Religion in Kenya : About 85.5% of Kenyans are considered to be Christians, making Christianity the most common religion in the country. At 10.9 percent of Kenyans, Islam is the second most popular religion in the country. Traditions, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Bahá’í are among the other faiths professed in Kenya.
Traditional Beliefs
Kenya’s ethnic groups have different traditional beliefs and behaviours, although they nonetheless have many common traits. Nearly all of them entail faith in an omnipotent, everlasting creator who is seen as being apart from humans. The name “Murungu” (a Masai borrowed word) or (more commonly) “Ngai” refers to the god of the Kikuyu. Although Ngai is invisible, he is represented by the sun, moon, stars, rain, rainbows, thunder, lightning, and large fig trees that are used as altars and sites of sacrifice. Numerous native faiths acknowledge the existence of spiritual energies that are more intimately connected to the living and actively engaged in their day-to-day activities. Success is guaranteed for men and women who appease the spirits; if they provoke the spirits’ wrath, disease or evil may ensue.
Many Africans believe that ghosts are a special kind of ancestor spirits who come back to exact revenge on the living.
Christianity in Kenya
When Kenya’s interior was made accessible by rail between Mombasa and Uganda at the close of the 1800s, Christian missionary activity started in the country’s interior. The 1920s and 1930s saw the founding of churches, some of which attempted to blend Christian and native beliefs, particularly in places where Kikuyu, Luo, and Luhya were the predominant ethnic groups. Colonial authorities kept a policy of assigning a mission to a certain province, therefore most churches tended to be ethnically homogeneous; however, this tendency has changed with more communication and mobility. A number of autonomous Christian churches that are no longer affiliated with any Protestant or Christian denominations may also be found in Kenya. With Johana Owalo as its founder, who became a Christian early in 1900, the Nomiya Luo Church was the biggest of these independent churches. He saw the angel Gabriel carrying him into paradise in a vision that he experienced in 1907. He observed that the popes, as well as Asians and Europeans, were not permitted to enter paradise. He later became an Islamic convert and started preaching that mission churches were against conventional wisdom. His blend of traditional, Anglican, and Christian rituals drew a sizable following. There are still a lot of mission churches in Kenya today. There are numerous, powerful religious organisations in the globe. The majority of Kenyans hold positions in the Church Province of Kenya and Roman Catholic churches, and the number of Kenyan clergy has increased in recent years.
The Portuguese brought Roman Catholicism to Kenya for the first time in the fourteenth century, and missionaries quickly expanded its influence during the twentieth century. In 2019, 9.7 million Kenyans, or 20.6% of the country’s total population, were Roman Catholics. In Kenya 60% of the population reported being Protestant, Evangelical, or affiliated with African established churches. Evangelical Lutheran Church in Kenya (ELCK) (and the smaller Kenya Evangelical Lutheran Church (KELC), the Baptist Convention of Kenya, the Anglican Church of Kenya, Africa Inland Mission, Seventh-day Adventist Church, the Presbyterian Church of East Africa, and others are among the denominations. Pentecostals make up between 30 and 35 percent of Kenya’s population making up of about 119,285 members. Kenya has the largest Quaker population in the world as of 2017 with more than 200,000 members, the Eastern Orthodox Church is third in size among Orthodox churches in Sub-Saharan Africa, behind the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church and the Oriental Orthodox Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. Other non-Protestant and non-Catholic movements of statistical significance are Jehovah’s Witnesses, United Pentecostal Church International, Branhamism, and the New Apostolic Church. The percentage of non-Catholic and non-Protestant people in the population is approximately 11.8%.
Hinduism
In Kenya, there are Hindus of Gujarati ethnicity. It is believed that there are 60,287 of them, or 0.13% of the total population. They are found in Nairobi as well as neighbouring cities such as Mombasa, Eldoret, Thika, and Kisumu.
Islam in Kenya
In Kenya 10.91 percent of people practise Islam as their faith. The majority of Sunni Muslims in Kenya are Shafii rite followers. There is also a tiny percentage of Ibadism, where 8% of Muslims identify as non-denominational, 7% as Shia, and 4% as Ahmadi Muslims.
The Kenyan constitution grants religious Shari’ah courts, also known as Kadhi courts, power over some civil cases, including divorce and inheritance. Muslims have long claimed that the government singles them out and treats them unfairly, especially in the wake of the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Nairobi and other cities. The faiths that are dwindling in Kenya do not demonstrate the differences among the 42 civilizations. They primarily exhibit the customs of the more extensive “umbrella” cultures.
No Religion
755,750 individuals self-reported as having “no religion” in the 2019 Census. This group is bigger than those who identify as traditionalists, Hindus, or followers of other religions, accounting for 1.6% of the total. 73,253 people, or 0.16%, said they were unsure of their faith. Individuals who identify as atheists in Kenya face stigma. Kenyans rank among the world’s ten most religiously diverse countries, with 90% defining themselves as “religious people,” 9% as “non-religious people,” and 1% as “convinced atheists,” according to a 2012 Gallup poll.
Buddhism in Kenya
In Kenya, Buddhism has expanded since 1999. In Kenya, there are over a thousand Buddhists. In Kenya, Buddhism is one of the religions with the quickest rate of growth. The primary Buddhist centre in Kenya is the Nairobi Buddhist Vihara/Temple. Nairobi Vihara promotes Buddhism in Kenya through conducting missions and offering meditation programmes.
Baháʼí Faith
Existing in Kenya since 1945, this faith is practiced by about 1% of the people. The Bahá’ís of Kenya took part in a national community health initiative in the 1990s that included building clean water sources, maintaining latrines, and administering immunisations.
Freedom of Religion
Kenya’s constitution guarantees religious freedom, and there is no official state religion in the country. The nation’s religious freedom rating in 2023 was 2 out of 4, primarily as a result of terror threats made by the Shabbab against Christians and the ensuing intimidation of local Muslims. The northeast region of the nation has seen the most of these instances.
