Opinion:
Last week, I woke up to a piece of news from Kampala. I am currently on mission to the land of the prairies – Canada, so everything from home, WhatsApped or Twittered, is gobbled without much scrutiny! (https://spoonerberries.com/) I was informed that the Minister of Ethics and Integrity, Hon Rev Fr Simon Lokodo had called a meeting in which he met a group of pastors, one that goes by the name of TULUMBE, literally, The Attackers, and gave them an ear on his proposed Religious & Faith Based Organizations (RFBOs) policy in Uganda. The group had complained that a “draft” policy, to which they had not contributed had been allowed to circulate, and was about to be passed.
They wanted to express their dissatisfaction at the move by
Government, so he accorded them a whole day to voice their grievances. This
meeting came on the heels of another charged one by yet another group of
Zealots, whose legal advisors opposed the same policy and got pastors worked
up, promising a blood-letting fight in defiance to the Minister and his ‘
impositions’ that they described as ‘smacking of religious freak’. That meeting
was conducted at a local church in Zzana / Namasuba area.
It shall be remembered that these same groups held several
convocations, one at Ndejje University and three in a Kampala City hotel,
denouncing the ‘draft policy’ which they had branded as the ‘Serwadda / Lokodo
Policy’ and calling it, ‘a means to entrench a dilute form of papacy’ in
Uganda. They also attributed its formation to a few individuals, yours truly
being chief, and the Minister of Government being misguided, to unwittingly
fulfilling the desires of a few persons, who wished to create a spot for themselves
in order to ‘lord it over all the churches, regardless of whether they be
independent, denominational or clustered’.
I marvel at the kind of shallowness some pastors exhibit
when they claim that one Christian minister has single-handedly written a law
to suppress others! How on earth can one person, who is not even an MP or
anywhere near the ‘powers that be’ have such influence and cause a whole edict
to be enacted so they can have some form of power over others? The same
blue-eyed individuals went viral with threats that they were taking up the
matter with the real decision makers! One such house of fellowship in the
country has prophecied that some people are going to die over the policy if
they do not withdraw their “evil” plans of harassing the church, but
inadvertently suggest that the churches be governed according to the existing
legal arrangement, namely, the medieval laws some as old as a hundred years!
Where does spiritual blindness end? Ok then, let us do some study.
Many Countries Favor Specific Religions, Officially or
Unofficially
According to a Pew Research Center analysis of
data covering 199 countries and territories around the world, more than 80
countries favor a specific religion, either as an official, government-endorsed
religion or by affording one religion preferential treatment over other faiths.
Islam is the most common government-endorsed faith, with 27 countries
(including most in the Middle East-North Africa region) officially enshrining
Islam as their state religion. By comparison, just 13 countries (including nine
European nations) designate Christianity or a particular Christian denomination
as their state religion.
Now that Uganda has decided to discuss a policy which will
give birth to a law in support of its religious communities, those opposed to
the formation of this policy need to recant their stance and listen to logic
and spiritual wisdom.
In 10 countries, the state either tightly regulates all
religious institutions or is actively hostile to religion in general. These
countries include China, Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam and several former Soviet
republics – places where government officials seek to control worship
practices, public expressions of religion and political activity by religious
groups. On the contrary, some countries, such as the United States, even give
benefits or privileges to religious groups, but generally do so without
systematically favoring a specific group over others.
Russia: A 1997 law on religion recognises the right to
freedom of conscience and creed to all the citizenry, the spiritual
contribution of Orthodox Christianity of the History of Russia, and respect to
“Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Judaism, and other religions and creeds
which constitute an inseparable part of the historical heritage of Russia’s
peoples. According to the Russian law, any religious organisation may be
recognised as “traditional” if it was already in existence before
1982. Russia has been defined by the scholar Eliot Borenstein as the “Southern
California of Europe” because of such a blossoming of new religious
movements, and the latter are perceived by the Russian Orthodox Church as
competitors in a “war for souls”. However, the multiplicity of
religions in Russia have been traditional components of Russian identities for
hundreds of years, contributing to a long-established ethno-cultural pluralism.
Argentina, for much of its history and including the present
day, has been an overwhelmingly “Christian” country. The largest denomination
in the country is Roman Catholicism. The historical background is very much due
to the Spanish influence brought about through the newly conquered territories.
However, immigration throughout the 20th century has brought other
denominations from various regions to Argentina. Overall, a 2008 survey found
that 24% attended religious services regularly, and that 10.3% described
themselves as atheist, agnostics, or having no religion. Only 35% of Argentines
consider religion to be very important in their lives according to a 2015
report. Argentina is also home to the largest Muslim community in Latin
America, numbering at around 400,000 people or 1% of the total population.
According to the last Latinobarómetro survey, as of 2017, 76% of the population
of Argentina is Christian, 66% of which belong to the Roman Catholic Church,
10% is Pentecostal / Evangelical, 21% are unaffiliated and 3% belong to other
religions.
Saudi Arabia: The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is an Islamic
theocracy governed by an absolute monarchy. Sunni Islam is the official State
Religion based on Sharia Law. Even though no law requires all citizens to be
Muslim, but non-Muslims and many foreign and Saudi Muslims whose beliefs are
deemed not to conform with the government’s interpretation of Islam must practice
their religion in private and are vulnerable to discrimination, harassment,
detention, and, for noncitizens, deportation. Children born to Muslim fathers
are by law deemed Muslim, and conversion from Islam to another religion is
considered apostasy, and yes, punishable by death.
Blasphemy against Sunni Islam is also punishable by death, but the more common penalty is a long prison sentence. According to the U.S. Department of State 2013 Report on International Religious Freedom, there have been ‘no confirmed reports of executions for either apostasy or blasphemy’ between 1913 and 2013. A Saudi court sentenced a Palestinian man, Ashraf Fayadh to death for apostasy on November 17, 2015, for alleged blasphemous statements during a discussion group and in a book of his poetry. There is no confirmation whether the sentence was meted out to him.
Religious freedom in Saudi Arabia, is virtually
non-existent. The Government does not provide legal recognition or protection
for freedom of religion, and it is severely restricted in practice. As a matter
of policy, the Government guarantees and protects the right to private worship
for all, including non-Muslims who gather in homes for religious practice;
however, this right is not always respected in practice and is not defined in
law.
The Al – Mutaween or Committee for the Promotion of Virtue
and the Prevention of Vice, uses the Saudi Religious Police to enforce the
prohibition of the public practice of non-Muslim religions, though their powers
were significantly curtailed in April 2016. The Shariah Law practice
applies to all people inside Saudi Arabia, regardless of religion.
While I am deeply gratified that the Government has acted
wisely in quietly and maturely handling the issue, I am appalled at the
ignorance of some of our pastors as to how the Government works, and lack of
foresight in matters of safeguarding our interests! That said, the State has
had its fair share of religious issues and could have enacted a law without
even consulting with the stake-holders. We have been given a golden chance to
chart out our own future. The policy that is now before the entire nation,
being discussed by the same pastors and all the stakeholders, offers all
religious groups in Uganda an opportunity to exist perpetually and an
unhindered shot at self-regulation.
In the Bible, the book of Esther 8:5-11 comes in handy at
this time. “And Esther said, “If it pleases the king, and if I have found favor
in his sight and the thing seems right to the king and I am pleasing in his
eyes, let it be written to revoke the letters devised by Haman, the son of
Hammedatha the Agagite, which he wrote to annihilate the Jews who are in all
the king’s provinces. Then King Ahasuerus said to Queen Esther and
Mordecai the Jew, “Indeed, I have given Esther the house of Haman, and they
have hanged him on the gallows because he tried to lay his hand on the Jews.
You yourselves write a decree concerning the Jews, [a]as you please, in the
king’s name, and seal it with the king’s signet ring; for whatever is written
in the king’s name and sealed with the king’s signet ring no one can
revoke.” So the king’s scribes were called at that time, in the third
month, which is the month of Sivan, on the twenty-third day; and it was
written, according to all that Mordecai commanded, to the Jews, the satraps,
the governors, and the princes of the provinces from India to Ethiopia, one
hundred and twenty-seven provinces in all, to every province in its own script,
to every people in their own language, and to the Jews in their own script and language.
And he wrote in the name of King Ahasuerus, sealed it with the king’s signet
ring, and sent letters by couriers on horseback, riding on royal horses [b]bred
from swift steeds. By these letters the king permitted the Jews who were
in every city to gather together and protect their lives—to destroy, kill, and
annihilate all the forces of any people or province that would assault them,
both little children and women, and to plunder their possessions.
The moral of the Biblical story is: when an opportunity
avails itself, and a king offers you a shot at your destiny, have them
write!
I hear the Minister has called one final but extremely
serious stake-holders’ meeting next week to read, edit and finally approve of
the proposed policy! We are being allowed to contribute to the future of
our faith and how our churches will be run! That is unfathomable! The
draft policy is now a public document and can be accessed by all that wish to
wet their appetite How the religions want to conduct their ‘spiritual’ business
is none of Government’s concern and they are leaving the matter to us to
decide.
The Balokole have one task: take a decision to
respect one another and chart a way forward for yourselves. This Government,
for once, is about to perform an act that is a life changer! This policy will
eventually be turned into an edict that will forever be iconic. I so
deduce!
Dr. Joseph Serwadda
Presiding Apostle – Born Again Faith.
