According to the Executive Director of the agency, Mr. Nana Ogbodo, who made the assertion, the call has become imperative based on the “need for a radical departure from the hitherto accommodating and reconciliatory posture of the churches with any axis of evil and oppression in our society.”
Ogbodo made the call at the weekend while delivering the keynote address with the topic, “The Church and the Challenges of Good Governance”, at the 2019 Synod of the Owerri Diocese of the Methodist Church of Nigeria.
The keynote speaker noted with dismay that the fabrics of our social cohesion have been corroded among other vices by strife, envy, greed and jealousy, stressing that “these have been exacerbated by the near disintegration of the family unit in Nigeria as a result of crass opportunism.”
While perplexed by the place of the church in the equation of diffusing moral rectitude or reordering of the moral compass of the society, Ogbodo, who declared that the truth must be told and the clergy must be brutally frank in doing so, lamented that families are known to have encouraged their children and wards to do what others are doing to “make it,” noting that “known and reputed criminals have been garlanded by their families and communities with titles and customary offices as an endorsement of their villainy.
To reverse the decadence in the country, he said, “the church must abort any unholy dalliance with theaters of corruption and resist the allure of filthy lucre,” adding that “if nothing is done about the present situation of contextualising sin on the lame excuse that it is not for the church to judge, then my worst fears would have been confirmed that the last bastion of truth and morality has sold out its mandate.”
Earlier, the Methodist Bishop of Owerri Diocese, Rt. Rev. Dennis Mark, noted that obedience to God’s word and moral uprightness hold the key for Christians out of the present socio-economic morass, adding that the synod would examine ways of refocusing on the gospel.
message.
