Performing Moral Authority: The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania as a Political Actor in Discourses on Homosexuality

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, a powerful political actor in the country and can be understood as a “religious interest group” (Braun-Poppelaars and Hanegraaff 2011). 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. Often, the politicization of homosexuality on the African continent has been explained with high levels of religiosity, however this does not give us any insights into how, why, and when specific (religious) actors politicize homosexuality. It also obscures the often-strategic use of homophobia by religious and political actors on the continent. What is thus needed is an actor-centered approach. As a political actor, the ELCT constantly oscillates between its self-understanding as a guardian of national morality which has the duty to shape the morality politics in Tanzania and the need to ensure its survival as an institution, which is directly linked to the maintenance of its own moral authority (Grzymala-Busse) in the country. These two goals are sometimes contradicting each other, due to the various national and transnational contexts and networks the ELCT moves in, as I want to show in this paper. The ELCT has at times been driven by fear of being identified as a “homosexual church”, a “fifth column” paid by its Western partner churches to bring immoral acts into the country in the eyes of society and the government, thus losing its moral authority and political privileges. At other times it has capitalized on the societal resentment of homosexuality in order to maintain or gain moral authority through driving the public discourse. Interestingly, similar patterns can be observed on the part of the government. The politicization of homosexuality leads to dynamic interactions between the two institutions, as I will show in this paper, which ultimately pressures both the government and the church into performing their moral authority.