Between people’s Pope and prosperity pastors

He is extraordinarily eloquent and oratorical. He is a master wordsmith. He is flamboyant. He is charismatic. He is a fashion freak. He can be blunt to a fault. All these make controversy, Pastor Chris Okotie of the Household of God’s middle name. Reverend Okotie became an instant national phenomenon when over three decades ago as a law student, he released his hit musical album ‘I need someone’. He was to go on to release a number of other hugely successful musical compositions. Okotie was later to stun the nation again when he announced he had become a born again Christian and was later to become pastor of his own church. In the past few years, Okotie has contested for the presidency of Nigeria on the platform of the FRESH party without success and from all indications he will make another attempt at what he perceives as a God-ordained project next year.

Even though they must be used by now to his controversial antics, many in Okotie’s congregation must have been bewildered when he recently launched an unprovoked, most vicious and vitriolic attack against the Catholic Church. He openly and unabashedly described the Catholic Church and its leadership particularly the Pope as Satanic. In his words “It is because the church perverts the gospel of Jesus Christ and that perversion is located in the leadership. However, there are many good Christians within the Catholic Church who are not aware of the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church that has substituted Mary for Jesus in what is known as the hyperdulia of the Virgin Mary. Salvation for them is not in Jesus alone but in accordance with what Pope Francis recently announced to the world. That in itself is a direct violation of the sanctity of the scriptures.”

Not done with his anti-Catholic strictures, Okotie said pointedly in a follow up interview that “Catholics will go to hell because they worship Satan and are led by an Anti-Christ Pope who is a friend of the devil”. He described Catholicism as a counterfeit church set up by Satan and alleged that Catholics “bow to idols and crucify Jesus every Sunday when they eat bread claiming they are eating Jesus body”.  Of course I am no theologian. But I think during the last Supper Jesus broke bread and told his disciples this was his body and they should eat the communion and drink wine representing his blood in memory of him.

This column is not qualified to take up Pastor Okotie on theological matters but disagrees vehemently with his acerbic views on both Catholicism and the pope.  Although born Catholic, I have over the years veered off into one form of Pentecostalism or the other. I quite agree with some of Pastor Okotie’s criticisms of the church particularly the seeming undue veneration, even deification, of Mary the mother of Jesus and the church’s doctrine on Saints. Yet, no human being, including Chris Okotie is qualified to decide who will go to heaven or hell. Are all religious adherents not praying in the final analysis for grace to triumph over evil and spend eternity with God in heaven?

In particular, I consider Pastor Okotie’s attack against Pope Francis most unwarranted, unfair and untrue. Pope Francis is one of the most credible leaders with impeccable integrity alive in the world today. His humility is unsurpassed. He is a worthy inheritor of the shoes of the fisherman – Peter, the first Pope, was a fisherman. In any case for an institution that has gone through various vicissitudes and is still standing and going strong 2000 years after, there must be something divine about the Catholic Church that Okotie can just not dismiss with a wave of the hand.

I concur entirely with Time magazine when it chose Pope Francis as its Man of the year. His leadership of the Church within such a period has been exemplary and near revolutionary. The very adoption of his papal name, Francis, in honour of Saint Francis of Assisi indicated that modesty, humility and compassion for the weak and the poor would be the hallmarks of the Francis papacy. At every point, Pope Francis has identified with the poor. He has given the papacy a human face. He has shunned the apostolic papal mansion for a modest guest house within the Vatican City. He has visited a hospital and washed the feet of AIDS victims. He opted for silver rather than gold as his papal ring. At every turn, Pope Francis has spoken up strongly and boldly against the unjust and ungodly global capitalism that produces one billionaire and condemns one billion human beings to a living hell of poverty on earth. This seems to me to be in perfect accord with the spirit of Christ.

On one occasion, Pope Francis declared with characteristic pungency, “Just as the commandment thou shall not kill sets a clear limit in order to safeguard the value of human life, today we also have to say thou shall not to an economy of exclusion and inequality. Such an economy kills…A new tyranny is thus born, invisible and often virtual, which unilaterally and relentlessly imposes its own laws and rules. To all this we can add widespread corruption and self- serving tax evasion, which has taken on worldwide dimensions. The thirst for power and possessions knows no limits”.

The Nigerian church, particularly the Pentecostal variant, has lost the moral authority to speak such truth to power. It is now so difficult to distinguish between church and state in Nigeria. A cleric becomes President of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) and the next thing is that he relocates to Abuja and becomes a prayer warrior for the status quo. Hardly can you hear any scriptures from church pulpits against the sheer armed robbery that is going on in the name of governance in Nigeria today. Top government functionaries are not only given preferential treatment in our churches, they are even allowed to desecrate the altar of God by being given the opportunity to spew pure falsehood from compromised pulpits. The Nigerian church is in a rat race to accumulate wealth. To buy a private jet is now the ambition of virtually every pastor. I once read the cover story of a magazine where a Pentecostal pastor boasted “I once went about in Molues. Now I am set to buy my own private jet”!

Pastors struggle to build the most magnificent church buildings even as they care less about the material conditions of those who come to worship in these beautiful edifices.

Our churches build ultra-expensive universities that children of their adherents who faithfully pay their tithe cannot afford to attend. In an interview, Pastor Chris Okotie spoke unabashedly about a Range Rover Autobiography which he bought for N33 million and a Rolls Royce Phantom Coupe, which he has procured for N120 million to commemorate his 30th year on the pulpit. And this is in a country where the vast majority of the people are ravaged by poverty. Human compassion – the kind Pope Francis symbolises- is not in the dictionary of most Nigerian churches. It is this kind of ostentation, exhibition of opulence and inequality that Pope Francis abhors and strongly condemns. It is what makes him so Christ-like whatever may be his human failings. Of course, one must be careful not to make undue generalisations here. The Redeemed Christian Church of God, for instance, is one of the richest Pentecostal churches in the world. Yet, Pastor Enoch Adeboye continues to remain a man of amazing simplicity, humility and modesty. Unlike most Pentecostal churches that are run like family enterprises, the Catholic Church is a well- structured institution, that is run according to stipulated rules and cannot be dominated or manipulated by one man or family. Of course, the Catholic Church has its moral failings but so do all religious organisations. No one has the right to cast the first stone.