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Edwin Nuwagaba: “Documentary On ‘False’ Pastors is Out.”

Like the saying, “old habits die hard,” there is tension brewing in church over pastors who were once witch doctors but declared that they had got saved and began churches. Cross sections in church believe that it is these ‘witch doctors’ that are responsible for the current crisis in the born again churches. Top stories of ‘men of God’ using charms and electric gadgets to perform miracles, sodomy, raping girls and snatching wives and husbands of members of their flock, have of recent dominated front pages in newspapers, tainting the image of born again churches.

Hussein Bogere: “I Helped Top Pastor Con Aids Patients.”

A prominent female Kampala pastor bribed and blackmailed worshippers to fake health ailments as serious as HIV/Aids so that she could then claim to have healed them, a parishioner alleged in a recent interview. The same pastor is being accused of using spies to learn secrets about members of her congregation and then using that information to extort funds- allegations that threaten to further discredit Ugandan pastors, several of whom have come under fire in recent months for dishonesty and improper use of funds.

Articles continue at link. Replacing witch doctors with Christians is not going to help the situation. The answer is not to replace an old superstition with a new one. The answer is to educate people regarding the fact that none of these superstitions are worth keeping around, that science alone offers the means to treat disease, that morals are independent of superstition, that training people to believe obvious falsehoods softens their minds for unscrupulous uses. I’d rather see aid going to a group like the Ugandan Humanist Association than any religious group. There’s certainly a need for it.