The leadership of Universal Apostles Fellowship Church of Righteousness UAFCR has issued a stern warning to believers to abandon skin bleaching and stop adopting Western lifestyles wholesale, saying the practice amounts to rejecting God’s design and embracing what church leaders call kaveera culture, cheap packaging with no nutrition.
Speaking during Sunday service on 31st May 2026 at the church headquarters along Acacia Road, Jinja City, Moses Tulituuka, the preacher in charge of UAFCR’s Jinja Zone, expressed alarm at the growing number of Ugandan and African women altering their skin to look Chinese or European.
“Why do so many of our women and even men want to change the skin God gave them?” Tulituuka asked the congregation. “When you bleach, you are telling your Creator, ‘You made a mistake.’ That is not self-care. That is inferiority complex. That is sin against your own body.”
He said the trend extends beyond cosmetics into dress, music, language and lifestyles, including homosexuality and lesbianism, which he described as foreign practices being copied blindly while abandoning values given by God.
Tulituuka anchored his message on Scripture to show that UAFCR’s position is not born out of ignorance, but from biblical teaching that addressed the human body long before modern hospitals existed. He referenced Genesis 1:27, where God declares that He created man in His own image, male and female. In the ancient world, Tulituuka explained, kings made statues “in their image” to show authority and ownership. By that same logic, every Ugandan, every shade of black, brown or caramel, carries God’s royal signature. To bleach that skin, he argued, is to scratch the King’s portrait.
The preacher also drew from Matthew 5:6, where Jesus says, _“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.”In first-century Judea, hunger and thirst described a desperate, survival-level need.
Tulituuka said Jesus was calling believers to pursue God’s standards of purity, justice and identity with that same urgency, instead of chasing trends of adultery, fornication, witchcraft, theft and embezzlement that have become normalized. He further quoted 1 Corinthians 6:19-20, reminding the church that the body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. Damaging it with chemicals, he said, is desecration, not decoration.
After laying the biblical foundation, Tulituuka told the congregation that science is now catching up with what Scripture warned centuries ago. He explained that skin bleaching involves the use of creams, soaps, pills and injections designed to reduce melanin, with common ingredients including hydroquinone, mercury, corticosteroids, kojic acid and glutathione.
Health workers, he said, are now seeing the damage firsthand. Prolonged use of hydroquinone and steroids thins the skin until it tears easily, burns under the sun and heals slowly. Long-term users develop ochronosis, a permanent blue-black discoloration that is often worse than the original skin tone. Hospitals such as Mulago and Jinja Regional Referral are treating increasing cases of the condition.
Mercury, another common ingredient, is absorbed through the skin into the bloodstream and accumulates in the kidneys and brain. The Ministry of Health has linked it to kidney failure, memory loss, tremors and nerve damage. High doses of hydroquinone have also been associated with cancer and liver toxicity.
Corticosteroids disrupt hormones, leading to high blood pressure, diabetes, weight gain, stretch marks and weakened immunity. For pregnant women, mercury crosses the placenta and endangers unborn babies.
Beyond the physical harm, Tulituuka noted, bleached skin loses its natural protection against ultraviolet rays, making users more prone to sunburn and skin cancer.
Researchers at Makerere University have also found a link between bleaching and mental health struggles such as anxiety, low self-esteem and body dysmorphia, with many users trapped in fear of “going back dark.”
Dermatologists warn that prolonged use of bleaching products causes skin thinning, steroid-induced dermatitis, and irreversible ochronosis which is a permanent blue-black discoloration.
Hospital data from Mulago National Referral Hospital in Kampala have documented severe dermatological complications among Ugandan women using skin-lightening creams.
Source: K.R. Katumba and C. Kityo, “Severe Dermatological Complications Following Use of Skin-Lightening Creams: A Case Series from Mulago Hospital, Kampala, Uganda”, African Journal of Dermatology 2, no.1(2009):34.
“Do you see why God warned us first?” Tulituuka asked. “When Leviticus 13 gave rules for inspecting skin diseases and Deuteronomy 23 ordered waste to be disposed of outside the camp, the Bible was giving hygiene and body-care laws three and a half thousand years before germ theory. Scripture was a health manual before science wrote its footnotes.”
Hard Work and the Promise of the Land.
Shifting from personal purity to community prosperity, Omubulizi Tulituuka encouraged members to be hardworking so that poverty can be fought from homesteads. He reminded the congregation that God’s promise has always been tied to obedience and righteousness.
Citing Psalm 128:2, he declared: “You shall eat the fruit of the labor of your hands; you shall be blessed, and it shall be well with you.”. He said the verse shows God’s design that righteous living and diligent work lead to provision. “When you are obedient and you work with your hands, God says you will eat the fruit of the land. Poverty is not God’s plan for His people, laziness is, so wake up, till your garden, keep your home, and God will bless the work of your hands,” he charged.
Mega Gospel Crusade and Ebola Precautions.
Tulituuka also asked followers to support the forthcoming Mega Gospel Crusade scheduled for 14th June in Luwero District. He said the church is mobilizing believers across regions to attend what is expected to be a major evangelistic outreach led by UAFCR’s Spiritual Supreme Head, Prophet David Isanga alias Nabbi Daudi.
However, he noted that church leadership is still waiting for further guidance from the Ministry of Health following the outbreak of Ebola which has spiraled into Uganda. “We believe in the power of prayer and gathering, but we also believe in wisdom,” Tulituuka said.
“As a church that teaches stewardship of the body, we will not ignore health guidelines. We are praying, and we are waiting for direction from the Ministry of Health so that the crusade honors both God and the safety of His people.”
The preacher drove his point home with a parable from a posho truck accident at Mabira Forest along the Jinja-Kampala highway. According to him, a local man cut open a sack of fine first-class posho and poured it on the ground just to take the empty white sack, or kaveera, for storing maize.
While he was not encouraging looting, Tulituuka said the man valued the sack more than the nutrition. He compared this to Christians who abandon biblical values of modesty, marriage and African identity just to carry the kaveera of bleached skin, foreign fashion and ungodly lifestyles.
Borrowing President Yoweri Museveni’s 2026-31 campaign slogan: “Kisanja No Sleep, Zero Corruption”, Tulituuka charged believers to apply it spiritually.
He condemned sleeping and phone addiction during church service, saying spiritual slumber is corruption of calling. Instead, he urged prayer, fellowship, fasting and evangelism, disciplines consistently preached by UAFCR’s Spiritual Supreme Head, Prophet David Isanga.
He closed by expounding Philippians 3:8-12, where Apostle Paul says he counts everything as loss compared to knowing Christ. Paul, Tulituuka explained, was an elite scholar and Roman citizen who called his credentials skubala, Greek for dung or refuse, after meeting Jesus.
Paul traded status for salvation and today, the preacher said, many reverse that equation by trading Jesus for bleached skin, foreign passports and social media fame.
“Paul counted culture as loss to gain Christ. We are counting Christ as loss to gain culture,” he said. “Drop the kaveera. Hold the posho. Drop the bleach. Hold God’s image.”
UAFCR leadership reaffirmed its mission to raise believers who are culturally confident, biblically rooted and physically healthy. “God’s laws on the body were never about control,” Tulituuka concluded. “They were about protection. When we warn you about bleaching, we are not ignorant. We are obedient.”
