Uganda’s President Yuweri Museveni. Photo: Russell Watkins/UK Department for International Development

I remember how shocked I was when I heard about the Lord’s Resistance Army for the first time. This Christian militia wants to introduce a theocracy in Uganda based on the Ten Commandments, and the pathway to this goal is death and destruction. The LRA is infamous for cutting off people’s lips, hands or ears if they betray them, arguing that they’re following the Biblical command in Lev 2419-20: “Anyone who injures their neighbor is to be injured in the same manner: fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth.”

The fact that Jesus abolished violence and said “You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also” (Mt 5:38-39) was something they didn’t like to mention.

The LRA is completely mad, and many are eager to point out that they aren’t very Christian at all but practice pagan, occult worship, and the Ten Commandments Theocracy is probably not their real goal at all. In later years, they have been very marginalized and are not even in Uganda any more. However, when I hear about the new anti-gay laws in Uganda, which put LGBT people in prison for life and which requires all citizens to “report” homosexuals, I wonder if the crazy LRA ideology hasn’t won a small victory after all. (more…)