A second look at pastors and their ‘big lies’

Allow me make a few comments on an article titled “Why pastors tell big lies” that was written by one of your columnists and published on Sunday May 21, 2023.

The vitriolic article claims to be a defence of God’s standards and values that have been trampled upon with impunity by many a Ugandan pastor. It takes aim at two major targets: The untoward conduct of pastors and some fundamental Pentecostal beliefs, particularly miracle healing.  

For the record, I have written in this paper before, from a pastor’s perspective, pointing out the abhorrent ways of some of God’s shepherds and calling for both structural and moral reform in the Pentecostal movement in Uganda.

Perhaps to help the uninitiated, the Pentecostal movement as it’s known today started around 1900 in Los Angeles, USA, in what came to be known as the Azusa street Revival. However, born again/evangelical groups had existed long before that. Pentecostalism is a branch of Christianity that believes in receiving the Holy Spirit after one is born again with the attendant gifts and manifestations such as speaking in tongues, deliverance, healing etc. 

In Uganda, the first Pentecostal church was Full Gospel church, Naguru, established in 1960 (‘The story of the first Pentecostal church in Uganda’, Daily Monitor, 21 September 2012). The movement went underground in the 70’s, having been outlawed by President Idi Amin, and resurfaced with a bang in the 80’s, especially under the present regime.

Worldwide, Pentecostalism is considered the fastest growing religious movement. In her article, “Inside the fastest growing religious movement on earth” published last year in CHRISTIANITY magazine, Elle Hardy, a British journalist, points to statistics that indicate a membership of 600 million worldwide. She states that this number is projected to reach 1 billion by 2050 (one in every 10 people on earth by that time).

Another credible source, the ‘Atlas of Pentecostalism’ (Pulitzer centre) an online database that tracks the trends of this movement, agrees with Hardy’s figures, adding that 35,000 people get born again daily globally. Certainly, there are factors driving that growth, but that will be a discussion for another day.

Coming back home, the trend is no different. The 2014 national population census placed Pentecostal adherents at 11.1 percent  of the population (1 in every 10 Ugandans), up from 4.7 percent in 2002. What’s my point in all this: For a movement to gain ground at such a rate and on a global scale, surely there must be some merit in its teachings, errors and deviants notwithstanding. There is no movement, political, religious or otherwise, that doesn’t face counterfeits along its journey of growth. 

It’s therefore unfair to portray the whole Pentecostal faith as worthless based on the conduct of few aberrant pastors. The language and tone used in the article was scornful, supercilious and quite offensive. 
Referring to believers as ‘idiotic’ for believing what they think works for them was unnecessary, to say the least.

On the theological front, I would advise my fellow analyst to resist the temptation of waging doctrinal wars in an opinion article. You can’t achieve much. He knows very well that Christianity is rooted in the Bible as the highest authority on doctrine, yet he doesn’t quote any verse to disprove the teachings of the said pastors at the open air crusade he attended. 

Needless to say, matters of doctrine can only be debated by someone schooled in that field, not a casual observer. 
It would have been more prudent if he had confined himself to calling out uncouth and unethical behaviour in the lives of our religious leaders, basing on facts that can be proved, not sweeping generalisations. 

As is the saying these days, let the nation stay calm! We’ll sort ourselves and put our house in order. However, it is everyone’s responsibility to be alert and on the lookout for false prophets who exhibit weird and exploitative tendencies.
            Nathan Kaija,        Pastor and social analyst    Kampala.