Christianity and national transformation (3)

While there is noticeable decline in religious fervour in many parts of the world, the religious enterprise appears to be thriving very much in Nigeria, as more and more company warehouses and private buildings are being converted to prayer houses, and our sports facilities all over the country are being used more for religious crusades than for sporting events. Streets within our towns and villages, as well as inter-state highways are often blocked these days by enthusiastic worshippers who flock to churches and camp meetings. In many of our urban areas, there are as many churches and mosques as there are streets! Within this religious firmament, priests, pastors and prophets, as well as sheikhs, imams and gurus of all sorts are swelling in number and having a field day. In  the last few years, a new dimension has also been added to the thriving religious enterprise. It is the increased patronage of high ranking public officials who not only openly call for and sponsor regular prayer sessions in different prayer houses, but have themselves become born again Christians and prayer merchants, often appearing at church crusades and prayer vigils with all the paraphernalia of public office, and sometimes grabbing the microphone to deliver sanctimonious homilies and earth-shaking prayers.

Yes, these days, prayers and preaching sessions are no longer limited to churches, mosques and homes. They are held at corporate boardrooms, in government offices, in commercial buses and in open markets. Nigerians going about their daily business can be seen brandishing the Bible or the Quran, the Rosary or Islamic prayer beads. The largest billboards in our town and cities are those advertising upcoming religious events. Thus, from all outward indications, Nigerians are a chronically religious people. There is perhaps no other nation in the modern world with as much religiosity as contemporary Nigeria. 

With all this show of religiosity or outward display of piety, one would have expected to see a very high degree of social morality in Nigeria, since all world religions generally promote truth, justice, honesty and probity. But this is not to be the case with us. There is an embarrassing contradiction between the high ethical demands of Christianity and the actual lives that many Christians are living. The number of fraudsters, thieves and rogues continues to increase geometrically, even as our environment is awash with prayers and ritual sacrifices to the God of truth, justice and righteousness. It doesn’t seem to be a matter of contradiction for many highly placed Nigerians that they embezzle or misappropriate stupendous amounts of public and company (or even church) funds, while at the same time struggling to occupy the front seats in their churches and mosques.

Many Nigerians often fraudulently procure medical certificates of fitness from hospitals when they have not undergone any medical tests. They also obtain sick leave permits from doctors, when they are hale and hearty. They sometimes falsify the age of their children and obtain fake birth certificates in order to get them into nursery or primary schools earlier than the stipulated age. Holding the Bible or Quran in court, they vow to tell the truth and nothing but the truth, only to tell a bundle of lies. They routinely swear to false affidavits in order to claim some underserved benefits, and make false age declarations when seeking employment or admission into institutions of learning. All these practices are so commonplace and so widespread that many young Nigerians are today unable to distinguish between good and evil or between right and wrong.

Rather than help to confront the myriad challenges facing us as a people and as a nation, religion has sometimes taken a backseat, and at other times a willing collaborator to the collective oppression of our people. The social environment in which many religious leaders live today is totally cut off and disconnected from the oppressive reality of the situation of millions of their followers, who continue to suffer untold hardship in order to survive. How is Christianity expected to respond to the many perplexing situations of gross social injustice in which we find ourselves? How can today’s Christianity develop a social consciousness where the worship of God is united with a corresponding social commitment?

In the history of Christianity, our faith has never been lacking in great reformers and courageous prophets, who have brought remarkable improvement to the human condition.

In every generation, God never tires of raising men and women who abandon the luxury of personal comfort in order to carry on their shoulders the yoke of championing the cause of justice for the poor and defenceless members of society. At the height of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi madness, the Lord Jesus raised Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945), a German Lutheran pastor, to challenge the status quo. Although he was martyred in 1945, he became a powerful symbol of the resistance of the church against the Holocaust. His book, The Cost of Discipleship reminds us that following Jesus is costly; that it demands everything from us. I have always been touched by a stirring quotation from Bonhoeffer’sbook, where he said: “When Christ calls a man to follow Him, He bids him come and die.

The cross is laid on every Christian. It begins with the call to abandon the attachments of this world.”

Martin Niemöller (1892-1984) was another German anti-Nazi theologian and Lutheran pastor. At a time when the German intellectuals and leaders of the protestant churches chose to remain silent in the face of Hitler’s mad purgation of the Jews, Pastor Niemöller emerged as an outspoken foe of Hitler, and on account of this, he spent the last seven years of Nazi rule in a concentration camp. In his famous but provocative poem, “First they came,” he spells out clearly the price we pay for our indifference in a period of great crisis.

First they came for the Communists, and I did not speak out-

Because I was not a Communist.

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out-

Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out- 

Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out- 

Because I was not a Jew.

First they came for the Catholics, and I did not speak out-

Because I was a Protestant.

Then they came for me-and there was no one left to speak for me.

 Catholic Archbishop Oscar Romero (1917-1980) of El Salvador was a man who stood for the poor and defenceless people of his country, at a time when the military government, which overthrew the Carlos Romero, trampled on the rights of the poor. A newspaper reporter once asked Archbishop Romero if he was aware that soldiers wanted to kill him and he replied, “You can tell them they are wasting their time. They can kill a bishop but they cannot kill the people of God, the Church. If I am killed I will rise again in the Salvadoran people.” He became a thorn in the flesh of the regime and ultimately paid the price of martyrdom. While he was celebrating Mass on June 24 1980, as he raised the Chalice, a soldier walked into the Church and fired straight at him and killed him. Thus, Romero made a covenant with his people and sealed it with his blood.Father Ojeifo is a priest of the Catholic Archdiocese of Abuja.