Expatriate Baptist minister runs for Kenyan Parliament

Posted: 10/05/07

Expatriate Baptist minister
runs for Kenyan Parliament

By Ken Camp

Managing Editor

DALLAS—A Kenyan Baptist minister who has lived in Texas more than 25 years appears likely to be elected to Parliament in his homeland.

Solomon Kimuyu has been nominated by the Kenya African National Union to represent Machakos township, about 35 miles east of Nairobi, in Kenya’s Parliament and serve as leader of the Akamba tribe.

Solomon Kimuyu, a Baptist minister who attended Hardin-Simmons University and earned degrees from Howard Payne University and Dallas Baptist University, will run for a seat in Kenya’s Parliament as the candidate of the Kenya African National Union.

Since he represents the dominant Akamba people—and polls show him receiving 80 percent of the expected votes—Kimuyu explained his nomination almost guarantees his election when voters go to the polls in December.

When the 260 KANU delegates selected Kimuyu, he became the first Kenyan in the United States—living in what his countrymen call “the Diaspora”—to be nominated by a major political party.

Kimuyu, who graduated from Mombasa Baptist High School in Kenya and earned a certificate in theology from a Baptist seminary in East Africa, moved to the United States in the early 1980s.

With scholarship help provided by First Baptist Church in Sweetwater, he attended Hardin-Simmons University and graduated from Howard Payne University. Later, he earned a master’s degree from Dallas Baptist University and a doctorate from the University of North Texas.

He taught Sunday school at First Baptist Church in Abilene during his time in West Texas, and he currently is a member of First Baptist Church in Garland.

Kimuyu directed the Rising Star Children’s Home and founded Solomon’s Youth Center in Abilene, Jefferson Home for Children in Azle and Solomon Home for Children International, based in Dallas. In the process, he was inducted into the Texas Business Hall of Fame.

Kimuyu has permanent resident status in the United States, but he has remained a citizen of Kenya throughout his quarter-century abroad. If elected, he and his wife, Protasia, will move to Kenya. His grown children were born in the United States and live in the Dallas area. So, moving to Kenya will mean a major adjustment.

“I have a lot of friends here” in Texas, he said. But Kimuyu sees public service in Kenya as a second calling.

“I came to this country to receive education for the purpose of returning my talent to my people. That time as come,” he said. “I want to go help my people.”

Kimuyu hopes to build trust and confidence in Kenya’s government by demonstrating honesty and integrity, he explained. And he wants to build farm-to-market roads and expand rural access to electricity, clean water and health care.

Kimuyu also hopes to fulfill another dream by building an educational center in the rural area that would house a high school, Bible college and leadership center.

But after more than two decades building homes for children and youth in Texas, he especially looks forward to returning to his first calling—the pastorate.

“When I go back, I will have a church to pastor again,” he said.

Kimuyu was pastor of Athi River First Baptist Church in Kenya, and he served as general secretary of the Baptist Convention of Kenya and vice president for the All-Africa Baptist Union.

In recent year, Kenya’s Baptist convention has experienced division—a problem Kimuya attributes to the controversy that gripped the Southern Baptist Convention for more than two decades and the imposition of the 2000 Baptist Faith & Message as a test of fellowship.

He hopes to be a unifying force not only in secular politics, but also within the Baptist convention in Kenya.

“ I want to go back like Nehemiah and rebuild,” he said.