Stories of Change: Religious Leaders and LGBTIQ Inclusion in East Africa

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Description

Through 20 annotated, semi-structured interviews with inspirational Kenyan and Ugandan Christian and Muslim leaders actively involved in struggles for LGBTQ rights, this open access book shows how religious leaders in East African countries can be agents of progressive social change. Utilising a revolutionary new life-story methodology, a team of field-leading scholars and practitioners from Africa and the UK draws out crucial, critical insights into the personal, theological, and social sacrifices and challenges that these religious leaders face in everyday realities dominated by conservative religious interpretations and theologies. In so doing, they also identify common strategies religious leaders develop to respond to these challenges while keeping true to their mission. For its engaging, accessible methodology as well as its powerful challenges to the ways in which many people speak about the relations between religion and LGBTQ rights in Africa, this book is a must-read. The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com.

Author Bio

David Kuria Mbote is Executive Director of the Kuria Foundation for Social Enterprises in Nairobi, Kenya, as well as a leader of the Kenyan gender and sexual minority rights movement. Damaris Parsitau is a scholar of religion currently serving as Director of the British Institute for Eastern Africa in Nairobi, Kenya.She also serves as President of the African Association for the Study of Religions. Barbara Bompani is a Reader in Africa and International Development at the Centre of African Studies, University of Edinburgh. She is co-editor of Christian Citizens and the Moral Regeneration of the African State (2017). Adriaan van Klinken is Professor of Religion and African Studies at the University of Leeds, where he serves as Director of the Leeds University Centre for African Studies and as Director of the Centre for Religion and Public Life. He is the author of Kenyan, Christian, Queer: Religion, LGBT Activism and Arts of Resistance in Africa (201