On Earth as it is in Heaven: Christianity, agriculture, and agrospiritual transformation in Kenya

In recent decades, faith-based organisations have become increasingly active in conservation and development practice. Despite this, questions surrounding how faith actually shapes such practise remain largely unexplored. In this thesis, I explore how one Christian conservation and development organisation in Kenya, Creation Stewards International (CSI), promotes and practises Farming God’s Way (FGW), a theocentric conservation agriculture movement growing in popularity across Eastern and Southern Africa. Drawing on literatures including the history of Christian mission in Africa, African Pentecostalism, and conservation and development, in conjunction with abundant empirical material stemming from discourse analysis, interviews, and participant observation, I explore the dynamic intersection between Christianity and agriculture in Kenya. I contend that the intersection of Christianity and agriculture in Africa broadly and Kenya specifically has been marked by what I term agrospiritual transformation. Throughout the thesis, I unpack this term with specific regard to agricultural practise, theology, and the smallholder farm itself, tracing not only the transformations taking place, but how they are practically shaping the faith-based conservation and development project that is FGW. The findings of this thesis are presented in four analytical chapters. In the first empirical chapter, chapter 5, I detail the historic intersection between Christian mission and agriculture in Africa. In addition to the connective work done by this chapter in linking past and present, I also demonstrate how agricultural work carried out by Christian missionaries was part of a larger project aimed at fundamentally remaking the African farmer. As will be made clear throughout the remainder of the thesis, this history, in part, reverberates today through FGW. Thus, in the second empirical chapter, chapter 6, I present an original discourse analysis covering the anthology of published FGW training material. I identify three key discourses running throughout the FGW material: FGW as revelation; expectations of increase; and full persuasion. Through this chapter, I demonstrate that much of the discursive work done through the FGW material aids in the overall production of prosperity, a key theme in African Pentecostalism. Building on these themes, in the third empirical chapter, chapter 7, I seek to link the literature on Pentecostalism in Africa with recent scholarship on conservation and development. Specifically, I turn my attention to the smallholder farmers with which CSI is working to implement FGW and explore the ways in which adoption decisions regarding, and expectations of, FGW are a matter of religious conviction. However, I also make clear that the factors shaping adoption decisions and expectations are not limited to faith alone, but also involve convincing participants of FGW’s benefits through mediums such as CSI’s FGW demonstration garden. Continuing to build on the place of Pentecostalism in CSI’s FGW promotion, in the fourth empirical chapter, chapter 8, I consider how some themes central to the literature on African Pentecostalism manifest in CSI’s promotion of FGW. I focus on prosperity, sin and conviction, Pentecostalism’s desired ‘clean break’ from the past, and gender representation to show that far from being limited to Africa’s urban centres, Pentecostalism and all of its aspects are alive and well amongst Kenyan rural smallholders through FGW. This thesis contributes to the literatures on conservation and development and African Pentecostalism. Regarding conservation and development, this thesis illuminates a small slice of the ways in which faith shapes conservation and development practise. Regarding African Pentecostalism, this thesis demonstrates that conservation and development practise has not been immune to the surge in Pentecostalism in Kenya. Far from being limited to the urban centres of Nairobi and Kisumu, Pentecostalism is alive and well amongst rural smallholders through FGW. This thesis serves to open new lines of interdisciplinary inquiry into further connections between Christianity and agriculture in Kenya specifically, and religion and conservation and development more broadly.

British Institute in Eastern Africa

Elizabeth Sinclair Fund

Edinburgh University Club of Toronto

Gilchrist Educational Trust