Building National Cathedral For Ghana: A Confusion Of Mundane And Exoteric

I am unapologetically a Christian. I am also a conservative Christian, holding the unwavering belief that Jesus Christ is the only way to eternal bliss. I also believe that godliness is relevant for all human beings, since at the heart of every human being is God consciousness. Atheism is, therefore, a delusion of the highest level. In fact, it takes faith to be an atheist, since the disbelief in God and the method of proving it is barely supported by the rigorous of scientific or empirical methods. In the same way, theistic belief is also hinged on faith, since while God is knowable; an exhaustible knowledge of God is not at the disposal of man. Thus, whether atheism or theism, faith is fundamental. It is, therefore, a show of arrogance on the part of atheists to taunt religious people for making faith the fountainhead of religion.

Much as I confess Christianity, I am strongly convinced that faith and reason must be carefully balanced. Any tilt in one direction as against the other would have a serious implication for human survival. Throughout the ages, some deep thinkers have underscored the need to hold extreme faith or extreme reason in check. Albert Einstein was right, he averred that, “Science without religion is lame, and religion without science is blind.” Anytime we had a lopsided stance in our appropriation of faith and science, we had societies that lacked progress.

It is, therefore, a matter of logic to explain why both the Arabs and Europeans had their Jahilliyyah and Dark Ages respectively. These episodic moments in the history of the Arabs and Europeans were as a consequence of religion/superstition dominating commonsense. Thus, during the period of Jahiliyyah and the Dark Ages, the development of science was halted. The results: barbarism!

In both the case of the Arabs and the Europeans, the recourse to science, following the revival of Greek logic, critical thinking, and science provided a clear balance for faith and reason. The end result was the scientific revolution. The Europeans over the years have advanced in science, and dwindled in faith, and as a result have technologically developed, but morally wanting. The Arabs have advanced in religion, and fallen short in science, and as a result trailing technologically.

Aside ancient Egypt (perhaps, Egyptian exceptionalism), Africa has not made any significant progress in the field of technology. We are superstitious. We blindly follow religion. We are also slaves of some imposed mythologies that have hindered our progress. For a very long time, Africans have always explained what appears to be scientifically explicable through the means of religion. Religion excites Africans. Religion is at the core of life in Africa.

Beginning from the 1960s when the study of African religions was casted in a new favourable light, following the foray of Africans into scholarship, scholars such as John Mbiti, Geoffrey Parrinder, Kofi Asare Opoku, and Bolaji Idowu opined that Africans are deeply religious. They asserted that in Africa, religion is so pervasive that life is religion and religion is life. That religion held a strong sway over Africans meant that Africans had little space for scientific revolution. This partly explains the technological backwardness of Africans. Usually, Africans have pacified their underachievement in the area of technology by holding colonialism guilty. But after over five decades of the end of colonialism, couldn’t Africans have reversed the negativities of colonialism? Couldn’t Africans have developed in spite of colonialism? Why is it that Africans have always lagged behind in the race against scientific backwardness? The answer: elevating religion over science!

Part of the reason for Africa’s technological backwardness is superstition. Throughout the centuries, Africans have had the proclivity to explain natural phenomenon in light of religion. Any ‘mysterious’ event that could be rationalized through the application of commonsense has been analysed through the prism of religion. Following the superstitious bent of Africans, some charlatans have always masqueraded as saints to fleece Africans. All the so-called impinging religions – Christianity and Islam – have been contaminated by the superstition of Africans. Most African leaders of Christianity and Islam have taken advantage of the failure of their fellow Africans to think outside of the religious box to dupe their fellow Africans.

The churches and the mosques never lacks deceptive men and women who use Islam and Christianity, especially, as a charade to enrich themselves at the expense of their members. Unfortunately, even after these clergy have duped their congregants to amass wealth, they do not invest the wealth productively. Thus, while the Protestant Ethic, which encourages industriousness, frugality, and investment, which Max Weber analysed as the spirit of capitalism, the weakness among Africans to think has resulted in the reverse in the Protestant Ethic. As I said, in Africa, the clergy use deception to fleece their members to accumulate wealth, and after the wealth is accumulated, they spend it on fickle materialism, and do not invest. From this perspective, is it any wonder that Africans are still trailing behind in the race against underdevelopment? Is it also a surprise that after decades of political independence Africans are still unable to undo the colonial legacies of underdevelopment, characterized by high rate of illiteracy, poor sanitation and squalid living conditions, high levels of poverty, and political instability?

On the occasion of Ghana’s 60^th independence anniversary, I was taken aback when I read that the nation of Ghana was going to build a national cathedral for the Christian community. I felt Ghanaians, led by their president, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufu-Addo, had betrayed commonsense, and largely confused mundane and exoteric dimensions. I felt a sense of shame, because my country had failed to draw a line of distinction between the religious space and political space. I felt that Ghana had retrogressed in applying commonsense. More importantly, the nation had failed to properly diagnose the causes of the country’s underachievement.

A common observation would clear our minds that the cause of our poor performance as a nation, after six decades of political independence, is not the absence of a national religious shrine. In fact, the length and breadth of Ghana are abundantly littered with churches and mosques. Depending on which region in Ghana you find yourself – whether in the Northern part of the country or Southern part of the country, churches and mosques are the most obvious religious edifices one is likely to see. The ubiquitous presence of mosques, for example is deeply felt in Muslim-dominated communities. In most Zongo communities, there are so many mosques that spaces that could have been used to provide accommodation for the teeming population in Zongo communities have been used to build mosques.

A classical lack of critical thinking, especially in the Muslim community is the use of what we used to called Montreal Park, Kanda, for the construction of a mosque. After the mosque at Makola was destroyed during Rawlings’ regime, the Muslims were given Montreal Park to construct a new mosque in 1995. The park, which was the site for football games for the youth in Maamobi and Nima, and the surrounding communities, was finally used for the construction of a mosque. When the leaders of the Muslim communities wanted to build a mosque, more than a decade ago, some of us suggested that the land could be used to build a university, which could serve dual purposes –academic and religious –, or heart and head. Unfortunately, that advice went unheeded, and as we speak, the Muslim community would soon dedicate a grand mosque in the midst of abject poverty. For me, the presence of the mosque in an urban slum is like a drop in the desert. Is this a case of religion prevailing over commonsense?

Since the liberalization of the political space in Ghana in 1992, the Christians have also been very much engrossed in building huge churches, which are usually occupied by persons who can simply not afford three square meal a day. All over Ghana, Christians have concentrated on building breathtaking churches, while their members wallow in abject poverty. Even when it suddenly dawned on the Christian community that they had to have more tertiary institutions to support education in Ghana, the intention of having such institutions was largely economic. Again, the leaders of most of these churches used their institutions of higher learning to advance their insatiable quest for epicurean lifestyle. Sadly, most poor church members cannot send their children to universities built with their tithes and offering. Is this not an unquestionable show of lack of commonsense?

Mr. President, the challenges that have burdened Ghana’s development are not the absence of a national cathedral. The problem is the absence of men, who are critical thinkers, who would transcend beyond the myopic and superstitious inkling of Africans. In my own assessment, the problem of Ghana, and by extension Africa, is religious superstition. Ghana needs men and women, who would not pursue cheap populism, but rather apply commonsense in their activities. Ghana needs a leader, who will “think like a man of action, and act like a man of thought” (Henri Bergson). Ghanaians are always praying. Every limited space in Ghana becomes a site for prayer. The religious fervor is that even on our secular university campuses, most students spend precious hours supposedly praying to God, instead of learning to excel in their academic pursuit.

After decades of praying, morality has taken a nosedive. Corruption, the greatest antithesis of development, has eaten deeply into the social fabric of Ghana. Ghana is about 70% Christian and 17% Muslim, and all of them are praying, and yet Ghana is still at the ebb of development. Ghana is morally sick, because our failure to carefully blend godliness and reason has robbed us of progress. Mr. President, just like the reformation in Europe, Ghanaian religions need a reformation that would purge the country of religious charlatans, and also free Ghanaians from the jaws and shackles of superstition. Godliness, not religion is what Ghana needs. We don’t need the superficiality of a religious shrine. We don’t need political opportunism over personal conviction!

Satyagraha
Charles Prempeh ( [email protected] ), African University College of Communications, Accra