The Need for Church Unity.

With the closing of the rainy season, nocturnal activity is on the increase once again, in Freetown. It comes in many forms and is very audible and not always melodic. It would appear that the dry season is revival season. Even as dawn breaks, the preachers’ amplified exhortations and alleluias can be heard closing an all night vigil in any one of the many churches and charismatic movements that exist in our neighbourhood. It is unlikely that a recent newspaper article on the subject of “church unity” is an issue for them.

Articles and stories that appear in Salone’s newspaper are habitually picked from the internet and the author’s name and the context from which they are writing never appear. This happens to be the case in the Awoko newspaper’s article “the need for church unity”, so that it is legitimate to ask, whose need, which church and what kind of unity is being referred to and where? The article makes no reference to inter-denominational relationships or ecumenism or mission so that it would be appropriate to ask what kind of church is being envisaged. Besides, it is a question any mission partner, church worker or member should be asking in Salone today.

Our own involvement in ecumenism was nurtured as mission partners with the United Church ofinvariably involved a host of denominations including Anglicans, Lutherans, Roman Catholics, Seventh Day Adventists as well the Presbyterian and Congregationalist who along with Methodists made up the United Church of PNG and Solomon Islands. Ecumenism is never more vibrant than when it is expressed in missional activity, be it by denominations or collaborative agencies.

In our current appointments, ecumenical endeavour lies at the heart of the college’s mission statement. The churches, movements and ministries from which the students are drawn are richly varied in both their histories and theology. However, they are but a segment of what can be seen in Freetown , as a manifestation of Christian based endeavour and purpose.

The library of Westhill College in The University of Birmingham includes a room dedicated to the work of Harold Turner, whose pioneering enquiry into New Religious Movements spanned decades. His work produced a wide ranging examination, which challenged long held assumptions, as to what was and what was not organised Christian religion. We met Harold very briefly when he was researching “cargo cult movements” in PNG and we shared our superficial understanding of the ‘millennium movement’, in our area of the Baining Mountains of East New Britain. Melki, its leader, was a quiet, rather shy man, but possessed a following with Uramat speaking Bainings, which frequently assembled in specific locations often close to burial sites and performed rites and military styled ritualistic acts which created a serious disquiet among local church leaders.

Known popularly as “cargo cults”, because of the anticipation of material wealth, a common feature of all millennium movements, these movements were evident in several locations across the whole of the country. At times the followers of the cargo cults were numbered in their thousands, in Melki’s case, it was but a few hundred, but like all such movements, they anticipated a day of rich material blessings to arrive in a given location and often on a given day. For Melki, the date was undetermined, but the nearby Rabaul harbour was the point at which riches, sent by departed ancestors, were to arrive at.

The transferability of this experience has become evident during our first year in Freetown. Small and mega gatherings, inspired by church and movement leaders from various parts of West Africa, have been a common feature of religious life. They are usual widely publicised with the invitation to allow “your gates to be opened” so that God’s riches may enter or for “an encounter with divine blessings”.

The phenomena of churches mushrooming on the gospel of prosperity are not confined to Salone or even West Africa, they are a universal aspect of the religious landscape in any nation, but they may well flourish better in tropical climates. It was reassuring to find that the link we have begun to make between the Melanesian “cargo cults” and the prosperity churches has been covered recently by eminent academics in sociology of religion, some of it in response to a short film made in Ghana, “Prosperity Gospel, Behind the Scenes”.

It appears that the holy seal of approval of lust, greed, and consumerism is granted by Neo-Pentecostal church leaders, who organise networks, coalitions and movements, to declare prosperity and material wellbeing to individuals, families, with a demonstration of resources that are naturally designed to impress. Even the names of the organisation alone are intriguing , “Church of the End Time Army of God”, “Battle Axe Ministries”, “Winners Chapel” and “Let My Gate be Open”.

As observant students of new religious movements, we went to the national stadium recently, to witness the first of a two night mega event of “empowerment”. A nearly half full stadium was still growing in numbers, vitality and anticipation as we seated ourselves among people at least a generation younger. As with churches across the city, women were in the majority, but the average age was younger than that which we would meet on a Sunday morning and we were greeted by a few people we knew. Responsive and willing to provide loud “alleluias” when prompted, the congregation was also eager to buy the white handkerchiefs bearing the image of the founding Bishop, ready to be waved at appropriate moments. They were also equally willing to wave the 1, 2, 5 and 10,000 Leone notes (2US$) in the air, before depositing them in large plastic bags to be tied tight and hurled over the perimeter fence onto the running track and collected by the uniformed stewards.

Emotional expression was at times exuberant but there were also moments of stillness, deep concentration and quiet reflective singing too. A choir item, led by a group who were surprisingly under-amplified for a congregation of 8,000, provided the entry of The Apostle who arrived in a cavalcade of top of the range 4x4 vehicles and a large squad of military styled “security men”, who positioned themselves across the football pitch. The presence of the Apostle/ Bishop caused one or two women’s legs to give way in a show of euphoria, but it was but a momentary phenomena and which passed without exploitation by the event leader.

In his teaching the Bishop made reference to several mission imperatives, that we could also say alleluia to. Included were poverty reduction, the creation of youth employment as well as the elimination of illiteracy and infant mortality. Frequent reference was made to being empowered to use the solution of faith. It was faith alone that would provide the material betterment to eliminate societal sickness.

When staying with Fr Pat Rasmussin, in December 1972, we discussed at length the impact of the cargo cult that had recently centred on Mt Turu, which lay within his area of work and service, in The East Sepik Province. The movement was made up of some 30,000 people, some of whom had abandoned subsistence farming in anticipation of the wealth that would emanate from the removal of a concrete obelisk, a trigo-metrical point on the summit of Mount Turu. The offending object was uprooted and the people duly returned to their villages and the anticipated social unrest from unfulfilled expectation did not arise.

The application of logical thinking, associated with the principles of the enlightenment, was considered to be of no assistance in trying to comprehend this particular millennium movement. And perhaps, despite all the automotive hardware of 21^st century engineering and the electronics of the public address systems, the application of cause and effect, to decipher the workings of prosperity gospel fuelled churches may also be unfruitful. The replication of neo-pentecostal practices , especially in worship, is, in our experience, progressing at an alarming rate into the synodical and historical churches. Could the absence of a rational understanding of the prosperity gospel phenomena be the reason for an ambivalent attitude of the church unity organisations ie Sierra Leone Christian Council and The Evangelical Fellowship of Sierra Leone, to comment on the effect these movements are having on their member churches? Or is their silence an endorsement of the influence of the phenomena on their member churches?