In an age where almost everything, from church sermons to therapy, has gone digital, even matters of the heart have not been spared.
A growing number of Christians looking to find love are nowadays turning to social media and dating apps, but as they log on in search of soulmates, one question looms: Can the love found here really be heaven-sent?
Gone are the days when finding a spouse was as simple as Adam waking up in Eden to meet Eve. In African societies, years ago, matchmaking was a communal effort, led by older relatives, often aunties.
These elders not only investigated backgrounds but also made moral and religious assessments, ensuring spiritual compatibility. But times have changed. Almost everyone, including spiritual people, are using technology in the daily aspects of their lives, including finding romance.
Belly Jullians Orondo, a communications specialist and fashion entrepreneur, is one of the Christians who dipped her toes into the world of online dating, but quickly pulled back.
“It was overwhelming,” she says. “I found myself chatting with more than 10 people scattered across the globe at once. It was time-consuming, mentally exhausting and just too much. I had to log off and delete the account altogether,” she says.
James Waweru, a clinical researcher, is sceptical about dating sites, Christian or otherwise. He says sometimes the motives of those using the sites are suspect.
“I once met a couple at the Attorney-General’s office; they had met on a Christian dating platform. One of the partners was very happy they would be processing a visa to tell Kenya kwaheri, but they had very little knowledge of the other person. What beats convenience when you have met on those platforms? I have no problem with migration. Only that to some, that would be the ultimate goal, and this defeats the authenticity of the relationship,” he says.
A growing number of Christians looking to find love are nowadays turning to social media and dating apps.
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Pete Mungai, a digital content creator, is also hesitant about using dating apps.
“I wouldn’t seek to meet someone on a Christian dating site, not because I think there’s anything wrong with that, but I’m not sure how Christian the people in there would be. In the same breath, there are plenty of non-Christians in church as well, so, if your question was am I open to meeting people online (as opposed to on a Christian dating site) my response would be to the affirmative,” he says.
Ultimately, the place of the original matchmaker, God, cannot be understated. Zainab Hussein, a reverend of the Latter Glory Church, says she had achieved satisfaction in being single and serving God as a pastor, with marriage as the last thing on her mind.
“I had said to myself that if I ever get married, I will be very sensitive to hearing God’s voice and I will marry a person who is very serious with God, a person who hears God’s voice and who knows his presence,” she says.
Then this man appeared on the scene, and he was relentless in his pursuit of her. She says one day she invited him for lunch, and that there was a clear presence of God, which they both felt. Hosea (the man) passed the test, and they are now man and wife.
“The point here is, don’t marry a person who is not where you are spiritually. Marry a person with whom you are at par or a person who is higher but not below, because life is spiritual. Today we perceive not only God’s presence together, but the presence of an attack and we immediately pray together,” she says.
Online dating.
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In this era of artificial intelligence (AI), where people turn to apps to share their deepest feelings, another troubling question arises: what happens when a devout Christian falls in love, not with a person, but with a bot?
Eddy Ouma, a pastor and an IT expert who also runs a ministry for singles, says: “Yes, you can fall in love with a bot that will obey your every command or desire just like you can fall in love with pornography. The problem is that you end up in bondage with them as your master eventually,” he says.
The trend of seeking love online is already well-established in the United States and is rapidly gaining popularity in Kenya. With increasingly busy schedules and shrinking social circles, more people are turning to digital platforms to find romantic connections.
Writing in Christianity Today, the world’s largest Christian newspaper, Harvest Prude says that for many Christians looking for love, “opaque code that materialises potential partners without explanation increasingly seems like the only choice”.
A lot of people are doing business online, teaching online, studying online, so there’s really nothing unusual about online dating.
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“Data shows that only about 15 per cent of people find a romantic partner through their friends. About 10 per cent meet at work or through co-workers. Almost nobody marries their high school sweetheart anymore, and vanishingly few marry someone they met in college. Church is one of the least common ways to connect. Only around 3 per cent of Americans in a romantic relationship say they met at a religious event,” she says.
Ms Prude talks of a couple who found love through a Christian dating site and eventually tied the knot, but their journey was far from smooth. The challenge? For many, an open expression of faith seemed to be a deal-breaker.
“She hadn’t completely filled out her profile when she first joined Hinge [a dating app], skipping some biographical categories, including religion. When she went back and checked the box saying she was a Christian, her number of matches and dates fell dramatically,” the article states.
“The man was facing troubles, too on his end. He was going through the same process of navigating the algorithms. If anything, it was more intense for him. Men have to wade through bots and fake profiles; when the women he saw were real women, they didn’t seem to want what he wanted,” Ms Prude writes.
Winnie Thuku-Craig, a born-again Christian, met her husband, Peter Craig on Facebook. She supports the idea that Christians can find love through social media, even though hers was not smooth.
“It was a time when I was busy with media interviews for my book Broken To Be Made Whole. Craig happened to see me on a TV show and started following my social media page. He soon became one of my top fans, always engaging, even though at that point I was too busy to pay attention to the thousands of fans talking about the book on the Facebook wall. After a while, he started sending me messages through my inbox, and that’s what made me notice him,” she says.
In those days, finding a partner online was not common, so theirs stirred resistance from both sides of the family. Winnie says she was accused of being a gold digger. When people learned she was financially stable, the narrative shifted.
Unlike back when one had to physically look or rely on referrals, the internet has made finding love easier.
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“They said I was chasing a visa. At one point, someone issued a death threat, warning me to never set foot in Australia. I reported it to the authorities, and the harassment stopped,” she says.
The couple married quietly at the Attorney-General’s office in Nanyuki. A small church ceremony followed at Rolf’s Place, far from the noise of disapproval. Some family members boycotted the ceremony. Others whispered. But Winnie no longer cared.
“I’d become a story told in angry tones,” she says. “I planned the wedding with a few friends and invited family. Whether they showed up or not, that was up to them.”
For the five years Peter lived in Kenya, their interracial relationship drew stares, assumptions and open hostility.
“People looked at me funny,” she says. “Even a close relative called me a bad name. People said young Kenyan women were marrying older white men for money. Yet, I’m older than him by three weeks.”
When they moved to Australia, it brought its own hardships. They relocated to a remote town of 1,000 people. They were the only Black or mixed-race family in the area.
“It was beautiful, but lonely,” Winnie says. “I fell into a deep depression, though I hid it well.”
“A lot of people are doing business online, teaching online, studying online, so there’s really nothing unusual about online dating. Back in the day, when we were dating, it was frowned upon, but not anymore. Times have changed. For me, the big question is, is it possible to meet someone online whose foundation is Christ and who will complement my walk with Christ? Is it possible to date online without compromising your walk with Christ? That's the whole point, isn’t it, being equally yoked,” she says.
However, she adds, like everything else that is now done online, dating has its own downside compared to the traditional face-to-face courtship. There is a lot of deception and scamming.
“I’d advise anyone thinking about going the online route to do it very cautiously and prayerfully. Take your time. Don’t commit too early. And most importantly, ask for evidence about what or who the person says they are. Ask without shame. Investigate. If they truly love you, they’ll understand why you have to be cautious. It might save you from a future tragedy or heartbreak,” she says.
Not everyone’s story is rosy. There have been chilling cases of tragic endings involving people who met the “love of their life” on dating sites, not necessarily Christian ones. Perhaps the most notorious is the heartbreaking story of Philip Markoff, a star student at Boston University School of Medicine.
The story was immortalised in the movie The Craigslist Killer, which was an adaptation of the true crime book A Date with Death: The Secret Life of the Accused “Craigslist Killer”. Markoff was a model student and on the way to becoming a top doctor, but behind the carefully cultivated mask was a murderer who stalked his victims on Craigslist.
