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For the third time in just the past few years, and the second time in 2011 alone, Christians have been attacked and killed, allegedly by Muslim mobs, over a disputed election result across Africa’s vast expanses.
Reports coming both from International Christian Concern as well as The Barnabas Fund reveal that the latest massacres have happened in Nigeria.
There, a recent election saw a Christian candidate picked over a Muslim challenger.
Similar situations developed earlier in both Kenya, where President Barack Obama campaigned for the Muslim challenger, and in Ivory Coast, where a Christian president re-elected and confirmed by his own nation’s election procedures was removed from office and replaced by a Muslim challenger at the behest of the United States and the United Nations.
In Nigeria, Muslim rioters killed more than 100 Christians and burned more than 40 churches yesterday “in response to the election of Jonathan Goodluck, a Christian, as president,” according to ICC.
“The Muslim attackers allege that the election was rigged and Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, a Muslim presidential candidate, is the rightful winner. Yet, impartial observers have called this election the fairest in decades,” the organization said.
It cited a report from a Commonwealth election observer who said, “The elections for the National Assembly and the presidency were both credible and creditable and reflected the will of the Nigerian people.”
The ICC reported the full extent of the casualties and damages isn’t readily available.
“The casualties could be much higher as the attacks took place over many of the 12 Muslim majority states in northern Nigeria,” the organization reported. “The situation is beginning to calm since security forces were deployed and enforced a 24-hour curfew.”
But it said minority Christians in those Muslim-majority areas “have faced repeated bouts of violence and discrimination” and “tens and thousands of Christians have been killed” over the years.
“We are very saddened by the violence against Christians and their property in northern Nigeria,” said Jonathan Racho, ICC’s regional manager for Africa. “Disputes over elections shouldn’t have been allowed to lead to religious violence against Christians.”
Officials with the Barnabas Fund echoed his concerns.
“The Red Cross is reporting that many people have been killed, hundreds injured and thousands displaced,” the organization reported.
The circumstances in Ivory Coast were similar. There, the re-elected Christian president was taken into custody just days ago as the French military intervened on behalf of a Muslim candidate.
There, Muslim candidate Alassane Ouattara took over from Christian incumbent Laurent Gbagbo after the U.N. and the U.S. demanded the change.
Gbagbo had remained in office after he was declared the winner by the nation’s own constitutional election process, which had determined there was voter fraud in the Muslim regions of the nation, and that fraud gave the initial election result that Ouattara had won.
“Supporters of the two men are split broadly along the country’s geographical, ethnic and religious divide. The predominantly Muslim north largely backs Ouattara, a Muslim from that region, while support for Gbagbo, a Christian, comes from the mainly Christian south. As forces loyal to Ouattara have fought to install their man, Christians, who are associated with Gbabgo, have been particularly targeted; imams have reportedly called on Muslims to attack Christians,” the Barnabas Fund report said.
“The country’s electoral commission announced Ouattara as the winner of the November poll – with 54 percent of the vote – and this result was backed by the United Nations. But Ivory Coast’s Constitutional Council, the body that certifies election results in the country, declared Gbagbo the winner based on valid votes cast. It annulled results in seven northern regions amid reports of electoral irregularities.”
In Ivory Coast, there was a massacre of between 800 and 1,000 people “who were seeking shelter at a Christian mission compound in Duekoue,” according to Barnabas Fund. The attackers reportedly were “descendants of immigrant Muslims … loyal to Ouattara.”
It was in 2007 when the election battle – and massacres – developed in Kenya.
Then-Sen. Barack Obama campaigned for now-Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga, a Muslim. Obama barnstormed on behalf of Odinga, the socialist who hails from the same tribal heritage, the Luo, as Obama.
Appearing with Odinga at campaign stops, Obama gave speeches accusing the sitting Kenyan president of being corrupt and oppressive.
Then on Aug. 29, 2007, Odinga signed a secret Memorandum of Understanding with Muslim Sheikh Abdullah Abdi, the chief of the National Muslim Leaders Forum of Kenya. In exchange for Muslim support, Odinga promised to rewrite the Kenyan constitution to install Shariah as law in “Muslim declared regions,” elevate Islam as “the only true religion” and give Islamic leaders “oversight” over other religions, establish Shariah courts and ban Christian proselytism.
Even with strong Muslim backing, Odinga was beaten in the December 2007 elections. He then accused the incumbent president of rigging the vote and allegedly incited his supporters to riot. Over the next month, some 1,500 Kenyans were killed and more than 500,000 displaced – with most of the violence led by Muslims, who set churches ablaze and hacked Christians to death with machetes.
Odinga eventually ended up as prime minister in Kenya through a power-sharing arrangement that was installed in an effort to appease those who were rioting.
Intercontinental Bank Plc, IBPLC, has revealed its desire and determination to make Nigeria a cashless country in line with what is obtainable in advanced countries of the world.
The bank expressed worries that Nigerians are among the few people of the world that still carry cash around anywhere they go despite the inherent dangers associated with the trend.
Speaking during a media launch of Intercontinental Bank Visa Hajj Card, at the bank’s head office, Victoria Island, Lagos, the Group Managing Director, IBPLC, Mr Mahmoud Alabi disclosed that it was in response to their customers’ demands and the bank’s philosophy of providing total e-financing solutions to customers as well as the desire to migrate Nigeria from cash to cashless society that Intercontinental Bank developed the Visa Hajj Card.
He said the card was designed to meet the aspirations of not only their customers but also prospective ones who would be embarking on the annual pilgrimage or visiting the holy land for lesser hajj.
Mr Alabi who was represented at the event by the Executive Director, IBPLC, Mr Abubakar Sule stated that the use of the card was not restricted to Saudi Arabia alone but in anywhere in the world and in any currency of choice.
“ The cardholders can use the Visa Hajj Card anywhere in the world where visa cards are accepted to withdraw cash on the ATM, shop using the Point of Sale (POS) terminals as well as use it for online transactions. With this card, they can conveniently pay for goods and services while performing both lesser and main hajj.
“Cardholders have access to other services from over 1.4 million visa automated teller machines (ATM) and 10 million Point of Sale (POS) in more than 200 countries and territories.
So they don’t need to visit any bank while performing the holy pilgrimage as they have 24 hour access to their funds without any need to carry cash or cheques”, he assured.
The GMD disclosed that the use of the card would eliminate the risks associated with fake currencies, cash theft and difficulties in sourcing foreign currencies while embarking on the pilgrimage. Other benefits according to him, include available favourable exchange rates when making purchases or withdrawing cash abroad, and availability of multi-currency transaction support feature.
Speaking on the security of the card, Mr Alabi said, “the Hajj Card is very secure since it is a chip and PIN card. It based on the functionality of Europay, Mastercard and Visa (EMV) security standard which as today is adjudged the best in the world with almost zero level of card cloning.”
He stressed that it was in consideration of the financial security of their customers that they blazed the trail in deploying the Verve Card, a chip and PIN compliant debit card to secure their customers debit card, among others.
Meanwhile, the IBPLC Visa Hajj Card promo is on. All cardholders are eligible to participate to win a cash reward of $10 after they must have loaded the card three times in a month and spent up to $500 in the same month. Visa Hajj Card is available at any of the bank’s branches.
Just after the First World War, an Anglican diocese was established in Lagos in Nigeria. Ninety-one years later, it has become the largest active Protestant church body in the world.
Much of the growth of the Anglican Church of Nigeria, however, occurred during the last two decades.
From 24 dioceses in 1988, the church has grown to 156 dioceses. Every Sunday, the Church of Nigeria gathers 20 million people in worship of Jesus Christ.
The 22-year period of the dramatic growth of the Church of Nigeria coincides with the terms of the last two primates, or heads of the church.
What happened?
To find out, The Christian Post spoke with the immediate past primate of the Church of Nigeria over the phone.
According to the Rt. Rev. Peter Jasper Akinola, it all started when bishops stopped thinking of themselves as bishops in the conventional sense.
Previously, the bishop was addressed as “His Lordship.” He mainly occupied the position of the office, had everything done for him, attended meetings, decided mission strategies, and graced ceremonies.
“Today, every bishop (in the Church of Nigeria) is first and foremost an evangelist,” said Akinola. “And from that, other things follow.”
The Church of Nigeria entered a period of rapid growth when it started creating “missionary dioceses.” This involves appointing and dispatching bishops to areas with a weak Anglican presence. These bishops are to form full-fledged dioceses within a five-year period.
The bishop-missionaries brought the Anglican presence to “every nook and cranny of the country,” Akinola expressed.
The emphasis on using episcopal leadership in advancing the missionary cause is clear from statistics.
Akinola became the 46th bishop of the Church of Nigeria in 1979. Today there are 167 bishops in the church.
Akinola himself practiced the principle that the bishop is a missionary.
He was assigned in the early 1980s to create an Anglican presence in the then new capital, Abuja, which was about to be built. From nothing, the bishop created a diocese that today comprises 55 parishes.
Was the dramatic growth of the Church of Nigeria largely due to the good leadership of its primates?
Akinola responded, “Without a leader, how much can we really accomplish?”
“When a leader is focused, when a leader is determined, when a leader is genuine, when a leader is being led by God, I am sure that good things will result,” he said. “But when a leader does not give attention to these matters or has a different agenda, of course the fellowship will be affected.”
Akinola acknowledged that much of the growth has been due to the good leadership of the church.
“But it is one thing to lead, it is another thing for what you do to be led by God,” said the retired primate. “So for me again it is certainly God’s mighty blessings upon our leadership that is responsible for our achievements.”
Explaining the missionary focus of the church, Akinola stated, “We believe very strongly that when a church ceases to evangelize and to plant new churches, it will not have the right to exist.
“The reason why this church is left in the world is to reach out and to be the salt to our world, be the light to our world and to make Christ known to the world.”
The leadership of the Church of Nigeria takes the Great Commandment and Great Commission seriously, the bishop expressed.
It is the mission to the lost that forms the “bedrock” of the activities and programs of the church, he said.
The Great Commandment is the call to love God with the whole being and to love the neighbor as self.
After He resurrected, Jesus gave His disciples the Great Commission to dedicate their lives to making disciples of others.
Despite its largeness, Akinola sees the Church of Nigeria growing to half the population of the country. Nigeria has over 150 million people.
“My successor is a firebrand in the area of evangelism and orthodoxy,” he said.
Nicholas Orogodo Okoh was elected in September 2009 to succeed Akinola as the fourth primate.
- From Prophecy News Watch
It is a vision most mainstream Canadian church leaders can only dream of: Sunday mornings in which parishioners dance and sing through three-hour services. Seminaries overflowing and unable to keep up with demand for pastors as the number of the newly baptized rises.
The dream is a reality in such places as Kenya, Nigeria and Uganda, where there is an explosion in Christianity. In the past decade, this demographic surge has started to spill out of Africa, as well as Asia and Latin America, in the form of missionaries to the West, a trend influencing everything from styles of worship to doctrine.
John Allen, in his most recent book, The Future Church, a look at global Catholicism over the next 100 years, wrote that issues such as abortion, condoms and female priests will not even be on the table in part because of the African influence.
Even the woes of the Anglican Church of Canada can be put on the doorstep of surging African Anglicanism. The conservative parishes that deserted their far more liberal national Church in the past decade received their moral support primarily from the conservative bishops of Africa.
The reasons for this growth and subsequent influence are complex, but simple demographics help tell some of the tale: Western birth rates are in sharp decline while African rates are soaring.
In 2008 there were 973 million Africans, up from 767 million in 1999 — an increase of 27% — according to UN statistics. By contrast, the population of North America grew from 307 million to 337 million, up 10%, and in Europe from 729 million to 732 million, an increase of just 0.4%.
As populations explode, more people turn away from failing nation states and toward to the relatively stable churches for food, shelter, education and medicine.
According to the World Christian Database, 2% of the world’s Christians lived in Africa in 1900; today it is 20%. In less than 40 years Africans will comprise 30% of the world’s Christians; taken together with Asia and Latin America, it will be 71%. In 1900, 82% of the world’s Christians were in Europe and North America.
“I see people turning to the Church like in the Gospels they turned to Jesus, namely, with inarticulate faith and trembling hope that He can resolve their most pressing afflictions and ailments,” said Pastor Michael Czerny, who runs the African Aids Network in Nairobi, Kenya.
With the growing number of Christians has come a surge in vocations. One seminary alone in southeast Nigeria has 1,100 seminarians – one fifth the number of all the seminarians in the United States.
Pastor James Okoye, a Nigerian theologian now at the Theological Union in Chicago, said the entire history of the Church has been one of reordering balance, in which areas with the most fervour and numbers find their way to the regions in religious decline or need.
So it is not surprising, he said, that while the flow of religious teachers once went from Europe and North America to Africa, it is now moving in the opposite direction.
With that new guard of leaders comes an altering in the style of worship and perhaps a gradual relaxation in the rigid boundaries between religious institutions and secular society.
“Church and liturgy are a fundamental part of the African community,” said Pastor Victor Eze, a Nigerian pastor in Red Deer, who has been in Alberta for five years. “If you’re not there on a Sunday people will ask what is wrong with you. It’s like a local festival in the community. Going to church is a religious and social demand. In Nigeria religion and the broader society are interwoven and it’s hard to tell where one begins and the other ends.”
He remembers his first Alberta service and laughs at the obvious cultural differences.
“I began the usual way, ‘In the name of the Father, Son and of the Holy Spirit.’ And I waited for the ‘Amen” response and there was silence – or that was how it appeared to me. I was used to a response that was thunderous…. The first time I heard nothing. They spoke, but it was so soft. I thought I didn’t say it loud enough.”
The export of a more exuberant style of worship is only a small part of the transformation of Christianity now underway.
Eze said that the conservatism that one sees in African churches relates directly to the fact that all religion, including tribal religions, were always integrated into the larger culture — and not pushed by a secular barricade.
“Africans are traditionalists and that translates into orthodoxy,” said Eze. “We believe it was always this way and always will be. There isn’t much question about why things have happened. The general attitude is this is the way it’s always been and this is the way it always will be. Not much question of why this or should there be a change here or there. This could also be negative.”
In the Anglican Church, the influence of African orthodoxy is being deeply felt in churches in Canada and the United States.
In this past decade, conservative Anglican parishes unhappy with the slide into liberalism of their national churches, especially over the issues of same-sex marriage and the ordination of female bishops, have formed their own province, the first to cross national boundaries. Many of those parishes found the blessings of African Anglican bishops who share those conservative views.
Indeed, half of the world’s 70 million Anglicans now live in Africa.
The reaching out to the West is part of the evolution of Christianity in Africa, said Harvard Professor Jacob Olupona, an Anglican theologian from Nigeria.
Christianity started in the form of small regional and independent churches that reflected local culture.
“At first they didn’t see mainline Christianity as Christian enough,” said Prof. Olupona.
But that has been replaced with a desire to join something that is greater than Africa, something that is global, he said.
For years Africans were ignored by the Western churches, said Prof. Olupona, but now “we have the numbers” so the West has to listen.
“A global Anglican Church based in Canterbury is almost over,” said Prof. Olupona. “There are now going to be competing centres of Anglican Christianity.”
Robert Duncan of Pittsburgh, the Anglican bishop in charge of the breakaway Canadian and American parishes, was even more blunt in his assessment.
“In the year 2000 the Archbishop of Canterbury was the second most important Christian leader in the world,” Bishop Duncan said. “In a short space of time that office has utterly been diminished. It shows that the British model of Anglicanism has failed. The new Canterbury will be in Africa. It is the realignment of Anglicanism and a new Reformation of Christianity sparked by Africa.”
While Fireproof, Facing the Giants, and The Passion of the Christ have generated talk of a Christian filmmaking renaissance in the United States, Nigerian Christians are actively contributing to the booming Nigerian film industry known as Nollywood.
Nollywood recently surpassed Hollywood in film production, according to a UNESCO survey released in May. The Lagos-based industry has existed for less than 20 years, yet produced 872 feature-length films in 2006, nearly twice Hollywood’s 485 productions. (Both trailed India, which produced more than 1,000 films.)
Most Nigerian films, almost all of which are low-budget affairs shot on location and released on DVD, are spiritual in nature. About 20 percent are Christian, according to Obidike Okafor, an arts and culture reporter at Nigerian newspaper Next. Others champion Islam, animism and witchcraft, or simple morality.
The Christian-themed movies often aim at encouragement and evangelism more than sheer entertainment. Groups or churches often screen the films and follow them with discussions or an altar call.
“Nigerian movies are really watched,” said Sunday Oguntola, religion reporter for Nigerian newspaper The Nation. “[People] like to watch stories. I rent an average of five movies every weekend to watch with my family.”
Oguntola’s Baptist church shows movies two or three times a month during the evening service. “People like to see life in movies,” he said. “They can watch them for hours.” Showing movies is usually more effective than preaching, and church leaders are capitalizing on that, he said.
The films are also a major part of witnessing in Nigeria, said Philip Jenkins, professor of history and religious studies at Pennsylvania State University. “This is particularly good where you’re dealing with people who are technically literate but like to have their material packaged in a more interesting way,” he said.
Unlike Hollywood, which looks nervously at devotional movies such as Mel Gibson’s Passion, Nollywood can’t be separated from the Christian film component, Jenkins said. “The lines between the two—Christian and secular—are actually pretty thin.”
Some Nigerian Christians would disagree. While Nollywood looks remarkably Christian compared to Hollywood, some Lagos pastors and film producers think Nigeria’s film industry is full of idolatry and social evils and don’t want their ministries associated with it. In 1995 the National Film and Video Censors Board tracked almost 200 G-rated movies and few others. By 2005 over 1,300 movies rated 18-and-older were outpacing G movies by 6 to 1.
“Half of the Christian movies are not done by faith-based organizations, but by directors who want to take advantage of the strong religious inclinations of Nigerians to sell [movies],” Okafor said. “The others do it to promote their faith.”
Independent companies, ministries, and large churches producing hundreds of Christian films often see themselves as an alternative to Nollywood. Nevertheless, they have enjoyed mainstream success and many of the films can be seen on state television channels.
Lagos pastor Olabode Ososami uses Christian films to evangelize youth but is very selective in the films he chooses. “I have not shown any of the Nollywood films because these are primarily actors not known to me as Christians. Indeed, they portray other violent, non-Christian roles in other films,” he said. “The spirit in the actor is important for me to screen a film to congregations.”
Not all Nollywood actors realize this distinction is important to Christians, Ososami said. Many professional actors have seen the large demand for Christian films and are cashing in on it.
Ososami said he is more comfortable with companies that produce only Christian movies, such as Mount Zion Films and Freegift International.
“I am very uncertain about Nollywood’s agenda in the Kingdom and what is behind it—apart from money, of course,” he said.
International Church Growth Ministries began producing films in Nigeria two years ago to show to church leaders. “They are very effective in that they are practical to what is happening in the church and people adjust their lives by watching them,” said president Francis Bola Akin-John. Watching a lesson is more effective than listening to one, said Akin-John.
Nollywood’s Christian films offer revelations into what one of the world’s fastest-growing Christian populations believe, Jenkins said. “When people are discussing splits within [Nigerian] churches, or moral issues, it helps to know the supernatural vision underlying some of these concerns. … If you went to America in 1800 and wanted to find out about the nature of their religion, you’d listen to the hymns. These videos also give you a good snapshot of what Nigerians believe.”
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