When faith and greed go hand in hand

Increasing intermixing between Christianity, paganism and greed in Africa is a major problem, as the DR programme Horizon showed a glimpse of on Monday night in the broadcast “Ghana's Money Priests”.
- From our partner churches in the area, we hear the same frustration, says General Secretary of FriKirkenET, Mikael Wandt Laursen.
- A religion of happiness, which promises gold and green forests through faith in God, has been rumbling onto the African continent in recent decades. In countries like Ghana and Nigeria, there is great spiritual openness, and charlatans, charlatans, charmers and con artists understand to exploit for their own benefit. This is a very sad development. Sad for the individual who wastes his life on false hope, and sad for serious churches, which struggle to contain the damage done by self-ordained priests.

Pentecostal churches or charismatic churches are the very broad, common denomination used for the type of churches that are grassroots-based and emphasize the experience of God as present and able, for example, to heal illness. Under this denomination one finds both the Monegrian happiness priests — and well-established and recognized denominations such as the Assemblies of God.
- On the one hand, it's great with grassroots based churches, because it involves the church getting close to people and getting a distinctly local expression. But on the other hand, unfortunately, it also means that people can independently initiate something that is a mixture of Christianity, old religious customs and personal greed,” says Mikael Wandt Laursen.

According to Mikael Wandt Laursen, if one wants to insure oneself against this mixture of faith and money, the solution is to create structures in which each pastor is related to and accountable to pastors in other churches, and that the pastor is not the sole ruler, but has a congregational council that can provide the necessary support and counteraction.
- In Denmark, as in the vast majority of other countries, Pentecostal churches have clear ethical principles - a structure that ensures full transparency in relation to financial means, that church members have the final say, and that no priests are left alone, but are surrounded by good peer relations and interaction with committed members of the church, he says.

When things go wrong, as they sometimes do in Denmark - most recently with the case of Byens Kirke in Silkeborg - it is because the principles and structure have not been respected.
- Therefore, Pentecostal churches were also called for a police report on the pastor from Silkeborg as early as 2010, just as the church itself was subsequently excluded from Pentecostal churches in Denmark, Mikael Wandt Laursen says.

In relation to the churches in Africa, Mikael Wandt Laursen believes that the healthy ones will survive the longest, and that Africans will eventually learn to say to charlatans:
- From studies elsewhere in the world, we know that people who become Christians experience a social boost, so that over the course of one to two generations they move from the lower classes of society to a more educated middle class. This will also make them better at separating the sheep from the chaff.

Photo: Screenshot from dr.dk