Interview with David Ochar, pastor of Cosmopolitan Affirming Church

The start and planning of the SERENE project has been greatly affected by the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. We have had to postpone the first project workshop, that was supposed to take place in May 2020, and we don’t know when we will be able to reschedule it. An important part of the first workshop was for project partners to meet, get to know each other, and learn about each other’s work. As an alternative way to address that aim, we publish a series of short interviews with stakeholders. This is the third interview, with David Ochar, senior pastor of Cosmopolitan Affirming Church in Kenya.

Could you please briefly introduce yourself and your organisation?

 I am David Ochar, a co-founder and pastor at the Cosmopolitan Affirming Church (CAC). CAC is an inclusive faith community in Kenya that openly welcomes LGBTIQ people of faith, mostly Christians; to explore and experience their faith in an affirming environment. We seek to create and sustain inclusive faith communities that collaborate on a range of faith and justice issues connected to LGBTIQ dignity and inclusion. In both our Nairobi and Kisumu chapters, we provide a safe space for weekly psycho-spiritual and psycho-social wellness activities utilising religious tools and traditions.

We seek to create and sustain inclusive faith communities that collaborate on a range of faith and justice issues connected to LGBTIQ dignity and inclusion.

How do your work and interests relate to the focus of SERENE on engaging religious leaders on issues of LGBTI inclusion in East Africa?

 Beyond providing a safe space for spiritual healing and communion, CAC engage with grassroots faith leaders and faith communities through joint worship experiences, theological education, and community workshops to steer conversations on LGBTIQ equality and inclusion. These efforts are as well geared towards educating, influencing change in negative norms, and expanding the inclusive faith spaces beyond the count of CAC. Collaboratively spearheaded by our partner organisation TFAM Global, our advocacy initiatives have since birthed a movement of grassroots faith and community leaders called the United Coalition of Affirming Africans (UCAA). Members of UCAA actively promote the human rights of LGBTI people in different platforms including offering a faith voice in support of the repeal of sections of the colonial era penal code that criminalise same-sex conduct between consenting adults in private.

The SERENE project supplements our work by creating an enabling environment for collaboration, generation of new ideas and knowledge, and providing religious leaders with tools to negotiate the terrains of religiously driven homophobia and transphobia. 

The SERENE project supplements our work by creating an enabling environment for collaboration, generation of new ideas and knowledge, and providing religious leaders with tools to negotiate the terrains of religiously driven homophobia and transphobia. 

How have you and your organisation been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, and how do you try to continue your work?

As the leader of our fellowship it has been dispiriting to suspend our major activities that involve grouping, especially the physical weekly worship services. However, from my microbiology background it was clear that the most responsible decision was to call off our gatherings immediately the first case was reported in our country.

Currently, we continue to connect virtually via zoom meetings every Sunday. WhatsApp, direct phone calls, and text messages are other mediums through which we stay in communion and check in on each other’s well-being during these unusual times in our world.

The economic impacts of COVID-19 cannot be understated. Like many other Kenyans, majority of our people have lost their sources of livelihoods due to the pandemic. Our main focus now is to ensure everyone is safe and with basic nutritional and sanitation needs as the government and our front-line workers do their part. We therefore rolled out a monthly food and sanitation basket hamper to all the members in need as we pray and hope the situation is contained soon enough.

What do you hope to get out of the SERENE project, once this pandemic is over?

In Kenya and East Africa broadly, the topic of human sexuality generates an abundance of passion within and without religious spaces. LGBTIQ identities and religion in the region has largely been portrayed as incompatible. Since many individuals and groups are already doing much to demystify such misconceptions and enhance inclusion, SERENE provides an alternative platform for the church, civil society, and academy to share and creatively find ways of exploring the contested religious tools around sexual diversity and gender variance within the East African context. Once the restrictions are eased out, I look forward to being part of this conversation and learn from the diversity in experiences and expertise that SERENE presents on this topic. I hope the project shall enhance our capacity at CAC to develop context relevant materials and resources for promoting inclusion and acceptance of LGBTIQ people.

I look forward to being part of this conversation and learn from the diversity in experiences and expertise that SERENE presents on this topic.

Worship at Cosmopolitan Affirming Church