Religion & Society Blog

Shocking child-brides practice in Marange apostolic sects needs urgent attention

October 19, 2015
LAST week we toured Mutare as part of a team working on a document on the history of the church in Zimbabwe and little did we realize we would bump into some deplorable practices being done in the name of religion yet strangely everyone seems to be turning a blind ...

Human-founded churches gravitate towards human worship

October 6, 2015
WALKING in Harare’s busy streets, one cannot help but notice colourful banners on high rise buildings of smartly dressed men and women with the caption, “Come and witness miracles, deliverance and receive financial breakthroughs at X or Y ministries”. The banners always underscore that the church is founded by bishop ...

Religious paraphernalia craze a new form of idolatry

September 28, 2015
IT HAS been widely reported in the media how contemporary churches are making thousands, if not millions, of dollars through selling religious paraphernalia. Perhaps there will probably be no time in history when churches have made so much money from selling religious merchandize as in this time. The merchandize, ranging ...

Do these ‘pastors’ have true spirit of the Gospel?

September 25, 2015
IF you want first-class professionals you enquire about their studies and character formation. Nowadays the public is concerned about the low moral calibre of certain church ministers, and of government ministers that are hardly better. Pastors who are accused of rape, seduction of married members of their flock, sexual abuse, ...

Church and money

September 22, 2015
Greed kills. Wars are fought over the hidden treasures of this earth. Oil may “oil” the machinery of one military power, while diamonds and gold fund the fighting machine of the other. “Blood diamonds” devastate a country, they do not build it. Businesspeople may commit ritual murders to outdo their ...

Theory of evolution: The greatest hoax of all time

September 21, 2015
PERHAPS no man has strongly captured the truth that the human body was purposefully designed than United States surgeon, Evereet Koopp, who insightfully said, “When I make an incision with my scalpel, I see organs of such intricacy that there simply hasn’t been enough time for natural evolutionary processes to ...

How the law of cause and effect destroys atheism

September 14, 2015
IN my hardscrabble voyage as a writer I have participated in gruelling religious debates with people of diverse minds on different aspects of religion and, as usual, religious narratives always evoke intense emotion. However, I have noticed that there is a tinge of hope in making headway when people debate ...

Goblins for sell: Let’s be wary of West Africa

August 27, 2015
IN YEARS gone by West Africa was known for its prowess in football but the tide seems to have shifted. Today, West Africa has claimed a spot as the hub for a brand of religion which has taken southern Africa by storm. This brand of religion comes in different forms ...

Atheism: Blind men arguing against the beauty in sunset

August 4, 2015
“An atheist is a man who believes himself to be an accident” – Francis Thompson I COULD NOT resist sharing a beautiful story I heard after coming across a recent wave of campaigns by a militant Atheist group in the United States going by the name ‘Undo Jesus.’ The group ...

African poverty and religion

August 4, 2015
For a very long time and from loads of literature, poverty has been linked to economics, governance, policies that guide the management of resources and general politics. In many a discussion, two key factors have always emerged and been blamed for African poverty; colonialism and bad governance. Colonialism is blamed ...