When the church is defiled

Every day, pastors are captured in creepy escapades. The latest was of one caught pants down in a dingy lodging with someone’s wife.
These sprees are luscious fodder for parody. To the puritans, they are embarrassments. Society is dumbfounded, though a section seems to enjoy the comic relief. But the State, whose territory such theatricals transpires, should be afraid.

Why should the State be fretful of a church on the cross? Didn’t such thinkers as St. Augustine of Hippo and John Locke counsel on the wisdom of separating state and church?

Upon the fall of the Roman Empire, St Augustine penned an incisive treatise City of Man, City of God. He postulated that the Christians should be concerned about the City of God (read heaven) and leave the City of Man to earthlings like emperors. Locke’s exposition, a letter concerning tolerance, dissuades religion and state from interfering with one other.

This doctrine of separation is valid. I would loath if the state controlled my conscience, neither would I be amused if religion manipulated management of the state.

However, you and I inhabit the City of Man, governed by the state, where the church is running an enterprise to ship souls to the City of God. The state should be keen about how agents of religion influence psycho-social orientations.

The power of religion is indisputable. Masses, so desirous of redemption, are always swayed by scriptures. They also hold in high esteem those agents who seek to decode scripture and assist in connecting with divinity.

It is why the history of man has been that of reverence for the deity and the prophet. You hold in contempt a man of God at your own peril. This power to influence the masses bamboozled Karl Marx to later declare religion as the opium of the people.

With this clout, religion is a critical societal element not to be ignored in statecraft.
Religion stabilises society by conditioning the masses – from an early age – to be orderly. Religion takes its battle to the soul, the lair of our conscience, and discourages transgressions against man and God. It is in religion that the family unit, equally vital for stability of society, is sustained. Religion promises penances and recompenses to sinners and the righteous respectively.

This framework, has predisposed mankind into guilty trips upon errs. It has also afforded society to develop broader codes for behaviour called ethics, influencing legal frameworks and respect for authority.

The clergy is a respectable class. Normally, pastors are the first where families run to during crises. Their messages of redemption and a plentiful paradise, resonates too well with masses which are under the duress of earthly injustices – social or economic. In short, religion allows for smooth operation of society.

Sociologist Emile Durkheim aptly noted in his The Elementary Form that religion reinforced the morals and social norms held collectively in society. But religion can only succeed in this enterprise if its agents can demonstrate unimpeachable fidelity and consistency to doctrine.

That is why it’s worrying when agents of God caricature themselves by indulging in abominations in total disregard of scriptures. Their acts nauseate and disturb the stability of society.

Consequently, the population distrusts religion and thereby forfeits all the censures and good counsel. Society becomes beastly. This is acutely treacherous in an environment where the jurisprudence is fragile, society lacks in constitutionalism and worse when there is no hope of economic emancipation.

Thus, states, since they hold power on behalf of the citizenry, will have a hard time managing a people with jungle mentality. That is why a state worth its salt should reign in on this runaway naughtiness exhibited by pastors.

Wall Street ignobility

The problem with our evangelicals, especially those in the Judeo-Christian realm, is that they have gained the Wall Street ignobility of vicious market-place competition. Here, it’s a bare-knuckled sphere with no holds barred in search of the earthly pleasures of material and ego massage.

All these acts are incongruent with scriptures. The contradiction breeds doom and gloom because the icons the masses looked upon as an appellation of the City of God are anything but replicas of Christ. Mahatma Gandhi observed this as well.

What ground does a thieving pastor has to hold a society into account when his fingers are soiled? How can he call for morality when he stinks like a skunk? And whence will such a clergy gain ground to reprimand a straying congregant? Normally, the prophetic voice of the church loses its decibels when matters of flesh overwhelm the spirit.

But it is curious why the religious and intellectual elite have conveniently allowed religion to be sullied. It is scandalising as to why the legal apparatuses tolerates when these sins are committed against state and God. Is the state not worried that the hallowed sanctuaries are convertible to workshops of evil minds?

That is why the state must interrogate to the depths the situation of religion in the polity and put it in the straight and narrow. Priesthood must meet certain thresholds.

Pastors contradicting the scriptures should be banned from practice. Pastors must attain a minimum of bachelor’s degree. This is because priesthood for long has ignored heed to academic sanctity. This explains why interpretation of scriptures is skewed.

Churches should be taxed, unless they prove beyond any shred of doubt that they are engaged in social projects. Finally, there should be a religious self-regulating body to moderate the conduct of pastors. This will help to weed out fraudsters.

Mr Wamanji is a communications specialist