Tema July 11, GNA – The immediate past General Secretary of the Christian Council of Ghana (CCG) has called for a forum to address religious extremities in the Ghanaian society as a way of safeguarding people from religious exploitation.
Rev. Dr. Kwabena Opuni-Frimpong says, “I am calling for a dialogue and a national conversations on how to regularize religious excesses in Ghana. We can’t allow things to go on like that in the name of religious freedom.”
He said this on Sunday on the side-lines of his send-off ceremony as General Secretary of the CCG at the Tema Joint Church, Community Seven, Tema.
In an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA), Rev. Dr. Opuni-Frimpong observed that “serving God is a good thing. What we should understand is that religion as a whole and religious leaders have influence which gives them opportunity to do things against people, such that, if things don’t go well, they would be destroying things in the name of God.”
He said there was a time when the state needed to intervene in religious excesses in Ghana, but the church stood against it because it felt that action would curtail religious freedom, “but due to what is happening now in the house of God the lying, cheating, duping etc. I believe it’s time the church sat down with government to relook at its earlier decision.”
He observed that all institutional bodies had freedom to operate, but there should be the need for governmental intervention when things were getting out of hand, adding that, “People should be responsible, but when the people fail to be responsible after some time, then some power must come in to force them to do the right thing.”
Rev. Dr. Opuni-Frimpong’s only worry was that the politicians may also play party politics with the issue of regulation should the church ask them to intervene.
The Very Rev. Professor Emmanuel Martey, former Moderator of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana, in a sermon, said heretic acts by some religious leaders in Ghana were happening under the watch of the CCG, the Catholic Bishops Conference (CBC), the Ghana Pentecostal and Charismatic Council (GPCC) and other councils of Christian churches.
In lamenting how the church laid the foundation for what was happening now by preventing government from intervening in religious excesses, he said, “For the Christian Council of Ghana, it appears it has muzzled itself. Its own pronouncements and actions in the past have prevented and disabled any proactive action needed for today.”
He said the tripod on which every civilized society was supported and regulated included law, medicine and theology, and wondered how the practitioners of law and medicine operated only when they had been trained and certificated by accredited institutions and not the practitioners of theology.
He warned that, “Such situation can only be a recipe for societal chaos; that’s what we are seeing. And those who’re to take action are not proactive.”
By Alexander Nyarko Yeboah, GNA