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Dackson reviews Sacred and Secular: Religion and Politics Worldwide by Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart.

The term church refers to a group of people governed by similar rules and beliefs, who congregate in recognition of a higher Being. In most cases the term church and religion are used synonymously. While religions is domesticated by morals that are illuminated by faith, most states are guided by politics whose orientation is generally practical empirical. In most cases the church. Politics on the other hand is given different definitions by different people. On one popular understanding, politics is concerned with the allocation of values in any social system. In Kenya as it is the case with most African countries, ethnicity has been and still remains the strongest force that binds a group together because other bases of alignment such as: religion, class, nationalism etc, are recent phenomena and in most cases alien. As it has been observed critically by the author, politics in Kenya are ethno-centric. The most vivid examples are given of the Rwandan genocide where in spite of the fact that an overwhelming percentage of the population is catholic, ethnic consciousness has resisted Christian assimilation.1 In Kenya, after the general elections of December 2007, Kenyans stooped down to ethnic/ tribal affiliations. Even the church leaders just as the Rwanda"s case identified, campaigned and supported camps of their ethnic groups. People always imagine that ethnic-based thinking is the solution to every issue of concern. In most cases the term ethnicity is taken to be synonymous with tribalism. Considerably ambivalence governs any application of the concept of ethnicity, a term which in most cases is understood negatively. This concept may refer to; a group of consciousness of common cultural labels and the subsequent manipulation of this consciousness to construct a culturally – informed vantage point from which to report on and respond to contemporary situations of impoverished and powerlessness.2 As a term, it can also be understood as a philosophy of its kind, such that if one does not understand the principles behind it, one will not understand the behaviour, politics and even the level of religiosity of Kenyans. This paper therefore intends to evaluate the relationship between church and politics in Kenya. This paper falls under cross cutting themes like religion, ethnicity and politics. But in this case it falls under governance, institutions and state building, especially in Africa. The questions that this paper tries to address include: How do the church and state in Kenya relate? Why are the church leaders in Kenya ethnic centered? Why are the politicians and other government leaders in Kenya ethnic centered? What is the philosophy behind Kenya"s church and government leaders? The authors will employ philosophical methodology. This method involves analyzing issues and rationalizing. The data that will be used includes mainly secondary data. This includes information that is obtained from libraries like books with relevant information, periodicals like journals and newspapers and even the internet sources. This paper also tackles an important issue in most African states. The paper will assist people understand the nature of politic as well as unearthing the level of religiosity of the people of Kenya.

To explore the question "How can someone create art now?," the essay first sketches a broad historical framework, and continues by peering through a lens made of two concepts: the center, and dissent. It explores the Greek influence (Plato the centrist, Socrates the dissenter; dissent as apartness, the center as control molded by dissent) and Christianity (dissent in Job, the Fall, and St. Francis). Whereas the dissent of Socrates was the mold filled by Plato's Center, in Christianity the omnipotent, omnipresent God is the mold, Sin and the Fall its negative, dissent molded by the Center: a double obverse. The essay talks about contemporary music and violence: the beat and the originary scene (Boulez), other strategies (Xenakis, Cage); commodification; rock promoting the ecstasy of identity and submission; Disneyfication. It explores feminism on violence; critical theory on the subject; the Deleuzian Body Without Organs and Kristeva's chora; and Judith Butler on subjectless agency, signification as a regulated process of repetition. Finally, the essay touches on the relations among dissent, autonomy, agency; superfaciality; insignification; theory as praxis as art as life; and intimate apartness built into the Sichselbstgleichheit of the work of art.