Pastor of Kingdom Life Church, Cedric Moss yesterday said the recently passed Non-Profit Organization Bill “has difficult and troubling provisions.”
However, he said that he is grateful that there seems to be wider consultation among non-profit organizations, churches in particular.
He added that he is most concerned about section one which requires all organizations to register with the government in order to operate. This, he says, is a complete overreach.
He said, “If a group of individuals decides that they want to band together to start a church and propogate their religion, the constitiution says you can do that without hinderance.”
He added, “to require them to apply to be approved to do that seems to me to be going above the constitution. Now, the other provisions in the bill, I believe many of them are certainly constitutional, and I would also say that I think some of them are good.”
The Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) eighth recommendation asks countries to review the adequacy of laws and regulations relating to NPO’s, which the country has identified vulnerable to terrorist financing abuse.
It also asks for countries to provide focused, porportionate measures in line with the risk-based approach to protect NPO’s from such abuse.
Pastor Moss said, “I think the government , in my view, has gone beyond what they’ve been asked to do on two measures. One, they have taken a shotgun approach to all NPO’s instead of saying, ‘We are going to target these particular ones and here are our reasons’.”
He said, “come to the churches and say they you believe we are vulnerable to terrorist financing abuse and you want to regulate us. No church ,in my opinion, is. Then even if you identify as being so, let it be proportionate.”
He noted that the government may not expect for a church to fund terrorist organizations. However he recommend that there be different stipulations for churches.
Pastor Moss was a guest on Love 97 and the Jones Communication Network’s talk show , Jones and Company.
