In the 1950s, Kenyans fought against colonial control in what came to be known as the Mau Mau rebellion. In response, the British government announced a state of emergency in 1952 and engaged in a brutal counter-insurgency campaign to secure control of colonial Kenya.

During the emergency, tens of thousands of Kikuyu, Embu and Meru – tribal groups predominantly from central Kenya – were detained without trial in camps. These detention camps relied on torture sanctioned by government to get detainees to renounce their nationalistic ambitions.

More than one million other Kenyans were forcibly relocated into new and controlled villages. These were frequently sites of forced labour, coercion and violence.

This was supported by the colonial policy of “rehabilitation”. The objective was to get Mau Mau adherents to “confess” their Mau Mau activities, give up their ties to the movement and receive education to become valuable colonial subjects.

But rehabilitation became a cover for excessive violence perpetrated against those in camps and villages.

It was not just the colonial state which engaged in rehabilitation. NGOs also employed people and spent money to help enact rehabilitation policies. These organisations included Save the Children and the Red Cross.

Read more: Academic sleuthing uncovered British torture of Mau Mau fighters

My recent research looks at another organisation that became actively involved: the Christian Council of Kenya. I am a historian of the relationship between Kenya and Britain before and after independence, and interested in the intersection between humanitarianism and decolonisation.

The Christian Council of Kenya was established in 1943 as an ecumenical group of missions and churches based in Kenya. It involved all the major Anglican churches, but few African Independent Churches. It was mostly made up of white European Church leaders and missionaries.

It was not a very powerful organisation until the 1950s. This all changed with the Mau Mau emergency. The council viewed its involvement in Mau Mau rehabilitation as an opportunity to evangelise and win converts to Christianity.

The council’s involvement reveals the variety of ways that NGOs became involved – and sometimes implicated – in policies of colonial violence.

The emergency provided the Christian Council of Kenya the opportunity to grow through a process of “NGO-isation”. This involved the transformation of missionary organisations into NGOs during the period of decolonisation.

As secular NGOs emerged, and policies of development increased, missions expanded their activities. This included employing new staff, fundraising, organising ambitious development projects, and working with governments and other NGOs. These were all things the council first did during the emergency.

In the process, the council became part of the colonial system of violence and mass incarceration. While sometimes directly criticising the government, it came to support the government and sanction its violence.

This was especially clear in later years when violence and torture increased but the council spoke out less against them. Through its place on a rehabilitation advisory committee and its direct connection to the governor, the council positioned itself as an ally of government rather than a critic.

The council’s involvement

In 1954, the Kenya colonial government invited the Christian Council of Kenya to help with the project of rehabilitation. This involved employing staff who could work in detention camps and new villages.

The council worked with Christian Aid in Britain, which raised funds for its activities. Christian Aid was at the time expanding from its roots in Europe. Working with the council in Kenya was Christian Aid’s first major project in Africa. The council also received colonial government grants.

The Christian Council of Kenya appointed a general-secretary, Stanley Morrison, a British national who led council efforts in the rehabilitation programme. Morrison believed that detainees would feel a spiritual lack after renouncing Mau Mau and that Christianity could fill the gap.

He saw working with Christian Aid and the government as a chance for growth and actively set about pursuing these opportunities. A key part of this involved sending priests into prisons and detention camps. This was a vast and literally captive audience for evangelism.

The council also designed a “cleansing ceremony” for detainees. This was intended to follow an extensive programme of Christian instruction, in which detainees would renounce their adherence to Mau Mau and embrace Christianity.

But the Christian revival it hoped for did not take place. The council’s activities and influence were limited, mainly due to the fact that there were hundreds of thousands in detention and over a million people in new villages. The council did not have the funds to employ enough people to meet this need. This meant that interventions like the cleansing ceremony weren’t widespread.

The complexities

The Christian Council of Kenya’s relationship with the colonial government was complicated.

On the one hand, it shared common aims with the government. On the other, the council was also concerned about the violence and abuses that occurred in the emergency.

This raised a challenge frequently faced by NGOs working in sites of violence: whether and how to voice criticism while ensuring access to their intended recipients.

Council members had different views. The group criticised the government publicly several times, but more often preferred to raise concerns privately. In this way, it ensured its friendly relationship with the colonial government.

The biggest clash was between Anglican bishop Leonard Beecher and David Steel, the moderator of the Church of Scotland. Steel favoured a direct approach against the violence, preaching a sermon that was broadcast on radio to raise awareness of abuses. Beecher criticised this as likely to damage the Christian Council of Kenya’s relationship with the government.

The government invited the council to join the Rehabilitation Advisory Committee in October 1954. This gave it the chance to mitigate excesses, but also meant it was implicated in government policy.

The council’s criticisms decreased further over the final years of the emergency. For example, when told of the “dilution technique”, which involved beating detainees who refused to confess their Mau Mau oaths, the council shrugged it off with the view that those men were probably psychiatric cases.

As the fighting wound down from 1957, the council no longer focused on rehabilitation, but on long-term development activities, such as training church leaders, running youth training programmes and working with industry.

By the official end of the emergency in 1960 when the colonial government lifted restrictions, the Christian Council of Kenya was well established as a development-focused NGO, with an active portfolio of activities, supported by Christian Aid in the UK, and with close relations to the Kenya government.

The opportunity that the council expected from the emergency – more converts – did not arise. But there was an opportunity for it in its own expansion.

The consequences

My findings highlight the need to pay more attention to missions and churches as major actors at the end of empire. They are often overlooked in favour of political actors, but could have played significant roles behind the scenes.

The council, with Christian Aid’s ongoing support, continued working in Kenya past independence, and still exists. It was renamed the National Council of Churches of Kenya. In 1963, the year of Kenya’s independence, the council appointed its first African general-secretary. Its role in the emergency helped set up its later success.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Poppy Cullen, Loughborough University

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Poppy Cullen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.