Primate of the church of the Lord Aladura, Dr Rufus Ositelu, is a PhD holder in both Computer Science and Theology. He lived in Germany, where he had his tertiary education for a long time, before he came back to Nigeria to oversee the Church his father founded. Now the Pope of all white garment churches in Nigeria, Ositelu, also serves as the President of the World Council of Churches (Africa Region), in addition to being the Primate of the Church of the Lord Aladura.
In this second part of a four-hour interview with Church Times and Asabe Afrika TV, His Eminence sheds light on the issue of the Church and many other issues.
Let’s talk about the practice of going barefoot to church that is common in white garment churches. How do we reconcile scriptures that we are the temple of God and the fact that white garment churches take the temple as physical by removing their shoes before entering the church?
Well, if I’m going to answer that question, I think the first place to start is that wearing shoes or not inside the church has nothing to do with what the Bible says or does not say. It is about you and your relationship with God. When Jesus died, the curtain that separated people from God was torn in two. We now have free access to God without going through any intermediary. We can meet God anywhere, anytime, without any inhibition, whether we are wearing shoes or not.
But then, let’s go back to history. It will amaze you that the Catholic monks about 500 years ago used to go barefoot. Till today, there is a monument in Frankfort, Germany that reads Barfüßige katholische Mönche, meaning the Barefoot Catholic monks. That was how the monks walked around in Frankfort. Once they wear their cassock, they don’t wear shoes. So, the idea of not wearing shoes is not peculiar to white garment churches. It is an ancient practice.
To me, it is amazing that white people used to go barefoot. I now wonder, could it be that the Celestial Church took it from there? Our people need to know that some of these practices are not new. So, whether you wear shoes or not, it is just to make things comfortable for ourselves.
Now let’s talk about the socio-theological implications of the practice. First, we are African Instituted churches. We must remember that. It means any African culture that does not go against the scripture is acceptable. We also say in law and in philosophy that anything that is not forbidden is allowed. So, we believe in African culture. If we go to houses of important people, we remove our shoes at the doorpost, but when it comes to God, who is the creator of the universe, we walk with our shoes into his house. Does that not sound strange?
But that is assuming that God is somebody we go to meet in a place and not that he is in our hearts. The Bible already says those who worship God do so in spirit and in truth. How will you react to this?
We don’t even meet God in our hearts. He is already in our hearts. We go to a dedicated place to worship him. When you see a king on the road, you don’t remove your shoes, of course, yet you pay obeisance to him. But when you go to his palace, you remove your shoes. It is that African concept that translates to the practice of removing shoes before entering the house of God in the African instituted churches. There is nowhere in the Bible where we are commanded whether to wear shoes or not to wear shoes when we go to Church.
There was a time when I was a student in Germany. A friend invited me to see their pastor. After the service, he invited us to his house. Nobody told us to remove our shoes before entering his house. That is the house of a human being; how much more the house of God. But there is nothing wrong if people have a culture of wearing shoes into the temple. The white garment people quote when God told Moses to remove his shoes to justify their action, but that is just a one-off case. It is not a canon.
But the truth is that those who wear shoes are just making life comfortable for themselves, which is not wrong. The truth, however, is that those who don’t wear even have a scripture to back their claim, but that scripture is not a canon as stated earlier.
The bottom line is that there is nowhere God says in the Bible that we must not wear shoes to his house or that we must wear shoes. So, I think it is a personal decision and it depends on your relationship with God.
To stretch it further, I was in South Africa and we were discussing. I was actually invited to give a lecture in Germany on why African instituted churches were experiencing growth but the churches in Europe were declining. After the lecture, the organisers announced there was a room at the venue where we could go to have a quiet time if we wanted. I was curious. I went to see the room. When I got there, I found out that people were removing their shoes before they entered the place. I was shocked to see that. There were no chairs and no stools in the room. They all removed their shoes before entering the prayer room. So I think wearing shoes or not is one of those non-essential theological issues.
But there are all kinds of reading to the practice. Some say it is occult?
I will tell you a story. Our bishop in the Church of the Lord Aladura in Ogere used to be the chairman of the Christian Council of Nigeria, an arm of the Christian Association of Nigeria, before he was transferred to London.
Just as an aside, we belong to CCN because you can’t be in two of the blocs in CAN. Before now, Church of the Lord Aladura and Cherubim and Seraphim were both in OAIC and CCN, but then there was a law that we couldn’t be in two of the blocs. So, Cherubim and Seraphim opted for OAIC while we opted for CCN. We had to join CCN because we felt we could learn more from the CCN, where the Anglicans and the Baptists are, than from any other group in CAN.
That is why our church is more theologically inclined. Unfortunately, there is this general belief that anybody in a White garment church is not sound in theology; that the church is all about miracles, signs and wonders. Some believe pastors in white garment churches are not well educated. But that is not the case with us in the Church of the Lord, Aladura, which I belong to. I remember I once went to NTA Channel 7 for an interview. And I was told they already had a wheelchair waiting for me and an interpreter. Their idea was that anybody in a white garment must be an old man who would be in a wheelchair and must be illiterate. So, when they introduced me as the one, they were taken aback.
Now, let me address your question. I was trying to say that we have had big personalities that came to our church and had to remove their shoes before coming in. These people didn’t see anything occultic about it. But there are a few people who think that way. I recall when the former governor of Ogun State, Otunba Gbenga Daniel, held a thanksgiving service in our church, and all the prominent figures had to come to rejoice with him. They all removed their shoes. All the top church leaders who came also removed their shoes. But this Bishop from the Anglican Church refused to remove his shoes. He did not even step out of his car. He would rather follow the service from inside his car.
Apart from seeing the act as occultic, some people believe that if they removed their shoes to enter the church, they would be stuck to the church forever. They believe something mystical won’t make them want to leave the church again.
But then, all these fears are unfounded. I believe if they truly know God and have a relationship with him, they won’t be running away from such an environment. People should be confident in the God they serve. That is the challenge I throw to people of other denominations who have these biases about White garment churches.
So you insist that people have to pull off their shoes before entering the church?
Yes, we do. I remember Apostle Gabriel Fakeye of the Ayo Ni O faction of the Cherubim and Seraphim Church once had a programme in his church when he was alive, and I wanted to remove my shoes before entering the church. Some of his pastors came to me and said they were waving that tradition for that day. They said they would sanctify the place when everybody had left. I told them that we practice the same tradition, and insisted I would remove my shoes. In our denomination, we would rather not allow you to enter with your shoes than sanctify the place after you might have left.
Thank you for the incisive response to the issue of wearing shoes or not to church. But then, how best can the church manage some church practices without abusing them?
It is very simple. Everything we do must be backed by scripture. We have all sorts of cases of abuse and manipulation of people by pastors. We have had cases of fake and staged miracles. Unfortunately, many of our people are gullible. There is this case of a big Nigerian pastor in Europe. A radio journalist told the story in an interview. He said he was in a programme, and the pastor boasted there would be a miracle on a particular date. The journalist said he was curious and wanted to see how the miracle would unfold. On the announced date, he was in the church and saw how members were manipulated. He confronted the church leader and accused him of manipulating people in the name of performing miracles. The pastor was to later confess that it is easier to perform miracles in Africa than in Europe. The pastor knows Africans are more gullible than the Whites. But the Bible already tells us to test all spirits. If what we are being asked to do does not agree with the scriptures, we should not do it.
I remember a young man who was struggling. He went to meet a Pentecostal pastor who told him he needed to have carnal knowledge of his mother for him to prosper. That is the extent to which some pastors abuse the pulpit. It does not take rocket science to know there is no such instruction in the Bible. Unfortunately, many of our people are blinded by their challenges. They are so desperate to get a solution that they fall into the hands of evil pastors.
When you say people must have recourse to the Bible before doing what their pastors say. How do we explain a situation where pastors use a wrong interpretation of the Bible to explain their evil ways?
Thank you for this. That happens a lot. Pastors defend wrong things by twisting the scriptures. The right interpretation is key. If pastors are not grounded in the scriptures, they become tools of manipulation to suit their fleshly desires. The encounter between Jesus and Satan is a classic example. Satan was quoting from the scriptures to tempt Jesus. But Jesus also used scriptures to counter him. So, I agree that the right application of the Bible is key.
You are the president of the World Council of Churches Africa region. What are you doing in your capacity to reduce this unfortunate trend of being manipulated?
We can only keep praying and educating our people. There are too many cases of manipulation that we sometimes don’t know where to begin. There was a woman who went to a church because she thought it was a safe place to be. But the first day she got to the church, she was told who to be wary of. She ran away and never went back to the church. In our church, we hold seminars and workshops to educate people on how to interpret scriptures and also to warn against the misinterpretation of the scriptures.
Unfortunately, people have been able to get away with crimes using the Bible because there is no right interpretation of the word of God. Our duty is to keep educating our people.
Any word for pastors who are not rightly dividing the word of God?
I think the first area of concern should be our people who fall victim to them. Many Nigerians are self-centred, and that is why they keep falling into the hands of charlatans. I think the solution is to start a reorientation of our children. Our kids should be exposed to ethics right from primary school. And to the pastors, I think they don’t have to join people to do evil. Many, because of position, power and money, would do anything.
But for some of us, those things are not what we should pursue; rather, those things should pursue us. I have met important people across the globe, and I really don’t get moved when people around me are seemingly better in material terms than I am. When I was in Germany, I was meeting the governor of the state almost every month. I was the president of the students’ parliament when I was in school in Germany. And I was the only black among them, and yet they appointed me as their president.
What would you say accounted for your perspective on things and your lifestyle?
I think it has to do with upbringing. But then, I can say my going to Europe also contributed to it. I left Nigeria in 1974. But when I was in secondary school here in Nigeria, I was the first person appointed by the principal in my school as a prefect against the norm. I was in form four then when I was elected. The whole school elected me because they saw the integrity in me. I was keeping their money as a member of the literary and debating society, and I think that made it easier for them to trust me with a position. When I got to Europe, integrity helped me earn the trust of the white man.
You have written a couple of books on the history of Christian churches in Africa. Let’s talk about that?
Yes. Many people have a wrong notion about the history of Christianity in Africa. They think it was imported to Africa by the whites. But that is not true. As far back as the first century, the whole of northern Africa . had been exposed to the gospel If you go back to the 10th century, about 99 per cent of Africans were Christians. Mohamed was born 700 years after Jesus had come and gone. When he started Islam, he resorted to forceful conversion. That is how many of the countries that were originally Christian countries became Muslim nations. This trend spread globally. Turkey that you see today was a Christian country. When Paul talked about foolish Galatians, he was referring to the Turks, that is, those who live in Turkey.
To be continued