DALLAS (ABP) — A Kenyan Baptist minister 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.
Kimuyu, who has lived in Texas more than 25 years, represents the Akamba people in Kenya. Polls show him receiving 80 percent of the expected votes, and his nomination almost guarantees his election when voters go to the polls in December, he said.
When the 260 national union 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 moved to the United States in the early 1980s. A member of First Baptist Church in Garland, Texas, 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.
“I have a lot of friends” in Texas, he said. But public service in Kenya is a second calling, he added: “I came to this country to receive education for the purpose of returning my talent to my people. That time has come. I want to go help my people.”
Kimuyu said he plans to demonstrate honesty and integrity within Kenya's government. If elected, he said, he wants to build farm-to-market roads and an educational center, and expand rural access to electricity, clean water and health care.
But after more than two decades building homes for children with faith-based organizations in Texas, he said he especially looks forward to returning to his first calling: the pastorate.
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.
After moving to the United States, 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.
In recent years, Kenya's Baptist convention has experienced division — a problem Kimuya attributed 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.
Kimuya said his goal is to be a unifying force not only in secular politics but also in the Baptist convention in Kenya.
“I want to go back like Nehemiah and rebuild.”
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