"This is not acceptable," the Rev. Grace Kaiso, an Anglican priest and executive secretary of the Uganda Joint Christian Council, told Ecumenical News International on April 29. "Nobody will agree to this because the greatest battle we have at the moment is that centered on morals, whether we are dealing HIV and AIDS or issues of governance," said Kaiso, whose council is made up of Anglican, Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches.

The government had the previous week circulated a paper in the national parliament that proposed confining religious education teaching to homes and churches. The letter also proposed consideration being given to withdrawing support for schools founded as private institutions, if they continued to charge student fees.

"From a strategic and ideological point of view, it was not appropriate for the government to condone the continuous teaching of religious education in schools," local media quoted the Cabinet memorandum as saying.

One issue raised by the government of the central African nation is that the Church could pay ground rentals as a trade-off for school fees received. Another concern of the government is that faith-based schools often resist recruiting head teachers who do not belong to the denomination that runs the school.

"We will be studying the paper. We will be responding, but for anybody to think this [teaching religious studies] is not important, is unacceptable," said Kaiso.

Some Ugandan political leaders have agreed with church leaders on the continuation of religious studies at schools in a country where about 84 percent of its 31 million people are Christians and some 12 percent are Muslims.

"If God can only be talked about in homes and churches, we are destined for moral disaster, " the Uganda Land Commission chief, Mayanja Nkangi, told New Vision, a government-owned newspaper on April 28.

Uganda's national motto is "For God and my country," but some analysts say that the role of religious institutions has been in decline since 1962, the year the country attained independence from Britain.