EDITORIAL: Regulate the pulpit before it consumes the people

When Rwanda shut down nearly 10 000 churches for failing to comply with regulations governing places of worship, it sent a clear message that faith is not a free-for-all. Religion, powerful as it is, must operate within boundaries that protect the dignity, safety and intelligence of the people.

Namibia should be paying very close attention. Because here at home, the pulpit has increasingly become a marketplace – not of salvation, but of exploitation. A marketplace where desperation is currency, and the vulnerable are the easiest targets.

If theological training were a requirement in Namibia, as it should be, perhaps the nation would stand on firmer moral ground. Instead, the country is overrun by self-appointed 'prophets' – many with no grounding in theology, no accountability and no moral compass – chasing quick money through spiritual theatrics. Salvation, in such an environment, becomes not just elusive, but commercialised.

These copycat preachers, draped in imitation charisma and borrowed mannerisms, are not spreading faith. They are performing it. Poorly and dangerously.

What is unfolding in many of these churches is not worship – it is public humiliation disguised as deliverance. Vulnerable Namibians, already weighed down by illness, poverty and personal crises, are dragged before cameras, accused, mocked, and reduced to spectacles for online consumption.

Their pain becomes content. Their dignity, collateral damage.

And yet, authorities watch. Institutions tasked with protecting citizens, especially the most vulnerable, have chosen silence. They stand by as elderly people are manhandled by self-styled prophets young enough to be their grandchildren. 

Freedom of religion is not a licence to exploit suffering, to humiliate the weak, or to run spiritual rackets under the cover of faith.

Countries like Rwanda have recognised this danger and acted decisively. There must be standards and accountability.