Prayer for rain: a pentecostal perspective from Kenya

Abstract

Nairobi, the capital city of Kenya, has a population of 3.5 million people. The concentration of Pentecostal and charismatic churches in Nairobi, as in other African cities, has more than doubled since the 1970s. The Kenya meteorological department in June 2016 forecast poor short rains in 2016. By December 2016, the Thika Dam (Ndakaini), which provides 85 percent of the water used in Nairobi, was below the 50 percent level. This led the Nairobi water and sewerage company to issue detailed water-rationing programmes effective 1 January 2017. With dry taps across the city, actual effects of depressed rains were visible. Using fieldwork data, this paper examines the response, if any, of three Pentecostal churches in Nairobi in two separate month-long periods, July 2016 and January 2017, to the meteorological department and Nairobi water and sewerage alerts. Three services for each Pentecostal church were sampled, bringing the total number of church services to nine. From fieldwork data, a vibrant African Pentecostal eco-theology emerges, which is the greening of all of God’s creation on earth. Using typologies available for defining the relationship between human beings and nonhuman nature identified within public theology discourse, I find that two of the congregations align themselves with utilitarian anthropocentrism and nature-centred approaches, while the other defies plausible positioning