Ho, March. 5, GNA- Major Courage Quashigah (rtd), Minister of Health, has urged the clergy to preach the substance of Jesus Christ's message and desist from using certain exhortations in the Bible to strip Ghanaians of their cultural heritage.

He said Jesus Christ's message must be preached properly and not used to enslave the people mentally.

Major Quashigah gave the exhortation when he addressed a Consultative meeting of Chiefs and Clergy in Ho on Wednesday. The meeting brought together about 180 traditional rulers and 40 clerics under the aegis of Operation Rescue Africa International and a group of churches to deliberate on their differences.

Major Quashigah suggested that the Christian priests should stress the message of Jesus, his love and dictates to man to strive to live by good deeds and not riches or haughty postures. He regretted that almost everything African has been so denigrated as backward and apostate that Africans have lost their African identity, hardly knowing what to do to develop. Major Quashigah observed that the evidently non-Christian nations such as Malaysia, Japan, Singapore, India and China have outpaced Ghana in all spheres because they held on to their traditional beliefs of right and wrong.

"No country in this world can develop outside its culture," he said exhorting clerics to search the Bible to bring out portions that taught people to be industrious. Major Quashigah, who drew cheers from the traditional rulers and shrugs of uneasiness from Christian priests, slammed clerics for tagging as evil, people who use traditional methods of healing and disease prevention.

He said whereas the traditional practice of having to wash one's hands in a concoction of leaves before entering the house on returning from a cemetery was proved to have antibiotic properties, but to the Christian that is regarded as paganism.

Major Quashigah wondered why the country could not develop the traditional methods used by traditional birth attendants to disinfect their hands with leaves after delivering babies. The Minister also spoke about the numerous food derivatives from cassava, maize and beans among others that our forbears developed, but which the modern generation could not improve upon and market. He asked the clergy to preach messages to their flock bearing in mind that the missionaries came not only to evangelize us but also to manipulate us in the interest of their nations. Mr Kofi Dzamesi, Volta Regional Minister asked the meeting to ensure that their decisions were implemented to help in the progress of the country.

Topics discussed include, Reality of True African Religion, Low Productivity among the People and Lessons in Conflict Resolution. The chiefs presented a resolution to government to train and equip traditional rulers with skills on Alternative Dispute Resolution, bring back the native court system and give idle land acquired by government back to their owners.