Ugandan clergyman, Pastor Aloysius Bugingo, has caused anger among Christians after reportedly burning bibles belonging to his congregation.
Pastor Bugingo claimed that the bibles were misleading and could not be a dependable source of the gospel.
Bugingo, who is the head of the House of Prayer Ministries, Uganda, and whose actions have been widely condemned as “stupid”, “ignorant” and “intolerant” by the wider Christian community, was reported to have burned the King James Version and Good News Bibles because they predominantly used the words “Holy Ghost” as opposed to “Holy Spirit”.
Quoting their leader, Bugingo’s followers said that he told them that the Bibles burned had been tampered with and that some verses were omitted without a satisfactory explanation.
The Pastor had told his congregation that the lines talking about the Fasting and Lent were deleted through unclear circumstances, and the words “Holy Ghost” appears 99 times yet “Holy Spirit” appears only seven.
This, to Pastor Bugingo, was the handiwork of “devil worshippers” and should therefore not be allowed to confuse his followers.
He claimed that the reason the Bibles burned contained the words “Holy Ghost” over “Holy Spirit” was because the accused devil worshippers wanted Christians to worship ghosts.
The Pastor is quoted by his followers as saying, “Satan is trying to twist the minds of those that think are learnt. There is no word used by Satan that is used by God. You will hear their agents – they call themselves pastors here in Uganda – rising up to fight what we are doing.”
Pastor Bugingo, who owns Salt FM and Salt TV, also announced plans to build a printing house that will produce “verified Bibles” and in response to his fellow pastors, who condemned his act of burning the Bibles, his answer was unequivocal. “If what am doing is wrong, then am ready for hell,” reported local media.
Images of the burning heaps of Bibles went viral over Social Media, and there was an exponential increase in anger towards the Pastor.
Religious leaders throughout the country have publicly condemned the incident as a “blasphemous abomination” and asked God-loving people to denounce what some Christians have described as “the warped teachings” of Pastor Bugingo.
There has been no comment to media from Pastor Bugingo.
