Dear Editor,
You cannot avoid the Pentecostal churches in Zambia. They are abundant and growing and their prayer sessions are both rapturous and solemn. They are largely originating from United States, Europe and Nigeria, and encouraged by the liberalisation of Zambia’s laws in the 1990s allowing for freedom of association and worship.
How comfortably does the rise of Pentecostal churches sit with Catholic priest Fr Augustine Mwewa’s view about some pastors who have turned the proclamation of the gospel into a source of lucrative financial gain?
IF you listen carefully to the words spoken from the pulpit in these churches, you could be forgiven for thinking that the pastors have an undeniably political agenda.
MMD president Nevers Mumba, himself a pastor, has thundered from the pulpit of his Victory Ministries parish in Kitwe: ‘Believers will take over this country one day. There shall be as many Pentecostal churches as there were bars in this country. This is virgin territory and God will take control of this nation!’ Sedition? Not quite.
The fact is PF politicians are just a little uncomfortable at the astonishing popularity of this kind of evangelic rhetoric. But at best they are actually rather grateful that the likes of Mumba are in politics.
This is because the main goal of the Pentecostal churches is, officially at least, benediction and salvation of poor souls rather than political agitation.
Mubanga Luchembe,
LUSAKA.