As A Kenyan, what I know about America was founded on my village being a mission Station. Founded in the eighteenth hundreds by Africa Inland Mission, Kijabe stands as one of the oldest and largest American mission station in Africa South of the Sahara. This is not the only mission station in Kenya. Kikuyu mission represents the Presbyterians. There are about 7.5 million baptized Catholics in Kenya. This shows representatively the historical Development of the Christian influence in Kenya.
Though it is not just the Americans who historically brought to us the message of the cross of Christ, it is accurate to say that they have contributed a great portion to Kenya’s Christian History.
It is this fact that shapes my concern that the recent Supreme Court ruling on marriage shows the end of American Biblical Foundation. Carl F. H. Henry, considered the father of modern day Evangelicalism, and founding editor of Christianity Today wrote a book titled, “Twilight of A Great Civilization” (wordbooks 1986) all biblical Christian should read this book. When he taught me at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, he defended one of his chapters in the book, “The Barbarians are coming”. In this chapter he argued that what would destroy America, as a nation, was not politics, rather, it was the emergence of Neo-Paganism. He argued that “Barbarians” (Neo-Paganism) were knocking at the door of American culture with an intention of not only changing the conscious of America towards Divine Revelation, but also using rational arguments to establish laws that will then defend their depraved mind!
I am not a prophet and I do not believe that Henry was writing these words as a prophet. Rather, he was writing as a Philosophical Theologian whose understanding of civilizations guided him in concluding that the fall of all major Civilizations was preceded by the embrace of sub human and Neo-paganistic idealism. You see, if God did not create Man and Woman and establish their sexual and social relationship as a foundational nucleus of human development and life, then, the Biblical history cannot stand. You see, if you declare marriage to be a constitutional rather than a divine institution, then the Narrative of Adam and Eve is muted as irrational superstition. Humanity as defined by the Bible stands distinct and special before God. And this humanity is rooted in Adam and Eve. “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them” This is to anchor all other things. Before He created THEM, he created all other things and calls them “GOOD”, meaning the best he could create for man.
Thus, if Divine THEM is rationally muted, then Divine GOOD is erased. That is why when a man marries a man and a woman marries a woman, they defile the THEM. According to St Paul, “For this cause God gave THEM up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meet.” Romans. 1: 27-28. When God gives you over, He removes His universal GOOD and great civilizations fall. Who would have thought that the Roman Empire would collapse, and the British Empire would be reduced to a small Island?
Carl F. H. Henry’s words are finally actuated! The Barbarians are no longer at the GATE. They have moved in and are walking in the halls of power calling the shots. America has lost its biblical foundation constitutionally and rationally.
May it always be then that we Kenyans remain not only rational and constitutional, but always be guided by the Divine Imperative of THEM so that we can remain within the blessings of GOOD. They that have ears to hear let them hear!
Teddy Njoroge Kamau (PhD), SYR Radio/TV Director International Desk. Imanisha
