Nairobi — It is official: the Government receives an average of two new applications daily from people seeking to register churches.

At face value, we should be celebrating this explosion of spirituality as showing our godliness.

But in Europe, people are turning cathedrals into shopping malls and dens of iniquity as congregations dwindle and moral decadence flourishes.

The secularisation surge manifests itself through soaring divorce rates, marriage breakdowns, teenage pregnancies, drug addiction and so on.

Judging by the excessive public displays of affection in the Nairobi streets on Friday nights and the sheer numbers of twilight girls beckoning at passers-by, Kenyans are plunging headlong into a similar cesspit.

This is why the proliferation of churches should be good news. But is it? We are afraid not.

Religion, as we report in our lead story today, is a fast growing sector for reasons more secular than ecumenical.

Register a church and, on the premise that more blessed is the hand that giveth than the one that taketh, the cash will simply flow in.

In many unfortunate cases, the believers cannot put food on the table in order to give the tithe, hoping to reap more by way of divine blessings.

People have been known to walk from Dandora to the city centre to part with the little they have and walk back home in the blazing sun as the bishop drives away to his pricey suburban home in an air-conditioned Lexus.

Surely, God cannot be so callous as to punish the less fortunate.

We are not issuing a blanket condemnation of the Church, for it often complements government efforts by building schools and hospitals, which are generally better managed than the public ones.

It is the few rotten apples that the State must tame by making the qualification for the licence more stringent.