Kampala, Uganda - A NATIONAL False Teaching Awareness Week (March 12 to March 19) has been launched to educate people on the problem of cults in Uganda.
Six years ago last Friday, the world awoke to the news of a mass suicide of cult followers in Kanungu in western Uganda. It later turned out that the worshippers in the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God, led by Joseph Kibwetere, were murdered in a doomsday inferno.
Although government authorities immediately swung into action, the leaders still remain at large. It was the kind of experience that made Christians determine that such an incident should never be allowed to happen again. Yet, like Kibwetere's group, several unorthodox cults have come up, both legally and illegally and continue to lure innocent people into strange dogma.
According to Chris Tuhirirwe of Makerere University Religious Studies department, most people join cults due to ignorance, poverty, desire for recognition and other related factors.
By building public knowledge about cults it is possible to avoid a repeat of Kanungu, Tuhirirwe says.
Recently a cross-section of Christian leaders in Kampala agreed to mark a False Teaching Awareness week starting this year.
African Evangelistic Enterprise's Rev. Geoffrey Byarugaba stated that the awareness week will feature activities geared to increase people's understanding of false teachings so as to avoid them.