?Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning says born-again Chris­tians must stop ac­cept­ing the den­i­gra­tion of their faith by peo­ple who know none of their be­liefs.

He said this in a state­ment in the Low­er House yes­ter­day, while ad­mit­ting he was con­sult­ing an or­dained pas­tor in the Full Gospel Fel­low­ship Move­ment who is a born-again Chris­t­ian. Man­ning said: "Per­se­cu­tion of the Full Gospel Fel­low­ship Move­ment has to come to an end," Man­ning said, adding that he grew up in a Chris­t­ian home. He al­so said that Gov­ern­ments in T&T have al­ways as­sist­ed de­nom­i­na­tion­al bod­ies with grants of land and fund­ing. He was re­ply­ing to crit­i­cism on the Light­house Min­istries church con­struc­tion is­sue. Say­ing that the con­tro­ver­sy on the is­sue was tan­ta­mount to re­li­gious per­se­cu­tion of him, Man­ning de­liv­ered a strong­ly-word­ed 53-minute state­ment on the is­sue. He came armed with fig­ures and facts to sup­port his ar­gu­ment. Claim­ing a smear cam­paign was on, Man­ning said: "The point I am try­ing to make it that it has be­come a prac­tice, not on­ly of this Gov­ern­ment, but of many gov­ern­ments that pre­ced­ed it, to make lands avail­able from the State for the con­struc­tion of places of wor­ship." Man­ning stressed that no state funds were be­ing ex­pend­ed on the trav­el of the Light­house Min­istries pas­tor–Ju­liana Pe­na. He said the Gov­ern­ment has had to dis­con­tin­ue land-dis­tri­b­u­tion poli­cies, since due to a pro­lif­er­a­tion of church­es. Man­ning replied in full yes­ter­day on the is­sue which was raised by UNC chief whip Jack Warn­er in the House re­cent­ly.

Man­ning said the Heights of Gua­napo church was not be­ing built with state funds, that the church did not be­long to him and that nei­ther him­self nor any mem­ber of the Gov­ern­ment gave in­struc­tions for Ude­cott re­gard­ing con­struc­tion of it. He said the church was owned by the Light­house body. He said he vis­it­ed the church on­ly once in "broad day­light" in 2005, with a se­cu­ri­ty de­tail. Man­ning said that in 2005, Cab­i­net de­cid­ed to make 0.3 hectares of land at Gua­napo avail­able to the project. The note to the Cab­i­net asked for 1.8 hectares and Cab­i­net ap­proved 0.3 hectares in Sep­tem­ber 2005. When it went to Town and Coun­try Plan­ning Di­vi­sion, it did not agree to the sub­di­vi­sion of the par­cel of land and a note came back to the Cab­i­net at De­cem­ber 7, 2006. Man­ning said he was not present when the de­ci­sion was tak­en. He said a squat­ter on the land was served with a quit no­tice. He said the church chose not to have a con­fronta­tion with the squat­ter and arranged for a mon­e­tary con­tri­bu­tion to en­sure things re­mained on an even keel.

He said Town and Coun­try was in talks on the church is­sue since 2005, and when ap­pli­ca­tion was made and ap­proval not grant­ed, it was be­cause it was not aware of the Cab­i­net de­ci­sion of 2007. Man­ning said it was gross­ly in­ac­cu­rate that Pe­na went every­where with him. He said he had ad­dressed that per­cep­tion dur­ing the Ben­ny Hinn is­sue and wasn't spend­ing more time on it. Man­ning said the Con­sti­tu­tion guar­an­teed free­dom of re­li­gious be­lief. He not­ed that Ro­man Catholics con­sult their priests con­stant­ly and the MPs in the UNC–from UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to Chan­dresh Shar­ma and Roodal Mooni­lal and Bas­deo Pan­day–al­so con­sult their pun­dits and gu­rus and no one com­plains about that. "But when the Prime Min­is­ter de­cides he will seek spir­i­tu­al ad­vice from who­ev­er he wish­es, the first thing they say is obeah or seer­women or prophet­ess...it is a dis­parag­ing state­ment. It is tan­ta­mount to re­li­gious per­se­cu­tion of the Prime Min­is­ter," he added.