The Lutheran Church and the politics of sexuality in Tanzania

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania (ELCT) has repeatedly positioned itself against homosexuality in the past, through statements, publications, and sermons, declaring it to be ‘un-biblical’ and ‘un-African’. Many other African politicians, governments and church leaders have done the same in the past years. The Tanzanian Lutheran Church is the second largest Lutheran Church in Africa, as well as in the world, with around 7 million members. It is also the second largest church in Tanzania and a powerful political actor in the country. It is a historical mainline church which developed out of the activities of German missionaries at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. In this paper I want to analyze the entanglements between the Lutheran Church and the government in Tanzania when it comes to the public rejection of homosexuality and the stigmatization of sexual minorities in the country. This way I hope to contribute to a more general discussion about the relationship between religion (especially Christianity) and sexual politics in a postcolonial context. As van Klinken (2017) reminds us, religion serves as a powerful locus of power and heteronormativity in African societies (as well as all over the world), thus calling for a post-secular turn when examining sexual politics on the African continent. I argue that the ELCT’s official rejection of homosexuality can be understood – among other factors – in a national context of what Ashley Currier calls ‘postcolonial homophobia’ in Sub Saharan Africa, which is the politicization of homosexuality by political and national leaders. As for the ELCT, the controversy about homosexuality serves as a way to take part in the construction of a national identity which is portrayed as both religious and heteronationalist, at times even anti-homonationalist (Puar) by both the ELCT and the government. It is constructed as the opposite to a perceived Western secular immorality. The ELCT also identifies this secular immorality in its Western churches, thus subverting long-standing missionary power relations, with the ELCT coming out on top as the ‘defender of true Christianity’. The ELCT presents itself as a reliable partner to the government when it publicly rejects influence from its Western partner churches on the matter of homosexuality. At the same time, it also constructs itself as well as a guardian of national morality, ready to defend the country (and Christianity) against any perceived sexual immorality from outside. I want to show that the ELCT’s and the government’s position on homosexuality mutually reinforce each other and are indicative of an equilibrium of power over influence in society. I thus argue that any liberalization of Tanzanian sexual politics will be difficult in the near future.