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Regulating churches will create confusion – Bishop Agyinasare
Presiding Bishop of Perez Chapel International, Bishop Charles Agyinasare, has joined many to reject a proposal to regulate churches, saying the move will create confusion.
Speaking on a special Father’s Day edition of Joy FM’s Christian talk show, A Walk with Jesus Sunday evening, he said it may even be impossible for the government to regulate the churches.
“How are they going to regulate Churches? Are they going to regulate religions or the Church? Do they have an issue with the Church? I think we’ve had problems in this country of some excesses of some so-called Pastors. We should be encouraged to deal with the excesses. But to regulate, the government can’t regulate the Church. It will create confusion,” he said.
The Speaker of Parliament, Prof Mike Oquaye, last month tasked the Youth, Sports and Culture Committee and the Constitutional, Legal and Parliamentary Committee to develop recommendations on possible regulation of churches.
That call has since been challenged by many Christian associations.
The Ghana Charismatic Bishops Conference, for instance, has said the move is wrong.
“…we do not support any idea of legislating or controlling beliefs, faiths or religious beliefs of our citizens,” the Bishops said in an official communiqué on the matter.
The Bishops said Ghanaians go to churches and prophets for solutions to the myriad of problems they face as citizens.
“The problems Ghanaians live with are in many cases not being solved in any practical manner by the authorities. When people are left with no hope they turn to their prophets and to their God for salvation for what should and could have been solved by national authorities,” the Bishops aver.
Bishop Agyinasare also believes that if anybody is found flouting the law, the courts and the security services must be made to deal with them.
A law to regulate church activities, he said, is not the way to go.
Source: Myjoyonline.com