‘Responsible citizenship needed to promote and sustain democracy’
The President of the Trinity Theological Seminary, Reverend Professor Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu, has called for responsible citizenship to promote and sustain democracy through the collective interest of the society and goodwill towards humanity.
“Responsible citizenship is expected to issue graceful speech and other morally upright acts that inure to the benefit of the whole community so that families and communities flourish together,” he reiterated.
Rev. Prof. Asamoah-Gyadu explained that God’s blessings came to those who did not compromise on the moral implications of faith and life and work towards the good of the community.
Delivering the J.B Danquah Memorial Lectures (Series 56), organised by the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences, in Accra, he noted that constructive citizenship is the tool to reverse the trend and channel efforts into building a Ghana which the citizenry could refer to as homeland without any reservations.
The three-day lecture was on the theme: “African Politics and the Mystical Realm- Religion and Governance in Post-Colonial Ghana” with the subtitle: ‘Healing Our People-Contemporary Christianity, Citizenship, and Governance in Ghana’.
Rev. Prof. Asamoah-Gyadu observed that citizenship was the status of a person under law considered as the legal member of a sovereign state and to be a citizen, one was meant to belong since one’s belonging carried with it privileges and responsibilities.
“Citizenship is a means of personal and communal affirmation which confers dignity, legitimacy and has implications for human rights because of the privileges and responsibilities associated with it.
“The art of politics in the country has become a distraction and in some cases, destructive to national endeavour so Ghanaians need healing from rebellious attitudes to law and order, mediocrity and the poor sense of hygiene,” Rev. Prof. Asamoah-Gyadu bemoaned.
As part of his reflection on politics, he pointed out that in many countries, the loss of elections had been marked with bitterness and rejection as incumbent governments sought to manipulate systems of governance to perpetuate their regime, leading to some of the “bitterest” conflicts that ever happened in countries like Cote d’Ivoire, Liberia and recently, The Gambia.
Rev. Prof. Asamoah-Gyadu suggested moral purity to put the citizenry on the enabling path for profession of faith since Christians were supposed to be exemplary as far as personal lifestyles were concerned, adding that“the manner in which people serve as private citizens and public servants has its own implications”.
According to Rev. Prof. Asamoah-Gyadu, religiosity must inspire a new hermeneutics of citizenship created the awareness life and work must be governed by eternal human values which positively affected workplace ethics in terms of time and resource management.
