By Mulengera Reporters
Pastor Martin Ssempa, one of Uganda’s controversial, fearless and most respected religious leaders, this Thursday stormed the Conference Hall at Parliament where the legislature’s Legal Affairs Committee is processing the Marriage Bill from, to give his views.
The Makerere Community Church Senior Pastor said he was here to be candid and tell the uncomfortable truths which a lot of people know about but are shy to go public about. He said there was no justification for Uganda as a country to continue pretending that polygamy is abominable, outlawed and criminal among Christians yet in actual sense, it’s what many men are practicing albeit clandestinely.
Renowned for taking no prisoners and for never mincing words, Ssempa (who introduced himself to legislators as a scholar and deeply spiritual person) said that there is nothing wrong with Uganda making history being the first country to legislate a law to the effect that one can officially marry and be engaged to two wives or more without ceasing to be an effective Christian or without committing an offence.
He clarified that the view that a good Christian man has to be one who is loyally married to one woman is alien and was imposed on Africans by European Missionaries who brought here Christianity more than 100 years ago.
Ssempa said that such European groups no longer have moral authority to dictate to Africans what is moral and therefore makes a good Christian because they are celebrating gay marriages at their Church altars yet this homosexuality they are defending, and trying to export globally, is worse and more evil than Christian polygamy. He stressed it’s morally more repugnant to be a homosexual couple than being married/engaged to more than one marital partner.
Speaking pragmatically, the flamboyant man of God (who for years was persecuted by fellow pastors for fighting homosexuality)
added that it would be deceptive for Uganda to continue pretending that Christian polygamy is illegal inside its borders yet in actual sense, the thing has already been embraced by many Christian men including Pastors.
Ssempa said that continuing to use the law to disallow what society has embraced and taken up as a convenient or even inevitable way of life (as is the case with polygamy) only creates problems for the country and cohesion of the family institution besides pushing many Christian polygamists underground.
He also spoke about illegitimate children who live with stigma simply because their fathers can’t openly associate with them and introduce them to other family members and siblings, for fear of being misunderstood and castigated for having departed from Christian norms.
“I personally don’t practice polygamy and I don’t even promote it in my church. We don’t teach or promote it in our church but the reality is it’s happening. It’s what a lot of people have taken up. You find a Christian man having wife number one and number two and there are children in both cases. He keeps quiet about wife number 2 and the children thereof simply because he is a Christian and Christian polygamy is disallowed in Uganda. Then chaos erupt upon his death as all these children and mothers finally show up. We must have a law recognizing and allowing this because people are now going underground with their Christian polygamous marriages, which isn’t good for society.”
Ssempa added that, whereas his own Church doesn’t, he knows many fellow Pastors who clandestinely join Christian men taking on additional wives and going into second marriages or more. He stressed that this is already happening and all law makers ought to do is to officially recognise and legally authorise or allow the same so that those who can’t do without are legally protected.
He said it’s irreversible and all Uganda as a country ought to do is to pass a law allowing Christian men, with means, to lawfully take on as many wives as they desire to as wives. Ssempa added that such would also deescalate tensions and feuding among co-wives engaged to Christian men.
Without divulging their names, Ssempa controversially asserted that he knows of fellow Pastors who don’t only secretly wed rich Christians in their churches into second marriages or more but they themselves are practicing polygamy already albeit underground for fear of being sanctioned under the law, which in it’s current form prohibits polygamous marriages among Christian men. (For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [WhatsApp line], 0779411734 & 041 4674611 or email us at mulengeranews@gmail.com).
