Nairobi, Kenya • When missionaries from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints arrived in this predominantly Christian East African nation 44 years ago, they were met with suspicion and some hostility. While many Christian churches encourage their members to evangelize, Latter-day Saint missionaries have been more aggressive, going door-to-door and even approaching people on the street.
Other Christian groups shunned the Latter-day Saints as cultic and anti-Christian. In particular, they deplored the rejection by the faith of the doctrine of the Trinity, in which God the Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit are believed to be three persons in one Godhead.
“Their way of evangelism and doctrine was seen by the mainstream churches as deviating from the evangelical mainstream doctrine,” said Rev. Martin Muniao, Senior Lecturer at Daystar University in Kenya.
But while the Rev. John Gattu, an educator at the Presbyterian Church of East Africa, agreed that Christians considered Latter-day Saints to be falling outside the faith because of its non-Trinitarian teaching, he said, “there is a generation that is looking for something different.” .
Indeed, the Utah-based church, which won legal approval from the Kenyan government to operate as a religion in 1991, is finding widespread acceptance and now has 57 congregations and two missions in the country.
On Sunday, Apostle Gary E. Stevenson wrapped up a visit to Africa with a press conference in Kenya, where he said church membership had surpassed 20,000.
After a surge in membership in the 1980s, the church has maintained double-digit percentage growth in several African countries over the past decade, during which time membership has more than doubled, according to church sources. Nigeria has produced the most converts in that time, and in the western part of the continent as a whole, the church now numbers more than 450,000 members.
“The missionaries serving in Kenya (have) converts in the church,” Stevenson said. “As we do this and the church continues to grow, continues to have congregations, we will build many houses to accommodate the congregations.”
Part of their success, Munyao said, comes from the decline of evangelism from other Christian denominations in recent years, clearing the field for Latter-day Saint missionaries.
But Latter-day Saint churches in Kenya have also found growing acceptance among churches that once shunned them, as well as other religious groups, including Muslims, who make up about 6 percent of the population.
“They have supported some of our events and we have used their venues for our events. We invited them to our events,” said Rahman Ismail, executive director of the Interfaith Council of Kenya, who noted that Latter-day Saints had not yet joined the council.
In 2017, the church announced construction of a temple in Nairobi, which is expected to be completed in 2026, according to General Authority of the Seventy Ian S. Ardern, president of the church’s Central Africa Region, a 17-country group that includes Kenya. Temples are reserved for special worship events, while congregations’ weekly worship services are held in meeting houses.
The temple campus will include apartments, “so that people who come can stay for a period of time and participate in the ordinances of the temple,” Ardern explained. “In the temple you will find the peace that Christ spoke of.”
In Kenya, as in the rest of Africa, the denomination carries out humanitarian and disaster relief work, supporting health, access to water, and education and nutrition programs.
Last year, the church launched more than a dozen educational projects focused on public primary schools, said Dennis Mukasa, the church’s regional director of humanitarian aid and president of the Nairobi Kenya East Stake, which includes a number of churches. The program aims to improve classrooms and general school infrastructure, while providing sanitation facilities under the acronym WASH, for water, sanitation and hygiene. Where possible, Latter-day Saint leaders in Africa try to work with existing governmental and non-governmental agencies.
With Kenya’s ongoing drought now believed to be the worst in 40 years, the church is distributing food supplies to 40,000 households, alongside organizations such as the Red Cross.
Munyao said the church has prospered through this apparent concern for the needs of Kenyans. “They’re very attuned to development, they’re humanitarian,” he said, “and they have an attachment to what’s happening in the real world.”
At the press conference, Stevenson answered questions about the church’s peace, humanitarian work and LGBTQ issues.
His tour had taken him to other Central African countries, including the war-torn Congo. He appealed for peace there, as well as in Sudan and Gaza.
“As we look at the conflicts,” the apostle said, “we hope that world leaders will be touched in a way that they will try to find peace and people will do what they can to love their neighbors.”
Like other Western religious leaders, Stevenson addressed the LGBTQ question in the church, saying that Jesus Christ welcomes all without any conditions.
“There is no condition of … race, ethnicity, sexuality, socioeconomics or gender, all are welcome to him,” he said. “So we’re trying to find a peaceful measure of love, equality, inclusion.”