Culled from

https://dacb.org/stories/nigeria/babalola-joseph/


https://dacb.org/stories/nigeria/babalola1-joseph/


https://dacb.org/stories/nigeria/babalola2-joseph/


https://dacb.org/stories/nigeria/babalola4-joseph/

Link1

Leader in the
Aladura
religious
movement.
He was born
into a
Christian
family in a
small town
in the Ilorin
district of
Nigeria.
After attending school in Lagos he became
a steam-roller driver for the highways
department. One day in 1928 his roller
stopped and he had a vision telling him to
preach the Gospel. He returned home
where he was thought to be mad and was
imprisoned briefly. He eventually made his
way back to Lagos, where he became
associated with the Faith Tabernacle, an
independent Yoruba church which had
broken from the Anglican Church. During
the 1930s he led a revival, which swept
parts of Yorubaland, known as the Aladura
movement. Although the movement
involved no political protest, British
officials feared its potential and put
pressure on Nigerian chiefs to deny
Babalola’s followers land grants. Babalola
himself was jailed in 1932, charged with
participating in a witch-eradication ordeal.
He was released after six months, and
remained prominent until his death.

Link2

Joseph Ayo
Babalola, a
pioneer in
the African
independent
church
movement,
was the
founder of
the Christ
Apostolic
Church, a
major branch
of the Aladura movement. The praying or
prophetic ( aladura ) churches had begun to
spread across the continent in the 1920s,
and among the Yoruba they had taken
strong root with the rise of the Cherubim
and Seraphim Society.
In the 1930s, Babalola, who had previously
been a highway department steamroller
operator, undertook an amazing preaching
ministry. After a vision telling him to
preach the Gospel caused him to be
judged mad and briefly imprisoned, he
went to Lagos and joined the Faith
Tabernacle, a Yoruba independent church
that had broken with Anglicanism. From
there he began traveling across Nigeria
and into Ghana, attracting crowds and
performing healing ceremonies. Unlike the
Zionist churches, which appealed to the
poor and marginalized of colonial society,
the Aladura movement appealed to urban
workers.

Link 2 cont.


Babalola preached a Christian revival,
attacking traditional religious practices,
burning fetishes, idols, and witchcraft
paraphernalia in grand bonfires, and
forbidding polygamy. The Christ Apostolic
Church, which he founded in 1955, took its
name from a British denomination that
helped in its formation. It was neither
antimissionary nor anticolonial. Indeed, it
had no social or political doctrine at all but
instead emphasized spirituality; it was a
holiness movement. For these reasons the
government did not attempt to attack it, as
had happened in the case of William Wadé
HARRIS in Ghana and Simon KIMBANGU in
the Belgian Congo. Babalola was jailed for
a few months on suspicion of participation
in a witch eradication campaign, but that
was the extent of his conflict with colonial
authorities. Babalola headed the church as
general evangelist, while its president, Sir
I. B. Akinyele, Oba of Ibadan (who was
knighted by Queen Elizabeth II),
represented its social prestige and public
acceptance.

Link2 cont.

After the death of Babalola, the church
continued to grow and in the 1990s had
about 500,000 members, with an annual
growth of about 15,000. It had 2
seminaries, 26 secondary schools, and a
teachers’ college. It has missions in West
Africa and overseas among expatriate
Nigerians as far away as Houston, Texas.

Link 3
t was Prof. Saburi Biobaku who said, Great men appear now and again to help shape the course of human history. The history of their lives does not of itself amount to the totality of the history of man. It nevertheless serves to illuminate that history and unravel the course of human events [l].

Link 3 cont.
The story of Apostle Joseph Ayodele Babalola, his life and work can be thus classified. His unprecedented Oke-Oye Revival gave birth to what is now known as the Christ Apostolic Church (C.A.C.), a Nigerian indigenous church.

thread continues here

www.nairaland.com/4072114/apostle-joseph-ayo-babalola-background#60720608

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