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(LifeSiteNews) — The world needs Africa. It’s a place where Christianity has managed to stay strong amid a world that is increasingly abandoning the Christian name and running towards the insanity that is wokeism, found in gender ideology, abortion, and the like.

This episode of The John-Henry Westen Show features remarks made at the Africa Life Forum, hosted last month at Strathmore University in Nairobi, Kenya. (Reposted with permission from Capuchin TV.) The aim of the Forum was to be a catalyst for dialogue among various groups in Africa to help preserve family, life, and faith.

There are three key takeaways from the talks given.

First, Africa has become a target for the West to push its agenda by means of technology and social media. This is seen in the various programs funded by Western governments, such as the American and Canadian governments, of sexual education programs across the continent, as described by Forum speaker and pro-life activist Ann Kioko, as well as money from various lobby groups attempting to make Africa a “mirror image of Western society,” in the words of Charles Kanjama, an advocate at the High Court of Kenya and speaker at the Forum. Not to mention the promotion of LGBT ideology on social media discussed by several speakers.

Sister Veronica Rop, a professor of Christian ethics at the Catholic University of Eastern Africa (CUEA), for instance, describes how she has seen in her students how social media has influenced their way of thinking on LGBT issues, which she observes are inherently foreign to African culture.

“This is the elephant in the room,” she observes. “This is the issue that we have to tackle because all agree it is anti-life. If we continue this way, we are not even Africans. We don’t have that vitality, the value of life which we find in marriage between a man and a woman.”

Alice Muchiri, MP, a Catholic Kenyan Member of Parliament who appeared at the Rome Life Forum last year, opines that any solution to the encroachment of LGBT ideology on the continent should be combated by a proper use of social media. In her opinion, the youth should be met where they are and that those opposed to the intrusive ideology should use media to keep the Catholic bishops informed. She uses Kenya as an example, since it’s a country where its Catholic bishops still have the moral authority to influence the nation’s politics.

Describing the Western push itself, Kanjama says it’s a philosophical battle in which Western nations are not willing to let Africans continue in their cultural and moral values, a philosophy which he maintains is already proven false by biology, medicine, and sociology.

Second, the battle against the encroachment of the West in Africa must be an ecumenical effort consisting not just of Catholics but also of Protestants and Muslims, forming a coalition that will fight the Western onslaught.

“We have won battles in the in the past because the Muslims are with us, the Hindus are with us, the Protestants, the Evangelicals,” says Muchiri.

Dr. Raymond Mutura, director of the Centre for Research on Organizations Work and Family and assistant to the executive dean of Strathmore Business School, recalls that when he was helping to draft the National Family Policy of Kenya, he worked with Protestants, Hindus, and Muslims.

“If you talk about the Hindus, they were there,” he recalls. “If you talk about the Muslims, they were there. If you talk about the Protestants, they were there. If you talk about the Christians, they were there. If you talk about civil society, they were there.”

Third, the use of language used by those promoting Western ideas in Africa can be confusing.

OB/GYN Dr. Wahome Ngare discusses the problem of language with regard to LGBT issues and abortion. To him, if he is approached by someone claiming he is a woman trapped in a man’s body, he would immediately know the man suffers from a psychological condition. Likewise, the problem of abortion deals with the term “abortion” itself, as the killing of an unborn infant.

“It will be criminal for me and totally unethical to affirm that position and even suggest drugs or surgeries that would then affirm the delusion, and that is what we find that is lacking from the West,” Ngare says of the potential gender confused patient. “There isn’t enough courage to stand for the truth, and I think it is time we as professionals said, ‘It is enough and we stop playing games.’”

Kioko observes that while the overwhelming majority of Kenyans are opposed to abortion and LGBT issues, they don’t know what “LGBT” stands for, and people in the government themselves do not know what ideology is being pushed by proposed policies – language she and those working with her are seeking to expose.

“Euphemism is very much used when [extra-African forces] are pushing for this agenda,” she says. “[Africans] don’t quite understand.”

The John-Henry Westen Show is available by video on the show’s YouTube channel and right here on my LifeSite blog.

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John-Henry is the co-founder, CEO and editor-in-chief of LifeSiteNews.com. He and his wife Dianne have eight children and they live in the Ottawa Valley in Ontario, Canada.

He has spoken at conferences and retreats, and appeared on radio and television throughout the world. John-Henry founded the Rome Life Forum, an annual strategy meeting for life, faith and family leaders worldwide. He is a board member of the John Paul II Academy for Human Life and the Family. He is a consultant to Canada’s largest pro-life organization Campaign Life Coalition, and serves on the executive of the Ontario branch of the organization. He has run three times for political office in the province of Ontario representing the Family Coalition Party.

John-Henry earned an MA from the University of Toronto in School and Child Clinical Psychology and an Honours BA from York University in Psychology.

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