Sascha Wil­son

A chal­lenge to the Pres­by­ter­ian Church from the pul­pit yes­ter­day, to speak out against so­ci­etal is­sues, de­mand ac­count­abil­i­ty and shat­ter the il­lu­sion that all is well in the coun­try.

The chal­lenge came from Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad dur­ing his ser­mon in his ca­pac­i­ty as a guest preach­er at the Susumachar Pres­by­ter­ian Church, in San Fer­nan­do, as the church cel­e­brates its 152nd an­niver­sary.

“As a body of Christ fol­low­ers, we can­not con­tin­ue to con­done cor­rup­tion, the lack of ac­count­abil­i­ty or turn a blind eye to ob­vi­ous dis­hon­est con­duct be­cause of eth­nic or po­lit­i­cal al­le­giances. Now is the time for the Church to stand up and de­fend right­eous liv­ing and its voice must be heard and must res­onate with­in this Re­pub­lic,” Seep­er­sad said.

Seep­er­sad added that the church ought not to ask cit­i­zens to de­ter dwelling up­on the neg­a­tiv­i­ty con­sum­ing the coun­try, but rather “point out the pre­vail­ing de­fi­cien­cies and so­ci­etal in­jus­tices and hold lead­ers and de­ci­sion-mak­ers, who de­file, dis­re­spect and dis­re­gard their oaths of of­fice, to ac­count.”

Al­so urg­ing the church to be sup­port­ive of gen­der equal­i­ty, he said, “The church needs to be vo­cal in the call for gen­der eq­ui­ty and must urge so­ci­ety to re­set the pa­tri­ar­chal mind-set which far too of­ten sex­u­alis­es and ob­jec­ti­fies our women, sub­jects them to eco­nom­ic ex­ploita­tion and the con­fines of tra­di­tion­al stereo­typ­i­cal roles.”

He said the church al­so needs to take a ze­ro-tol­er­ance ap­proach to cor­rup­tion. “The church must ques­tion and ex­pose the pro­pa­gan­da of politi­cians, the greed of busi­ness own­ers, the fail­ings with­in our jus­tice sys­tem, the bi­ased agen­das of me­dia pow­er bro­kers, the smart man na­ture of many cit­i­zens and the hate and in­tol­er­ance which we dis­play to those who are dif­fer­ent from us. Truth needs to res­onate from our pul­pits as we dis­pel the er­ro­neous nar­ra­tive, that, “all is well.”

Seep­er­sad added that as a body, the church must ini­ti­ate, in­ter alia, dif­fi­cult con­ver­sa­tions about fis­cal ac­count­abil­i­ty, the eq­ui­table dis­tri­b­u­tion of na­tion­al re­sources and the mit­i­ga­tion of cor­rupt prac­tices.