I am not writing about Mungiki, or Al-Qaeda or even the Church of Scientology but about Protestantism in Kenya and particularly the new kind of charismatic kind. In a now rare visit to the pages of my Bible, I have now confirmed a scripture that was first introduced to me by a wandering Jehovah's Witness. You have probably heard of them, or heard their knocks and ignored it or if you were caught unprepared like I was, then you probably had to suffer several minutes of Bible study and religious salesmanship. The scripture that was read to me that day persuaded me that there was a way to be a religious atheist, so a proselyte was made of me. That Witness may not know it, but she saved my life for faith.

Steady now and back to the topic. I remembered that scripture when I read from here about this massive prayer rally in Nakuru. The pictures are not flattering but the story itself is far worse. Let's start with the picture shall we. In classic style, the Bible has here been read literally and the poor fools went out and spent good coin on sacks, which they and the newspaper editors have seen fit to name sack-cloth. The message of sacrifice and self-flagellation you notice has been lost on them entirely. This though is nothing new, you have obviously heard of such preachers as T.D Jakes or Wilfred Lai or even our dear Margaret Wanjiru for whom faith is a six figure number at Barclays Bank. I concede, T.D is unlikely to bank with Barclays, but these people evidently are more the rich man than Lazarus.

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Now to the message. I am thinking that perhaps the Nation's reporters were biased, and that the Nation editors decided to sex up the report. All the same it is odd that nearly every last person who got on stage spoke about sex. Sincerely, there are a few bits about corruption and abortion; but read through the report and it captures nicely what third-world religion is all about, what third-world morality is all about. We live in one of the poorest countries in the world, one of the most unjust societies, one of the most violent and repressive and all people can talk about on stage is who gets to sleep with who. Like the Pharisees from Jesus' day, who were keener on stoning prostitutes than they were on feeding orphans and widows, we are obsessed with our privates to the point of delusion. The Church's will never demonstrates against the grinding poverty, or the state's dereliction of its duties, but when the government tries to save lives with condoms it rises up in arms. What would Jesus say indeed.

Even here on this website, you have your fair and regular offering of moralistic rants, against alcohol, and western television, against gays and so on, but fairly little about the Kenyan poor, or about the suffering millions. Our religion, in stark contrast to the exhortations of the Christ, is more obsessed with what is clean and unclean than even before the Messianic Covenant was sealed.

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I remember I was once one of these religious types. When I did my A-level German orals, I had not prepared myself at all. So I decided to talk about sex, and how it was eroding the social fibre of our society, how some girls give it up so easy, why night clubs are incompatible with good society and so on. I managed a B+.