Allan Tacca’s “all pastors are fraud” is biased and fraudulent.

Dr. Martin Ssempa

Allan Tacca’s article reminds me of my neighbor who carefully dumps his sewage into the public rainwater drainage whenever it rains. Unfortunately the smell of sewage is greatly odious and his trick has been figured out to his embarrassment. You just cant dump your you know what into the rain trenches. The local council has busted him and made sure he builds himself a personal sewer. No more free dumping in our rain gutters.

Allan Tacca in his article, “I say all Pentecostal pastors are frauds” in monitor of July 22 2007, uses the current rain storm against a few clearly identified fraudulent pastors, to “dump” his bias and hostility to God and religion squarely at my feet. He makes sweeping un-researched statements, which essentially tarnish my image ending with a charge of being “fraudulent” and a profiteer for leading a prayer meeting of university students.

Of course Allan is entitled to his opinion. He has right to be an Atheist as he has claimed in earlier writings, but he cannot use the platform of a newspaper which is owned by a major religious leader of Islam to insult all of us who look back to Abraham as our father, (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam). He claims that we are ignorant, faddish and superstitious for believing that there is God (Allah) who has a divine agenda with a calendar dedicated to human affairs! I am surprised that this would actually be allowed to run in a paper owned by His highness the Agha Khan, who is a leader of millions of Muslims worldwide. Don’t Muslims break the Ramadan fast due to the movement of the calendar of the moon? Aren’t there special days of prayer such as Juma on Friday, Sabbath on Saturday and Resurrection worship on Sundays for Christians? Doesn’t God bless and hallow the seventh day of creation in Genesis 2? What is so fraudulent with holding prayers on the days of 7.7.07?

Allan Tacca creates the impression that the meeting was a time of material sowing and pastoral profiteering. We have never held a meeting for the purpose of pastoral profit making. In fact Allan should know that it is a contradiction to have a meeting of undergraduates with the aim of making money. A simple common sense will tell you that college students are not exactly the population to target when you are looking for money. In fact for the last 7 years we have held a meeting called primetime, which brings in thousands of college students but we have never held a financial collection. It is odious for Allan to allege that the reason we do meetings for college age students is to make money. Allan will be a better writer if he can actually do his homework on the stories he is writing about.

Allan alleges that I manipulate our followers with “weird” bizarre performances and 120-decibel psychedelic sounds, which affect the brain activities of the people who come to our meetings. It sounds like we are running some kind of communist brain washing camp. We don’t have weird performances and neither does our sound go to 120 decibels. These are grotesque distortions of the reality, which Allan makes to win Monitors readers away from faith in God. Allan is not only misinformed, he is prejudiced against the existence of God.

Allan in his atheistic fanaticism calls being born again “grotesque paganism!” This is not complaint about alleged criminal activity of the likes of Obiri Yebua and Kitaka. It is an all out attack of bias, hostility and religious intolerance by a columnist who happens to write for one of the world’s most influential religious leaders! This is an insult on people of faith everywhere. Allan’s atheism rejects the possibility of God and prayer. Consequently he wants me to renounce the fact that anyone can intercede in prayer on behalf of others to “God”. Well too bad, Allan’s Atheism does neither diminish not remove the reality of Gods existence. In fact the bible calls him a “fool” who says that there is no God.

Allan ends his articles by insulting all Ugandan parents and teachers who teach their children the fear of God. These, which are more than 96 per cent of the population, are called illiterate, dangerous mind controllers who “parrot religious hogwash”. Of course Allan is entitled to his opinion as an atheist, but he is entering into hostile waters when he begins to insult as all those who have a faith in God. Is Allan aware that he is writing for the Agha Khan’s paper?

I don’t deny that there re few pastors who have given us evidence to think that there may be frauds and criminal activity. These must therefore be fully investigated, prosecuted and face the arm of the law. Every profession has a few ghost soldiers, ghost teacher and even ghost members of PGB. Even in the Born again, there are few ghost pastors who are fraudulent. This does not mean that all Pastors are therefore fraud. In fact, faith and prayer to God is not a fraud rather the very primary universal conclusion of any humble man and woman who has looked at creation and realized there is creator called God. Having conversation with God is called prayer, and is not a strange idea.

Maybe next time Allan wants to pour out his rant against God, he should not be cowardly like my neighbor who waits for the rain to illegally release his sewage in the public rain trenches. If Allan has a problem with God or Allah, let him just write an article with boldness called “God or Allah is a fraud”.