Call to engage Apostolic sects

Comment & Analysis
BY JENNIFER DUBE THERE is need for positive engagement of apostolic sects, which continue to grow across the country due to various reasons, including increasing social problems and economic hardships, an official with an organisation working with the churches has said.

 

Carmellious Machingura, a health programmes officer with the Union for Development of Apostolic Churches in Zimbabwe (UDACZA) said the sects were ready to adapt.

“A lot of negative things have been said about the white garment churches, yet these continue to grow like none other, absorbing all sorts of people, including the educated,” Machingura said.

“A person who may have lost hope in life due to unemployment for example, may find reason to hang on after consulting a prophet, thus the church would have played a pivotal psychological role in that respect.”

Machingura however, admitted that most of the churches, especially the ultra-conservative ones, were still lagging behind on several developmental issues, hence the need to positively engage them. Among other negatives, apostolic churches are famed for trampling on women and children’s rights.

Pregnant women are not allowed to visit health institutions and are made to deliver their babies at home, in some cases leading to maternal deaths due to complications.

Some of the sects also prohibit immunisation of their babies because they do not have faith in conventional medicine. Some sects deny the child the right to education and in the case of girls, they get married off at a tender age and in some cases, into polygamous marriages, where women endure emotional and psychological pains and risk getting infected with HIV.

“Some of the churches are very difficult to access because of their conservative culture, but we need to continue trying if we are to help them catch up with the rest of society,” Machingura said. “Without trying to coerce them to accept popular practices, we can engage them through workshops and motivational seminars, where we outline the various risks associated with various practices and leave it to them to make decisions.”

But Reverend Webster Padera of the African Apostolic Church yekwaMwazha said some sects, like his, had embraced modernisation a long time ago. “These teachings are good especially for bogus prophets and other, but as for us, we embraced a lot of these things a long time ago,” Padera said.