Nairobi — I read a story (Nation, October 26) with great dismay. A new council of elders for the Kalenjin community had been assembled at the Reformed Church of East Africa's conference centre in Eldoret.

First, let me declare my interest. My father is an ordained minister with the RCEA, and has served in various parts of Kenya since the mid 1970s. I'm also as Kalenjin as anything else I might be, owing to my blurred ethnic heritage and command of some Kalenjin dialects.

I grew up in the RCEA, and remain committed to its confession of the Christian faith, even when I'm part of faith communities outside the North Rift, where the Church's presence is strong. In the 1980s and early 1990s, I attended RCEA's youth conferences, including one at which Bishop Alexander Muge challenged us to review our cosy relationship with the repressive Moi regime.

The RCEA's ambivalence on the pressing issues of the 1990s, particularly the ethnic cleansing that would follow remarks and actions by the high and mighty was surprising.

The prolonged domination of vital positions in the church leadership by the Kalenjin then, as in the first Kibaki regime, are key to understanding the RCEA's shaky prophetic witness under both regimes. When the RCEA, under the NCCK, acquiesced to the excesses of the Kibaki regime prior to the disputed 2007 polls, few were surprised.

As an aspirant for the Cherangany parliamentary seat, I followed the church's reaction after the polls with even greater interest. At the height of the post-election violence, the church leadership -- including my father -- met in Eldoret to determine a united response. Predictably, the meeting resulted into an ODM vs PNU and Kalenjin versus the rest retreat.

When, after 2007, the NCCK apologised for having failed the nation, I was among those who thought my own RCEA had also seen some light. The celebration was premature, for their decision to host an ethnic caucus barely 22 months after the nation's ethnic bloodbath smirks of nothing close to repentance.

Councils of elders of the kind the Kalenjin have assembled, as indeed other communities also are putting together, are no way to heal a nation. I witnessed the truism of this in the 2007 campaigns, when in the multi-ethnic Cherangany, various councils would be bought off day and night by the over 10 contestants.

I was, therefore, not surprised when houses began going up in smoke and people maimed, killed or evicted when competing ethnic interests felt betrayed by the overall poll outcome. Even in areas where the violence had not been spontaneous, the organising for power around ethnic identity was still pretty much the staple food.

In the months following the fall-outs between Prime Minister Raila Odinga and Agriculture minister William Ruto in the ODM power-games, preliminary indications are that ethnic polarisation in relation to the Kalenjin has increased, not waned. It's not for nothing, therefore, that reports have emerged about communities arming themselves ahead of 2012, whose violence is expected to make the 2007 appear like a Sunday school picnic.

While ethnic chauvinists across the political divide are busy romancing their final solutions and post-2012 power structures, the sober-minded among us remain concerned about prospects for the Rift Valley and for the country. From where I sit, one would expect a church headquartered in such a region to be alive to these realities.

From where I sit, one would expect such a church to know that when tribe replaces party as a tool for political mobilisation, then our road back to 2007 becomes very short indeed.

One would also expect such a church to know that the use of church facilities in the manner reported on Monday can be as damning or glorious afterwards -- depending on the unpredictable political winds of our times -- as it was for the Lutheran Church in Nazi Germany.

Make no mistake: I'm saying all this for the RCEA, as I would for any denomination or faith playing lap-dog to the high and mighty. It is still not too late for the RCEA, as indeed every other person of goodwill, to rediscover the transformative power in becoming the moral conscience of this nation.

The writer is a political strategist