‘When prayer becomes dominating and manipulative in its intent, it becomes magic…. Imprecation and incantations become, in effect, “oral talismans” (charms)’ A.G. Ha, “Prayer” in New Encyclopaedia Britannica, Chicago 1984, p949
In part 1 of this essay, we see prayer developing from man’s primitive infancy into a sacred ritual. The essence of the ritual is also examined, and the point made that modern scientific worldview has considerably influenced the attitude to prayer and raised critical questions concerning whether faith-driven praying can change natural processes. Incidentally, practically all the praying in Nigeria is addressed to gods created and rooted in alien cultures. Thus, the prayers themselves are derived/adapted from Islamic-Christian sources, validated by ancient Semitic mythologies, but moderated by prevailing local concerns to invoke putative panaceas for exigent 21st century mundane problems. In this second part, praying as a presumed cure-all ritual is the key element in an evangelical crusade that is expected to usher in the millennium. This crusade has been on for over three decades now, that is, longer than enough for the failure of its pretensions to manifest. Indeed, it has become obvious that the noisy business-promotion carnivals masquerading as religious revivals for national salvation, were conceived in wishful presumptuousness and superstitious belief in magic. Even if it had originally been designed for national regeneration, praying as the major component of a self-serving commercialised enterprise has become a widespread racket, and a lucrative hustle for “prosperity”.
That developments in religion in Nigeria took this turn, and with the acquiescence and active collaboration of the political and intellectual elite is a matter for deep concern. The national elite has adopted praying and related rituals as the prime means of insuring stability and development. Yet, these rituals are not associated with, or driven by, any known ethic. Apart from the authority of antediluvian sacred texts on the power of prayer already discussed in part I of this essay, there is, perhaps, also the assumption that the act of going about making iwure, or invoking blessings and good wishes is, in itself, salutary. Meanwhile, economic instability has contributed to preaching and praying becoming an all-comers’ hustle. Thus all sorts of characters (many of them refugees from unemployment) with little or no requisite training or disposition for the vocation, have assumed the title of pastors. Ersatz worship centres began to dot the landscape. Above all, big churches sprang up, founded by charismatic preachers with good formal education and considerable entrepreneurial ability. These money-spinning churches, with their “faith-healing” clinics, deliverance rituals, and open-air revivals, have transformed religious hustling in the name of evangelisation into big business. Indeed the big churches have become the hub, while preserving the religious façade of what are, essentially, personalised business empires.
Ironically, this commercialisation of religion represents the culmination of the degeneration of what began outside the established, older churches in the early 1970s as a mission aspiring to pursue the ideal of “holiness”. Unfortunately this aspiration succumbed to the allure of the Prosperity Gospel under the uncongenial socio-economic environment and the vulgar materialism generated by dissolute dissipation of unearned petrodollars in the late 1970s and 1980s. In addition to this, the nascent evangelical movement itself has from the beginning been remarkably bereft of leaders of distinguished intellect and character, like the Wesley brothers, whose evangelical revival in 18th century England led to far-reaching social reforms, spiritual awakening and the birth of the Methodist Church. It is not surprising, then, that the neo-Christian evangelical mission in Nigeria gave birth to a complex of competing, personalised, owner-founder churches, with minimal central coordination or ideals, and without any creative approach to bringing religious values to bear on the problems of society.
Developments in religion and its social and spiritual uses usually take place in response to prevailing societal preoccupations. In Nigeria socio-economic upheavals since the civil war have increased the pervasiveness of poverty and hardships, while the boom in unearned oil income has accelerated the rise of a materialistic culture. It is in this context that the new churches and their doctrines about prosperity, through divine intervention, despite the country’s adverse socio-economic fortunes, assume significance. For example, praying for prosperity, which the clerics themselves represent as ministering to the people’s existential needs, has clearly shifted emphasis away from religious values. Indeed, the new churches actively encourage and promote the impression that religion is principally about overcoming mundane problems through the invocation of supernatural powers. Little wonder neo-Christianity and even Islam have degenerated into miracle faiths peddling panacean prayers to life’s problems.
The education of the Nigerian elite, like that of their peers in the rest of Africa, has continued to be dominated by the “civilising mission” ideology. The virtual imposition of Western Christian/Islamic cultures, the wanton assault on ancestral values and philosophies, and the failure of the elite to try and redress these historical calamites, are some of the factors that have rendered religion, as currently practised in Nigeria, an insidious, even noxious, social institution. Practically all “educated” Nigerians grew up believing that Islamic/Christian cultures are divinely inspired, while knowing little of, and therefore despising, indigenous religions. Members of the clerical profession, in particular, could not escape the enchantment of the imported faiths’ sacred books, the sublime poetry and prose of the Q’uran/Bible, and the engaging seductiveness of the great historical, romantic, and philosophical texts of Hebrew literature canonised in the Bible. All these Semitic cultural and spiritual achievements have now become universalised, with the translation of the Hebrew/Christian and Muslim deities into the God of all creation.
Thus, smug in their intellectual enslavement to other cultures’ mythologies, and unaware that all religions are valid products of culture in time and space, our clerics (not to talk of our intellectuals) have arrived at the feeble-minded belief that Islam/Christianity are the only “true” religions ordained by God; that these Semitic/Christian faiths can work miracles; and that ancestral systems of belief and worship are demonic, and can embody no values or philosophies of any consequence.
Given the prevailing worldview in Africa, and the belief, even by the highly educated, that the Muslim/Christian sacred books are packed with supernatural power, it is not surprising that Nigerian clerics, like every Nigerian faithful, believe in the presumed metaphysical powers of the miracle faiths. Hence, these clerics went about trying to heal the sick and make the lame walk in line with the teaching of their sacred books. But, what then happened when they discovered that they could not accomplish these feats, let alone raise the dead on demand, in the name of Jesus? Surely, it must have somehow occurred to these clerics that the sacred books could not be taken literally; and that biblical “miracles” could not be replicated routinely, if at all, in our post-biblical-age, post-Enlightenment world.
The response to this realisation explains, to a great extent, some of the major problems in religion in Nigeria today. Whereas the advanced societies of Western Europe and America outside the “Bible Belt”, have updated their worldview in keeping with growing knowledge about the natural world (while continuing to develop the social, spiritual and other uses of religion) the ignorant but fanatical pseudo-religious African adherent of the miracle faiths would rather impose ancient middle Eastern worldview on reality, as if the world works according to the thinking of medieval religious savants who made no distinctions between phenomena believed to be true by faith, and events validated through modern scientific criteria. Thus, Nigerian prosperity preachers have refused to acknowledge that instant healing and miraculous “breakthroughs” into fabulous wealth, as well as insulation from the usual vicissitudes of life cannot be conjured in today’s world by mere invocation of Jesus’ name. However, to sustain the superstition that there are still “signs and wonders” as of old, there has been a resort to tricks, to theatrics, and to stage-managed “miracles”. After all, even men of God have to make a living.
Accordingly, what passes for evangelisation today, especially outside the established and mission churches, for the most part, is an unconscionable pursuit of material success by clerics, using the rhetoric and doctrines of religion. In order to exploit the potentials of the all-comers’ prosperity hustle to the fullest, the enterprise is organised under three main agenda: To persuade the faithful that there are “automatic” supernatural solutions to all imaginable problems. To reveal to believers “prophetic” visions of “breakthroughs” in business and allied endeavours leading to fabulous wealth. Finally, to identify presumed malevolent, demonic powers and, sometimes, to give advance warning of impending adversities that call for “spiritual” insurance.
The media is replete with all sorts of advertisements inviting the faithful to a variety of “crusades” and vigils on weekly, monthly, quarterly, or ad hoc basis. In these advertisements, the most extravagant of claims are made about “deliverance” of the faithful from all sorts of occult powers, as well as their liberation from sundry cares, including poverty and destitution. Naturally, in a society where the power of impunity has trumped the rule of law, nobody ever asks questions about the failure of the pastors/healers to deliver on their promises. The faithful pay their tithes, donations, or dues and the preachers move on to organise other mammoth revivals, where the demons supposedly afflicting their clients are again bound or scattered. There is usually a session when people come out to declare that they had been healed, although there is no way of verifying such testimonies.
As if failure of governance, which makes the citizenry regular victims to predation at these “evangelical” revivals is not enough guarantee of constant patronage of prosperity clinics, the industry has invented additional strategies of attracting clients. One is to dream up fictitious “prophetic” visions of “breakthroughs” for patients searching for an end to chronic medical problems, or for people engaged in business and other endeavours. Another, far more diabolic, even if it does show that our clerics are not without creative insights, is the invention of a veritable plague of evil powers, for ever stalking the unwary. Now, what the creation, by clerics, of these phantom forces do is to fill the minds of their clients with anxiety-inducing neuroses, bogeys and phobias, so that they are forced to approach the pastor for deliverance. Among such forces and powers are: “covenants” entered into by one’s parents or ancestors; malevolent adversaries in one’s larger family; “curse” of the first-born; unpropitious influence of family names in honour of traditional cultural/historical landmarks like Ifa, Ogun etc; anti-harvest forces; and agbana, the demon that “swallows” one’s profit or money. Whereas we see in the above a manipulation of neo-Christian doctrines, it must be pointed out that there is also provision for certain “prayer points” to deal with these malevolent forces. Consider, for example, the following: “Any power in my father’s house swallowing my money, vomit it and die in the name of Jesus.” “You strong man that appeared in my last dream die by fire in the name of Jesus.” (From “Mountain of Fire & Miracles Ministries” handbill, New Bodija, 13-15 May 2010).
The marvel about our contemporary modish “evangelisation” is that it is a respectable business, patronised by the political and intellectual elite, while the charismatic pastors that sponsor the “revivals” walk the corridors of power, promoting successive reprobate rulers that have practically destroyed the country. Yet, there is a sense in which the predatory activities of Nigerian politicians, the murderous rampages of armed robbers and kidnappers, and the cannibalistic exploits of children-trafficking/baby-factory proprietors converge with the fraud, the corruption of values, and the undermining of the truly spiritual, promoted by our charlatan charismatic worshippers of Mammon. These pastors often resort to “spiritual” scams to make more and more money, like the promotion last year by an influential pastor of a scheme named “covenant partners” of God. Others dabble in money rituals that straddle the borders of criminality. It is no use taking any of the more respectable-looking pastors or imams seriously if they deny any part in such occult practices. After all, it is the same kind of doctrines and mentality/worldview that invents superstitions about driving a car powered miraculously, without gasoline, that create and propagate such weird beliefs that there are ritual concoctions for making money out of thin air!
In the following conclusion in two parts, I shall make reflections on two main issues that have emerged from this essay, with particular reference to popular views, and social uses, of religion.
- Akinola writes from New Bodija, Ibadan
