As you close your eyes in prayer, the pockets of the "righteous" man swell, built not on miracles, but on the sweat of your devotion. In many places across Africa, the church has become less of a sanctuary and more of a business, where hope is commodified and pain is profit.
What’s the difference between the mganga from Tanzania and your local pastor? One wears beads, the other a collar but both promise healing for a fee. You're told your gift must be “used for the kingdom,” yet the same church drains your talent, your time, and your wallet while turning a blind eye to your hunger. You buy your pastor a Range Rover while your own "range" can’t take you past the gate.
What’s the difference between the mganga from Tanzania and your local pastor? One wears beads, the other a collar but both promise healing for a fee. You're told your gift must be “used for the kingdom,” yet the same church drains your talent, your time, and your wallet while turning a blind eye to your hunger. You buy your pastor a Range Rover while your own "range" can’t take you past the gate.
The church has become more obsessed with what enters your body than how you are actually living. Sermons are filled with warnings about sex before marriage, while behind closed doors, priests are violating the very children they preach to protect. The contradiction is jarring but all too familiar.
And still, people keep going. Because hope is expensive. When systems fail, when governments rob you blind, the church is the last place you’re told to turn. But what happens when it, too, exploits that desperation? When salvation comes with a price tag, and belief is bankrolled?
Faith isn’t the problem. But how that faith is manipulated that’s where the rot lies. And it’s time we start asking the uncomfortable questions, especially when the church becomes more about power and performance than people.