Divided church failing in conciliatory role - Mutati
THE church has failed to properly superintend over the political situation in Zambian because, like politicians, it is also divided, MMD leader Felix Mutati has said.
Speaking in Chienge yesterday, Mr. Mutati said the situation had created a situation where there was no reconciliator for political parties in place to create a platform for dialogue,
He said Zambia had, as a result, missed an opportunity to dialogue around economic emancipation for its people.
He said bickering and name-calling had taken centre stage in the country’s politics and overshadowed progressive national discussions which could have transformed the economy and uplifted the lives of Zambians.
He said it was unfortunate that politicians had placed a prioritised outsmarting each other instead of focusing on how to tackle the challenges facing the ordinary Zambians.
“ e role of the church has always been to sit us down and make us realise that what is important are the needs of the ordinary person. e church must look within itself and pay attention to issues a ecting people and not those that divide the church body,” he said.
“Unless the church is uni ed, it will be very di cult for it to superintend over any conversation in what is essentially a di cult political landscape. It is generally normal for politicians to be divided but unusual for the church to be divided. e call is that we don’t only need to pray for the politicians but for the church so that it looks forward to its eminent role as the reconciler of people when faced with di culties,” Mr. Mutati said.
He said the church desperately needed dialogue within itself if it was to return to its primary objective of providing hope for a united country but also urged political players to take deep introspection on what it existed for as opposed to running political parties as business-as-usual.
“ e church need a dialogue within themselves before they resume their role of o ering reconciliation among political parties who see things di erently. As politicians, the rst think we think about is who I am going to condemn today and if I do that, I believe I will have done the work for the day.
“Our de nition of progress is how hard we have squashed our opponents and how miserable we have made others to be and then we think we have the courage. We must desist from making headlines in the media and equate it to politicking,” Mr Mutati said.