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	Catholics, Anglicans Laugh Loudly As Pentecostals ‘Sodom’ Things up By Bernard Tabaire Daily Monitor May 23, 2009 http://www.monitor.co.ug/artman/publish/Tabaire/Catholics_Anglicans_laugh_loudly_as_Pentecostals_sodom_things_up_85249.shtml The sprint to the day’s deadline was just beginning in the Daily Monitor newsroom in August 2007. It was about 2:30 p.m. My blood was beginning to riot. What story would we lead with the next day? Being in charge of the newsroom at the time, I was still fretting when suddenly three men strode into my office. Having failed to see the managing director because he was out of town, they had decided I would absorb the blows just fine. The team leader, Pastor Martin Ssempa of Makerere Community Church, fired off. Days earlier, lesbians, gays, bisexuals and the transgendered had held their first news conference in Kampala demanding respect for their rights, and there had been a swift public demonstration led by Pastor Ssempa denouncing them. The good pastor levelled two accusations against the newspaper: that the Daily Monitor was promoting homosexuality while at the same time running down pastors. That, again, was the time when several pastors were in the news for shaming their God and themselves by reportedly cheating and sodomising some members of their flock. We debated for two hours and disagreed. But not before the pastor handed me an open letter to the Aga Khan chronicling the newspaper’s alleged satanic doings. In turn, I handed him a copy of the editorial policy guidelines and objectives of the Nation Media Group, whose principal shareholder is the Aga Khan. The Monitor, being largely owned by NMG, follows those guidelines in its journalism. Pastor Ssempa and other brother pastors are back in the news and so is homosexuality, or some variant of it. (Your columnist is no psychoanalyst but he thinks some pastors somewhere are fixated on same sex sex.) This time the accused sodomite is Pastor Robert Kayanja, arguably Uganda’s most loaded and best connected preacher. Pastor Solomon Male of Arise for Christ Ministry and Pastor Ssempa are at the forefront of pointing fingers at Pastor Kayanja, the main man at the palatial Rubaga Miracle Centre. Pastor Kayanja says he is a straight man. He has threatened to sue his accusers. The police are involved. And some of the allegedly abused young men are retracting and reaffirming their police statements so often in one day it is difficult to keep pace. The circus is on. But this is serious circus. The element of gay sex, forced or otherwise, is being used because it does not only titillate (as sex of any type always does), it is frowned upon in Uganda. Use that against anyone of some standing in this society and you are bound to tarnish that person’s name for a long time on top of garnering extensive publicity. Interestingly, young men are always in the mix. In March we saw Mr Stephen Langa of Family Life Network round up some reportedly reformed young gay men to throw mud at gays and lesbians generally. Today, it is young men again saying they were molested. Maybe both sets of young men are telling the truth. But me thinks some religious zealot who has decided to be our moral guardian is using them for selfish ends. The Pentecostal movement in Uganda has not stumbled upon this moment of crisis. Greed, hypocrisy, envy, lies, abuse of authority have to do with it. Uncritical congregants have helped, egging pastors on and making them believe they are the only ones seated on God’s right-hand side. Churches for the born-again Christians have mushroomed over the last 25 years not because we are experiencing the second revival after the one of the 1930s (thanks partly to a certain Simeoni Nsibambi) as Pastor Kayanja has argued. Rather many churches have sprouted – with leaders christening themselves pastor, apostle, prophet, whatnot but never reverend – after splits over power and money. It is never about doctrinal or scriptural differences. So a losing pastor stomps off and erects his kiwempe structure complete with a rusty megaphone and, Ugandans being quite gullible, soon the church is filling up to the rafters with congregants and resounding yells of hallelujah. Amen! With dubious promises of the good life ahead if only you “sowed”, the pastor chooses to enjoy his own good life here and now. He quickly graduates to a posh house, posh car, while many of the “sowing” flock remain mired in poverty and disease. They even never demand accountability because you cannot ask Gaad to do that. Very few of these churches publish their books of account. It is okay for pastors to make money and live wealthy lives. It is not okay, though, for them to shamelessly ride on the desperate backs of their flock. With this level of depravity, it follows that the men of God must rough up each other. It is civil war time. It may well be a fight to the death. After all, the Mafiosi also turn guns on one another. That only makes the local Roman Catholic Church and the Church of Uganda look attractive again. Who knew? Contact: bentab@hotmail.com
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