Religious leaders are expected to gather at the Rhema Bible Church, north of Johannesburg on Wednesday morning for the first ever religious summit.
The summit follows an investigation into the commercialisation of religion and the abuse of people’s belief system conducted by the Commission for the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Cultural, Religious and Linguistic Communities (CRL) Rights Commission.
The summit comes as two popular church leaders, Tim Omotoso and Shepherd Bushiri face criminal charges of sexual abuse and money laundering respectively.
The summit will be attended by members of the different religious groupings, including Christians, Muslims and African religious groupings.
One of the aims of the summit is to form a peer review mechanism and a strategy to regulate the sector.
The religious sector plans to work closely with the police, Department of Home Affairs and South African Revenue Service (SARS) to ensure that only credible religious leaders run churches in South Africa.
Calls have been made for stricter regulations on foreign pastors who want to operate churches locally.
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