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"My wife is loyal to another man" |
Spouses
torn apart as church loyalties clash. By
KAPLICH BARSITO B eneath Zablon Mukoshi's warm smile and bright face lurks extreme frustration -- his wife is loyal to another man, a pastor. Zablon says that his wife Alice cannot do anything without the clergyman's permission. She has to seek the permission of her pastor to travel with him to their upcountry home. |
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Zablon Mukoshi (extreme left)
explains how he left the |
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It is
not just
Mukoshi left the church seven months after their wedding in
November 1997. He still lives with his wife, but feels that he has lost her to
the church. Now, as he celebrates his escape from what he terms a manipulative
cult, there is nothing he can do about the hold the man of God has on his wife.
"There the pastor has the final word on
whether you will marry a particular woman or not," he says.
He misses the company of his wife, as she is
involved in church services most of the time. "But what is worse is that
on Sundays, my wife leaves a three-month-old baby at home in the morning and
arrives back well after
"There is no way I will leave church
and backslide (fall back) from salvation. My husband backslid six months after
our wedding and left the church, I will not do the same." she said in a
telephone interview yesterday.
But what kind of marriage does the couple
have?
Couples are not issued with marriage
certificates when they tie the knot in the church. Those who have defected
claim this is a scheme by the leaders to maintain control over the couple.
"Without the marriage certificate, your
marriage is not legally recognized and you are at the mercy of the
minister," says Matthew Musau, who was a
missionary with the church. He has since left and started his own church.
This and differences over matters of
doctrine are what made me leave the church, says Mukoshi.
The
"This is one of the many ways used to
have a hold on the lives of the members," he claims.
There was no freedom to mix with other
people, he says. You had to call and inform the pastor who you wanted to visit
and why. The pastor had the power to veto any visit, which he deems not good
for the member's spiritual well being. Mukoshi gives
the example of a couple which disagreed, the church recommended that the wife
goes and lives with a church elder and the man ordered to pay for her upkeep.
George Ongoro, who
was a member of the Gospel Assembly for 15 years before he quit two years ago,
says: "We were taught and we believed that we were the only people of God
in the whole world. To us, there was no salvation in any other church."
And for one and a half decades, Ongoro regarded other churches and religions as destined
for hell and took pride in the fact that his denomination of
3,000 people worldwide were the chosen people who would go to heaven.
At what cost?
Members are encouraged to make heavy
financial commitments. People have sold off property and taken loans to give
money to the church because the leadership says so.
Ongoro had to take a Sh50, 000 loan
to donate towards the construction of the church located in
"When the construction work began, many
people were financially stripped bare.
Others sold houses and cars to give money to
the church," he adds.
In this church, says Ongoro,
people are ruled by fear of what can happen to them if they leave. "I know
of two women who became mad after leaving the church in the mid-1980s. If one
is not properly counseled, he or she can die after quitting."
The faithful are taught that God will judge
them if they abandon their faith in the church.
Ongoro says he is all celebration for having finally broken
free of the church and its teachings. "I thank God that I left and I
continually pray for those still there."
But Ongoro says
having been in the church for all those years, he has realized that the level
of deception runs deep and the current leaders may not even be responsible for
it.
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By KAPLICH BARSITO What does the church leadership say about
the accusations of high-handedness leveled against it? "It is all lies," says the Rev. Rutivi. These people have left the church and you can expect them to justify their departure. |
The fact that Musau
has started his own church, says the Rev. Rutivi, is
clear testimony that he left because of other ambitions and not because
something was wrong with the church. The Rev. Rutivi
says it is not true that his church claims to be the only one sheltering the
people of God.
"Even the Rev. Rutivi
needs help. He joined the church like anyone of us and was taught the same doctrine, I thus cannot point an accusing finger at
him."
Another former member of the church who left
last year is grateful that he was able to leave. "It was one place where
the teachings were so systematic that you did not realize that you were a
captive until you quit," says the woman who did not want to be named.
Yet another past member, speaking on
condition of anonymity, says he quit the church last year after 13 years. He
has vowed never to attend any organized church service, which is led by a
pastor.
"I will only participate in a church
led by elders as required by the Bible and not by a single individual," he
said in a telephone interview.
"We have never said so and we cannot
preach it because God has called different churches for different reasons. Each
church is called to fulfil a particular
purpose," the clergyman says.
Clement Kaula, the
spokesman for the Gospel Assembly, is firm that the church has no unseemly
practices.
"You have talked with me for the last
half-hour, do I look or sound brain-washed?" he asked after an interview
at Utalii Hotel.
He admitted that people have sold property
and even taken loans to give money to the church "But out of their own
persuasions and conviction and not coercion of any nature.
"We tell the members
to pay their tithe (10
per cent of their income) which is compulsory according to the
Scriptures. They can also give a free-will offering of whatever amount they
desire," he says.
Kaula says each time there is a need in the church, which
requires money, like the putting up a building, members are asked to make
donations.
On allegations of doctrines, which have
destroyed marriages, Kaula says a woman has an equal
right to determine her place of worship as a man. "If a husband decides to
leave the church for whatever reason, the wife should not be forced to abandon
her faith to follow him."
Kaula says they do not match-make for those who want to
marry. "Unless, of course, someone is shy and asks a church elder to
assist in approaching a young woman in the church, then that will be at a
personal and not official level."
The claims that the church
is out to wreck marriages is false he says, because sustaining strong
marriages is at the core of the church's teachings.
Gospel Assembly does not control people,
cutting them off from relatives, according to Kaula.
All that the church does is to give them spiritual nourishment. The strong
attachment they have to the church is a show that they are happy, the spokesman
says.
He admits, however, that marriage
certificates are not issued on time due to administrative flaws in the church.
"We normally do not issue them on the
wedding day because we like to type them nicely, so we tell people to come for
them after a week. Sometimes they come and find them not ready."
He says it is not true that the church uses
the absence of certificates as a way of controlling marriages.
Couples who have since left the church are
free to collect their marriage certificates, Kaula
adds.