Between training pastors and educating citizens

Many of Uganda’s religious leaders often look dispensable, but the Pentecostal church operators’ very qualification to practice as pastors, apostles and prophets is on the line. The devil in their soup is education; or, rather, the lack of education. To their action-packed programme, they have added defending their existence.

It is estimated that only one in 10 Ugandan Pentecostal pastors has bible college training, some of the colleges dubious or disreputable.
So, should the untrained nine take the pulpit? Where they own churches, should those churches not be closed by a denominational governing council, if the Pentecostals were a mature self-regulating religious organisation; or by an agency of the State?

Pastor Pius Emmanuel Sentongo, who talks a lot on Impact FM, is a determined advocate of pastor training. He speaks almost enviously of the training in the Catholic and Anglican Churches. The problem is that he stretches his own gifts a little bit, describing himself as a great mind who only discusses ‘ideas’, forcing critics to take him seriously.

The question asked by ordinary chaps like me and the carpenter next-door is: if a divine ‘calling’ is not enough, and specialised training is indeed the enabler, why are untrained ‘pastors’ still allowed to confuse millions of Ugandans?
Mr Sentongo’s position is contradictory, but not surprising. He opines that they can continue with their work, but must seek professional training.

He gives the misleading analogy of a multi-course meal, comparing the untrained pastor’s effort to an appetiser. After training, he would deliver the other ‘courses’ of spiritual food.
Sorry, Mr Sentongo. These fake ‘pastors’, whom you castigate for spreading weirdly erroneous biblical interpretations, and who so misunderstand their social environment that they sometimes spoil the solemn decency at a funeral; why are their services not terminated like with other quacks?

The appetiser, too, has to be properly cooked! It is not meal courses, but fake chefs. Like fake doctors, fake teachers or fake lawyers; their ‘calling’ cannot be a licence to work. Or indeed like fake priests in the other Churches; they are struck off the relevant register.
But the problem is actually deeper than Mr Sentongo thinks.

Why? Immediately after the pastors with bible college papers have advocated education on radio, they return to their congregations and scream exactly the same trash as their untrained competitors: demons that apparently have a revolving door... the Holy Spirit descending... miraculous prosperity... in the name of Jesus! It is the same psycho-emotional manipulation, inducing devotees to experience pleasurable gains that are not there.

Next Sunday, and the following Sunday, your star ‘apostle’ or ‘prophet’ vows that he will not leave a single demon standing.
But be assured; the Sunday after that, all the demons will be back!
The problem is a philosophical one, and if Pastor Sentongo cannot yet rise to it, he must return to school or privately study more deeply until he can confront it.

The problem: How can this God, who is clearly a human cultural invention, be theologically interpreted to have a kind of value-based authenticity that believers can recognise (and) embrace?
Because Uganda’s Pentecostal preachers, with or without college papers, still treat this abstract deity as a greedy all-powerful magician-king, an autonomous entity who ‘calls’ servants and delivers ‘goods’ from outside, rather than an ‘inspiration’ rising from one’s mind, their God is as false as the pagan gods they mock in their sermons.
Educating the citizens for a critical mindset may, therefore, be even more redeeming than bible school for the pastors.

Mr Tacca is a novelist, socio-political commentator.
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