In order to set the grounds and bring you to date with the recent development which has made this article necessary, let’s quickly consider the background.
One of the most powerful men of God in the West Africa country-Ghana who by might and supposed God’s anointing has found himself in charge of if not the biggest, one of the biggest chapels in the capital openly ridiculed women last Sunday to the total acceptance of his many congregants, shockingly the women.
And his bigot statements took their roots from the Bible as he had a biblical quotation to illustrate how unworthy women are—‘as 7 women are for one man’.
Archbishop Duncan Williams (note his title) is reported to have said (also on video);
“It’s a privilege to be married. It’s a privilege in the time we live in when it’s seven [women] to one man’’
“Sister when you get married, be thankful and stop misbehaving because it’s seven to one. It doesn’t matter how pretty and beautiful and intelligent you are; until a man proposes to you, you are going to stay beautiful, pretty, intelligent, nice and whatever, and rotten”.
“That’s what it is, and somebody needs to tell you because there [are] so many women out there misbehaving. You got to be told the truth. And the reason why a lot of marriages are not working is because everybody is afraid to offend women to tell them: ‘Come on girl, you got a good thing going, hold fast onto it, don’t misbehave and don’t lose it’”.
“And somebody says: ‘How about the men?’ They got issues too but you see, the fact of the matter is that a man can be 100 years old and marry again if he ‘moves’. A man can be 100 years and marry if he can ‘drive’. But a woman just can’t get married at a particular age. [It] gets to a place [where] everything begins to melt and you can’t marry just because you want to marry”,
“It is what it is, and sometimes we don’t want to hear the truth. We get offended when the truth is said, but I have come to a place [where] I tell people that I have lost my reputation a long time ago, and so it doesn’t really matter whether you like me or you don’t like me, and I don’t preach to impress people anymore. I stopped doing that a long time ago. I deliver what I’m told to deliver, and whether you receive it or not is none of my business; it’s your business”, he said.
Since its inception, religion (especially Christianity and Islam) has treated women with gross contempt and still considers our sisters, mothers and wives as inferior—unworthy of a lot. It’s therefore not much of a shock for many of us that certain positions in the church cannot be occupied by even the most intelligent amongst women, for the mere fact that the person is a woman.
Look around the world to the poor regions and even though the solution to poverty simply lies in elevating women, any attempt to enforce women empowerment has and will be met with the clergy’s objection. For many years, religion backed by its holy books has and continues to oppress women—with some of the alleged great works and roles played by women like Mary Magdalene even disappearing from the Bible.
The very holy books based on which the two aforementioned religions operate have no idea and acknowledgement of the concept of equality—and fails to recognise the important roles women have in society by pushing them behind the veil. Women are positioned as helpers of men, with no real purpose in life—except the one I have just noted.
Considering the era in which these religious texts were written, you could forgive them for the way and manner they view women, but if in a 21st century democratic Ghana, a Bishop in charge of thousands of congregants can make the above statements with strong reliance on the bible—it surely must be met with anger and be treated with the same gross contempt it came with.