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	Oyee Pastor Kayanja, Angels & Demons Ne' Kasubi Tombs Daily Monitor May 27, 2009 http://www.monitor.co.ug/artman/publish/Charles_Onyango_Obbo/Oyee_Pastor_Kayanja_Angels_Demons_ne_Kasubi_Tombs_85480.shtml As the Ugandan media was full of pastors of the 'Born-Again' churches throwing mud at Pastor Robert Kayanja of the Rubaga Miracle Centre, accusing him of sodomy, I went to watch the Angels & Demons movie. Based on Dan Brown's bestselling book by the same title, Angels & Demons, it is a sequel of sorts, to The Da Vinci Code, a more controversial offering from the author's even more controversial book. The one thing that the ugly fights in the Born-Again churches in Uganda remotely share with the Catholic Church in Angels & Demons, is the intrigue, betrayals, and jockeying for power which is present whenever there is religion. But that, I am afraid, is where it ends. The circus that we are witnessing in Uganda wouldn't make it even to a bad Ki-Nigeria movie script. It is that awful. I ought to come clean here. I am a conflicted mix of old school Catholic-Agnostic-Rationalist-Yoga dabbling-abstemious oddball, so I am not exactly objective when discussing Born-Again issues. But I will say this: Vilified though he might be, I kind of admire Pastor Kayanja. Not for his religiosity, but rather his durability. Most free market disciples must admire the way he has clang on to his 'first mover advantage'. When Born-Again pastors were still small-time by-day preachers and by-night witch doctors robbing old housewives of their pennies, Kayanja modernised the craft of the alternative church preacher. He went to the USA, and mastered the art of the glitzy stage show. He hung around some of the best Pentecostal preachers and honed the skill of how to make generous donation for miracles-on-order look chic. Then, he went on to amass fortune and erect an impressive temple to his God. In terms of staying power, his brand has survived in the market longest. He has weathered many storms, and he might survive this one. His enemies, though, are multiplying and he has recently gotten careless and sometimes mixes religion with partisan politics. He needs to retreat to the Himalayas Mountains and reflect, or else he will be ruined. Kayanja is the only modern Born-Again pastor on whom, if you were inclined, you could write a book. It wouldn't be a good book, because the material is thin, but it would still be a book. The others have not laid down as much rubber on the road as he has. And that is where we must return to Demons & Angels. For one of the striking things about the film is how brilliantly it captures the circumstance and pomp of the Church, imbued with nearly 2,000 years that are full of everything from corrupt and murderous Popes, incredible remarkable contributions to our collective civilisation as we know it today, an ignominious flirtation with the Nazis, a continuing reactionary line toward the role of women in church leadership, to one of the most liberating forces of the 20th Century – liberation theology. Put that together, and you end up with a product so rich and deep in history, you can never plumb its depths enough to touch its bottom. If all scholars of religion in the world combined to fathom the mysteries and contradictions of the Catholic Church, after many years of application, they will still not have unraveled all of its mystery. As both The Da Vinci Code and Demons & Angels showed us, there are many layers in the church. If you defeat the outer ones, there are many more inside. As in the Da Vinci Code, the evil and more ancient forces in the church will combine and defeat the march of progress. And, as in Demons & Angels, nobler alliances will marshal and defeat the infringement of evil. You don't have to be over 1,000 years old to weather the Tempests. But you need at least a history of at least 50 years. A media company in Africa needs to have survived at least three regimes, one of them very bad, before we can see it last into the foreseeable future. A school that has not produced students for two generations (60 years, surely cannot be taken seriously). Budo has already found its greatness, and even if it collapsed tomorrow, its place in history will remain unaltered. Greenhill Academy, on the other hand, is a great school and turns in better examination grades than Budo. But if it closed tomorrow, history will quickly forget it. The other place that is full of history is the Kasubi Tombs. You are regaled with more than 250 years of Buganda history in a straight line, and you are offered artifacts and see graves that tell their own story, even if the chroniclers didn't speak. That gravity is lacking in the unending story of the feuds in the Born-Again churches, and even more so, in our politics, where we are forced to endure endless banalities about whether Dr Kizza Besigye contributed anything during the bush war, or President Yoweri Museveni is a coward who never fired a gun during his struggle. History, history, we cry. When will you come to our rescue?
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