Papa's: Are they a threat to marriages?
ZAMBIA has been inundated with churches, which has regrettably resulted in untold immoralities involving’ men of God’ seducing married women into having sex with them. Virtually every week, media houses are awash with stories about ‘papas’ indulging in sexual relationships with the women they preach to, with most of such female congregants in marriages.
Last Sunday, there was a story of a man of Lusaka who told Matero Local Court how some Pentecostal papas have destroyed his marriage after they ‘prophesied’ to his wife that he was not her God-given husband. Royd Beene, 33, told Magistrate Harriet Mulenga that his wife spent most of her time at a mountain in Makeni with papas who have started mystifying her thinking. And now there is a video which has gone viral on social media showing a man who caught her pregnant wife pants down with a papa right in the matrimonial bedroom.
It is awfully difficult to comprehend how a person who claims to be a man of God can sneak into another man’s bedroom and sleep with his pregnant wife on their matrimonial bed. This is going too far; hiding in the name of God to commit adultery is monstrous. The wicked behaviour of some preachers of the gospel is denting the image of the Church and that of well-trained and genuine men of God in the country.
To a large extent, all this is attributable to bourgeoning churches, pastors, prophets, and other gospel preachers with debatable backgrounds who are contributing to moral decay in Zambia. Ideally, the rising number of Pentecostal pastors should translate into reduced levels of wickedness because we look up to men of God for counsel so that we conduct ourselves in a God-fearing manner. We, therefore, support the call by Roan legislator Joel Chibuye for Government to strengthen registration mechanisms for churches to help curb illegitimate sexual engagements by some clergy. The lawmaker told Parliament yesterday that he is apprehensive about the rising cases of preachermen getting involved in sex scandals with other people’s wives. Mr Chibuye alluded to a trending video footage in which a pregnant woman was caught pants down in bed with a man believed to be a papa. In the video, the husband is heard asking his wife why she was sleeping with another man on their matrimonial bed. “Is the new dawn government not thinking of strengthening laws for registration of some of these churches so that these papas can be arrested before they start entering our bedrooms whilst we are here?”
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Mr Chibuye said during the Vice President’s question time. “I am worried and I should say that we are worried that of late, the so-called papas are leading this country into moral decay. Madam Speaker, I have a Sunday Mail [copy] which says ‘Man blames papa for failed marriage’. “[Now] there is a video trending which is talking about a papa entering into someone’s bedroom. “This might sound very simple, but we have witnessed a lot of moral decay coming from these papas who when they are preaching, people are seriously saying ‘dig, dig, deeper, papa,’ he said. Vice-President Mutale Nalumango responded that issues of morality are of the heart and cannot be detected when one is registering a church.
“If I go to register a church, my face won’t show my intent,” Mrs Nalumango said. She wondered how a man of God could lure another man’s wife to the bedroom and the woman gives in to the demands. “You can’t go to pray and go to the bedroom; what Bible verse are you using?” Mrs Nalumango said. Surely, these papas are up in arms to ruin morals in our country and, as the Vice-President aptly prodded, members of the public should be on the look-out for these men of God with problematic characters and expose their wicked deeds.