We can begin by acknowledging two things, however uncomfortable the very pious may find living with the knowledge.

Number One: All Gods Are Human Inventions. This does not mean that it is always wrong to worship them, or some of them, or one of them. Entire societies and civilizations are partially built on myths.

Once a society’s complex cultural interests describe the attributes of its god(s), and people begin to deify them, they are considered to exist and gain authority as gods, albeit sometimes very slowly.

Religion is the enterprise that manages and regulates the world of gods and their devotees. Number Two: All religions begin as cults. The great Abrahamic (so-called revealed) religions of our time are no exception.

Now, if all these things are by the processes of thought and manual works of man, why should not new gods and new religions grow up in our midst in abundance? Why do new gods and new religions almost always sound hollow and false? Indeed, new gods and new religions are often viewed with suspicion and considered to be potentially dangerous.

Why is establishing these new entities as difficult as erasing the old ones? Age and mystery may partly explain the paradox. Rather like artistic creations in architecture, sculpture, painting, and music, being old enhances the value of gods and religion.

The veils that cover their exact origins and the length of their stories over the years give them a kind of impersonal monumentality, a degree of cultural authenticity that no new god or religious faith can enjoy.

About two weeks ago, in Kagadi district, two 30-year-old brothers, David Munyirambe and Obed Baguma, sacrificed 10 of their own family members (including their father and mother) because they refused to leave the Adventist church on the day the seventh and join them. new faith, “God, Holy Spirit, Son, Man, Man.” The two brothers were later shot dead by security forces.

As grim as the story sounds, it is not the first and will not be the last on the African continent. Several thousand years earlier, when the Israelite (and Christian) God, Jehovah, was young, His prophets and the leaders who plotted and contested to establish His supremacy were no strangers to barbarism.

While the Kagadi brothers killed 10 family members, Elijah slaughtered (or oversaw the slaughter of) 400 prophets of Baal at the Kishon brook in the days of King Ahab. Ironically, although Elijah had apparently been empowered by Jehovah to play the role of a miraculous/magical fire-maker and an anti-Baal executioner, the prophet could not trust the same God to protect him against Jezebel, who aided the priests of Baal. So Elijah ran to hide from Jezebel’s wrath.

The old Christian traditions that were spread around the world by imperial powers tamed and idealized God into a figure of compassion, mercy, and benign but very limited power. God’s secular analogy is glorified but relatively powerless constitutional monarchs in functioning democracies.

No serious thinker or lucid theologian expects God to perform miracles. The peddlers of the new Christian cults are generally impatient with this quiet God.

They imagine a God that can only be asserted through stage scams, extreme manipulation of devotees, blackmail and sometimes violence. This is the danger.

If the religious background becomes a widespread return to a primitive spiritualist ethos, it may only be a matter of time before Africa witnesses a catastrophe of biblical proportions. To a God in a state of divine rest, this will mean nothing.