Sanitising the religious landscape

See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than Christ. (Colossians 2:8)

Religion, however we define or conceptualise it, is very fundamental in human society. Humans are incurably religious. This is to the extent that even atheism is in the long run a form of religion. This is because; it is a religion that believes in the non-existence of God, while theism is a religion that believes in the existence of God. There is a common thread that runs through atheism and theism: both are based on God: His existence or non-existence. Also, faith is very cardinal to both atheism and theism.

Through strictly empiricism, none is able to provide enough and sufficient or further and better evidence for the existence or non-existence of God. All told, religion is at the core of human existence. Louis Berkhof, John Mbiti, Geoffrey Parrinder, and John Pobee have all convincingly argued that religion is at the base of humanity.

In Ghana, religion forms the centrality of the life of Ghanaians. We live to religion and die to religion. Throughout the lifecycle, religion plays an important role. Religion permeates every facet of life: economic, social, and political. The ubiquitous expression of religion is seen in the fact that every space in Ghana has been domesticated by religious people.

The fact that religion constitutes the fulcrum of life is expressed also in how Ghanaians tend to view the world or have their worldviews deeply shaped by religion. Religion is the point of reference or prism through which the world is understood. Existential realities are deeply framed around religion. Indeed, contrary to modernists, who predicated the demise of religion, following advances in science and technology, since the 1970s, the world has witnessed unprecedented resurgence in religion globally.

Considering the importance of religion in the lives of most Ghanaians, it is quite logical that most persons, including a cadre of intelligentsia, will appeal to religion to explain events, which may logically appear inexplicable. Incidentally, this development has also empowered most charlatans, who parade as men of God, to fleece most willful, gullible and ignorant Ghanaians. Knowing how duplicitous these charlatans use religion as charade to dupe Ghanaians, ex-president Jerry Rawlings in the heydays of the revolution passed a law (PNDC Law 211 in 1989) that was designed to regulate religious activities in the country. This law resulted in the banning of religious groups like the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, also known as Mormons. Rightly or wrongly, the Christian bodies in Ghana resisted this law, and eventually it was not recapitulated in the 1992 Constitution when Ghana, once again, transitioned to democratic administration.

Over the years, I have watched the religious landscape with close interest and concern. I am unapologetically a Christian. I unqualifiedly believe in the normative/dogmas of the Christian teaching. I also believe that the truth of the Christian faith is objectively and absolutely true. Hence, I believe that, with respect to the Christian faith, if a teaching is true, then it is not new, and if it is new, then it is not true. I, therefore, write as a concerned conservative/fundamentalist Christian, knowing that writing critically about changes in the church practices is a slippery ground that could not be left in the hands of the faint-hearted.

On July 9, 2017, I attended the wedding ceremony of my cousin, and events that unfolded at the wedding heightened my fears about the future of the church in Ghana, and broadly Africa. As I see the state of the church in Ghana in light of the observation by the late Professor Kwame Bediako and Joel Carpenter and Lamin Sanneh that the center of gravity of Christianity is progressively shifting from the Global North to the Global South, particularly Africa and Asia, I question the preparedness of Africans to engage in reverse mission: that is taking the Gospel back to the Global North. Events unfolding in Ghanaian Christianity hardly convince me that the church is ready for such a lofty task as revealed in Matthew 28:18-19.

At the church, whose name I deliberately will not mention, the pastor conducted his Sunday service before the wedding. Because of the wedding, the pastor decided to hold captive visitors who were attending the ceremony to his church. So, he decided to engage in some form of exorcism. He claimed to have the spiritual prowess to know and control the realm of the spirit. Alas, he called the wife of my maternal uncle, and said to her that she had been spiritually poisoned, and that if she had not come to the church, she would have suffered from stomach cancer. I was sitting right in front of my uncle’s wife, so I was expecting that he would called me too. Obviously, I would have carried the day with my sarcasm.

He offered a terse and quite rehearsed prayer, and claimed that he had neutralised the spiritual poisoning. I felt uneasy about this development for three main reasons: first, I realised that the so-called pastor was only embarrassing the wife of my maternal uncle. Let us assume without admitting that he was right in his spiritual insight, could he not have used a different approach to tell her about it? For instance, could he not have called her privately, and together with the leadership of the church, prayed with her? Second, I felt he wanted to use my maternal uncle’s wife to gain cheap popularity. Third, I felt that, by using my maternal aunt, he was capitalising on her vulnerability to instill fear in every body in the church. All said, he did that to legitimise his authority and win the support of the gathering, whom he eyed as members. But more disturbingly, by connecting pain to spirituality, particularly witchcraft, these charlatans succeed in creating friction and international fragmentation in families. Following the logic of witchcraft, if an old woman is accused of being a witch, then by extension her daughter and granddaughters are also witches. The existence of witch camps in some regions in Ghana is emblematic of a nation that is deeply rooted in superstition and religious extremism! The charlatans sustain this witchcraft mentality.

What happened at the church today is a broader reflection of how these charlatans use religion to con unsuspecting and/or suspecting Ghanaians. Their modus operandi is to instill fear in the people. Another method they use is what I call theistic dualism. Here, they create a religious scene, where God and Satan are put on the pedestal of authority. In the distorted theology of these charlatans, Satan is not a creature of God, but a supreme authority that ruffles shoulders with God. Also, they try to spiritualise every issue, and it is that which makes them relevant. Here, if you have headache, they should be able to attribute it to the devil. And once it is the devil that is responsible for your headache, and since the charlatan is the only person who is able to fight the devil, you obviously would have to invest your faith in him. This Zoroastrian dualistic theology is the trump card of these charlatans. Similarly, they take advantage of the economic morass of Ghana. Quite a good number of sick people can hardly afford to seek broader conventional treatment when they are sick. Obviously, if you are sick and you fail to get right conventional treatment, you will be compelled to go to these charlatans for their spiritual gimmicks.

There are a slew of reasons for the thriving of these charlatans, but for the sake of space, I will just duel on one: which is lack of sound theological teaching about pain, suffering, and evil. This is known in theological parlance as theodicy. The Christian faith is largely based on suffering and pain. Our Lord Jesus Christ was the chief of all sufferers, and the crime committed against him, which is deicide, is the highest form of crimes ever committed in human history. Also, the early apostles went through significant pain. Most of them died very degrading deaths. This is to the extent that one of the mantras of the Christian faith is that: “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.”

Unfortunately, most of these charlatans, who ride on the demonic teaching of prosperity Gospel, have distorted the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the centrality of suffering in the Christian faith. Gone were the days, when Christians would sing songs like, “If I lose my mom; if I lose my dad; if I lose the love that they gave me; if I lose all that I may possess, I know that I still love Jesus.” Today, such songs have lost their meaning and suffer from anachronism. We all want material prosperity. Obviously, I am not against material prosperity. My concern is how materialism and epicurean logic has taken hostage of Christians. In view of this theology, Christians are unable to bear the brunt of living the Christian faith. Most of us are simply not willing to die or suffer for the sake of the Gospel. So, we are all running uncontrollably seeking these charlatans. We do this, even as we remain oblivious of the fact that Church history teaches us that the church thrives under very severe and intense persecution.

Christianity is not based on miracles and exorcism, however we cling to them. Christianity is based on the person (deity and humanity of Jesus Christ) and work (crucifixion and resurrection) of Jesus Christ. As we go through pain, we should know that our lord Jesus Christ went through the worst of pains, and yet was without sin, and because of that He is able to sympathise with us. Chasing miracles at the expense of authentic Christianity is injurious to our fate in the hereafter.

Come, Lord Jesus.

Satyagraha

Charles Prempeh, ([email protected]), African University College of Communications, Accra