By Chuks Osuji
Understandably, those who have read church history ( the Emergence and existence of the church) can remember that history of the church is punctuated with so many conflicts and murder of different types particularly among and within those referred to as, “Non-believers, infidel, anti-christs, non-conformists” etc. As a Christian myself by the ordinance of my parents, I have always wondered why Christians should fight themselves and among themselves. More troubling is the fact that the founder of Christian faith is known as, “Prince of Peace”
Yet, those who are in the prison cells today all over the world are mostly Christians. Their offences may be diverse. Many of them were convicted on grounds of violent crimes and murder. Unfortunately, Christianity is not built on crime, violence or any type of criminal or social misconduct. As far as I know, it is built on love, peace and unity. At least, I know that one axiom or statement in the scripture is, “Love your neighbour as you love yourself.” Of course, this is a far cry. Even in other faith evidence abound of distrust, in fighting, conflicts and other misdemeanours. Yet we are “Fighting “ to make heaven or the kingdom which the Bible tells us is the domain of God Almighty. Although reasons for misunderstanding and conflicts among the Christians in the Middle Ages was struggle for membership. Church history books are punctuated with evidence and events of conflicts and wars in efforts to win membership. There were several religious wars particularly in Europe among different religious believers. It must be mentioned that the world was at peace with its self untill the reformation of the 16th Century religious reformation marked ultimately by rejection or modification of some Roman Catholic doctrine and practice and establishment of the Protestant churches. This event marked a split in the church resulting in the emergence of many churches like the Anglican, Baptist, Presbyterian, et cetera. Painfully, many Protestants known in Europe then as the Huguenots were persecuted and executed for recanting Catholicism. From that time, persecution on religious ground became rampant. It was at this time that there was the emergence of Jesuit order led by Ignatius Loyola. Who could be referred to as Christian soldiers to the responsibility of executing non-conformists. In fact, when colonialism was spreading all over the undeveloped countries of the world, it went along with evangelism particularly in Africa, Far-east, Asia Minor, India all in the efforts to “win souls for Christ”
Correspondingly, there were similar movements in the middle East’s and Arab world. In fact, it was after most of the countries of the world were colonised and evangelised that killing of Protestants and non conformists abaited.
In Nigeria, the Catholic and the Anglican as part of the colonial activities emerged. Of course, their objectives were centrally to “*evangelise the natives.*” Frankly speaking, after colonialism had taken shape in Africa, the issue of killing people on ground of their faith became a thing of the past. This shifted to scriptural war. In Nigeria especially in the north, there were scattered evidence of religious riot between Christians and Moslems on flimsy reasons. And since Nigeria because independent in 1960, efforts have been to ensure that Christians and Moslems live in peace.
Although there have been some scattered religious crisis particularly in the north, the only well known religious disturbance was in 1996 when Christians were provoked leading to the destruction of some Pentecostal churches in Imo State provoked by the behaviour of 419nas including the beheading of a young boy one innocent Ikechukwu, a groundnut hawker. Since then, the region has known religious peace untill few days ago due to the activities relating to the seeming speculations that Rev. Fr. Ejike Mbaka was missing. Unfortunately and without verifying the accuracy of the report, Fr. Mbaka’s supporters went wild in Enugu touching Holy Ghost Church Enugu and the Bishop’s court causing a lot of damages.
ThankGod that no life was lost. But the damage was enormous. Nobody but nobody could believe that members of a religious adoration ground could behave in such manner.
Interestingly, in my last article concerning Fr. Ejike Mbaka entitled,”*Mbaka threatens many faith” I concluded thus*, “ My postulation is that we must ignore Mbaka and his prophesies because he does not have any direct link to God. This not withstanding, I expect Mbaka to serve useful purposes in our political system and therefore will not support any danger coming to him or to any other Nigerian. However, he must check his excesses because he is walking on dangerous grounds that may not be able to see the danger of a burning tree.” Could this be an instructive lesson to Mbaka?.
