Religious excesses 'getting out of hand'; law-backed regulation needed – Opuni-Frimpong

A former General Secretary of the Christian Council of Ghana, Rev Dr. Kwabena Opuni-Frimpong has called on the government to regulate religious excesses in the country because, in his view, “things are getting out of hand.”

According to him, some churches, in the name of religion, are abusing the rights of their members, especially children, and, therefore, there is the need for regulation to restore sanity in the church.

Speaking to Benjamin Akakpo on the Executive Breakfast Show (EBS) on Class91.3FM on Wednesday, 30 January 2019, Rev Opuni-Frimpong noted that just as the Ghana Bar Association and Ghana Journalists Association regulate the activities of lawyers and journalists, respectively, a law-backed body should be set up to regulate the activities of churches in the country.

He said: “We need to regulate religious activities in this country. Things are getting out of hand. It is not only in the areas of investment but in the name of religion, families are now breaking apart. We are having challenges where 13-year-olds and 14-year-olds are being paraded on television and in the name of testimony, they say: ‘I’m a witch’. Do you know the effect on those children?”

“The Minister of Gender, Child and Social Protection must quickly respond to that and what we are doing to Ghanaian children because if a child goes, and under whatever, they put camera on them and they say: ‘I’m a witch’, can that child go back to school and do what in class? They say: ‘I killed my father, I killed my mother’, and, so, social protection must even be on the religious front and the best way to do it is to regulate the excesses that we are witnessing everywhere.”

Rev Opuni-Frimpong continued: “As the Ghana Bar Association is able to do it, as GJA is able to do it, GPRTU and other various professional bodies are able to do it, we must do same.”

He suggested that: “We can have self-regulatory arrangements backed by law. At the moment, what the Christian Council and other bodies are doing are voluntary but we can have an arrangement that has some level of legal backing to self-regulate, and those who will not belong to any of them, the laws of the land must apply because you cannot go in the name of God and prophesy to dehumanise people.”