By Eric Appah Marfo
Accra, Feb. 23, GNA — The Reverend Professor J. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu, President, Trinity Theological Seminary, has called for responsible citizenship to promote the collective interest of the Ghanaian 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.”
“God’s blessings come to those who do not compromise on the moral implications of faith and life and work towards the good of the community,” he said.
Rev. Prof. Asamoah-Gyadu was delivering the J.B Danquah Memorial Lectures (Series 56), organised by the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences, in Accra.
The three-day Lecture is on the broad theme: “African Politics and the Mystical Realm: Religion and Governance in Post Colonial Ghana.”
Day Two was on the subtitle: “Healing Our People: Contemporary Christianity, Citizenship, and Governance in Ghana.”
Rev. Prof. Asamoah-Gyadu toasted constructive citizenship as the tool to reverse the trend and channel efforts into building a Ghana which citizens could refer to as homeland without any reservations.
Ciitizenship is the status of a person under custom or law considered as the legal member of a community or sovereign state.
Rev. Prof. Asamoah-Gyadu said to be a citizen, one was meant to belong, adding that one’s belonging carried with it privileges and responsibilities.
“Citizenship is a means of personal and communal affirmation. It confers dignity, legitimacy and has implications for human rights because of the privileges and responsibilities associated with it,” he explained.
He bemoaned the art of politics in Ghana which he said had become a distraction and in some cases, destructive to national endeavours.
Rev. Prof. Asamoah-Gyadu said Ghanaians needed healing from rebellious attitudes to law and order and from mediocrity and the poor sense of hygiene.
As part of his reflection on politics, he said in many countries, the loss of elections had been marked with bitterness and rejection as incumbent governments seek 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 more recently, the Gambia.
Rev. Prof. Asamoah-Gyadu called for moral purity to put as the citizen on the enabling path for the profession of faith.
Christians are supposed to be exemplary as far as personal lifestyles are concerned, adding that, the manner in which people serve as private citizens and public servants has its own implications, he said.
Rev. Prof. Asamoah-Gyadu said religiosity must inspire a new hermeneutics of citizenship created the awareness that life and work must be governed by eternal human values which positively affected workplace ethics in terms of time and resource management.
GNA