I just returned from Kenya, where I grew up as the child of evangelical missionaries, and Rwanda. While there, I had meetings with various Christians, including a group of pastors in western Kenya, a Kenyan civil society activist, a genocide survivor and a genocide scholar in Rwanda. All of them expressed horror at what is going on in the United States and especially by the majority of white American evangelicals’ support for it.
I met with the pastors in the town of Kericho, where my family once lived. It’s a multi-ethnic, politically volatile area of the country. One of these pastors’ main goals is to advocate for peace among their various communities.
These pastors are predisposed to admire American evangelicals. Several of them had worked with my parents, including my host, whose schooling my parents funded. They all heaped praise on my parents and me by proxy, saying that my father was a “unifying” force in the community and that my visit was performing the same function, by giving them an opportunity to build their relationships across divides.
This kind of unwarranted praise was familiar to me. Growing up, I was always uncomfortable with the vaunted position missionaries had.
The pastors expressed their hope that more American missionaries would come to work in the area, even though Kenya is far more evangelically Christian than the United States. I pointed this out to them, as well as the fact that they were all missionaries themselves. They nodded in recognition, but said they lacked the funding that American missionaries brought with them.
An Unwell U.S. Church
Then I told them that, sadly, I believed the United States needed African missionaries more than Africa needed American missionaries right now, because the American church is not doing well.
I asked them how much they knew about what was going on in the United States under Donald Trump. They were painfully aware of some things, such as the closure of USAID, the high fuel prices due to the Iran war, the difficulty getting US visas, the shuttering of the refugee program, and Trump calling countries like Kenya “sh*tholes.”
And they all seemed to know about January 6th. It’s the kind of political unrest with which Africans are all too familiar, and seeing it happen in the US has made a big impression.
They were less familiar with other developments, such as the violation of immigrants’ civil rights, the shooting of protestors, Trump’s history of sexual assault and friendship with a profligate pedophile, and the staggering corruption. I told them about Trump calling Somali Americans “garbage” and telling racist lies about legal Haitian immigrants. They were horrified.
And then I broke their hearts. “I’m sad to tell you this, but white evangelical Christians are supporting all of this. They are Trump’s main base,” I said. “In fact, when you have a chance, please use your influence to tell American Christians you meet that this is wrong. Maybe they will listen to you. They won’t listen to me.”
I had a similar conversation with Joseph Omondi, who runs a peace-building organization in another multi-ethnic area of Kenya that he started in the aftermath of Kenya’s violent 2007 election. His organization isn’t explicitly Christian, but it works closely with churches and pastors, whom he says are essential peacemakers in Kenya because of their moral authority and large platforms in a country with high levels of church attendance. “It’s a free audience, every week,” he explained.
Omondi said he was “shocked” by what was happening in America, particularly by the complicity of American Christians, whom he contrasted unfavorably with Kenyan Christians. “The church should be a unifying platform and a source of moral guidance,” he said. “The church in the US is fundamentalist.”
He was unsympathetic to the bargain American evangelicals have made with Trump to champion the socially conservative positions they care about. “Kenyan and American evangelicals agree on, for instance, LGBTQ issues,” he said. “But we don’t agree with the sort of democracy Trump has imposed….America is great because of diversity.”
He lamented the United States’ exit from global leadership as “a disaster” that “weakens America.” The collapse of USAID is just one example of that, from which his own organization has taken a major hit.
He had just signed a three-year contract with USAID when Trump was elected. After Trump’s inauguration, “we were told to return the money.”
“No other country in the world did so much,” he said. “Americans need to look at the world as a global village in which we all need each other.”
In Rwanda, I met with Serge, a genocide survivor and Marc, a scholar who runs education programs for the trust that runs the Genocide Memorial in Kigali. Both told me they were Christians whose faith guided their work and both were gravely concerned about the United States.
As Marc walked me through a presentation on the causes of genocide, we discussed some of the parallels we are witnessing here in America—the dehumanizing language, the scapegoating of certain communities, the violation of civil rights, and the increasingly tribal mentality. Like the Kenyan pastors, Marc and Serge were more aware of Trump’s dangerous trajectory than they were of his support among white American evangelicals, whom they, too, regarded positively.
After Marc’s presentation, Serge and I discussed this further over coffee. His evangelical faith had been so essential to his healing and ability to forgive those who murdered his family. He had a difficult time believing this same faith might be excusing or even promoting bigotry and division.
He emailed me later, still seeming to process this. He encouraged me to send him some talking points the memorial might use with American visitors, many of whom are no doubt white evangelicals who go to Rwanda in large numbers on mission trips, to help them see the fire with which they are playing.
Flipping Tables
It’s truly sad to see my country, once held in such esteem in Africa, toppling from its pedestal and withdrawing from its constructive role on the continent. But on a spiritual level, maybe America’s decline is a good thing that will correct power imbalances in the global church. American evangelical culture has heavily influenced Africa, in ways good and bad, but always as part of an uneven exchange in which Americans are the superior partner, who teaches but never learns.
If anything good comes out of the Trump era, perhaps it will be Christ turning the tables in global Christianity, as he did in the temple.
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Holly Berkley Fletcher is an author, historian, and former intelligence analyst. She was raised in Kenya by evangelical missionary parents. She earned a PhD in American history and taught in universities for several years before being hired as an Africa analyst by the Central Intelligence Agency, where she worked for nineteen years. She writes the substack A Zebra Without Stripes, and her most recent book is The Missionary Kids: Unmasking the Myths of White Evangelicalism. She lives in the Washington, DC, area with her husband, two kids, and delinquent rescue dog.