Religion should correct the State, not depend on it

NRM presidential candidate Gen Yoweri Museveni has joined FDC presidential candidate Dr Kizza Besigye in promising to finance religious institutions. Now, if there is a word I would pray we delete from our vocabulary as a country, that word is funding.

Funding for this, funding for that…lack of funding…we need funding…insufficient funding…ad nauseam. Little wonder then that we are literally on a self-destruction spree, all seeking survival through all manner of ‘projects, initiatives, programmes, funds, schemes’, degenerating from projectisation to sloganeering. Reason behind this? Funding.

And we now want to draw religion into this same circus. Religion, in the intrinsic sense of the word, where it is an integral component of one’s life, is priceless. And it is this invaluable nature of religion that is the strength of religious institutions. I’m a lay Catholic in all meanings of the word, thus will advance my argument at that level and in that capacity, namely neither a spokesman nor a theologian much less an authority. Simply a baptised Catholic.

The little I have read about the fusing of State and religion (which this institutionalised funding would result into) tells me we need not touch this with the longest stick. As people’s power picked momentum in the run-up to the storming of La Bastille during the French Revolution, one popular slogan was that this was a struggle of the people against ‘l’alliance entre la couronne et l’autel’, literally meaning the matrimony between the crown and the altar. This is one example of religion embedded, and its consequences.

The Church (read religion) in modern times is a defender of the defenceless and there is no way it can play divine this role if it is state-funded. This is more pertinent in our situation where the regime, government and the State are fused. True, there are polities in Europe, say Germany where citizens pay Church tax and the State funds church programmes, including priests’ salaries, but our situation here is different.

The Church’s primary duty is fulfilling the Mission of Jesus Christ, which rests on five pillars (Luke 4:18-19) among which is freedom to the oppressed. In Uganda and Africa, the State has been the biggest institutionalised oppressor and we have cases of where the Church has played its role in seeking freedom for these oppressed. Our own history here tells us that. How would it have fulfilled this obligation had the Church been dependent upon the State?

Whoever takes the reins of power in May 2016, please do one thing for religious institutions: establish a fully functioning economy in the country, and the rest will fall in line. Religions have their faithful who will sustain them beyond whatever amount institutionalised funding from the State would translate into.

A very mundane case is instructive here. One parish priest in Mbarara Archdiocese drives a brand new double cabin pick-up truck that he bought at Shs500. Yes Shs500. When the parish council passed the resolution to buy a new vehicle for the parish priest, Christians started raising the funds and in the course of the fundraising, Stephania, an old lady living in the church premises (commonly called Omutooto), contributed Shs500. Vehicle bought. Father comes to present the same to the Christians, in accountability for what their funds bought. Old Stephania, bewildered that her Shs500 had bought this monster vehicle, offered Father another Shs500 coin. Therein lies the secret. And we are in scores of millions here. (NMG)

Mr Matsiko is a management and development consultant. [email protected]