On The Matter of Corruption III

Institutionalized Religion Promoting Corruption

By Dr. Samuel Adjei Sarfo

Last week, I decided to source ideas from my fellow Ghanaians here in the US concerning the upsurge in corruption in Ghana and how the practice could be obviated. One such friend called Godwin Adelayitar quickly pointed out to me, “If you want to discuss corruption in Ghana, begin with the churches because that is the establishment actively goading its members into corrupt practices while they remain absolved from all blame. Ghanaians are giving large sums of money siphoned through corrupt deeds to these churches who are keeping them without answering any questions from any quarters. Therefore, one effective way of money laundering is through religious donation where nobody audits anybody or asks any questions about the source of wealth. You want to talk about corruption, begin with the churches!”

I reflected on what the friend said, and wondered if the blame for corruption could not be expanded to cover the wider phenomenon of religion itself. Although at the center of the cultural life of Ghanaians, religion has woefully failed to make the population righteous. Under the shadow of this glaring failure, one may rightfully ask, “What is the use of the religious establishment if the people still persist so flagrantly in their corrupt practices?”

As I understand it, religion is simply humankind’s search for a fruitful relationship with the holy other, and it is founded on the rubrics of revelation, sacred writings, myths, rituals, holy sites, theories of salvation and ethical living. Of these rubrics, the most important is ethical living. This is the pattern of acceptable behavior and conduct that is free of any propensity for corruption—the life that is considered right, honorable and praiseworthy by all civilized societies. And on the question of ethics, all religions are unified, insofar as each agrees on the virtues of generosity, decency, respect, peace, mercy, honesty and responsibility. Given the visceral nature of ethical norms, it makes sense to presume that it must be the most pleasing to God, since it determines a person’s true level of righteousness. It makes sense also to conclude that it is ethical behavior which brings the divine rewards of human happiness and security. Thus the most cogent part of religion is righteous conduct or proper behavior. And so if our religious faith has not enabled us to expunge corruption from our lives and embrace ethical living, then what is the purpose of our worship of God?

If people were persuaded to be the best that they could be, eschewing greed, hatred, dishonesty and jealousy, and upholding the virtues of love, honesty, compassion and friendship, every human person will become a divinity unto himself, and our lives here on earth will mirror the heaven we daily anticipate. Unfortunately, the first order of business of most religious leaders is to keep the minds of their followers away from ethical living and to focus them on acts that feed their monetary interests. They do this by de-emphasizing righteous behavior and accentuating the importance of religious frills. In this instance, rituals, sacred objects, miracles, shrines, myths, glossolalia and offerings take the center of worship, and the devotee is gradually alienated from any service to his society and humanity, focusing instead on massive transfer of wealth for the enrichment of the religious order. Thus ethical conduct is replaced by the opium of redundant instructions and postures structured to make the person feel emotionally good as long as he lives in doctrinal abstractions and keeps the money flowing into the religious kitty. Religion, instead of transforming the individual, now incapacities his critical thinking and turns him into a corrupt hypocrite……an unquestioning minion of those who have sworn a cabalistic allegiance to temporal power and earthly wealth while babbling lopsided notions about the glorious afterlife.

Religious leaders have cleverly decoupled the perennial messages of the prophets from themes of righteous living and substituted these with income producing doctrines that have made them millionaires overnight. They strut the corridors of power, dressed in the garb of riches, to intone their messages to the miserable wretches from whom they daily extort huge amounts of money, and they take cover from any criticism for their misdeeds by constantly shouting in sonorous voices, “Do not touch God’s anointed!” The foregoing explains the reason why the rise of religious faith in Ghana has not corresponded with the rise of ethical living.

Yet devotees of the faith have shown an amazing reluctance to extricate themselves from the talons of religious scavengers. Former President Rawlings was not known for many philosophical viewpoints, but he was right on point when he stated that God will one day demand of those victims of religious fraud whether they also were not given brains to think for themselves. In our world today, many people are in mental captivity, not because of the dearth of religion, but because their intellectual faculties are subsumed in deception to the point of hopelessness. These are not prepared to be redeemed; rather, they will kill, burn and destroy in order to remain in their mental captivity. They are like the late Kofi Tetteh, a mentally challenged man from Effiduase- Koforidua, my hometown. He worked very hard, weeding farms and cleaning houses and thereby earning some money for himself. At the end of the day, he would give all his money to young girls who used to deceive him that they would marry him. Anyone that tried to tell the truth to Kofi Tetteh became his worst enemy. His very existence depended on being constantly deceived by young girls to part with his hard-earned money! Likewise, many who profess to be religious devotees willingly maintain themselves in their life of religious delusion and readily part with their hard-earned income. They, like Kofi Tetteh, consider the truth to be their worst enemy. Indeed, God will one day demand of these people whether they also were not given brains to think for themselves.

There is also something to be said for a psychological satisfaction that arises out of this religious genuflection: humans naturally gravitate towards evil and therefore do not care to make their societies better through proper conduct or ethical living. As oxymoronic as it may sound, to many religious people, no price is too great for the freedom to be as corrupt as possible while at the same time feeling like a devout child of God. In this sense, the deceptive ways of the religious leaders are far more alluring to them than the weighty duty that comes with a true commitment to the ethical life. These people readily accept blatant lies and pay good money in order to escape from the rigid rigors of righteous living. They are at their best when those religious mountebanks intone to them in a voice of fake piety, “Your righteousness is like rags before God, so there is no need to be righteous. You are saved by grace. But your money is all good and clean no matter where it comes from.”

When Jesus came, he found the Pharisees engaged in deceptive teachings and corrupt practices. Instead of being concerned about the plight of the poor and suffering, they were busy teaching abstract religious dogma and collecting huge tithes on virtually everything. Jesus repudiated their teachings and spoke extensively about altruistic love and authentic kindness. And they caught him and nailed him on the cross for his truth. Today, religious leaders have stolen his name while rejecting his message and retaining the corrupt practices of the Pharisees.

At the University of Cape Coast, Garbah, professor emeritus of Religion, used to repeat the thoughts of ancient pundits in these paraphrastic terms: If the Muslim or the Christian or the Hindu, or the Taoist or the Baha'ist or the Mormon or any religious person does what they are supposed to do, their actions, thoughts and behaviors will be both similar and the same insofar as they will concentrate on the ethical life; and how they live their lives will consequently lead to the positive transformation of the whole of society. Further, Prof. Garbah taught that the lamps are different but the light is the same. What the aged teacher meant was that at the irreducible level, all religions should strive to achieve the same purpose: making the individual more virtuous, more honest, more loyal, more loving, more compassionate, more peaceful, more truthful, more respectful, more generous and more forgiving. Every known religion should espouse these values and give them a pride of place in their doctrines.

But religious leaders tend to ignore these unifying virtues taught by the prophets and to focus on what can be called the frills of religion, namely dress code, prayer posturing, taboos, fairy stories, tithe and offering. Herein then lies the source of all religious conflicts: by preaching what divide them instead of what unite them, religious leaders fan hatred and animosity and fear amongst their followers, thereby creating war instead of peace, antipathy instead of sympathy, and divisiveness instead of cohesiveness.

The time has come for us to wake up from our slumber, to unmask the palpable guiles of our religious leaders and their deceptive teachings. Although inherent in religious phenomena is its verifiable capacity to baptize whole populations in the pond of ignorance, we still possess the power to work out our own salvation through critical thinking, ethical conduct and righteous actions.

While others remain unperturbed by the abdication of religion in the fight against corruption, we remain convinced that the institution must be prompted to preach ethical living as a more viable alternative to the litany of abstract dogma applied in her processes of mass deception. For the worship of God has nothing to do with myths, temples and rituals, but everything to do with the quality of our lives in the world: our kindness, our generosity, our sense of duty, our honesty, our love and goodwill towards all humankind. Our genuine transformation and freedom from corruption begins the day we pray to God and say, “Of all we know of righteousness we shall perform; from all we know of corruption we shall refrain; and of all we are left to know of the ethical living, we pray for the Almighty God to teach us.”

Samuel Adjei Sarfo, Doctor of Jurisprudence, is a general legal practitioner resident in Austin, Texas, USA. You can email him at [email protected].