Strange things people have done in the name of faith across the world

The sect's followers dug underground bunkers in his Mauche home in Njoro Nakuru County which also doubled up as a church to protect themselves from the nuclear bombs they believed would be unleashed.

The 55-year-old Mosheh Sang was to die in 2015 after battling an unknown illness for almost a year with relatives and friends saying the father of four only relied on traditional herbal medicines. He was buried before the elapse of 24 hours as per their church's doctrines. The dead are considered unclean and have to be buried immediately to ensure the living remain clean.

Religious sect

In 2018, a family in Nakuru lost a child while clinging to some false beliefs in faith. The family between 2014 and 2018 allegedly lost seven children. The family were members of Kanitha wa Ngai (Church of God), a religious sect, that does not believe in hospitals.

The members of Kanitha wa Ngai do not prescribe modern medicine and some suffer at home in silence and their illnesses remain undiagnosed. They prefer to engage in intense prayers instead of going to the hospital.

A majority of Kanitha wa Ngai followers also have little regard for quality formal education.

An Anglican priest who has been a Canon in the church with 30 years of experience also denounced his faith to spread the gospel of Mwene Nyaga. Mwege Nyaga in Gikuyu is God thought to dwell on the top of Mount Kenya.

Before taking the drastic step, he was known as Reverend Canon Peter Kinyanjui but after what he describes as 'finding myself on the theatrical road to Damascus' he is now Thiong'o wa Kinyanjui.

In 2020, Kinyanjui denounced his Christian faith and started convincing people to ditch Christianity claiming it is a form of 'foreign faith' and tracing 'our roots to traditional ways of worship.'

He believes Christianity deliberately disregards the role that the living dead plays in the society.

Coptic Holy Ghost Church, Mamboleo in Kisumu members on the other hand continuously wave their index fingers as members approach one another. This is seen as a greeting style.

In other churches, members who attend church on Saturday are not allowed to engage in other activities apart from attending church service.

Men in some faiths are not allowed to shave their beards while women have to cover their heads and wear long dresses that cover them from head to toe.

In other churches, members have resorted to giving offerings generously believing more shall be added unto them.

In the year 2000, at least 200 members of the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments are believed to have died when they set fire to their church in South Western Uganda. Members of the sect, who were anticipating the end of the world, crowded the building and set it ablaze.

From left: Ursula Komuhangi, Credonia Mwerinde, Joseph Kibwetere and Dominic Kataribabo. Mwerinde and Kibweteere claimed that they had seen visions of the Virgin Mary. [BBC

The Movement had been founded by Credonia Mwerinde and Joseph Kibweteere in 1989 after Mwerinde and Kibweteere claimed that they had seen visions of the Virgin Mary. The five primary leaders died in a fire and a series of poisonings and killings that were initially considered group suicide.

It was later determined to be a mass murder by the group's leaders after their predictions of the apocalypse failed to come about. BBC News and The New York Times referred to the Movement as a doomsday cult.

In 1978 at least 900 followers of the reverend Jim Jones's People's Temple a US-based cult died at Jonestown, Guyana, in a suspected cult-inspired suicide. Most of those who died drank grape punch laced with cyanide. Those who declined to drink were shot.

In October 1993, 53 hill tribe villagers in a remote Vietnamese village died by suicide using primitive weapons after they were tricked out of money by a local blind leader who had promised to get them to heaven.
A man named Ca Van Liem who declared himself king inspired the mass suicide.

Sacrificial suicide

In October 1994 charred bodies of 48 members of the Solar Temple cult were found in a farmhouse in Switzerland. At the same time, five bodies were discovered in a cottage near Montreal in Canada. The cult, founded in 1980 by Luc Jouret, believed that sacrificial suicide leads to rebirth on a planet called Sirius.

In March 1997, 39 members of a cult going by the name Higher Source committed suicide at a mansion in Santa Fe, California United States. The bodies of 21 women and 18 men were found lying face up and dressed in black trousers and black tennis shoes with purple triangular veils covering their chests and faces.

The 39 it is believed killed themselves by swallowing phenobarbital dissolved in apple sauce and vodka. The sect leader, Marshall Applewhite, also died.

The deaths allegedly coincided with the arrival of the Hale-Bopp comet, which the cult members believed contained a spaceship that would deliver them to a "higher evolutionary level" after they had shed their bodies.

In December 1991 a minister and 29 worshippers suffocated after toxic fumes filled a church in San Luis Potosi, Mexico. The minister, Ramon Morales Almazan, urged people to stay calm and keep praying as they began to choke on the fumes and vomit or faint.