Regulating the church

What will make a normal adult male have sex with a pregnant sheep? The answer is difficult to conceptualize, but according to Circuit Judge Benjamin Osei Yaw, sitting at a Fiapre Circuit Court, it could be for' Sakawa' or a means of seeking voodoo help for 20 year-old Gordon Yeboah, a self-styled evangelist, who was standing trial for having carnal knowledge of the animal at Ampehia, near Abesim in the Brong Ahafo Region.

Yeboah was sentenced to seven years in jail and joins a tall list of so-called men of God doing time in prison, and calls into question the conduct of people who use the pulpit as a gold mine, in the course of which all manner of crimes are committed.

Prophet Kofi Yirenkyi, aka Jesus One-Touch, General Overseer of the Jesus Blood Prohetic Ministry with its headquarters in Accra, is doing time at Nsawam. He was found guilty of regularly sexually abusing his own 10-year-old daughter.

There is the case of Bishop Vaglas Kanco, Presiding Bishop of the Vineyard International Ministry in Accra, who was found guilty and jailed for defrauding a British national, Ms. Sutherland of 120,000 pounds sterling. According to the prosecution, he asked for the cheque to pray over it and managed to cash it.

The pulpit is becoming the route that unscrupulous people are using to commit all manner of crimes. As a result of the nature of religion, whose adherents are supposed to believe without questioning, criminal-minded people are using the Bible to defraud society.

The Chronicle is calling for a system of regulating the mushrooming of churches in this country. The state must be interested in how these churches are registered and how they operate. We are aware of the right to freedom of worship as cornerstone of building a free and unregulated society.

We are beginning to get the hunch though, that the unfettered freedom to worship is being abused. All manner of criminals are using the church to visit pain on innocent Ghanaians. Stories abound of men and of God using their power of influence to seduce people's wives and creating all manner of problems for otherwise happy families.

The Chronicle, is calling for some form of regulation for churches. We would like to believe that the time has come when churches would have to be registered. The Ghana Pentecostal Council, for instance, could be empowered to draw up a code of conduct for emerging spiritual churches.

There must be an age limit and basic qualifications for people establishing churches in the country. We believe that it would form the basis for regulating the conduct of men and women who use their religious credentials to visit all manner of problems on innocent members of their congregation.

We do not believe there is any profession or calling in which people just enter without going through some form of training. One goes through training before graduating to become a tailor, seamstress or a hair-dresser. It is only natural that priests, pastors and prophets are made to go through some form of training. The word of God should not continue to be exploited by evil-minded human beings to exploit society, with the rest of us looking on.