Church and Political Party Sadly Similar?

by Letters Editor · October 24, 2017

Paul Traynor, Benoni – Over the past few years I have come to recognise some striking resemblances between my Church and the African National Congress.

The most significant are:

Clinging to an identity which belongs to the past and refusing to adapt to the needs of the society in which it exists.
Holds its power and authority in the hands of an elite few.
Leadership values power over authority.
A failure to listen to critics within and without their structures.
Regards internal criticism as disloyalty and punishes or silences the offenders.
Values collective conscience (obedience) over personal conscience (mature deliberation)
Demands that internal disputes be kept within the “family” and imposes secrecy to achieve this.
Tightly controls its discussion agendas.
Refuses to be moved by voices of outsiders, seen as hostile opposition even when legitimate and patently valid.
Insists on steering its own reform within self-appointed structures without advice from outsiders or its own membership.
Pays strong lip-service to democracy but is seldom seen to practise it.
Imagines that it will rule “till Jesus returns”.