Samuel Kobia

Samuel Kobia (born March 20, 1947, Miathene, Meru, Kenya) is an African religious leader, theologian, and ecumenist who served as general secretary of the World Council of Churches (WCC) from 2004 to 2009.

Kobia earned a degree in theology from St. Paul’s United Theological College in Limuru, Kenya; a diploma in urban ministry from McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago; a master’s degree in urban planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and a Doctor of Divinity (honorary) from the Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis. Kobia, a minister of the Methodist Church in Kenya, was appointed executive secretary for urban rural mission for the WCC, an international ecumenical organization, in 1978. He became director of church development activities with the National Council of Churches of Kenya in 1987 and general secretary in 1990. Three years later he became executive director of the WCC’s Unit III—Justice, Peace and Creation—then one of the organization’s four major program units. He directed the WCC’s Cluster on Issues and Themes from 1999 to 2002 and served as director and special representative for Africa in 2003. He was elected general secretary of the WCC, the organization’s highest office, in 2004.

As head of the WCC, Kobia displayed a willingness to confront injustices in his native country and continent. At a 2004 news conference in Nairobi, he said that Christians had failed to address the Rwandan genocide of a decade earlier. He also denounced the increasing incidence of child rape in much of Africa, calling it “an abomination to the sanctity of life” and an “open disgrace to God and the human community.” That year Kobia met with leaders of six African American denominations in Washington, D.C., and challenged them to address such issues as the spread of HIV/AIDS and the role of the United States as the only remaining superpower. He also met with United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan in New York City to discuss the situation in Iraq, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the role of religion in political affairs. At an ecumenical gathering in Berlin in July, he called for interreligious dialogue to combat the “blatant misuse of religion in the mobilization of war” and negative caricatures of Muslims. One day after the U.S. presidential election of 2004, Kobia released a letter on behalf of the WCC chiding some U.S. churches for having presented God in partisan terms during the campaign.

After the death of Pope John Paul II in 2005, Kobia paid tribute to the former’s ecumenical endeavours. Later that year he refuted charges of anti-Semitism raised by pro-Zionist groups against WCC member churches that had protested Israel’s continued presence in the West Bank.