By Clement Oduwole
I was born into the Baptist system. My grandpa must have been a dyed-in-the-wool Baptist as to name my dad after the founder of the Baptist Movement – John (the Baptist).
My old man, now late, was an elder at the Baptist Church, Kumasi, my birthplace. He was so proud of being a Baptist and went the extra mile to get me involved in church activities. As his first son, he encouraged me to join the choir. He made two sets of choir gowns for me with mortarboards to match.
He also pampered me with all manner of sweets anytime I was going for choir practice. But little did he know that he was wasting his time and money spent on sweets and chewing gum. For, rather than head for the choir practice, my port of call was the football field for evening practice most of the time or the Odion Cinema. Looking back now, I still wonder why he did not name me John Junior in keeping to the family tradition of identifying with the founder of the movement.
When I was brought to Nigeria in the late 50s as a kid, I continued with the Baptist system along with my elder sister. During one of my long vacations in Jos, I accompanied her and her spouse to the First Baptist Church situated along Adebayo Street one Sunday. Unknown to me, I was on a divine mission to unify Christianity and Islam. I sauntered into the auditorium and bounced along the aisle and my head was appearing and disappearing inside the oversized cap my brother-in-law passed on to me.
And just as I was stretching my neck sideways, looking for a space to fix my little bumbum, my head suddenly became empty! I swung round only to see my cap retreating on the tip of the janitor’s staff. I was supposed to remove my cap while stepping into the auditorium. I was consumed by shame as the whole congregation looked in my direction as the drama unfolded.Even the reverend spared some time to giggle.
I followed up the disappearing cap and stood on my toes to retrieve it. The janitor then asked me where I thought I was: in a mosque? He reminded me that I was supposed to uncap my head upon stepping into the church. Although I was so young, it was the first time in my life I ever went to church in native attire with the full complement of a cap.
As I shimmered out of the auditorium in anger, his voice was educating me that it was Muslims that worshipped in the mosque with their caps on but shoeless, while their Christian opposites worshipped with their shoes on but capless. That embarrassment led to my eventual exit from the family church. A decision that would have caused my old man to quake in his grave!
When I found myself in Jos in the 70s where I had gone to work for The Nigeria Standard newspaper, I had become an apostate, so to speak, embracing the Catholic system whose pattern of worship is quite different.
What is more, the Catholics have images of Mary and Jesus Christ positioned in and out of the church auditoriums. There are no such representations in any Baptist church premises. Followers of John the Baptist don’t chant ‘Hail Mary’ or fiddle with rosaries.
I spent quite a long time in the Catholic system and made a lot of friends that included the late Arch-Bishop G. G. Ganaka of the Jos Arch-Diocese, the late Monsignor Emmanuel Ude, who died in a fire incident that engulfed his residence at Rayfield, Jos, and his successor, Cletus Gotan.
My peregrinations then took me to the ECWA church system where I had a sojourn for less than two years. Then, I was sucked into the Pentecostal environment. That was in the mid-90s. One major problem I have had since becoming a Pentecostal is my failure to speak in tongues.
The general belief in the system is that as a true Pentecostal, you must be able to speak in tongues as it happened on the Day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit descended on the disciples. In other words, if you can’t speak in tongues, you are a fake!
There was this evening programme we had in my early years of going Pentecostal in Jos. The driver of the resident pastor made speaking in tongues so easy that he just casually strolled into the auditorium, hands in pocket.
The next thing I heard was robo bobo, robo bobo! And I began to wonder. Was it because he was an Urhobo man? As an Ijaw, you can as well break into jawjaw jawjaw… until you break your jaws! An Ngas from Plateau can as well dissolve into gas gas gas… until he runs out of gas! As an Offa man, nothing could have stopped me from screaming fafafa fafafa fafafa until I saw how far I could go! In the actual fact, I have tried my best severally to speak in tongues as a hall- mark of being born again but I gave up the (dangerous) idea the day I bit my lips in the process of trying not to be an odd man out… and I saw blood! However, if I see a true, Holy Spirit filled speaker of tongues, I will know… quite distinct from the studied mombo jumbo being spewed out in most of the churches, even from the pulpits!
In all of these religious peregrinations, it is the Catholic system fascinated me the most… and it still does! Forget about what happened at the St. Philip’s Catholic Church, Ozubulu, on August 6, last year, where a lone gunner executed some innocent parishioners over a drug war scripted in faraway South Africa.
Only recently, the Parish priest of the St. Christopher’s Catholic Church, Wannune, Rev Fr. David Mzer Aswe, reportedly refused to allow the Benue state Governor, Dr. Samuel Ortom, a fellow Tiv man, speak in his church during a thanksgiving service in honour of the former governor of the state, Mr. George Akume, at his 64th birthday.
The governor was to use the occasion to address the issue of unpaid workers’ salaries in the state. But the young Father insisted that the governor should speak at the reception venue instead and that he would not permit His Excellency to spew lies from the pulpit.
That kind of refusal could not have taken place in any Pentecostal church where VIPs and thieving politicians have free access to the microphones and are treated like God because of the heavy bucks the pastors, bishops, general overseers, etc, would expect them to dole out after the service.
Wait a minute… if I decide to return to the Catholic system, would you or would you not label me as a religious rolling stone?
