In November 2023, on a Sunday morning in Embu, central Kenya, a church sanctuary came alive with the sounds of women’s voices singing in harmony and the steady rhythm of drums. For Mary, it felt more like a tomb.
Mary, whose surname CT agreed to withhold due to safety concerns, said her husband, a respected church member and usher, had verbally and physically abused her for years all while leading prayers in church, counseling families, and speaking—sometimes from the pulpit—about order in the home and faithfulness in marriage.
At home, arguments over something small—money, food, or the way she spoke or dressed—ended with humiliation or violence. Mary recalled one evening when she tried to calm a conflict by kneeling to pray. She said her husband grabbed the cross necklace around her neck so tightly she thought she would choke and asked her, “Do you really think praying for your own mistakes will get you anywhere?”
Finally, the necklace snapped, and Mary heard the beads fall and scatter across the floor. “That sound stayed with me,” she said. “It was like my faith had fallen apart with them.”
Kenya faces an ongoing crisis of violence against women fueled by cultural beliefs and poor social infrastructure to help victims. Survivors like Mary and faith leaders are part of a growing push to address the ongoing crisis.
According to a 2024 study, 45 percent of Kenya women ages 15–49 reported experiencing some form of physical violence. More than 40 percent of Kenyan and East African women have reported experiencing intimate partner violence, compared to roughly 33 percent of women in the United States.
Academics blame weak legal enforcement, underreporting, societal views of women, and limited access to legal support for the prevalence of gender-based violence (GBV)—a term often used in Africa to describe crimes including physical violence, child marriages, and sexual abuse against women.
Despite increased laws criminalizing domestic violence and other abuse of women, the United Nations says East African countries continue to experience high rates of these crimes. In Uganda, 95 percent of women reported experiencing physical or sexual violence before the age of 15, driven partly by social norms and early marriages. Countries with recent geopolitical conflicts such as Sudan often experience higher rates of GBV than other countries, but domestic violence remains high across the continent.
Emily Onyango, Kenya’s first female Anglican bishop, said cultural beliefs about masculinity and femininity have fueled violence against women, reinforced by misinterpretations of Scripture and practices such as forced marriage and widow inheritance. She identified teachings against divorce under any circumstances as reinforcing cycles of abuse.
For many women, cultural stigma makes reporting difficult, especially if their husbands hold prominent positions or have a strong social image. Law enforcement and community members may doubt the abuse or simply do nothing.
One survey found 70 percent of Kenyans viewed domestic violence as a private matter rather than a criminal one, and 60 percent believe women would likely face criticism, harassment, or shame for reporting to authorities.
Mary said she didn’t report her husband’s abuse for fear of stigma from her tight-knit church community. She thought that as a good Christian wife, she should just stay and pray harder.
“I thought maybe God wanted me to endure,” Mary said. “When everyone expects you to endure, you begin to believe suffering is normal.”
When she finally approached a domestic violence help desk at a local police station to report her husband’s abuse, she said the policewoman questioned whether she was sure her husband abused her since he sounded like a “prominent person.” Mary left the station without completing the report.
Though 8 in 10 Kenyans considered it “somewhat likely” or “very likely” that police would treat such cases seriously, less than half of women sought help to stop the violence at home.
East African faith leaders are becoming more vocal about the prevalence of violence against women, even in churches, and are taking steps to combat it. Some congregations are introducing training for pastors to recognize signs of violence and to refer survivors to professional help. Others are partnering with advocacy groups to create safe reporting channels within church communities.
Eva Karimi, the founder of Christian anti-GBV ministry Women of Love and Prayer (WOLAP) and the wife of bishop John Waweru of Share the Love Centre in Murang’a, a town an hour and a half north of Nairobi, fears domestic violence rates in Kenyan churches could be as high as 70 percent because many female churchgoers are silent as they fear ostracization in the church.
As a ministry leader and bishop’s wife, Karimi said she has spoken to many desperate women secretly enduring violence at home. She said they often take sermons about forgiveness and endurance as a directive to bear with their suffering: “They live in silence, partly also for fear of stigma.”
Karimi told CT many women also fear being unemployed after leaving violent marriages: “If a woman cannot feed her children after leaving, she will go back [to her abuser].”
Because women who leave may suffer from trauma or lack job skills, WOLAP provides practical solutions including counseling, connection with partner hospitals offering psychological care, and savings and microloan pools.
“A church should be a rescue center, not only a place to be fed the Word of God,” Karimi said.
WOLAP also engages with the abusive husbands if the women agree to it. In cases when violence overflows from alcohol or drug abuse, Karimi said they aim to confront the roots of violence inside families.
“Sometimes men have never been told what they are doing is abuse,” she said. “When they are confronted and supported to change, some do.”
Many Christian women in Kenya such as Mary don’t believe divorce is permissible, but some evangelical leaders are trying to correct that perception.
After Nigerian gospel singer Osinachi Nwachukwu died from injuries incurred from ongoing violence by her husband in 2022, Malawian pastor Confex Makhalira wrote an article for The Gospel Coalition Africa advising pastors and elders that if an abusive partner remains unrepentant after an initial temporary separation and fails to respond to church discipline, they should recommend divorce without hesitation, though “with tears and sorrow.”
Mary took almost two decades to reach that conclusion. When she finally left her husband in December 2023, she took only a small bag of personal belongings and her Bible. She had nowhere to go, so she left her two small children behind until she could come back for them.
A year later, she found a women’s group in Nairobi for domestic violence survivors and managed to reunite with her children—then 5 and 6 years old—bringing them to live with her shortly after. She’s still hiding from her husband.
Her women’s group gathers weekly over dinner to pray, encourage one another, and provide practical support. The group eventually gave her a microloan so she could train as a certified makeup artist and start her own business instead of relying on odd jobs washing clothes.
“It was the first time someone said my life matters,” Mary said. She began rebuilding her faith through singing worship songs with her women’s group, reading the Bible, and discussing it with other women.
Mary said the content of her prayers have changed.
“Before, I prayed for my marriage to survive,” she said. “Now I pray for courage—for myself and for the women who are still sitting in church, smiling through the silence, pretending everything is fine.”
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