The Nation Newspaper

Tag: Secularism

  • Much ado about secularism (III)

    It is to appease the sectarian sentiments of the two major religions, Islam and Christianity, that Nigeria enjoys an observer status (not membership) at the Organization of Islamic Countries, OIC and diplomatic relations with Israel and the Vatican. Yet the two religions have never failed to mutually begrudge each other these non-secular privileges. Christian and Muslim organizations now even own their broadcast media outlets and through years of sectarian pressure they have both managed also to get the foreign affairs ministry and the Immigration Office, from time to time, to allow outside proselytizers from their faiths to come into the country and often to use including state-owned public spaces to fish for souls. In addition to these, both Islamic and Christian religious knowledge are taught in public schools and in both private secular and religious schools beginning from nursery, primary, secondary schools up to the tertiary levels.

    And so the secular claim of the Nigerian constitution continues to be made even more and more complex by the non-secular tendencies both of the operators of the constitution and especially of the vociferous sections, especially of the Christian and or Muslim communities who of now are in the fray trying always to probate and then reprobate on these matters. Predominantly Muslim states that admit Nigeria is a multi-religious nation, indulge only the sectarian fancies of Muslims to the exclusion of those of others. And many Christian organizations, who insist that Nigeria is secular, and even publicly oppose the granting of sectarian privileges by governments to any, yet are not themselves averse to the enjoyment of those privileges. Said W.B. Usman in his ‘The Manipulation of Religion in Nigeria’, ‘The two major religions… have become part of the competition for political and economic space’, and that often they do so even in contempt of the law –e.g. by the indiscriminate building of religious places of worship without regards for environmental and planning regulations, by the brazen closing of public accesses during all kinds of religious occasions and also by the deliberate constitution of public nuisance through the use of heavy speakers and amplifiers. Mutual inter-faith antagonism, he said usually ‘flows from hostility by some Nigerians to any apparent forging of a close relationship between religion and the state… (especially if it is not their own religion), and the attempt to use religious doctrines to form the basis of laws and policies of the state’.

    And the question then is often asked whether the struggle between the two major religions in Nigeria manifests a quest truly for the souls of Nigerian citizens or for the soul of the Nigerian state. If the state has not been able to subordinate organized religion in order to give vent to the true textbook definition of secularism, organized religion, it appears, may have itself overwhelmed the state, to give vent to the popular counter-thesis that Nigeria, rather than being secular, is actually a multi-religious or a religiously plural, society. As the Hausas would say ‘barewabaza ta yiguduba, dan ta yayirarrafe’ –we cannot be a nation of believers and pretend to lock God up in our individual closets. Even the bastion of capitalism and free market, America, has not been able to do that. Nor does she pretend to do that.

     

    Postscript

    We saw George Washington link the ‘notion of church and state’ to advocate a ‘common ground for religion and government’; and we saw Ronald Reagan -a proponent of ‘prayer in public schools’- oppose the omnipotence of ‘state’ over ‘man’ even as he repudiated the ‘communist’ idea that ‘man’ should ‘stand alone without God’. We see also among Americans, a settled claim to spiritual pre-eminence even in the manner in which they arrogate to America the hallowed nickname of ‘God’s Own Country’, -suggesting that America alone, to the exclusion others, is pre-eminently heaven’s only ‘child’ and in whom alone God is well pleased. And although America neither has -like the UK- an established state church to which she is spiritually beholding, nor does she have -like Germany or Italy- political parties plumed in the feathers of religion, yet she, in addition to being ‘God’s own country’, also prides herself –like Nigeria- as a ‘Nation Under God’. Americans believe, that there is a God up there who provides for America beyond measure; and who bestows on her the preeminent overlord-ship of the rest of the ‘un-anointed’ world! Plus, in moments of national tribulations, America is known also to take solace in the pathos of the spiritual refrain, ‘In God We Trust’; even as she also, in moments of national triumph, regale in the supplicate ‘God bless America’. Not the God of capitalism; and certainly not the God of democracy, but the very ‘Living God’ of Abraham and of Moses! All these are not the attributes of a nation unconcerned with the ‘religious’. On the contrary, they are proofs of a nation’s unquestioning surrender to the sacred realm. In fact of the many unwritten cannons supplementary to the U.S. Constitution, the un-coded code regulating who governs America includes all except non-Christian Americans.

    On the other hand, America’s love of the ‘mundane’, her systemic abiding passion for the ‘hedonistic’ and her romance with the ‘profane’ all combine to create for her an alternate God of sort in ‘capitalism’ as an object of deification. America is the veritable Gog-Magog of the ‘Free Market’, pre-eminently the number one ‘capitalist’ nation in a globalizing, Darwinist world that believes -contrary to all spiritual dogmas- in the survival only of the fittest. It is inconceivable that with these attributes, America can be anything but ‘secular’. It is strictly on account of the virtual deification of ‘capitalism’ which America is irretrievably sold to, that in spite of the many forms of her tokenistic constitutional allegiance to God as we have seen, she is still referred to as the quintessential ‘secular’ ‘state’ which, come to think of it, Ronald Reagan ought to have directed his outburst at when he railed at “Communism’s attempt to make man stand alone without God”. And you wonder ‘between a ‘capitalist America’ and a ‘communist Russia’ which is truly the ‘enigma wrapped in enigma?’ Is it Russia which makes no pretence about standing ‘alone without God’, or is it America which makes a show of standing both with God and with Mammon? Is it Russia which neither gives to nor takes from God or Caesar, or is it America which hypocritically takes only from God and not Caesar, but gives only to Caesar and not God?

    Iran is a good example of a non-secular yet non-wholly theocratic Islamic system. Although the prevailing ideology of that state is the Islamic Shariah, Iran is also run by other modern Western tenets that are the direct anti-thesis of the Islamic code. Although its government is suffused largely by clerics, yet to the extent that it is also ‘run by’ technocratic, non-clerical others, Iran still comes short of a full-blown ‘theocracy’. In reality, if being ‘concerned with temporal, worldly matters’ to the exclusion of ‘religion’; or if being concerned with ‘the profane’ in disregard of ‘the sacred’ is the abiding yardstick for defining ‘secularity’, even UK then cannot be said to pass that litmus test. But again, it makes sense to say that if by reason of unwillingness to completely dissociate ‘State from Church’, the UK is non-secular, it should make sense also to say that her willingness to resonate liberal inter-faith attitude towards other religions, especially when, at the peak of the debate over the alleged hegemonic motive of Islam, Britain could still establish the ‘Islamic Bank of England’, that again can be proof of a secular virtue, if not secular nature.

    And which begs the question: Is any state by the way ever wholly ‘secular’ or wholly ‘non-secular?’

     

    • Concluded.

  • Much ado about secularism (II)

    Going by the dictionary definition of secularism as ‘concern with temporal, worldly matters’ to the exclusion of ‘religion’, a nation therefore cannot be said to be secular merely because either by law or by choice it has succeeded in subordinating all forms of organized religion to the whims and caprices of the state. Nor is a nation non-secular only because its constitution expressly provides for the right of the individual to freedom of religion, belief and conscience. This guarantee already exists extra-constitutionally as a fundamental right of all humans –to, among a hoard of very many other rights, decide for themselves, the sacred from the profane. Thus the secular or non-secular credentials of a nation are not to be gleaned only from the express provisions of her constitution disavowing or endorsing religion as state policy, but it can also manifest in that nation being able to maintain sectarian neutrality -or what experts described as ‘a principled distance’- from all forms of organized religion, notwithstanding her constitution expressly disavows or endorses religion as a fundamental policy of state. Thus a practical separation of state from religion is the veritable hallmark of secularism, and about which we have seen in my previous submission that there is hardly any good example in Europe or in the Americas.

    Nigeria’s constitution neither expressly admits that the Nigerian state is secular nor has it expressly admitted that it is not. And so as it will not be sufficient to argue that Nigeria is non-secular merely because Section 38 of her constitution guarantees freedom of religion, or that Section 42 prohibits discrimination against citizens on the basis of their beliefs or the circumstances of their birth, by the same token it will not be sufficient to adjudge Nigeria secular only because Section 10 of the constitution expressly prohibits the adoption of any organized religion as a state religion, or because the constitution has not expressly disavowed secularism as a policy of state. But even as the constitution in many areas appears to radiate secular sentiments, in yet many others, it can be said also that it exudes practically non-secular tendencies. For one the constitution is essentially faith-blind in its conferment of right to citizens to aspire to or be appointed to public office. It does not demand that those who seek public office must fulfil any faith-based requirements before they can do so. This is in addition to the fact that the constitution has provided for the restriction or even derogation of the religious rights of citizens whenever to do so is in the interest of defence, public safety, public order, public morality or for the purpose of protecting the rights and freedom of others.

    Nonetheless, the problem of Nigeria’s secular status or her non-secular credentials is not so much in what the constitution has expressly provided for as it is in what it has opted to be cautiously or inadvertently vague or silent about. Section 10 which prohibit the adoption of any organized faith as state religion, merely infer the secular intention of the constitution. It does not categorically say that secularism will be the guiding principle of state. Again sections 38 and 42 which, respectively guarantee freedom of religion and prohibits discrimination on that ground, may infer non-secular intention but they have not categorically proclaim Nigeria a non-secular state.

    Many experts say that it is this constitutional vagueness occasioned by the centrality of religion in the lives of most Nigerians, and the mutual competition between the two dominant religions in the country, namely Islam and Christianity, that are responsible for the ambivalent secular-cum-sectarian approach especially to matters of state. We claim to be secular but we are not about to let go the sectarian privileges that we enjoy ironically from a state that is supposed to have no affiliation whatsoever with organized religion. And as the constitution remains vague on the precise relationship of state and organized religion, so has the judicial arm too, for tactical reason, remained not forthcoming with a precise definition of the secular or non-secular status of the Nigerian state. As many times as Christian rights activists had challenged especially the penal jurisdiction of the Shariah courts –as provided under sections 268 and 277 of the constitution- as much times too had the judicial arm tactfully avoided the issue by throwing out such cases on the grounds of absence of locus. The courts, it appears, know too well the implication of ruling carelessly on such sensitive matters because it may open the floodgate of judicial recrimination and counter-recrimination between adherents of the two major religions who, each enjoy one form of sectarian right or privilege over the other.

    As Christians say that Islam has been adopted as a de facto state religion in most Muslim-majority states of the north and that the annual tradition of using state resources to fund pilgrimages to Mecca, plus the presence of ajami Arabic on Nigeria’s currency and on some military insignias compromise the nation’s secular status, Muslims too complain that the entire legal and political system of administration in the country are essentially Judeo-Christian in nature and thus obviates the need to split hairs over whether Nigeria is secular or not. In fact, they insist that Nigeria is not only NOT secular, but that it is more Judeo-Christian in body and in spirit than even the North can be said to be Islamic. They cite the two weekly work-free days (Saturday and Sunday) declared for public officers in deference to Judeo-Christian tradition and argue that Christians enjoy more sectarian rights and privileges under the Nigerian constitution than the Muslims who have to go to work even on Fridays. And they say that with four annual ‘holy’ days, namely Good Friday, Easter Monday, Christmas Day and Boxing Day, the Christians also enjoy more annual holidays recognized by law than the Muslims do with only three, namely Eid-el-Fitr, Eid-el-Kabir and Eid-el-Maulud.

    And just this week MURIC, a Muslims rights organization has complained that January 1 too is no less Judeo-Christian than the rest of the Christian ‘holy’ days are and that it should cease to be recognized as a work-free day unless the first day of the Islamic calendar too is accorded similar status. In truth, although the first of January originated from a Christian day of feast –according to the Encarta Encyclopaedia- it has since transcended that narrow sectarian significance to become a universal ‘occasion for spirited celebration and the making of personal resolution’. And so not many Muslims it appears are in synch with the MURIC demand for the reason, as one FaceBooker, Ahmed Musa Hussaini said, that “Muslims don’t just claim a right because Christians and other non-Muslim groups are enjoying that right…. Muslims do not begrudge other faiths on account of their own rights. All religions have their own peculiarities; have their own social and cultural aspirations… “

    Thus in this case, MURIC appears now to be as intolerant as some hard line, secular-minded Christians have always been whenever they contest the right of Muslims to be expressive about their faith both in body and in spirit and in private and in public, because the fundamental doctrinal obligation of their faith is that Islam must be practiced as a way of life at home, in the work place, in the market arena, in the school, etc. It is in this context, most Muslims insist, that especially the questions of wearing of the hijab in public schools and the involvement of governments of Muslim-majority states in the building of mosques and the sponsorship of Hajj, must be appreciated. They argue that if the majority of the people who vote in a government and are therefore entitled to a ‘way’, are okay with it, it cannot be any less democratic –provided also that the minority who subscribe to other faiths are not denied other sectarian rights or privileges peculiar to their own unique forms of worship.

     

    • To be continued…

  • MURIC to CAN: show us secularism in the constitution

    The Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC) has disagreed with the Christian Elders Forum (CEF) over the country’s religious nomenclature.

    The CEF differed with the Sultan of Sokoto and President-General of the Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs, Alhaji Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar, for describing the country as a multi-religious nation. They insisted that Nigeria is a secular country.

    MURIC challenged the Christian Elders to show Nigerians the word ‘secular’ in the constitution.

    A statement by its Director Prof Ishaq Akintola, said a secular country is one that does not recognise God or religion.

    The group said: “This is a country that recognises the existence of many faiths. Churches, mosques and shrines thrive in their thousands while the Federal and State governments give official recognition to the spiritual engagements of the followers of all creeds. To cap the edifice, the preamble of the Nigerian Constitution starts with the words, “We the people of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, having firmly and solemnly resolved to live in unity and harmony as one indivisible and indissoluble sovereign nation under GOD…”

    “This is an indubitable rejection of secularism. So how secular is ‘secular’ Nigeria? It is sheer bunkum. We assert clearly, emphatically and unequivocally that Nigeria is a multi-religious nation.”

    MURIC affirmed that the Sultan Abubakar is right.

    The statement reads: “Nigeria is a multi-religious nation. By describing Nigeria as a secular country, CEF ploy is to sustain the colonial game of Christianisation of the Nigerian structure. They are simply defending the actions of the colonial master. Based on the strategic approach of all belligerent elements and oppressors, that attack is the best form of defence, it is now in the character of Nigerian Christian leaders to be constantly on the attack.

    “The truth is that the British colonialists had forcefully entrenched Christian way of life on Nigeria. A few examples will suffice. Whereas Friday was our day of rest since the advent of Islam in Nigeria in 1085, the colonial master who came 800 years later (in 1842) annulled Friday (like June 12) and changed it to Sunday. Shariah was prohibited while Christian common law was imposed on us till today.

    “Hijab, which was an integral part of school uniforms for female students, was outlawed. Islamic Studies was trivialised while Bible knowledge was prioritised. The Christian cross was forced on us as symbol for the hospitals. The church choir gown became the officially recognised academic gown used during ceremonies in universities. It is also used by lawyers and judges in the law courts. We can go on and on ad infinitum.

    “Christian elders complain that Muslims are now occupying certain posts but they ignore all other sensitive positions being occupied by Christians. Were they on sabbatical in the days of former President (Goodluck) Jonathan when General (Azubuike) Ihejirika was Chief of Army Staff, Rear Admiral Dele Ezeobe was Chief of Naval Staff, Air Vice Marshall Alex Badeh was Chief of Air Staff? Were these people Muslims? Where were the Christian elders when all Jonathan’s ministers from the South west were Christians?”

    MURIC appealed to the Christian elders to allow their nomenclature to reflect in their actions and utterances, adding: “They should let the youths benefit from the wisdom of elders and not vice versa. We expect CEF to douse tension and not to heat up the polity. Nigeria has enough on its hands already and true patriotism demands that all hands be on deck to salvage the near-helpless situation. Let us squarely face the tangential and ignore the peripheral. Nigeria should be on our mind, not fishing for men or rabble-rousing.

    “MURIC salutes the Sultan of Sokoto for his self-control, unparalleled tolerance and robust appetite for moderation. We urge him to ignore all sorts of provocation and continue in his chosen path of statesmanship and responsible leadership.”

  • Not atheism but secularism working with ecumenism is the real issue – interlocutors please take note! [For Tai Solarin and Chike Obi, heroic secularist forerunners]

    Not atheism but secularism working with ecumenism is the real issue – interlocutors please take note! [For Tai Solarin and Chike Obi, heroic secularist forerunners]

    “I read your write-up (on “I went to church today…”) in flawless language with tears and sorrow. Retrace your steps back to Christianity and be born again without delay. Christ is the only way to God at the end of life here on earth… All who deny, reject or operate outside Christ are doomed forever as they will unfortunately spend their eternity with Satan in the Lake of Fire. Think of eternity, time without end, for ever, and ever and ever and ever…” This message was one among over a dozen that came to my email address in response to my column last week. I am not at liberty to reveal the name, the identity of the person who wrote this to me, but I assure the reader that it was signed by someone who claimed to be a pastor and an engineer. Since the name of this interlocutor matched the name on the email address, I presume that the person is who he or she claims to be, i.e. a pastor and an engineer. Ergo, he or she is a member of our social and cultural elite.

    Now, I have not the slightest doubt that this person, this interlocutor wrote me because I had revealed in last week’s column that I had once been a Christian. As a matter of fact, the response explicitly asks me to retrace my steps back to Christianity.Let me say also without any hypocrisy whatsoever that in expressing sorrow at what he or she perceives as the gravity of the spiritual crisis of my separation from Christ, this person probably meant well. But in a country and a world in which there are, respectively, millions and billions of Non-Christians”, what am I to make of his or herringing assertion that “all who deny, reject or operate outside Christ are doomed forever”?

    Of course, I do know what to think of this assertion: it is savagely intolerant and anti-ecumenical, especially in a country and a world in which there are millions and billions who are not Christians and indeed have their own “saviors” or divine personages. Of course, it is possible that this interlocutor did not think of this particular implication of his assertion. After all, he or she was speaking, pleading with someone who had once been a Christian. In other words, if I had said that I was once a member of the Moslem faith, in all probability I would have been ignored since the message was meant for fellow Christians, practicing or “lapsed”. Nonetheless, the charge of savage, anti-ecumenical intolerance remains: the distance that should normally exist between being a pious and devoted follower of Christ and a rabid exponent of religious extremism is, in this case, practically non-existent.

    It is absolutely important that the essential point I am making here be carefully and concretely spelt out in a manner that I probably did not do in last week’s column. Before the Second Coming of Christ, before those who are saved ultimately reunite with the Savoir in paradise, Christians are necessarily obliged to live in peace and unity with Non-Christians in a country and a world in which the Non-Christians happen to be in the demographic majority. This is not a matter of mere numbers; rather, it is a vital question of ecumenism, defined as the movement for the promotion of understanding and cooperation among diverse faiths and their constituted communities. Ecumenism sounds reasonable and desirable, but in actuality it poses extraordinarily tough challenges to all religionists, especially those of the three Abrahamic faiths, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. These three religions come from the same historic and cultural roots, but are extremely, even inordinately jealous of their separate and unique claims to the Godhead. This is why ecumenism has to be constantly and forever renewed and reimagined in every generation, between these three faiths and between them and all other faith communities in the world. I did not make this clear in last week’s column, but I now wish to place the greatest emphasis possible on it: atheism is not the real issue; rather, it is ecumenism in concert with secularism. What exactly does this mean?

    I stated in last week’s piece that for a very long time now, the essential question for me has been not whether one is a believer or a non-believer; it is what kind of human being one’s belief or unbelief makes one. Let me now make a crucial elaboration on this statement, this claim. I look carefully throughout history since the emergence of religion as a powerful institution in human cultures and I do not see a single instance when atheists have waged wars of conversion and/or physical extermination on religionists and believers. By contrast, the historical record is replete with savage wars between religionists, among the believers. Moreover, these wars were sometimes waged between believers of denominations within the same faith community: Catholics against Protestants; Sunnis against Shias. Indeed, this kind of war persists to the present time, the case of Boko Haram being an apt, if tragic example. This barbaric jihadist insurgency initially concentrated its campaigns against Christians, but facing denunciation and opposition from Moslem clergy, laity, elites and politicians, it turned on Moslems as well, bombing mosques and slaying Moslem worshipers in their dozens.

    It is not because atheists are morally superior human beings to religionists that they have never waged wars of conversion and/or extermination against believers. The reason is quite simple and rather mundane and undramatic: at all times and in all places, there have been too few of them!Moreover, those among atheists who sometimes choose to do battle with religionists do so only at the level of verbal and doctrinal jousts. I think I made it clear in last week’s piece that I am not an atheist of this kind: within a few years of leaving Christianity around the age of 20 or 21, I had realized that it is an exercise in futility to engage in disputations around the existence or non-existence of God. Moreover – and this is of the greatest significance – although I left Christianity, Christ himself remained for me one of the greatest historical personages that ever lived. His ministry was built around the cardinal principles of love, generosity of spirit, militant opposition to usurious accumulation of wealth and solidarity with the downtrodden whether they be Jews or Gentiles. As a matter of fact, Christ was one of the early secularists, as the third epigraph to this piece indicates: Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s… Of course Christ’s secularism was strategically conditioned by the historical fact that his ministry took place in an oppressed, colonial outpost of the Roman Empire.

    Nominally, the leaders and most of the followers of all the faith communities in our country embrace secularism. Whether they like it or not, all say that bridges of understanding must be built between the religious communities and the Nigerian state must strictly observe the constitutional separation between state and religion and on this basis must be fair and equable to all the religions. In reality however, the kind of faith professed and widely practiced in our country in at least the last three to four decades is hardly respectful of secularism and ecumenism. Again, I assert here as I did in last week’s piece, that on this matter, I speak from both personal experience and long, sustained reflection over the course of several decades. Some of the personal experiences have been mildly, even unintendedly comic as when siblings or acquaintances warn me darkly about actual or potential “spiritual attacks” from “enemies” that I neither know of, nor care to know about. Some experiences are vexatious, as when siblings insist on regularly texting me biblical quotes and short sermons in complete indifference to my assurance to them that as soon as I receive such text messages, I delete them unread. But some of these personal experiences take bizarre and outrageous manifestations as in instances when people willfully and opportunistically commit terrible wrongs against friend or family and then claim that it is the work of Satan, the work of “enemies”! I mean, people lie, they cheat, they commit stupid and harmful blunders and absolutely refuse to accept responsibility for their acts, claiming instead that all is not lost as God is in control!

    In a country like Nigeria at the present time, it is a great insult to God, to the presumed Almighty to say that He or She is in control! If this is true at all in any consequential sense, it could only be at a deeply personal level at whichdecent, loving and pious individuals live in peace and contentment, within themselves and with their fellow men and women. At the public, collective level of our associated existence as a country, not control but frenetic non-control is the manifest and overwhelming reality. As I stated last week, a simplistic, superstitious, grasping and avaricious religiosity dominates the spiritual landscape almost completely. The lines separating the holy days from ordinary days have been totally obliterated and the money changers now live permanently in the temples, in the holiest of the holy. Zoning of public from private spaces, of commercial from religious areas, hasmore or less disappeared. All days of the week are now “Sundays” and worship takes place at all hours of the day and night and with a noisiness loud enough to wake the dead. Self-trained and self-proclaimed pastors now outnumber men and women of the cloth with traditional training in well-established theological seminaries. Charlatans far outnumber clerics with genuine calling for spiritual pastorates. Above all else, as the mother of all the symptoms of this newfangled religiosity, is the fact that the sacred has now completely swallowed the secular: religion is now no longer a part of life, it presents itself as the integument within which life is enfolded. Please note that this is not religion as it is practiced in many other places in the world or indeed as it was practiced in our own country not too long ago.

    In conclusion, let me state emphatically that the profile I have given here is a compendium of symptoms, not an analysis of causes and probable solutions. That is beyond the purview of one or two essays in a newspaper column. Which is why, as a sort of indication of programme of action, this piece is dedicated to the late Tai Solarin and Chike Obi, heroic forerunners in the establishment of the practice of robust secularism in the public affairs of this country. Nobody remembers either of them for hisatheism; rather, it is for fearless and principled promotion of secularism for which they are remembered and venerated. May their legacy persist well beyond the present dark age of religious charlatanry, avarice and hypocrisy!

  • Secularism in the church (2)

    Secular preaching

    More than any single factor, secular preaching in the church has done much more damage to the spiritual life of the body of Christ. Today, preachers use their pulpit to talk about business, millionaires club, making profits, covenants of favour, planning, thinking and goal setting that could shame Harvard Business School!

    Harping on these topics week in, week out in the church has removed the sacredness and hallowness of the church in the hearts of the people. Preachers who believed they are called to preach secular subjects and not the whole counsel of God are chief secularists in the church of today.

    • Secular books and writings

    Secularism is being entrenched in the churches of today because Christian writers write secular books, devoid of scriptural passages because they want to appeal to all their audience.

    Preachers also make references to secular authors and encourage supposed Christians to read their books which have the capacity to damage their spiritual life. I have seen preachers referring to the Bible as ‘The Good Book’ and Jesus Christ as ‘The Wisest Man’ that ever lived!

    They do these so that they will not offend their audience but at the expense of the spiritual life of the people.

    • Emphasis on money and ostentatious lifestyle

    I was told by a friend recently that he spent N1.7 million (approximately $10,000) on a preacher for only one hour in his conference. Just as I was writing, I heard the report of a crusade and a ministers’ conference held by one of these preachers.

    Every sermon ended in fund raising and an American preacher came with his own printed seed faith envelope to collect money and went away with the money! People gave grudgingly but with loud complaint about the methods employed.

    All these and many evidences of extravagant lifestyles of preachers have enthroned the worship of mammon in the heart of the average church, and as such godliness has taken the very back seat in our scheme of things.

    • Spasmodic prayers

    The churches of today are not a praying church in the true Bible sense. Of course, we pray official, monotonous and lifeless prayers while some only pray against their enemies to die by fire.

    The truth is that real, heartfelt, sincere and fervent intercessions and prayers are not encouraged in the majority of today’s churches. Rather, selfish, self glorifying and self-centered prayers are the order of the day.

    • No spiritual growth and discipleship

    In most churches, there are no systems that encourage spiritual growth of the members. Yes, once in a while preaching might touch it but there is no concerted effort to use the system to develop the spiritual growth of the people.

    Therefore, you find people who have been in the church for years but who are still spiritual babes, carnal and immature in their lives and in the things of the Lord.

    The bitter truth is that most pastors of today are not comfortable with a spiritually growing Christian. They don’t want those who will be asking too many questions.

    They therefore keep them in perpetual state of babyhood in the Lord so that the pastors can do what they like and nobody will ask questions!

     

    • Akin-John (08023000621; akingrow@gmail.com) is President of International Church Growth Ministries.