On a recent episode of Pieces of the Portrait, popular women’s advocate, fashionista and talent show host, Linda Yaa Ampah, asked a soul-searching question that shook the very foundations of the Christian faith.
Linda wanted to know whether Christianity has helped us or made us worse.
She asked: “What have we gained from Christianity?”. Her host, a respectable Christian lady, dignified her question with an equally worrying explanation.
Blaming the devil, she said Christians go to church these days not out of joy, but do so grudgingly, stressing that church is not like before. She cites manipulation, self-gain and “the twisting of the gospel”.
Wither Christianity
In the same week, Osofo Kyiri Abosom, a controversial man of God who made an audacious attempt at Ghana’s presidency, went viral for sending an earth-shattering message to Dr Mensah Otabil of ICGC, warning that anybody who uses the name of Jesus and the Bible to preach is a fraudster.
He is also reported to have said that Heaven and Hell are scams and that Jesus did not die for Christians of today.
The blood of Jesus, according to him, means nothing.
The preacher disputed the omnipresence of God and offered a fanciful prognosis that God only exists in our brain and in our heart.
He also wonders why Ghana needs a National Prayer Day.
When practitioners and devotees start questioning the very axis and the foundations on which their faith stands, these are indications of serious cracks that threaten the future of the faith. The concerns appeared to have reached a crescendo when a very respected Christian leader, Rev Eastwood Anaba, recently questioned the modern Christian attitude: “These days, we are running churches without Jesus. The way we do church today, even unbelievers can set up church, gather and speak that language that looks like church. Everything is so professional, organised and mechanized, instead of spiritualized.”
Church, crusades and marriages are organized without his presence, he regretted.
These concerns and other excesses we have tolerated about Christianity and other Abrahamic religions, should have engaged the thinking of Christians and Muslims when we recently witnessed a social media crossfire between a Muslim cleric and a Christian leader.
Thankfully, our religious leaders gathered to skillfully abort what could have been a national disaster.
It was beautiful watching Imams, pastors and government persons shake hands and hug each other to bring to a peaceful end disagreements and suspicions we have always pretended never existed.
In our traditional system, when our elders call a matter settled, it is duly settled, except when an overzealous gong-gong beater ruffles the old feathers of a dead matter that was perhaps never dead.
Elders may sit again until a powerful arbiter calls the truce.
We bend over backwards to call the process peaceful and resolve to live with the verdict, to please the spirits yonder. That is traditional wisdom.
National religion
We were happy to have settled our differences on that day, and praised our revered national chief Imam and other peacemakers for successfully managing those uncomfortable moments.
In the Abrahamic religions, especially in Christianity and Islam, these conflict resolution structures have worked over the years. However, we can’t pretend we didn’t exhaust that discussion entirely.
We have some homework to do, to make our peace-loving nature as Ghanaians count properly, especially when 71.3% of us profess Christ while some 19.9% are Muslims.
We are people of faith, even if our constitution says we are secular because we do not have an official national religion. Our laws guarantee freedom of worship for everybody.
Perhaps, we mistaken this freedom of worship as a license to turn many sacred things on their heads, and in the process opened up our faith for unhelpful scrutiny and harsh commentary.
In a social media era, these commentaries may have unintended consequences, like the near religious collision we almost witnessed.
What we learnt from that process, or pretended to have missed, is that the religions with the biggest following in Ghana have a lot to worry about what goes on inside their camps, than bother about how other religions see their spiritual heads.
There is more that unites Christians and Muslims than what divides them, the two being siblings from Father Abraham, and descendants of Isaac, Ishmael and Keturah.
Social Media Sermons
Christians have a lot to worry about how to define a workable structure in the propagation of the gospel in a social media era. How do we gate-keep alarming and funny prophecies, and weed out dodgy characters and charlatans? By now, we should properly certify who qualifies to preach or set up a church in Ghana.
Our Muslim brothers should be able to stamp their feet on extremists who project the religion for what it is not.
Beyond protecting the Holy name of Mohammed (Peace and Blessings of Allah be upon him), Muslims should guard their interactions with other faiths, to be able to win their respect for Islam, not threaten lethal backlash when Christians get it wrong about the Prophet. They may be innocent.
Rather than threatening the wrath of God or merely sermonizing about what true Christianity should look like, Christians should recognise the fierce urgency of standing up for their faith and biting hard the hands of those who speak down on Jesus, such as Kyiri Abosom.
They must end the cantata of prophecies about who will win the next presidential elections. Christians should get their church back.
By KWESI TAWIAH-BENJAMIN
Tissues Of The Issues
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Ottawa, Canada
