Regulating churches: How difficult it is for African States

Even with the raging controversy between the Government and religious organisations over the new regulations, Kenya is not the first country where such a debate has taken place.

Recently, some African countries have been asking to have churches regulated following bizarre actions of the alleged flock shepherds.

In mid-2015, Pastor Penuel Mnguni from Pretoria, South Africa, made news by allegedly forcing his congregation to eat rats and snakes in the name of seeking blessings.

This made the Commission for the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Cultural, Religious and Linguistic Rights Communities (CRL) to propose that religious organisations be regulated.

As reported, the Council of Muslim Theologians Secretary General Moulana Ebrahim Bham was quoted saying any idea of regulating religion would impact negatively on the freedom of religion, which is a constitutional right.

However, already the Parliamentary commission was reported to have started summoning heads of different religions in its investigations on "Commercialisation of Religion" to come up with a regulation mechanism.

In November 2015, the CRL chair did report that pastors were plotting to kill her for her persistence to have churches regulated.

In Nigeria, the home of billionaire pastors in the continent, a professor was reported to have advised the Government to introduce taxes and licences to regulate the indiscriminate founding of churches, as a way of guarding against the activities of religious fraudsters.

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When it was unanimously voted for in 2014 during a National Conference that religious bodies should pay taxes as they were making a lot of money from their 'business', religious leaders vehemently refused even after threats of being de-listed were issued by the Commission of Corporate Affairs.

Globally, it seems that the United States is the only country that has been able to have its churches regulated by embedding national values in them.

According to Sarah Barringer Gordon, US authorities interfered heavily in church affairs in the 1800s. In the process, concepts such as lazy accountability and leadership, democracy and governance were made part and parcel of the practice of faith.

Early religions in America are said to have been subjected to stringent legal regulations ranging from limited acres of land, how much they had in liquidity and their annual income.

More so, it was mandated that lay trustees should hold and manage church properties and not an individual.

As the Episcopal Café reports, religious bodies were forced to become more lay-controlled, accountable and democratic even if the religions in question (like Roman Catholicism) had a priestly, hierarchical tradition.

The United Kingdom back in 1874 introduced the Public Worship Act that was allegedly aimed at limiting ritualism in churches (Anglo-Catholicism).

Before the Act , the church of England used to regulate its worship practice through the Court of Arches, with an appeal to the Judicial Committee.

With the Act, the church of England was being supervised by secular court.

In China, despite the country providing the freedom of religion, it is limited to the government-sanctioned organisations and registered places of worship, with the Government controlling the growth and scope of the activities of religious groups.