Noise about religion   E. Ablorh-Odjidja September 6, 2010   I am not a theologian. Anything you read about religion here is more descriptive than substantive; descriptive in the sense that it is what I see and hear around me; same as others do most of the time.   Also, I will limit myself to churches even though I find the call of the Muezzin early in the morning equally disturbing.   Suddenly, there are more churches than factories in Ghana. Open halls that once housed segments of our productive society; schools, warehouses, furniture plants, and small tool shops, have been converted to church halls and mosques.   You know there is a church in a neighborhood if there is a cacophony that goes on unabated through the night; boldly disturbing the peace and reducing a whole community to a point of nervousness in the name of God.   Yet you dare not call the disturbance a nuisance because you will be promptly hailed by the church members as an incarnate of Satan when it should be clear to sensible people around that the real Satan would sooner have these church members as his incarnates. After all, they are already performing the task for him!   Why rowdiness and not calmness should be the signature of some churches in our communities must be the question.  And as a matter concerning freedom of religion, it should be much so. Agreed then that this license of freedom ought to be the essence of religion.  But how far must this freedom go, to the point of making restful sleeping meaningless?    How about my freedom to sleep undisturbed in the middle of the night; must that also be prohibited by the freedom of the religion package granted to these rowdy worshipers?    The characteristics of many of the churches in our neighborhoods are already stamped with this claim of freedom. But note this. I am not advocating for the banning of any of these churches.  Nor am I asking for the banishment of their members from the affected neighborhoods.    My only concern here is about the noise.  Noise making must not be defined as freedom of religion.  It cannot be such since it is offensive, intrusive, impacts all within its sphere, and therefore put a lot of unhealthy stress on a community.   The loud, amplified music racket you hear all night into the morning hours prevents a good neighbor from having the peaceful rest to which he or she is entitled.    That person may be a kid in school, a surgeon with a critical operation scheduled for that early morning, or a civil engineer on a high-rise building project.  The stress experienced may end up as failures in any area of their professional lives that morning.   The lack of sleep induced by this overdriven religiosity may end as a catastrophe that only the devil can appreciate, but the consequence of which ought to be a criminal and/or civil matter. It should therefore be considered un-Godly.   Apart from the noise, I will leave alone the messaging that goes on within these churches and mosques, since I will not be there inside the vicinity with the members and their pastors.  So, I will say to them that their ability to tolerate the worship, other than the noise, will be a matter of a judgment call conditioned by their faith.   But it should be known that faith alone on their part must still not grant them limitless freedom to restrain my ability to complain about the nuisance and obtrusive cacophonies that come out from the walls of these churches and mosques into nearby streets and housings in my neighborhood.     For, the noisy ambiance that they churn out nightly in their neighborhoods is no different from that produced by the "drinking bars" (the houses of the devil) in the same communities.   Both Christians and Muslims have assured us that the "drinking bars" are houses of the devil.  The only concern here is the churches and mosques are producing the same irritating noises as these houses of the devil.   There is a good chance that some of us may go to heaven and others may not, but there is a message in the Bible that suggests discretion in the way we prepare ourselves for that eventuality.   Mathew 7:22 -23 (the Bible of course) says:   “Many will say to Me in that day, "Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?   “And then I will declare to them, "I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.”   Who practices lawlessness?  The lawlessness is the noisy part.  Cacophony is what is practiced in some of these houses of worship all night.  Even beasts in the wild know when to be quiet.   And in our traditional religious practices, the same practices that Christians and Muslims have long condemned as paganism, have moments of the year when any noise, like loud drumming, is not allowed.  When, therefore, will the members of these churches and mosques know that a less noisy environment is good for the soul?   Keeping your neighborhood stressfully awake all night is not a good sign of respect for God (or the law either).  It must be an embarrassment to the Good Lord.   E. Ablorh-Odjidja, Publisher, www.ghanadot.com, September 6, 2010 Permission to publish:  Please feel free to publish or reproduce, with credits, unedited.  If posted on a website, email a copy of the web page to publisher@ghanadot.com. Or don't publish at all.