PENTECOSTAL POLITICAL HERMENEUTICS AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR CHURCH STATE RELATIONSHIP IN KENYA IN JUBILEE REGIME

Abstract

The paper examines how Pentecostals/Neo-Pentecostals interpret the Bible in regard to political issues. There has been on emphasis on Pentecostal civic engagement, but the hermeneutics that informs it has not been examined. Further the paper looks at the implications of the Pentecostal hermeneutics to church state relationship in Kenya in the jubilee regime. Towards this end, then attempt is given in understanding the Pentecostal/Neo-Pentecsotal theology/ the challenges to constructing it; a discussion of Pentecostal Political hermeneutics and the Pentecostal churches and the Jubilee regime. The paper concludes that a pneumatic posture is the fitting matrix for understanding Pentecostal/Charismatic theology; the Pentecostal political hermeneutics is pneumatic in posture with the spirits/demons being responsible for national evils and calamities. With this posture, Pentecostals in Kenya tend to spiritualize politics and therefore cannot be an effective prophetic voice of the nation. Rather, they are an easy target of co-option by the political ruling class. The Pentecostal pneumatic posture is too spiritualized and mostly losses touch of reality and thus its incapacity to be critically prophetic.