TRAGEDY OF A CHRISTIAN NATION: WHEN THE CHURCH PLAYS DIRTY POLITICS

THEbehaviour of the Roman Catholic and SDA churches in the past week has brought to the fore the double standard of these two churches who wish to score political mileage when their business is not politics but religion.

We cannot have church leaders that speak as if they are in opposition to the government. If by any chance these donations were perceived to be dirty, isn’t the church better placed to cleanse these donations with prayer?

Religious organisations, churches included, remain among the most trusted institutions in the Zambian society. They enjoy higher levels of public trust than either the state or the private sector. This trust should not be abused or manipulated for whatever personal reason some religious leaders may have.

That said, we all need to agree and understand that the number one responsibility or duty of any church is to save souls, that agreed, the Church also picks up the responsibility of helping the poor, the sick, the orphaned and vulnerable in our society.

For the Church to carry out all these functions they need resources and the number one resource they all need is money that can easily be converted into various sectors of need.

When some churches now claim or declare that they can’t receive donations from the government because the people of Zambia are suffering and there are no medicines in hospitals, then the intensions of their leaders must be questioned, because it becomes clear that they are playing double standards and holier than thou.

Doesn’t our Holy Bible teach us that “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her?” How ironic that the custodians and teachers of the Holy Bible would fail to practice the same principle they teach us on a daily basis?

If those churches have seen the many problems, would that not be their responsibility to accept the donations and channel those resource to those areas observed to be lacking than scandalising Government donations given in good faith?

The question that begs answers is that, does the Church scrutinise all church offerings and tithes as to what their sources are? If that really was the basis on which the church worked, then no offerings would be accepted if you come to think of it.

What kind of a church would refuse a donation at the expense of its members dying from hunger or lack of medical care? If this is not politics, then we are confused on how to define the behaviour of these churches which we expect to be above party or tribal politics. Lest we forget, the Catholic Church has been involved in much more worse and inhuman inequalities like the genocide in Rwanda and the abuse of the boy-child by numerous priests and fathers and the Pope is on record as having publicly asked for forgiveness worldwide and they now have no moral right to condemn any a donation given to them in good faith unless they have a political agenda.

The SDA on the other side has many members worshipping in many unfinished churches across the country, wouldn’t those donations have gone a long way to help complete some of these projects? Doesn’t our good lord also provide in many mysterious ways?

This is a challenge in most societies in the world. Zambia’s particular circumstances are complicated by a difficult historical relationship between the church and the state.

The state has often used the church to garner votes. The church, on the other hand, has at times given moral and religious sanction that allowed the state to perpetrate significant injustices as was seen in Rwanda, the more reason the church must stay away from active politics but play the role of unifier and adviser. The state and the church both have the responsibility to protect their relationship and peacefully manage it, no other should exploit the other for whatever reason. The issue of church and state relationships remains important for a number of reasons. First, Zambia is a deeply religious society. About 85 percent of its citizens are Christian, while a further eight percent belong to other faiths. Second, it has a clear precedent where an inappropriate relationship between the church and the state led to wide scale human rights abuses during the colonial rule.

There appears to be a re-emergence of the abuse of the trust that Zambians place in religions. This is a dangerous situation. An example is the current dilemma of donations we find ourselves in, you cannot have church leaders that speak as if they are in opposition to government.