All good religious leaders must support regulation
What you need to know:
- The issue: Regulating churches.
- Our view: Whereas we are aware that there are many leaders in the RFOs who are walking straight, we also know that there are many self-seekers whose moral aptitude is wanting who are hiding among them.
Government is set to fine tune a policy aimed at guiding the registration and regulation of religious and faith organisations (RFOs) including churches.
Government cites the need to put in place a comprehensive mechanism to guide its engagements with the RFOs and cites the increase in cases of manipulation and exploitation of followers by the leaders, which has in some cases resulted into loss of property and lives, disunity among the faithful, increased domestic violence, family breakdowns, among others, as some of the issues that have forced its hand.
The plan is bound to be met with opposition, but all right thinking Ugandans must support it.
In recent weeks some of the leaders in the RFO and their children have been involved in serious exchanges in which they have traded some very serious allegations. It is difficult to put a finger on what exactly is fuelling these exchanges.
What is certain is that those exchanges have capacity to trigger violent confrontations that might result into a bloodbath as their followers attack each other. This makes a case for regulation.
We are a country that prides itself in religion. We are a country where the born again movement commands quite a lot of influence in the ruling classes, but this should not blind us to the contradictions within that movement and the actions of their leaders and followers.
Jesus taught in Mathew 6: 5-6 that: “When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men… but when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father who is unseen.”
Why then do we have all those noisy overnight prayers, some in residential places?
Dallas Theological colleges guides that the seven everyday ways of worshipping the Lord God include admiring the wonders of nature, dedicating a sacrifice of silence to the Lord, reading scriptures aloud, singing songs of praise, loving others and praying through a Psalm.
At no point does it say that worship should be carried out using loudspeaker. Does the God they worship have audio impairments?
Whereas we are aware that there are many leaders in the RFOs who are walking straight, we also know that there are many self-seekers whose moral aptitude is wanting who are hiding among them. That is why all the members of the clergy should be supporting the call for regulation.
