Rev. Johnson blames Church for failures

The General Overseer of the Restoration Baptist Ministries in Monrovia thinks the churches of Liberia and traditional leaders have failed to reconcile the country following 14 years of civil war.

Rev. Joseph Gardea Johnson told this paper in an interview that churches and traditional leaders failed to createa corridor to achieve national reconciliation. Speaking Friday during program in observance of Good Friday at his church´s edifice in Congo Town outside Monrovia, Rev. Johnson, who is former pastor of the First Baptist Church also in Congo Town, said it is unfortunate that influential leaders who many Liberians look up to for direction to have reneged on its responsibility.

Commenting on call for the Christianizing of Liberia, he said some religious leaders were using the situation to amass wealth at the expense of the populace, but did not say how. According to him, some people were creating the grounds that the country is at amok with the issue of Christianization.

He alleged some influential leaders of certain religious group are already receiving foreign monies under the disguise that Christianizing Liberia has put them under ´serious religious threat´. “There are some people who are using the phase of Christianizing Liberia as a means of enriching themselves with foreign monies. Such idea is wrong and terrifying for the young democracy,” he said.

Rev. Johnson noted that call to make Liberia a Christian state by some politicians was intended to divert the minds of the public from the deaths of former Liberia Petroleum Refinery Company Managing Director, Mr. Harry Greaves and former consultant Michael Allison of the National Oil Company of Liberia or NOCAL.

The Baptist prelate said it is important that the government establishes the causes of the deaths of these men or else, the country may experience more mysterious deaths in the near future. He said there is nothing call Christianizing Liberia instead, the preamble of the 1847 Constitution which established that Liberia was founded on Christian Principles is that clause that should be put back in the current Constitution.

Rev. Johnson disclosed since he founded his ministry, he has planted 12 churches across the country without Liberia being a Christian State, which is not the crucial issue, but reinserting in the preamble of the Constitution the reference God.

In August 2012, President Johnson Sirleaf constituted a six-member committee headed by former Chief Justice Counselor Gloria Musu Scott, to amongst other things, arrange public discourses to solicit views from Liberians across the country, and other parts of the world to make some changes in the 1986 Liberian Constitution. 

Delegates at a National Constitution Review Conference held in Gbarnga, Bong County from March 29-April 2, 2015 endorsed more than two dozen propositions, including Proposition 25, which has become very contentious here, particularly among Muslims, who vehemently kick against it.

By E. J. Nathaniel Daygbor-Edited by Jonathan Browne