Ghana’s Politician-Priests: Mockingbirds Without Moral Credibility

I find it very distressing to watching some Ghanaians become string-puppets to the moral lectures of some of our nation’s priests. If religion is indeed an opiate of the masses, then suffice it to say that Karl Marx was thinking about our nation’s deceitful priests when he, first, discovered his theory on delusional religiousity and its convulsive impact on our thought processes. As predicted, some of the nation’s pastors, including Duncan Williams, have already attributed the president’s recent accident to noumenality without offering any proof to support their obscure religious sermons. Duncan Williams’ harping reminds me of Odifuo Kwadjo Sarfo’s media publicity on his technological inventions which, to me, was nothing but a toddler’s assembling of miniature-toys for a paycheck. When the treasure chest of a church runs dry, politics becomes a viable alternative to supplement the earnings of needy priests.

Since when did the nation’s fake doctorate-flaunting pastors become God’s vicars? If Duncan Williams could read God’s mind, as he seems to imply, why couldn’t he predict, and advise himself on how to salvage, his doomed marriage? Was the God of Pastor Duncan Williams sleeping when the glitzy pastor was sending Him letters for holy guidance? Or, is this another case of the Prophet Hosea? As a nation, we have allowed ourselves to believe that the Pastor Duncan Williams’ failed marriage was another sign of God’s plans for humanity. Well, I am happy that I am not part of subdued minds who accept self-serving sermons that coax the human mind into unending slavery. In my opinion, the nation’s charismatic ecclesiastic guild is swamped with dancing-pastors who recite biblical verses to hold their church members in awe.

While some of our nation’s entrepreneurial-pastors see the church as a passage to access social respectability, their moral conduct hardly meets the basic requirements of priesthood. In the Ghanaian context, the inadequacy of the state in addressing to the basic needs of society has bestowed unworthy recognition on some of the nation’s many capitalist-pastors. I am shocked to see a six-month doctorate pastor jump from one radio station to another to lecture an entire nation on the correlation between alternative lifestyles and the spread of HIV/AIDS. How many of these pastors condemn homosexuality as a perversion of Christian values, yet defend their own infidelity? Expediently, these pastors are quick to cite King Solomon’s infatuation with women to justify their own moral transgressions. In my opinion, the devil has nothing to do with the inability of our nation’s pastors to contain their unruly rod, and desire to test the effectiveness of their sausages on female church members.

In the twenty-first century, some Ghanaian Churches are criminal cohorts of the reviled state in perpetuating social inequalities. Like the Ghanaian state, some churches twist, and magnify, the spiritual evils in our heartless nation as a way to endear themselves to their weak-minded congregation. With an avowed commitment to becoming part of a new paradise, certain Ghanaian churchgoers have been forced to disinvest in the children’s education and, instead, invest their lifetime earnings on pastors who care less about their wellbeing. In the West, we have seen some Ghanaian pastors refuse to return home when their contract ends. As an alternative, they create their own churches with the excuse that the "God of Abraham" has ordered them to serve Him in the West. According to these pastors, their dreams are spiritual visions from God, and an invitation to do His work. Interestingly, since coming to the West, some Ghanaian pastors dream everyday, and communicate God’s changing commandments to their church members on Sunday.

In democratic Ghana I am yet to see any meaningful role that the nation’s emerging churches have played in solving the country’s many perplexing questions, and acute human misery. If anything, what some of the nation’s churches have done is to “nigerianize” their biblical teachings, and to compel the faithful to submit to institutional exploitation. While Liberation Theology is key in leading reforms in certain countries, Ghana’s consumerist-pastors have become overweight leeches who bleed their church members of their economic bloodline without any shame. Matter of fact, some of the nation's churches have become shrines where suspected witches are tortured to confess to crimes they have not committed. In the mind of these pastor-politicians, confining accused witches, who are predominantly women, and poor, is their way of extorting accused “witches’” children in the diaspora. In twenty-first century Ghana, some of the nation’s self-styled priests chain their victims to the trees without any intervention from the state, even when our criminal laws prohibit such a practice? It is also a known fact that one of the nation’s pastors who infamously chained suspected witches to trees at the Sunyani Bethel Mission was an ex-police officer. Who polices the church when the priest becomes the principal violator of the church’s moral stipulations, and the nation’s criminal law on involuntary confinement?

Priests who prey on the vulnerability of their congregants must be treated like petty criminals. To allow some of the nation’s charismatic churches to afflict undue punishment on innocent citizens is an injustice in itself. As to whether the state is prepared to constrain the activities of these pastors is another story, especially when they serve as spiritual advisors to some of the nation’s politicians. A church must liberate, and not oppress, the people. It must empower the weak to challenge societal injustice, and not condone oppressive conducts that make mockery of God, and make humanity question His existence and divine munificence.

To project God’s good image requires pastors to reassert their moral values by shunning the company of the nation’s corrupt politicians. They must also speak out against their binge spending on inconsequential campaign promises while many citizens grit their teeth in penury. Can our nation’s inglorious pastors ignore the bonuses that come with sitting, at the podium, with our pot-belly politicians? Can they reject the smell of the greenish dollar, and do what is morally right, and ought to be done, in the name of God? In my opinion, many Ghanaian pastors would prefer to die with a dollar in their “rigormortized” hands. To them, dying a rich man is an affirmation of God’s blessing, and the belief that one could enjoy their earthly possessions in heaven, if, indeed, one really exists.

The Ghanaian Christian community needs pastors who have the moral influence, and urbane spiritual values, to steer our nation from the irreverence we see in the nation’s churches. Piety is synonymous with God. To bear the cross of evangelism, one must love humanity, and reject the trappings of millennial materialisms. To suggest otherwise, and contend that the size of God’s blessing is determined by one’s generous financial offers to the church is sacrilegious and an indictment on twenty-century Ghanaian church-politics. To exalt God for every good thing, and accuse the devil for one’s moral indiscretion is one of the many defense mechanisms used by the nation’s devious pastors to extend their abuse of humankind. Hope all is well. Good day and cheers.

Views expressed by the author(s) do not necessarily reflect those of GhanaHomePage.