Bishop Charles Agyinasare has said it is ungodly and unbiblical for pastors to touch or fondle the genitalia of church members whom they lay hands on for healing and other miracles.
The Perez Chapel International founder told his congregation on Sunday, 29 April at the Perez Dome, Dzorwulu, that such pastors only take advantage of their church members.
Bishop Agyinasare warned that if the trend is not checked, it could spell doom for Ghana and the Christian community.
“As a nation, if we don’t do something about our Christian ministry, very soon we’ll be recording a Jim Jones – (An American pastor who founded the Peoples Temple cult and caused over 900 of his followers to commit revolutionary suicide in Guyana in November 1978) – because we have all kinds of people [in Christian ministry].
“If you google right now, you’ll see a pastor who told a church member, a woman, to remove her panties in church. How do you tell a woman to remove her panties in church? If the person is not your wife, even in private you don’t tell the person to remove their panties,” Bishop Agyinasare deplored.
He said: “Mostly some of these problems are caused by people under the guise of working miracles or delivering people from demons”, adding: “It is true Jesus said in His name we would cast out devils and lay hands on the sick, but He did not say we would put the demon possessed in chains like it is happening in some prayer camps. He did not say we would give them concoctions to be delivered like some are spraying insecticides into the mouth of church members for deliverance [while] others are given toilet detergents – Dettol – to drink”.
Bishop Agyinasare said it was inappropriate for pastors of the opposite sex to grope church members under any circumstance. “Others who are men are laying hands on ladies breasts and their genitalia. If a man has to pray for a problem on the breast of the opposite sex, he must let the woman lay her hands on the affliction and he lays his hand on her hand. He can also call another lady to lay hands on this person and he lays his hands on the other hand. Some women pastors are bathing men. What if something happens and the man rapes them? The lady pastor must get a man to minister to this man”, he advised.
“There are many people doing all kinds of crazy things calling it a prophetic act”, he complained, and urged the Ministry of Religious Affairs to “strengthen the Church Councils: Catholic Secretariat, Christian Council, Ghana Pentecostal & Charismatic Council, National Association of Christian & Charismatic Churches etc., to question the integrity of pastors who do not want to be members of the council”.
Government, Bishop Agyinasare said, “should only recognise pastors belonging to the councils. You can’t bless marriage or deal with government in the position of a pastor if you do not belong to any of the councils”.
In his view, just as the Religious Affairs Ministry of Zambia was able to stop a popular South African artiste who normally performs naked from entering that country, and also stopped a pastor whose visit the government saw as inimical to Christendom in the southern African country, so must Ghana also.
“I think it is time Ghana stood up and did some things. There are pastors using their legs to stomp women’s stomachs, and anointing women’s ‘something’, and if you’re a woman and you allow a pastor to anoint your ‘somewhere’, you, too, are you not a fool? Because he is a pastor? We’re allowing all kinds of things under freedom of worship; one of these days, we’ll see things we’re not supposed to see. There are pastors in other places giving people cockroaches to eat, snakes to eat, some pastors are stepping on people and all kinds of things. Most of the pastors who do this are just in the cities, you don’t find them in the villages because in the villages, they won’t get anything, they want to take advantage of people, because we’ve come to a place where people think that gaining is godliness,” he noted.
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