This Kenyan cult leader misused the Bible to cause a massacre

Was it madness, psychosis, or Christian fundamentalism that drove the brainwashed cultists of preacher Paul Mackenzie to death through fasting? “A Pentecostal descendant, Mackenzie radicalized the faith and exploited his followers with his absolute authority over the sect,” says Damaris Parsitau, a sociologist of religion at Egerton University in Nakuru, Kenya. side, because why do people turn to faith to solve all their problems, even if they want to die? This kind of religious massacres can only take place in a climate of fear and poverty.”

Kenya was shocked last week by the discovery of mass graves on an estate belonging to a Christian sect in the predominantly Muslim coastal areas around the town of Malindi. Since then, lurid images of new white body bags with mothers, children and men appear on television every day. Ninety victims have been recovered so far. Some corpses appeared to be starving, others had been violently killed. Relatives told how their children were lured into Mackenzie’s Good News International Church cult and turned into zombies. Other survivors say they fasted voluntarily. “Each individual voluntarily decided to fast for seven days, it purifies the mind and brings us closer to God. I believe in Mackenzie very much,” said cult member Ben Amani, 41, in a Kenyan newspaper.

Kithure Kindiki, Kenyan interior minister, spoke of “misusing the Bible to carry out a massacre.” He promised that the church sector will be regulated. According to Archbishop Martin Kivuva, “there is a troubling reality in which so-called prophets and cult leaders have mastered the art of exploiting Kenyans in the name of religion.” Mackenzie himself prophetically warned after his arraignment at a court in Malindi: “You have no idea the magnitude you are fighting. You will face the consequences.” After which his police escorts murmured a few pleas to Jesus just to be on the safe side.

Mackenzie was a taxi driver until 1991, after which he invested in the Jesus industry

Mackenzie was a taxi driver until 1991, after which he invested in the Jesus industry. Like many Pentecostal churches, he founded a “prosperity church,” where material prosperity is promised to members in the name of God. In 2019, he was also arrested in connection with the death of children, but was released on bail. The case is still pending in court.

Church leaders fly around in helicopters

The Pentecostal Church is the fastest growing church in Africa, with cultic congregations focused on the prosperity gospel with a commitment to loud, flashy, charismatic individuals. “Kenya has a large group of evangelical churches, some of which lean towards the Mackenzie doctrine,” wrote columnist Macharia Gaitho this week. “Priests of these churches are welcomed in the presidential palace and are generously provided with public funds so that they can pray for those in power.”

Kenya is a Christian nation with three quarters of the population. Young and old flock to places of worship, religions flourish and churches grow. Some preachers build gigantic buildings where they put their thousands of followers into a trance with modern light and sound effects. These church leaders fly around in helicopters, have tea with senior politicians, while doing their earthly needs on golden toilets. Inspired by these divine riches, many a Kenyan blessed with strong verbal qualities starts his own church, as Mackenzie did. This is how thousands of churches sprang up, each of which produces a lot of noise in urban areas, with a loudness that exceeds the disco.

More churches than schools

Africa in general is a strongly religious continent. Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame caused a stir last year when he banned 6,000 churches. “There are more churches in Rwanda than schools and industries,” he grumbled. In Rwanda, priests have since been required to obtain a theological academic degree before they are allowed to preach.

From church to cult has already resulted in mass slaughter. In Uganda’s Kanungu district, 700 followers of priests Credonia Mwerinde and Joseph Kibwetere died in 2000 when they nailed and set fire to the church building. In this sect too, magic and Christianity formed a poisonous mixture; Mwerinde (a former sex worker) and the ex-civil servant Kibwetere both said they had seen the apparition of Mary and had special spiritual powers as a result.

Deadly cults are not just an African phenomenon. In Guyana, 900 followers of the Peoples Temple died in 1978 from poisoning by the cult leader Jim Jones from the United States. In San Diego, Mashall Apllewhite, former Presbyterian minister of the Heaven’s Gate sect, ordered his followers to commit suicide in 1997, killing 38 of them. And a ‘starvation sect’ was also active in the Netherlands. In Utrecht, a group tried not to live on food, but on “light, warmth, colours, music and love”. In 2017, a woman was killed.

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