Church leaders should keep off political talk

Apr 12, 2010

WHENEVER I attend Sunday mass at Rubaga, I find Archbishop Cyprian Lwanga’s religious summons most inspiring. Unfortunately, his political lectures at the pulpit tend to be partisan and divisive. I wonder why this man of God does not stick to what he knows best — religious summons.

By Kintu Nyago

WHENEVER I attend Sunday mass at Rubaga, I find Archbishop Cyprian Lwanga’s religious summons most inspiring. Unfortunately, his political lectures at the pulpit tend to be partisan and divisive. I wonder why this man of God does not stick to what he knows best — religious summons.

For instance in his controversial Easter Sunday political message, he asked Buganda to seek independence from Uganda. He said Buganda could do this through an arrangement similar to the 1929 Lateran Treaties and Concordat worked out between Italy’s fascist, atheist war criminal Benito Mussolini and the Catholic Church’s aristocracy. This created the 109 acre Vatican city state. For this the Vatican legitimised Mussolini’s autocratic hold on power and proclaimed that he ruled by ‘divine providence’.

However, Dr. Lwanga conveniently, forgot to inform his congregation that the arrangement between Mussolini and the Vatican compromised the latter, to the extent that then reigning Popes Pius XI and XII kept quiet amid the gross human rights abuses deliberately conducted by fascist states, ranging from Franco’s Spain to Hitler’s Germany. Abuses that included the holocaust and Operation Baborrossa.

In a secular democracy like Uganda, religious leaders should not use their pulpits to propagate political messages. Religions follow a dogmatic creed which stifles free debate. Furthermore, historically, the politicisation of religion has resulted into political intolerance and tragic consequences. This was so with the medieval crusaders. Indeed the intolerant creed of Mackay (Makayi) and Lourdel (Mapera) bred Buganda’s 19th Century religious wars.

This consolidated Uganda’s tragic culture of religious sectarianism, which President Museveni and the NRM have done so much to eradicate. As is reflected through the NRM administration’s deliberate attempt to accommodate the political representation of Catholics, Muslims and Anglicans. The intrusion of religion into politics in Uganda as in the main society offered murky results.

The Anglican and Catholic missionaries were the torch bearers of colonial rule and its so called patronising civilising mission. And their so-called missionary work offered the ideological justification of Pax Britannica in Uganda.

They supported and benefited from the 1900 Buganda Agreement, a social and political injustice which ensured that a few handful chiefs, and these churches, expropriated Buganda’s land at the expense of the majority. All this was clearly not in the spirit of Christian brotherhood. And incidentally the church was never known to oppose or even criticise the worst excesses of colonialism in Africa.

Certainly, the venerate Catholic Archbishop, Joseph Kiwanuka, must have turned in his grave at Dr. Lwanga’s Easter Sunday political utterances. For in 1962 Kiwanuka opposed the politicisation of the Kabaka, and supported the creation of a secular unitary and democratic Uganda, views contained in his famous pastoral letter of that year.

The Church can only be justified to partake in politics when society is faced by arbitrary dictatorial rule, where dissent and normal political activities are circumscribed.

Indeed religious leaders as senior Prince Badru Kakungulu of Kibuli and Fr. Clement Kiggundu, Cardinal Nsubuga and Anglican bishops, Janani Lawum, Miseiri Kawuma and Yokana Mukasa were heroes in this regard.

That said, following our promulgating the 1995 Constitution and our having in place the rule of law, constitutional rule and constitutionalism, Dr. Lwanga and others engage in anachronism when they turn their pulpits into political rallies. They should leave politics to the politicians and the hopefully wise electorate.

The writer is a presidential adviser on Buganda land matters

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