Rescue women from religious charlatans

Rescue women from religious charlatans
Daily Graphic, Tuesday, February, 2, 2010; Page 9
Kofi Bentum Quantson

This is not about women physically locked up in prisons or police cells through a default of the criminal justice system.

Neither is it about women virtually physically confined to homes of abusive and violent men courtesy of an outmoded cultural environment that bars them from breaking free into freedom.

And it is not about women burdened with totally collapsed or clearly unworkable marriages from which they cannot escape because of ancient religious taboos imposed by male chauvinist centuries ago. Nor is t it about women, who out of fatal love, or actual compassion, have rescued themselves to the domination of men who treats them like beasts of burden or men or articles of decoration to satisfy social commitments, or equipment for their crude sexual appetites.

This is about women in the captivity of organized and commercialised religious crooks and charlatans. These are vulnerable women whose truck loads of spiritual, psychological and emotional problems drive them into deceitful but welcome arms of spurious pastors, prophets, miracle-working evangelists and so on.

These women are easily identifiable. The form the bulk of the membership of the so-called spiritual or charismatic churches and a host of prayer camps and temples all over the country.

You will find many them on Wednesday, Thursdays and Fridays, in white headgear or white tops, hugging bottles and containers of “holy water” for drinking and for washing away evil.

Or canes or leather whips for lashing the devil during All Night sessions. Also in the luggage will be olive oil and perfume, usually florida water for protecting against satanic spirits and attracting God’s angels like St. Michael, St. Gabriel and St. George.

Some of these women are full-time members of the spiritual groups. Others belong to the “Traditional Churches,” but patronize these groups on part-time basis. So typically on Sundays they would dress gorgeously “to go and worship God,” then on other days they would go for prayers.

But who have captured these women? They are the charlatans, crooks and fraudsters who have turned true religion into the unholy mechanism for deceiving and duping gullible people, especially our women folk.

You will hear some of them on the airwaves polluting the atmosphere with screams and threats of hell; advertising the awful powers of the devil and how helpless people are unless they, the religious crooks, intervene. That is the type of men of slavery which subjects the vulnerable and gullible into a state of chronic fear and despair that is fascism in perverted religion.

You can see some of them on television displaying swanky fashionable shirts or elaborated pontified costumes, some weird and ridiculous. And of course you cannot miss their very practiced sermonisation and their drama-style physical posturing.

You will find some of them too, the itinerant ones, in buses, tro-tros, at the market, lorry stations and so on. Some typify every aspect of negative aspect of religious practices that should not be encouraged.

Especially where because of the mounting craze for miracles, some resort to underhand satanic magical procedures to deceive people that is that power of God and the Holy Spirit in action. That is damnable miracles have become the trick for criminal exploitation.

All that aside, they way they scream out their skewed understanding of misinterpretation of scripture contains seeds for political trouble. In this age of ICT, how do go about preaching that some people are God’s chosen people and that all others are destined for the roaring fires of Lucifer’s hell.

How do you insist that we should all cross River Jordan to reach Jerusalem, the headquarters of Heaven, where on Judgment Day, we will all line-up to be judged? That is subtle religious subversion. Christians, Moslems, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, Agnostics, Athesists, Pagans, Nihilists and so on. As many people have traveled far and wide can confirm the kind of Christianity we are practicing and developing, can, if not checked, lead to serious religious consequences. The reason is clear. We seem to be drifting further from the very simple directive given by the Master Christian Himself, Jesus the Christ.

When asked by His disciples which is the greatest commandment, His answers was clear, simple and direct, Love the Lord, with everything you have. Then love your neighbour as yourself. I repeat. This directive is clear, very clear. So why are Christians creating and multiplying problems with all sort of theories and weird practices that are distracting us from the master’s path and actually leading us astray? No wonder the expensive joke that the devil in on vacation because organized religion is busy accomplishing the devil’s task.

Did the Master not teach His disciples that “if you ask my Father anything in my name, He will grant it”? So are not surprised to hear, in many churches, screaming appeals and supplications to the Master Jesus Himself, and not to the Father in
Jesus’ name?

The really distressing aspect is those who shout instructions to God, ordering Him on how He should run His would. As if it is mortal man who created the world. The most terrible part of this impudent blasphemy are those who actually order God to destroy or kill the perceived enemies.

Where is mortal man heading?

Indeed, it is baffling that we choose to ignore the central principle that God is one. That He is the Source of All Life and the Author of all Creation. His sun shines on everybody and everything. The Lord’s prayer taught by the Master should be better appreciated. “Our father,” not your father or my father, Our father… Amen.

But all that is not my immediate worry. My work is about the way some of our vulnerable women are being exploited by religious crooks, imposters and charlatans in the name of God. It is an enslavement more destructive than the physical bondage of chains and handcuffs. Because this works like an invisible poisonous tranquilising substance, eating away slowly but surely and subverting the very being of our women folk. It is a deadly cancerous danger.

I do not think all women’s rights advocates have fully comprehended this aspect of destruction of our mothers, our wives and our sisters. If they have, I wonder whether they are responding productively. We should not wait for some foreign-based NGOs to come and organise seminars and pay us per diem before we suddenly bristle with alacrity!

So let’s take a leaf from that wise man. Destroy man and you destroy an individual. Destroy a woman and you destroy a nation.