevenson mentioned. “As we try this and the church continues to develop, continues to have congregations, we are going to construct many homes to accommodate the congregations.”
(The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) Apostle Gary E. Stevenson and his spouse, Lesa, shake the palms of missionaries of the Tanzania Dar es Salaam Mission in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, on Thursday, Feb. 15, 2024.
A part of their success, mentioned Munyao, comes from a decline in evangelism by different Christian denominations in recent times, clearing the sphere for Latter-day Saint missionaries.
However Latter-day Saint congregations in Kenya have additionally discovered growing acceptance among the many church buildings that when shunned them, in addition to with different religion teams, together with Muslims, who make up some 6% of the inhabitants.
“They’ve supported a few of our occasions, and we have now used their venues for our occasions. We now have invited them to our occasions,” mentioned Rahman Ismail, government director of the Interreligious Council of Kenya, who famous that Latter-day Saints had not but joined the council.
In 2017, the church introduced the development of a temple in Nairobi, which is anticipated to be accomplished in 2026, in line with normal authority Seventy Ian S. Ardern, president of the church’s Africa Central Space, a gaggle of 17 international locations that features Kenya. Temples are reserved for particular worship occasions, whereas congregations’ weekly worship providers happen in meetinghouses.
(The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) An aerial view of the Nairobi Temple, the religion’s first in Kenya, on Tuesday, Feb. 13, 2024.
The temple campus will embody residences, “in order that individuals who come can keep for a time frame and take part within the ordinances of the temple,” Ardern defined. “Within the temple, you’ll find the peace that Christ spoke about.”
In Kenya, as in the remainder of Africa, the denomination carries out humanitarian and catastrophe reduction work, supporting well being, water entry, and training and meals packages.
Final yr, the church launched greater than a dozen instructional initiatives targeted on public major faculties, mentioned Dennis Mukasa, the church’s regional humanitarian supervisor and president of the Nairobi Kenya East Stake, which incorporates plenty of congregations. This system goals to enhance lecture rooms and normal college infrastructure whereas offering sanitation services below the acronym WASH, for water, sanitation and hygiene. The place they’ll, Latter-day Saint leaders in Africa look to work with current governmental and nongovernmental businesses.
With Kenya’s ongoing drought, now deemed the worst in 40 years, the church is distributing meals provides to 40,000 households, alongside organizations such because the Purple Cross.
Munyao mentioned the church has prospered by means of this evident concern for the wants of Kenyans. “They’re very a lot attuned to growth, attraction to humanism,” he mentioned, “and have an attachment to what’s occurring in the actual world.”
On the information convention, Stevenson responded to questions concerning the church’s peacemaking, its humanitarian work and LGBTQ points.
His tour had taken him to different international locations within the Africa Central space, together with war-torn Congo. He appealed for peace there, in addition to in Sudan and Gaza.
“As we take a look at the conflicts,” the apostle mentioned, “we hope leaders of the world might be touched in a manner that they may attempt to discover peace, and the folks will do all that they’ll to like their neighbors.”
Like different Western religion leaders, Stevenson addressed the query of the LGBTQ within the church, saying that Jesus Christ welcomes all with none situation.
“There isn’t any situation … of race, of ethnicity, of sexuality, of social economics or gender, all are welcomed to him,” he mentioned. “So we attempt to discover a peaceable measure of affection, of equality, of inclusion.”
