Anger over Rwandan plan to regulate religions: CEN 6.12.09 p 6.

Archbishop Emmanuel Kolini of Rwanda is spearheading a drive by the country’s Christian and Muslim leaders to defeat a bill introduced by the government that regulates the formation and finances of the country’s churches and mosques.

Requiring new churches to have at least 100 members and for its ministers or muftis to have an academic degree would have a chilling effect on religious freedom, Archbishop Kolini wrote in a letter to the country’s local government minister Musoni Protais.

On April 16, Protais tabled the Religious Denominations Bill before the Chamber of Deputies. The Bill asks the government to regulate the formation of new religious organizations, and require existing groups to submit to government supervised audits of their finances.

It sets out “procedures for creating such organizations or religious denominations, requirements, and rights and obligations owed to them in their daily activities,” a summary report printed on the website of the Rwandan parliament said.

Archbishop Kolini told Kigali’s New Times that Rwanda’s churches believed the proposed regulations were onerous. By imposing academic tests upon the organizers of new churches, the “freedom of worship is dishonoured,” he said.

Supporters of the Bill argued that the plethora of new African indigenous churches—some of which ignored local zoning laws and engaged in dubious business practices required a firm governmental hand.

However,” you cannot handle churches the same way you handle associations and NGOs. We are different,” Archbishop Kolini told the New Times. “I think if this law is passed, it is likely to cause tension,” he noted.