HARARE - Apostolic Christian Council of Zimbabwe (ACCZ) has urged the Evangelical Fellowship of Zimbabwe (EFZ) to stand up and applaud its drive to stop abuse of congregants by church leaders.
This comes after the EFZ — an association of over 300 Evangelical and Pentecostal churches — scoffed at a probe into unethical practices in churches led by ACCZ president, Archbishop Johannes Ndanga.
Goodwill Shana, EFZ national treasurer, argued at a press conference this week that no individual church had the right to investigate or ban other churches saying Ndanga could have been misquoted.
Shana questioned Ndanga’s claims that he was conducting the probe using powers vested in him by the government through a Cabinet directive to regulate churches.
But Ndanga says he used the same powers when he handled incarcerated Independent End Time Messages leader Robert Gumbura’s case.
Turning to calls for the regulation of the church’s activities either by an act of Parliament or otherwise, Shana said any law that seeks to do that will need to involve the broader Church and its umbrella bodies.
Joseph Pagan’a, the ACCZ director of information and publicity, said the duty of his council was to correct the public’s perception about churches in general not to become famous since the mission of probing churches was meant to bring about sanity and moral uprightness in churches.
“EFZ should applaud our organisation for the work we have done especially in (Robert Martin) Gumbura’s case which had nearly disrupted the Christian community for undermining the rights of congregants within the church through various forms of abuse,” Pagan’a said.
“We were shocked to see their complaints addressed through the media and as spiritual organisation, they should not be jealous of the works executed by ACCZ since they paid deaf ears to their invitation prior to the press conference.
“As an indigenous board that oversees and represent the previously deprived and marginalised churches with home grown ideologies, they are supposed to join us spiritually in the fight against the repressive stigma by foreign-controlled churches, some of which have unfriendly ideologies.”
Patience Chigodora, a religious analyst, said Gumbura’s case was supposed to be handled by EFZ since it is responsible for regulating operations of Pentecostal churches.
“The board was thus toothless or else a huge terrifying structure in appearance but completely harmless if we consider the period under which Gumbura operated by his sexual dissatisfaction suffice since early 80s,” Chigodora said.
“ACCZ should be applauded but we feel sorry for that board as far as their operations are concerned for not responding to such devilish practices by Gumbura’s church.”