Using his Sunday newspaper column, Rtd Judge GW Kanyeihamba has vigorously attacked Ps Dr Ted Wilson, the global leader of the Seventh Day Adventist (SDA) church who visited Uganda recently. In his piece titled “In defense of religious leaders commenting on politics,” the outspoken former Judge accused Ps Ted Wilson of hypocrisy adding that moral leadership required him to use his visit to Entebbe State House to directly rebuke President Museveni for his previous attacks on clerics who rejected Magyezi’s Bill that resulted into the Constitution being amended to remove the age limit.
The furious Museveni had gone as far as accusing religious leaders of being traitors and unpatriotic. Kanyeihamba says that Ps Ted Wilson, who was in full knowledge of all this acrimony, failed in his leadership. Instead of defending the clerics’ right to make correctional comments calling politicians to order, Ps Ted Wilson instead backed Museveni and advised the clergy to refrain from making political comments. Kanyeihamba says he was so surprised at first he thought the man of God had been misquoted.
He specifically writes: ” Dr. Wilson is very much mistaken. The whole thrust of religion is the goodness of human beings perceived as a whole. Taken scientifically, that is bodily, mentally and spiritually.” Kanyeihamba also says its wrong for Ps Ted Wilson to speak things that contradict what Jesus Christ, the greatest religious teacher of all time, preached and practiced. He says just like some of the Ugandan clergy have been doing, Jesus condemned the political injustice of the Jewish political class of his day and subsequently paid the price, something he faults Ps Ted Wilson of overlooking in his utterances while in Uganda. Giving the example of Janani Luwum & the Ugandan martyrs, Kanyeihamba says throughout history all great religious men attacked political injustice and never acquiesced with it like Ps Ted Wilson is advising the contemporary Ugandan clergy to do.
He urges Ugandan clergy to emulate Luwum & the Uganda martyrs rather than being cowed by SDA head Ps Ted Wilson’s cowardice homily. “Dr. Wilson missed an opportunity to do God’s work (when he met M7). Yet the two (religion & politics) are too intertwined that one is a genius of the other,” Kanyeihamba writes in his thought-provoking opinion article. “Its strange that our distinguished Pastor (Ted Wilson) having had the privilege of meeting our President, Lord Temporal, did not use the opportunity as Lord Spiritual to warn President Museveni and other political leaders to refrain from using political platforms to criticize religion and spiritualism.”
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