Church won’t fight homosexuality through prayer and fasting alone

The church is waking up to the reality of how cogently sin can press its way to the altar and receive applause.

The Church of Uganda has cut ties with Canterbury after the latter announced that same sex marriages can now be blessed.

Calls for prayer and fasting have intensified to resist the proliferation of these heinous acts in the church and our country.

I see this as a desperate effort and I can’t hide my disappointment at the church’s failure to tackle society’s problems that has resulted in foreigners having great influence on us.

The world is doing things the church should be doing. Here, I am generalizing the church as one regardless of denomination.

To begin with, homosexuality spreads through indoctrination, the same way we develop religious beliefs after learning about God. At birth, we are all the same; no one is born with a belief system. People who are predisposed to homosexuality are mostly those from dysfunctional families, where rejection and lack of a parent’s role leads one to seeking for affirmation.

In the 2014 census, Christians comprised 85 percent of Uganda’s population. Statistically, it means the majority of the street children, for example, are from Christian families. Sexual abuse at an early age is another key factor and this is quite more pronounced in single sex schools. Today’s society problems speak volumes about the lack of social services especially in the traditional church.

Secondly, Christians are called to be doers of the word; visiting orphans and widows in their trouble, feeding the hungry and thirsty, tending to strangers, clothing the naked, and visiting the sick and those in prison. Now, ask yourself why there are children on our streets yet we have homes and churches. How many people in your neighbourhood sleep hungry when your rubbish pit is full of leftover food?

Well, foreigners are intensively serving humanity and in so doing, they’re sowing love and taking centre stage. We cannot even estimate how many billions of US dollars have been invested in Africa. Imagine an American coming to your village in the middle of the second largest continent to remove jiggers from your neighbour’s feet!

So the beneficiaries of these numerous organisations feel more loved by foreigners than their neighbours, their churches, and their political leaders. And that’s a big loophole.

Thirdly, the church is divided and lacks a unified vision. We tend to think the church is poor, but we need to imagine how much money the entire church in the country collects every week. The Pentecostal church, for example, is growing at the fastest rate, but lacks a centralised leadership. Each ministry has its own leader with his own vision. To unify this church, the National Fellowship of Born Again Pentecostal Churches of Uganda was formed in 1990, but the majority of the ministries are autonomous and unaudited.

While some of the well-established churches have served their communities through education, health promotion, financial literacy, social services, and many other good services, they’ve largely peddled on the strength of donors. With no collaborative effort, the church is weak, and that’s another big loophole.

Now let’s face it. The Bible says that money answers all things in this world. The church’s vulnerability is partly a result of wallowing in foreign cash. The church has failed to teach people how to get out of poverty; how to apply knowledge (wisdom), getting serous with work, and planning how to spend money without being wasteful, but instead generous.

While I am not trying to demonize donations, many ministries are built on foreign donations and some of the donors have bad intentions. Some prominent church leaders have allegedly involved themselves in homosexual activities and some of the traditional church founded schools are said to be ravaged by homosexuality. Money and foreign influence have played key role, but this comes through betrayal by those in key religious positions. The Church of Uganda should know that declaring herself independent from Canterbury is not enough because the above loopholes are being utilised by foreigners in spreading their culture.

The church must wake up and utilise church collections effectively to tackle society’s problems. Corruption in church must end and there should be a collaborative strategy to strengthen the church.  The church should invest more in social services to end domestic violence and various forms of child abuse. Finally, Christians must work and learn how money works to get them out of poverty. But otherwise, God must be embarrassed.

Grace Ainembabazi, Christian and a dentist