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Uganda - Lessons out of Kanungu
RELIGION
The images of bodies
burned to death inside a small church in the western part of Uganda
went around the world. Members of the cult for the «Restoration of the Ten Commandment»
had apparently committed mass suicide in expectation of the end of the world
When more mass graves were discovered in other places owned by the cult leaders, it become clear that most of the over 1,000 victims did not commit suicide, but were murdered in cold blood over a period of several months. People were puzzled how hundreds of people could be killed without neighbours or police or chiefs ever noticing.
Commentaries of all sorts abounded. Cult leaders were mainly ex-Catholics, including the founder Kibweteere and two ex-communicated priests and cult members made extensive use of Catholic symbols like crucifixes, statues and rosaries. Critics lost no time in pointing an accusing finger towards the Catholic Church, and one even thought that such violence was symptomatic of all «theistic» religion. Others demanded stricter government control of religious bodies. The western media tended to depict the tragedy as yet another example of the violence rampant in Africa. Few, if any, tried to understand the underlying causes.
In the last years there have been at least eight known incidents of cult suicides. Only one happened in Africa, one in peaceful Switzerland, one in Japan, most in the United States. Only one involved Catholics, most originated on the fringes of fundamentalist groups, at least one was inspired by pseudo-scientific theories gathered from the internet. Cults have sprung up on all continents in both secular and religious milieus. Fortunately, most do not go to such extremes as to murder their adherents. But many develop similar features to those of the Kanungu cult: extreme secrecy, brain washing techniques, total dependence on a leader who claims direct connection to the divine. If these phenomena occur everywhere in the world, we have to look for more universal causes than any particular religion or culture. What pushes people to abdicate their freedom, loose their property and collaborate in their own self-destruction?
In search of certainty
For the beginning of an answer, we have to look not at religion, but at the massive social, cultural and religious upheavals we all live through: traditional ways of life are disappearing under the onslaught of the global media culture, marriage and family life are replaced by the soap-opera idea that life is an endless sequence of falling in and out of love, the combination of massive corruption and IMF policies have pushes many people to the edge of survival, AIDS has turned the most intimate act of human relationship into a menace. We are all somehow uprooted and lost in this whirlwind of change that nobody seems to understand or is able to control. We all look for ways to cope.
Some escape into the dream world provided by all forms of drugs, be it alcohol, hard drugs, sex and even religion, anything that makes us forget the uncertainty of life for a few hours. The final form of escape is suicide.
Then there are the fundamentalists of all descriptions who seek solace by escaping into the past: Muslim fundamentalists try to rebuild the world as it was at the time of Mohammed. Catholic fundamentalists want to go back to the Church as it was before the Second Vatican Council. Protestant fundamentalists pretend to find all answers in the Bible, including the date of the end of the world. The existential anxiety created by social, cultural and religious change, too fast and profound to be digested and integrated, explains at least in part, some of the more bizarre phenomena in modern society, including Kanungu. People who are uprooted and anxious, easily fall prey to anyone who offers absolute, guaranteed divine certainty, however absurd.
An explosive mixture
This pervasive sense of being lost, that favours extremism of all sorts, is compounded by several other factors in the African context:
Millennium Madness: The idea that the world will come to an end at the turn of a millennium is a recurrent fever. If you add that the ecological degradation is in fact increasing the severity and frequency of natural disasters, it is not difficult for preachers to prove, bible in hand, that the apocalypse has started. Secular society has produced its own form of millennium madness with the Y2K bug and its apocalyptic scenarios.
Extreme poverty: The disastrous IMF structural adjustment programmes of the last decade have enriched only a tiny and totally corrupt elite, made the middle class poor and turned poverty to misery. Ecological degradation, rapid population increase and scarcity of land have aggravated the plight of the urban and rural poor. Small wonder, if they will cling desperately to anybody who will promise an alternative. Although Uganda is praised for its economic growth, statistics indicate only relatively few people profit.
Commercialised Religion: Capitalism has produced its own brand of Christianity: the gospel of prosperity. It justifies ill-gotten richness as God’s blessing and promises financial blessings to the poor if only they put their last penny in the collection box. Religion has become a growth industry and the Kanungu cult was one of many Churches where gullible believers are robbed of the little they have.
It is interesting to note that the parts of Uganda that have produced such religious extremist movements as the cult for the «Restoration of the Ten Commandment» and the «Lord’s Resistance Army», have suffered disruption from guerilla movements.
The Church proven right?
Although the Catholic Church was savagely attacked in the aftermath of the Kanungu tragedy, the event seems to confirm its age-old tradition. In fact, the only person who recognised the cult for what is truly was, was the local Catholic bishop who excommunicated the priests involved and advised everybody to keep off. The death of the victims would prove the Church right on two scores:
I) The Church has always maintained that personal revelations and inspirations need to be verified against the tradition of the Church. It has rightly been suspicious against those who claim to have a directly hotline to heaven, and requested with St. John «to test the spirits to see whether belong to God». (1 John 4:1). A magisterium, a process of discernment, is needed to keep on the path of sanity and sanctity.
2) The events also make a mockery of all die-hard liberals who maintain that religious beliefs are entirely a matter of private opinion. When Archbishop Kirima suggested last year in the report on «Devil Worship» commissioned by the Kenyan Government, that government had to intervene where the common good was at stake, he was derided by the Media. After a thousand victims have been dug up from their graves, it is clear that there are limits to religious or any other personal freedom. Catholic Social Teaching in this as in so many other matters, tries to strike a sound balance between human rights and the common good.
A Church without spirituality?
Nevertheless, the Kanungu events also pose serious questions to the Church. Why did so many Catholics, even many educated ones, leave the Church to join this cult or so many other Churches? What are they looking for? Perhaps they look for genuine spirituality which they no longer find in the Church.
The spiritual life of ordinary people used to be fed, not only by the Mass, but by many different devotions: the rosary, adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, Stations of the Cross. Vatican II wanted to centre Church life again on the Word of God and the Eucharist. But for many Catholics, the Sunday Mass is the only moment to receive spiritual food. And if the sermon is poor and the liturgy uninspiring, they go home hungry and begin to look for food elsewhere. Do Catholics see their bishops and priests as men of prayer, as spiritual persons who can initiate others into a life in the Spirit? Cults do offer an intensive prayer life, more demanding than any monastery. There is so much hunger for the Word of God and for prayer. The Church in the last decade has spent so much time, money and effort on development, justice and peace and social issues. Has it lost, in the process, sight of its essential mission to lead people to God? If the Church no longer offers solid spiritual food, Catholics will look for it elsewhere, even if they get only junk food.
The tragedy of Kanungu and the many Catholics leaving the Church, should make all pastors wonder whether they lead their flock to green pastures or leave them out there in a spiritual desert at the mercy of cheats and charlatans.
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