Archbishop: Beware religious shams

DO NOT LET religion take away your common sense.This is the philosophy of Dr John Holder, Archbishop of the West Indies and Bishop of the Barbados Diocese, regarding the notion that many churches start up in the pursuit of riches.In a recent interview with BARBADOS BUSINESS AUTHORITY, Holder said that people’s natural attraction to God or some sort of religion made then vulnerable to exploitation by false preachers, but they ought to be sensible enough to detect religious shams.           “We have to be careful that religion is not being used to exploit us. Religion should never take away our common sense. God doesn’t want us to be stupid. He wants us to use the brain that he has given to us to understand Him and understand His Word and to understand other people, and especially understand those who would want to exploit us,” he said at his office, Henry’s Lane, St Michael.He pointed out that Barbados was a country that accommodated anyone who wanted to establish a church because Government or the average person would “never, ever, ever say don’t put a church there”.“And there are persons who use religion to become extremely rich; very, very rich. I would not identify anyone in Barbados as doing that. What I’m saying is that there is a possibility that it can happen here. But I’m not saying that it is happening here,” Holder said.