1.0 Introduction
Walls separating religion and state have crumbled in favour of the state. Every day, the states intervene in religious business, and judges by strict interpretation of the law overturn holy sacraments, indigenous religious stipulations etc.; the various religions lacking legal standing are not consulted and have no recourse. Rather than fighting this outrage, some are even campaigning to preserve this infringement on religious freedom by writing it into the constitution. The politician is always on a look out to exploit and to take advantage of situations and social groupings to advance their cause and these have both negative and positive consequences for society. Since 2001, most of the leadership of major religions in Ghana have been viewed by the wider Ghanaian society as sympathetic if not openly supportive of one political party or the other. Religious leaders who were once constant critics of a ruling government become less critical when there is a change in government. Today, political parties are vying for Muslim votes; in other to outdo each other, politicians continue a tradition of government using tax-payers money to subsidise Muslim pilgrimage or attempt to send some members of the clergy to Jerusalem as happened earlier this year. Party politics may have built bridges between ordinary adherents of the various religions but may also have open up new frontlines of polarization in the society. If religious leaders will sincerely and honestly under this secular dispensation stay off politic, respect and accept secularism as a policy of state and work assiduously to entrench the true tenets of pluralism, politicians will have option but be compelled and even be afraid to do anything that will taint religion, and in that matter religious tourism.
Political tainting of religious tourism constitutes political interference in religion;