Stories of Change: Religious Leaders and LGBTIQ Inclusion in East Africa

Based on in-depth interviews with over twenty inspirational Kenyan and Ugandan Christian and Muslim leaders actively involved in struggles for LGBTIQ rights, this open access book shows how religious leaders in East African countries can be agents of progressive social change. Through a community-based approach of life-story methodology, a team of field-leading scholars and practitioners from Kenya and the UK draws out crucial, critical insights into the personal, theological and social sacrifices and challenges that these religious leaders face in everyday realities dominated by conservative religious interpretations and theologies. In so doing, they also identify common strategies religious leaders develop to respond to these challenges while keeping true to their mission. The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com

David Kuria Mbote is an independent consultant and researcher and is executive director of the Kuria Foundation for Social Enterprises in Nairobi, Kenya. He is a leader of the Kenyan Gender and Sexual Minority rights movement. He also has researched religious leaders and LGBT inclusion in Kenya, publishing this work in journals such as Pastoral Psychology and Journal of Sex Research.

Damaris Parsitau is a scholar of religion, currently serving as Director of the British Institute for Eastern Africa, in Nairobi, Kenya. She has published extensively on issues of religion, gender and society, with a focus on Pentecostal Christianity. She also serves as President of the African Association for the Study of Religions.

Barbara Bompani Barbara Bompani (she/her) is an Associate Professor in African History and Institutions at the University of Parma, Italy and honorary fellow at the Center of African Studies at the University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom. Her research broadly focuses on religion, politics and development in Africa. In the past ten years, she investigated the relationships between sexuality and public religion, in particular conservative Christianity, in East Africa. She has published widely on these topics, and was co-editor of the volume Christian Citizens and the Moral Regeneration of the African State (2017).

Adriaan van Klinken is Professor of Religion and African Studies at the University of Leeds, UK, where he also serves as Director of the Leeds University Centre for African Studies and the Centre for Religion and Public Life. His research intersects religion, sexuality and public life in Africa. Among other publications he is the author of Kenyan, Christian, Queer: Religion, LGBT Activism and Arts of Resistance in Africa (2019) and co-author of Reimagining Christianity and Sexual Diversity in Africa (2021) and of Sacred Queer Stories: Ugandan LGBTQ+ Refugee Lives and the Bible (2021).