The fallacies of Pastor Enoch Adeboye
Written by Douglas Anele   
Sunday, 14 December 2008

Taken from Vanguard

RECENTLY, in an interview with Sunday Vanguard’s Sam Eyoboka, the general overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), Pastor Enoch A. Adeboye, made some assertions which have generated debate in the media.

Adeboye responded to issues ranging from the perennial traffic logjam along Lagos-Ibadan expressway whenever his church is having a programme at the Redemption Camp, the problem of immorality and corruption in Nigeria, to the question of deregulation of churches in the country.

My overriding purpose in this essay is to draw attention to some weaknesses in the responses of Pastor Adeboye to the issues raised by Mr. Eyoboka. At the outset, I completely agree with Adeboye on the ultimate futility of amassing wealth one does not really need by stealing from the public.

In my view, it shows that those who do this are intellectually, morally and spiritually very immature. But Adeboye is wrong when he says that “the only way we could eradicate corruption is to bring everybody to the saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ, so that the fear of God will dwell in them…”

I also disagree with his view that “there’s no way you could trace the money to them (corrupt public officers) except the Almighty God exposes them”. Nigerians have good reasons to believe that top government functionaries nationwide stole billions of naira between 1970 and 2007.

These corrupt big men and thick madams are either in Nigeria or abroad enjoying their loot. In well organized countries, such criminals are imprisoned and their properties, including cash, confiscated by government. Moreover, it does not require superhuman intervention for a serious-minded government and relevant law enforcement agencies to track the bulk of the stolen funds and assets.

In Europe, Asia and North America, for example, intelligence agencies and the police regularly succeed in tracking down monies illicitly acquired both by public office holders and private individuals, sometimes many years after the crimes had been committed. The United States and her allies in the war on terrorism have, to a large extent, blocked the financial arteries of some well-known terrorist groups.

Therefore, although the sophisticated methods used by corrupt public officials to steal money make it difficult to identify the looters and their loot, as Adeboye correctly proclaims, it is grossly misleading to suggest, as he does, that only divine intervention would expose looters or that only the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ can eradicate corruption in Nigeria. The notion of “saving knowledge of Jesus Christ” is very ambiguous theoretically, and it is difficult to see how such a vague notion can be effectively applied practically.

Corruption can never be completely eradicated in any human society because it is based on some ineradicable existential conditions of human existence here on earth, especially greed and desire to benefit maximally from available opportunities. What countries serious about reducing corruption to a level where it does not impede development have done is to create traditions, institutions and laws which make it extremely difficult for people to steal public funds and get away with it, no matter how highly placed such criminals might be.

At any rate, the over emphasis on financial breakthroughs, sowing of seeds and tithes by the new Pentecostal churches encourages corruption, because it indirectly compels church members to struggle to impress the general overseers and win admiration, respect and special praises from everyone due to the size of their “gifts” to the church.

For the “bible believing” churches, the most important thing in the life of a Christian is not spiritual enlightenment and growth, but willingness to pay tithe and give donations - the bigger the better - to the church. In fact, since clergymen and clergywomen started amassing wealth, the level of corruption, even in the various churches, escalated to the extent that the churches themselves are now run like family ventures.

The high level of greed and materialism exhibited by church leaders is a complete departure from the main thrust of the teachings of Jesus contained in the gospels.

Another fallacy committed by Pastor Adeboye is his argument that the increasing number of Nigerians who embrace Christianity, and the exploits of Nigerian pastors overseas, imply that the rest of the world see Africa as the hope of the world. He even unwittingly created the impression that idol worship, witchcraft and human sacrifice existed in Africa alone until the West brought the light of the gospel to us.

One should not be surprised if Adeboye is exultant about his claim that churches brought to Britain by Nigerians are packed full every Sunday, whereas the older more traditional and orthodox churches are “slowing down”. Adeboye is happy that the churches headed by Africans are bubbling with life every Sunday.

As a leader of one of the popular churches in Nigeria, it is definitely in his interest that Pentecostalism is expanding, because the more RCCG members there are, the larger the tithes, offerings, gifts etc. that would accrue to the church.

A visit to any of the Holy Ghost congresses organized by Adeboye’s church, and a quick mental calculation of the amount that would be realized from the “multitude”, would give one a fair idea of how smart and ingenious Nigerian pastors are as businessmen and businesswomen.

I am surprised that a man who has a background in science would suggest that Africa is becoming “the lighting continent” for other parts of the world, that when you look at the other side of the world, “we are doing better”, simply because Africans are exporting Christianity back to the West.

This is sad. It suggests that our religious leaders, unlike their colleagues in Europe and America, are yet to wake up from their dogmatic slumbers. In recent years, all the parameters used to evaluate different aspects of human development point to the disturbing conclusion that Africa is stagnating.

With the arguable exception of South Africa, there is no genuinely technologically advanced or industrialized country in Africa. Africa’s contribution to the world economy is below ten percent.

Most African countries receive one form of assistance or another from countries outside Africa. The continent is currently ravaged by poverty, disease and internecine conflicts and wars.

Thus, given this scenario, no objective observer can honestly affirm that Africa is doing better, in any positive sense, than the West. The fact that warehouses originally built for manufactured products have been converted to churches proves beyond reasonable doubt that Nigeria’s economy is asphixiating.

Are Adeboye and his colleagues unperturbed by the deepening economic problems of Nigeria, by the fact that explosion in the number of Pentecostal Christians is directly proportional to the economic hardships facing Nigerians?

Why is it a good thing that instead of exporting manufactured products and technological know-how to the West we are exporting religion, foreign religion at that, to Europe? Indeed, if Africa is doing better in any meaningful sense, why is the continent experiencing brain drain continuously?

What Pastor Adeboye and those who reason like him on this matter fail to realize is that the West had tried religion during the Dark and Middle Ages, and discovered that it led to a dead end. Hence, since the scientific revolution of the 17th century, and the industrial revolution of the 18th, the West has directed its productive forces to the acquisition of scientific knowledge and its technological and industrial applications.

The long term consequence of this paradigm-shift is that Western countries now enjoy some of the highest standards of living known in human history. Pastor Adeoye is wrong in claiming that we are doing better than the West, simply because of the wave of new Pentecostalism sweeping across Africa.

Adeboye and other rich pastors can afford to downplay the negative consequences of exporting Christianity rather than manufactured products and hi-tech services to the West. After all, they and their families have escaped from the gravitational pull of poverty.

Even, the immoral activities in Western countries which Adeboye referred to in the interview, and worse, exist here in Africa as well. The recent documentary on Africa’s witch children is a case in point. Adeboye makes the usual ecclesiastical mistake of denigrating aspects of our traditional culture uncritically.

====================================================================================


http://www.vanguardngr.com/content/view/24493/71/


FOR example, he talked about idol worship, human sacrifice and witchcraft. But these  practices are not peculiar to African villages; in fact they are still practiced all over the world, although human sacrifice is outlawed in all countries.

When Adeboye says that Africans worship idols, it appears that he does not understand the fundamentals of African ontology and religious worship, and the role the effigies and figurines play in the religious consciousness of the traditionalist.

For the African, the supreme being, what the Igbo call Chi-Ukwu, is too big, too powerful and remote to be worshipped directly.

Therefore, the physical embodiments of lower deities are used as means to channel the prayers and psychic energy generated during religious worship to the Supreme Being. The African does not worship the effigies and figurines per se.

Rather, just like the Christian uses rosaries and the crucifixes, the traditionalist employs the physical objects of his religion to help him concentrate and focus his attention on the major task at hand, namely, the propitiation of the God of his people, usually accompanied by requests.

The first Europeans to visit autochthonous African communities were ignorant of African religion. As usual, what they did not understand they denigrated.

The same colonial mentality makes Africans to denounce traditional African religions without genuine attempt to grasp the philosophical underpinnings of those religions. Logically speaking, the rosaries, crucifixes and other physical aids to Christian worship have the same ontological status as the so-called idols of traditional African religion.

Therefore, when Adeboye says that “things are different now”, he simply means that one set of physical aids to religious worship developed by Africans has been supplanted by the one he prefers, that is the set imposed on Africans by European missionaries and colonialists.

Pastor Adeboye actually missed the point when he dismissed off-handedly the question of the true birthday of Jesus of Nazareth. For him what is important is the belief that Jesus came as a saviour; the date of his birth is immaterial.

One of the most controversial topics in biblical scholarship is the identification of when Jesus was born. This question has direct relevance to the lingering doubt about whether the individual presented in the gospels as Jesus actually existed or whether the character in question is the product of accretion of legends and myths around an obscure deviant Jew.

Adeboye’s response is typical among believers who are satisfied with dogmatic uncritical acceptance of religious doctrines.

Such people are not interested in the truth or falsity of what they believe. Adeboye’s anti-intellectualistic attitude to religion is expressed by his assertion that discussion of, and arguing about, religious doctrines is an academic exercise, which will merely make us “feel that at least we have exercised our brains.”

This cavalier attitude to the veridicality of religious doctrines, coming from a former academic with a doctorate in mathematics, is rather disappointing. Truth is usually the first casualty when probing questions tend to unsettle convenient religious dogma.

I am convinced that truth, in terms of the correspondence of our ideas, theories and doctrines to reality ought to be the basic regulative principle of human transactions. It may be convenient for a believer like Adeboye to concentrate his energies on “making heaven”.

But for millions of people all over the world, the question of the historicity of Jesus is of critical importance, and rightly so, in defining their attitude to Christianity. 

The writings of scholars such as Albert Schweitzer, Arnold Toynbee, Alfred Reynolds, Barbara, Thierring, David Tabor and many others demonstrate that the question concerning the actual existence of Jesus of the gospels is far from settled.

Ascertaining the truth about Jesus is fundamental to establishing the authenticity of Christianity as a reliable path to spiritual development.

This implies that an honest Christian must be interested in questions relating to the life and times of Jesus of Nazareth, unless he or she is subconsciously aware that unearthing the truth would shake his or her belief to its very foundations.

Adeboye’s analogy with his own birthday is misplaced, because there is no doubt or controversy about his actual existence, or supernatural powers  and  occurrences associated with his life  whereas, as I stated earlier, there are reasons to doubt whether an individual described in the gospels as Jesus of Nazareth existed.

Also December 25, which is officially accepted by a vast majority of Christian denominations as the birthday of Jesus, is known to have originated from the ancient festival commemorating the birth of the sun-god. Some Christian sects, for example the Jehovah’s Witnesses, believe that Jesus was born in October, not December.

Thus, it does not help Christianity if church leaders dismiss cavalierly questions relating to certain key historical episodes of their religion, as Adeboye

On the controversial issue of whether the practice of monogamy was divinely founded and decreed, Pastor Adeboye manifested the usual Christianity-induced narrowness of vision characteristic of most Christian clergy in Nigeria. He referred those interested in the matter to the book of Genesis which narrated how Yaweh created only Eve for Adam!

It is really amazing the level of ignorance which our pastors display on matters one can easily investigate to ascertain the real facts.

The literature on marriage is huge. I suggest that Adeboye and other die-hard monogamists should read Friedrick Engel’s The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, Bertrand Russell’s Marriage and Morals, Havelock Ellis’ Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Albert Ellis’ Sex Without Guilt, Clorinda and Joseph Margolis “Alternative Lifestyles and Sexual Tolerance”. Throughout history, human beings have tried all sorts of combinations in marriage, as determined by socio-cultural, economic, political and psychological factors.

Therefore, any suggestion that the institution of marriage, or that a particular form of marriage relationship is decreed or favoured by a certain deity, betrays a disappointing and unacceptable devaluation of man’s capacity to create relationships suitable to his needs.

Is the marriage institution so sophisticated, beyond the inventive capacity of human beings, that a divine origin has to be postulated in order to explain it?

Of course, it is not. Marriage is well within the productive powers of humans to forge relationships among themselves. Polygamy, monogamy, polyandry, communal marriages, etc. are some of the possible modes of marital relationship, which have prevailed in human societies at various times.

I am completely convinced that marriage is better understood and practiced when looked at as a purely human invention meant to satisfy some basic human needs.

If, as Pastor Adeboye argued, monogamy is divinely ordained, how can one account for the incredible variety of marriage types which had been practiced in various cultures of the world? Why should God prefer monogamy to all the rest?

The truth is that monogamy is the cultural product of a strand in the intersection of Hellenic and Jewish cultures, supported by St. Paul and the Church Fathers who were motivated by the desire to maintain mathematical equivalence of gender in marriage.

I am persuaded that no one acquainted with the history of marriage throughout the ages, and its intimate connections with socio-cultural, economic, environmental and psychological factors, would postulate a divine origin for marriage or insist that monogamy was decreed by God. On this issue, therefore, Pastor Adeboye committed the fallacy of non causa pro causa.

To the question of whether the churches should pay tax, Pastor Adeboye, naturally, believes that they should not. But the reasons he gave are superficial, unconvincing and unsatisfactory.

He argues that the income of the churches come from the members who, he believes, had already paid taxes.

Thus, to tax the church “is to double tax the members, and that will be illegal”. For Adeboye, then, taxing the churches means an unjust double taxation of the members!

===================================================================================

The fallacies of Pastor Enoch Adeboye (3) E-mail
Written by Douglas Anele
Sunday, 28 December 2008

I THOUGHT that the main reason religious organizations all over the world are exempted from tax is that they are classified as charity organizations.

Since a charity organization is a non-profit making body created to provide humanitarian services to the community, it is reasonable not to tax them, because of the important roles they play especially in those areas where government is regularly found wanting. For instance, before the explosion in Pentecostalism, the orthodox traditional churches like the Catholic, Methodist, Anglican and Baptist churches had parishes in the cities and villages. T

hese churches provided educational, healthcare and other humanitarian services to the people, especially in the rural areas, either at no charge or at highly subsidized rates. Consequently, it was reasonable that the churches were exempted from paying taxes. But, what do we have now? To be candid, the new Pentecostal churches have become safe havens for "retired"people of questionable character who exploit the ignorance and poverty (both material and intellectual) prevalent in Nigeria to swindle gullible Nigerians.

Most of these churches have their headquarters and few branches in the urban centres, and do not, by any stretch of the imagination,provide humanitarian services to anyone. They cannot even be described as charity organizations. Adeboye seems to acknowledge this, when he talked about crooks in the churches as analogous to Judas Iscariot who betrayed Jesus. However, his analogy deliberately downplays the level of spiritual decay and moral crises within Pentecostal Christendom today. Instead of one Judas, we have many Judases betraying the fundamental rationale of religion, viz, spiritual enlightenment and growth.

The showy and materialistic lifestyles of Church leaders, particularly the pastors of Pentecostal churches, is a good reason for taxing their churches, because it is evident that the main focus here is to make enough money to "live big". Yet, I am not totally convinced that taxing the churches would help Nigerians in any significant way, because our government cannot be trusted to manage the money well – there are just too many kleptomaniacs in government. Pastor Adeboye made a category mistake when he argued that taxing the churches is equivalent to double-taxing the members.

If his argument is valid, then there is no reason to tax any firm or business organization, because those that transact business with them have already paid tax also. Pastor Adeboye conflated the taxable income of Church members with the income that accrues to the Church. Both are separate, and it is logically absurd to treat them as identical. No one likes a reduction in his or her income. Pastor Adeboye knows that if churches are required to pay tax, his income as the general overseer of RCCG will likely go down, a situation that might necessitate inconvenient belt-tightening measures by his family, and more ingenious ways of getting more money from RCCG members.

In Nigeria today, it is very difficult to see a Pentecostal pastor who lives a modest lifestyle different from the sordid "bread and butter" Christianity prevalent in the country nowadays. Whenever the issue of vain glorious materialism among the clergy and Christian elite rears up, Pentecostal pastors flip-flop, and misinterpret some verses of the Bible to justify their greed and acquisitiveness. Jesus of Nazareth, the founder of Christianity, at every opportunity, scathingly criticized the quest for material things. Pastors usually rail against materialism from pulpits. Nevertheless, their actions are the opposite of what they preach. Nowadays, "men and women of God" insist that the love of money is the root of all evil; but they are always willing to pal around and accept tithes, gifts and offerings from shady characters, including looters of public treasury. For example, sometime ago, a lowly paid worker in a Lagos Hotel was alleged to have given gifts amounting to N39million to his church, for which he received a letter of commendation from his pastor.

Therefore, Pastor Adeboye misses the point when he says that the churches of today "are doing better than the original one". If he means that the new churches are making more money and have more vociferous members than the older ones such as the Catholic and Anglican churches, he may be right. But that is if one neglects the most important criterion for evaluating religion: The level of spiritual enlightenment it inculcates in adherents which provides proper orientation for a life inspired by love and guided by knowledge.

On this criterion, contemporary Christianity is big failure. The overall tenor of Pastor Adeboye's response to the issues raised by Sunday Vanguard's reporter resonates with unreasoning acceptance of Christian dogmas as preached by the swanky pastors. The rising popularity of the new Pentecostalism, which Adeboye celebrates, should, instead, be a source of spiritual disquiet for sincere Christians who are genuinely concerned with spiritual, not material, prosperity. In practically all its mode of worship, contemporary Christianity has deviated substantially from the teachings of Jesus. Although one may explain such deviations as the consequence of adapting Christian religious worship to the demands of the time, I believe that the deviations indicate fundamental changes in the spirit or motivation of Christianity.

Pastor Adeboye's church and all Christian denominations pray in a manner contrary to how Jesus prayed and admonished his disciples to pray as well. Alfred Reynolds has provided an interesting perspective on this issue. In his work, Jesus Versus Christianity, he quoted copiously from the New Testament which proved that the noisy, showy and ostentatious mode of prayer, which presently dominates Christianity, is spiritual unsatisfactory. Jesus says: "And when thou prayest rest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are; for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the street, that they may be seen of men.

Verily I say to you, they have had their reward. But when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou has shut the door, pray to thy father which is in secret and thy father which seeth in secret shall reward thee"(Matt, 6:5-6)". Indeed, there is a consistent pattern of behaviour which shows that Jesus considered prayer as a personal affair between a man and his God. It is hard to find in the Gospels any record where Jesus actually prayed in public. We usually read that "he left them," "he departed", "he went a little further", "withdrew himself," to pray.

The Synoptic Gospels consistently recorded that Jesus considered prayer, fasting and alms-giving as matters between God and man which, in their most spiritually rewarding form, should be performed without witness. However, contemporary Pentecostal pastors think otherwise. Prayer, fasting and alms-giving must receive the widest publicity. Even, they issue commands to God, like military dictators, and consider it an act of piety to pray noisily and aggressively both at home and in the Church. Pastor Adeboye missed a good opportunity to call on his colleagues to turn away from "bread and butter" Christianity, and strive for spiritual excellence. He merely reminded us that there is a Judas in every twelve, and deliberately glossed over the mercantilist attitude of pastors to Christianity.

Those who call themselves Christians these days believe that God's grace, not good works and love of fellow human beings, is the most essential factor for spiritual growth. Self- styled " Bible – believing" Church members, encouraged by their general overseers, are convinced that material prosperity is a sure sign of genuine Christianity. All these are contrary to what Jesus taught, and how he lived. Where as Jesus taught that "by their fruits we shall know them, " pastors of Pentecostal churches teach that "by their tithes and gifts to the pastor we shall know them." Jesus was clear and unequivocal on his condemnation of riches and wealth.

The new churches preach prosperity and financial breakthroughs. These churches have enormous properties and revenues. The pastors and general overseers are involved in all sorts of financial transactions and extractions which have rendered them spiritually blind and impotent. Should it surprise any one, then, that, in spite of the increasing number of churches, corruption, hatred, armed robbery – indeed all symptoms of spiritual retadation – are increasing in Nigeria ? I suggest that Pastor Enoch Adeboye and his colleagues should embark on an honest soul-searching exercise to ascertain whether they are really helping people to grow spiritually or whether they are out to make " a quick buck ", as the Americans would say. But, surely, by their fruits, we already know them!

oga, did they expell you from this church or one of the sisters dumped you? you seems to like them a lot

My overridinng purpose of answering this post is to draw attention to some weaknesses in your responses to the weaknesses in the responses of Pastor Adeboye to the issues raised by,  (yer u catch the drift)


My overriding purpose in this essay is to draw attention to some weaknesses in the responses of Pastor Adeboye to the issues raised by Mr. Eyoboka. At the outset, I completely agree with Adeboye on the ultimate futility of amassing wealth one does not really need by stealing from the public.

In my view, it shows that those who do this are intellectually, morally and spiritually very immature. But Adeboye is wrong when he says that “the only way we could eradicate corruption is to bring everybody to the saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ, so that the fear of God will dwell in them…”[b][/b]



What do u expect him to say? He is a preacher of a religion that believes that all problems can only be solved when evryone on earth worships and obeys God.



For the “bible believing” churches, the most important thing in the life of a Christian is not spiritual enlightenment and growth, but willingness to pay tithe and give donations - the bigger the better - to the church. In fact, since clergymen and clergywomen started amassing wealth, the level of corruption, even in the various churches, escalated to the extent that the churches themselves are now run like family ventures.[b][/b]

Now, the writer is just being silly


[i]Another fallacy committed by Pastor Adeboye is his argument that the increasing number of Nigerians who embrace Christianity, and the exploits of Nigerian pastors overseas, imply that the rest of the world see Africa as the hope of the world. He even unwittingly created the impression that idol worship, witchcraft and human sacrifice existed in Africa alone until the West brought the light of the gospel to us.[/i][b][/b]

From a Christian point of view, it is generally accepted that Africa is a beam of hope in a degerating and darkeningworld




[i]One should not be surprised if Adeboye is exultant about his claim that churches brought to Britain by Nigerians are packed full every Sunday, whereas the older more traditional and orthodox churches are “slowing down”. Adeboye is happy that the churches headed by Africans are bubbling with life every Sunday.

As a leader of one of the popular churches in Nigeria, it is definitely in his interest that Pentecostalism is expanding, because the more RCCG members there are, the larger the tithes, offerings, gifts etc. that would accrue to the church.[/i][b][/b]
The writer is being silly again


A visit to any of the Holy Ghost congresses organized by Adeboye’s church, and a quick mental calculation of the amount that would be realized from the “multitude”, would give one a fair idea of how smart and ingenious Nigerian pastors are as businessmen and businesswomen.[b][/b]

Yawnyawn


I am surprised that a man who has a background in science would suggest that Africa is becoming “the lighting continent” for other parts of the world, that when you look at the other side of the world, “we are doing better”, simply because Africans are exporting Christianity back to the West.

This is sad. It suggests that our religious leaders, unlike their colleagues in Europe and America, are yet to wake up from their dogmatic slumbers. In recent years, all the parameters used to evaluate different aspects of human development point to the disturbing conclusion that Africa is stagnating.

With the arguable exception of South Africa, there is no genuinely technologically advanced or industrialized country in Africa. Africa’s contribution to the world economy is below ten percent.

Most African countries receive one form of assistance or another from countries outside Africa. The continent is currently ravaged by poverty, disease and internecine conflicts and wars.[b]

I can assure u he was speaking from a spiritual/moral point of view. Looking at things from that angle, Africa is miles ahead of most of the rest of the world


Are Adeboye and his colleagues unperturbed by the deepening economic problems of Nigeria, by the fact that explosion in the number of Pentecostal Christians is directly proportional to the economic hardships facing Nigerians?[/b]
a spiritual leaders primary concern is of the spirit, not of the flesh



Why is it a good thing that instead of exporting manufactured products and technological know-how to the West we are exporting religion, foreign religion at that, to Europe? Indeed, if Africa is doing better in any meaningful sense, why is the continent experiencing brain drain continuously?[b][/b]


?Yawnyawn


What Pastor Adeboye and those who reason like him on this matter fail to realize is that the West had tried religion during the Dark and Middle Ages, and discovered that it led to a dead end. Hence, since the scientific revolution of the 17th century, and the industrial revolution of the 18th, the West has directed its productive forces to the acquisition of scientific knowledge and its technological and industrial applications[/b]

False. there havebeen a lot of spriritual revivals in the West in more recent times. in fact, the industrial revolution coincided with a spiritual revival. but thats besides the point, if there s one.


The long term consequence of this paradigm-shift is that Western countries now enjoy some of the highest standards of living known in human history. Pastor Adeoye is wrong in claiming that we are doing better than the West, simply because of the wave of new Pentecostalism sweeping across Africa
[b]

there was no shift from religion to science, they re both paralel interests of man. and fsailure in one should not and cannot bne attributed to the other





Adeboye and other rich pastors can afford to downplay the negative consequences of exporting Christianity rather than manufactured products and hi-tech services to the West. After all, they and their families have escaped from the gravitational pull of poverty.[/b]

Here, the writer is just being silly



Even, the immoral activities in Western countries which Adeboye referred to in the interview, and worse, exist here in Africa as well. The recent documentary on Africa’s witch children is a case in point. Adeboye makes the usual ecclesiastical mistake of denigrating aspects of our traditional culture uncritically.[b]
All cultures have their excesses. however, it is generally thought that Africans are more spiritually minded, which is what i guess Adeboye would ve been referring to



FOR example, he talked about idol worship, human sacrifice and witchcraft. But these  practices are not peculiar to African villages; in fact they are still practiced all over the world, although human sacrifice is outlawed in all countries.

When Adeboye says that Africans worship idols, it appears that he does not understand the fundamentals of African ontology and religious worship, and the role the effigies and figurines play in the religious consciousness of the traditionalist.

For the African, the supreme being, what the Igbo call Chi-Ukwu, is too big, too powerful and remote to be worshipped directly.

Therefore, the physical embodiments of lower deities are used as means to channel the prayers and psychic energy generated during religious worship to the Supreme Being. The African does not worship the effigies and figurines per se.

Rather, just like the Christian uses rosaries and the crucifixes, the traditionalist employs the physical objects of his religion to help him concentrate and focus his attention on the major task at hand, namely, the propitiation of the God of his people, usually accompanied by requests.

The first Europeans to visit autochthonous African communities were ignorant of African religion. As usual, what they did not understand they denigrated.

The same colonial mentality makes Africans to denounce traditional African religions without genuine attempt to grasp the philosophical underpinnings of those religions. Logically speaking, the rosaries, crucifixes and other physical aids to Christian worship have the same ontological status as the so-called idols of traditional African religion.

Therefore, when Adeboye says that “things are different now”, he simply means that one set of physical aids to religious worship developed by Africans has been supplanted by the one he prefers, that is the set imposed on Africans by European missionaries and colonialists.[b][/b]


don't be silly dear writer. to a Christian, any other religion is false. any image worship, no matter how ingeniusly explained is idol worship. simple and straight forward. Xtianity talking negatively about African religion is not du to the fact that these religions weren't understood (even tho ure right, the whites didnt fully understand these religions) it was due to the fact that Xtinas believe their is only ONE god,  the Christian God. And by the way, Pentecostal xtinas criticise the catholic mode of worship.



Pastor Adeboye actually missed the point when he dismissed off-handedly the question of the true birthday of Jesus of Nazareth. For him what is important is the belief that Jesus came as a saviour; the date of his birth is immaterial.

One of the most controversial topics in biblical scholarship is the identification of when Jesus was born. This question has direct relevance to the lingering doubt about whether the individual presented in the gospels as Jesus actually existed or whether the character in question is the product of accretion of legends and myths around an obscure deviant Jew.[b][/b]

Actually the writer is the one missing the point.
1. Xtians don't have a doubt in their minds about Jesus's existence. And if u do ur research carefully, u ll discover most scholars agree that Jesus most likely existed. People who still doubt his actual existence are living in denial.
2. If the above statememt holds, then his real birthdate is indeed irrelevant.




Adeboye’s response is typical among believers who are satisfied with dogmatic uncritical acceptance of religious doctrines.

Such people are not interested in the truth or falsity of what they believe. Adeboye’s anti-intellectualistic attitude to religion is expressed by his assertion that discussion of, and arguing about, religious doctrines is an academic exercise, which will merely make us “feel that at least we have exercised our brains.”

This cavalier attitude to the veridicality of religious doctrines, coming from a former academic with a doctorate in mathematics, is rather disappointing. Truth is usually the first casualty when probing questions tend to unsettle convenient religious dogma.

I am convinced that truth, in terms of the correspondence of our ideas, theories and doctrines to reality ought to be the basic regulative principle of human transactions. It may be convenient for a believer like Adeboye to concentrate his energies on “making heaven”.

But for millions of people all over the world, the question of the historicity of Jesus is of critical importance, and rightly so, in defining their attitude to Christianity. 

The writings of scholars such as Albert Schweitzer, Arnold Toynbee, Alfred Reynolds, Barbara, Thierring, David Tabor and many others demonstrate that the question concerning the actual existence of Jesus of the gospels is far from settled.

Ascertaining the truth about Jesus is fundamental to establishing the authenticity of Christianity as a reliable path to spiritual development.

This implies that an honest Christian must be interested in questions relating to the life and times of Jesus of Nazareth, unless he or she is subconsciously aware that unearthing the truth would shake his or her belief to its very foundations.

Adeboye’s analogy with his own birthday is misplaced, because there is no doubt or controversy about his actual existence, or supernatural powers  and  occurrences associated with his life  whereas, as I stated earlier, there are reasons to doubt whether an individual described in the gospels as Jesus of Nazareth existed.

Also December 25, which is officially accepted by a vast majority of Christian denominations as the birthday of Jesus, is known to have originated from the ancient festival commemorating the birth of the sun-god. Some Christian sects, for example the Jehovah’s Witnesses, believe that Jesus was born in October, not December.

Thus, it does not help Christianity if church leaders dismiss cavalierly questions relating to certain key historical episodes of their religion, as Adeboye

On the controversial issue of whether the practice of monogamy was divinely founded and decreed, Pastor Adeboye manifested the usual Christianity-induced narrowness of vision characteristic of most Christian clergy in Nigeria. He referred those interested in the matter to the book of Genesis which narrated how Yaweh created only Eve for Adam![b][/b]

enough already. No serious scholar still debates the existence of Jesus. Its a dead topic.


On the controversial issue of whether the practice of monogamy was divinely founded and decreed, Pastor Adeboye manifested the usual Christianity-induced narrowness of vision characteristic of most Christian clergy in Nigeria. He referred those interested in the matter to the book of Genesis which narrated how Yaweh created only Eve for Adam!

It is really amazing the level of ignorance which our pastors display on matters one can easily investigate to ascertain the real facts.

The literature on marriage is huge. I suggest that Adeboye and other die-hard monogamists should read Friedrick Engel’s The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, Bertrand Russell’s Marriage and Morals, Havelock Ellis’ Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Albert Ellis’ Sex Without Guilt, Clorinda and Joseph Margolis “Alternative Lifestyles and Sexual Tolerance”. Throughout history, human beings have tried all sorts of combinations in marriage, as determined by socio-cultural, economic, political and psychological factors.

Therefore, any suggestion that the institution of marriage, or that a particular form of marriage relationship is decreed or favoured by a certain deity, betrays a disappointing and unacceptable devaluation of man’s capacity to create relationships suitable to his needs.

Is the marriage institution so sophisticated, beyond the inventive capacity of human beings, that a divine origin has to be postulated in order to explain it?

Of course, it is not. Marriage is well within the productive powers of humans to forge relationships among themselves. Polygamy, monogamy, polyandry, communal marriages, etc. are some of the possible modes of marital relationship, which have prevailed in human societies at various times.

I am completely convinced that marriage is better understood and practiced when looked at as a purely human invention meant to satisfy some basic human needs.

If, as Pastor Adeboye argued, monogamy is divinely ordained, how can one account for the incredible variety of marriage types which had been practiced in various cultures of the world? Why should God prefer monogamy to all the rest?

The truth is that monogamy is the cultural product of a strand in the intersection of Hellenic and Jewish cultures, supported by St. Paul and the Church Fathers who were motivated by the desire to maintain mathematical equivalence of gender in marriage.

I am persuaded that no one acquainted with the history of marriage throughout the ages, and its intimate connections with socio-cultural, economic, environmental and psychological factors, would postulate a divine origin for marriage or insist that monogamy was decreed by God. On this issue, therefore, Pastor Adeboye committed the fallacy of non causa pro causa.[/b]


Err, He said it was divinely ordained i.e God wants us all to be monogamous. He didnt say yo HAd to be monogamous. Theres a difference. You can marry as many women as u like. Who cares?


To the question of whether the churches should pay tax, Pastor Adeboye, naturally, believes that they should not. But the reasons he gave are superficial, unconvincing and unsatisfactory.

He argues that the income of the churches come from the members who, he believes, had already paid taxes.

Thus, to tax the church “is to double tax the members, and that will be illegal”. For Adeboye, then, taxing the churches means an unjust double taxation of the members! [b]

How is that unconvinvoing and unsatisfactory? And by the way, thereason y churches don't pay taxes is bc they are NONPROFIT organisations ok? at least theyre supposed to be.



Conclusion: Go get a life! you hide ur inanity with big words

i was too worn out from reading the posters crap to properly edit my reply, if u dont understand it go get a life too

If you see the Car (Bentley with driver and all) Adeboye is uses in LOndon, it will feed over a million starved children in Africa somewhere.

Church is a very good business, so what do you expect him to say?

Kuns:

If you see the Car (Bentley with driver and all) Adeboye is uses in LOndon, it will feed over a million starved children in Africa somewhere.

Church is a very good business, so what do you expect him to say?

Kuns how has your child molester God helped starving children?

Kuns:

If you see the Car (Bentley with driver and all) Adeboye is uses in LOndon, it will feed over a million starved children in Africa somewhere.

Church is a very good business, so what do you expect him to say?

ops he is in london

are u in love with poverty as an idea or u are just jealous u are notthe one riding the car

JJYOU:

ops he is in london

are u in love with poverty as an idea or u are just jealous u are notthe one riding the car

hey will you stop giving credibility to a man that lied that he travelled for over 300km on an empty tank?

deleted

bindex e be like say kuns don get new brother ohhh

simmy:

i was too worn out from reading the posters crap to properly edit my reply,  if u don't understand it go get a life too

MY dear, don't trouble yourself any further, if a few hundred words are so taxing as to exhaust you.  I see this emotional response many times the christian dream bubble is pierced.

The fallacies of Pastor Enoch Adeboye (3) E-mail
Written by Douglas Anele
Sunday, 28 December 2008

I THOUGHT that the main reason religious organizations all over the world are exempted from tax is that they are classified as charity organizations.

Since a charity organization is a non-profit making body created to provide humanitarian services to the community, it is reasonable not to tax them, because of the important roles they play especially in those areas where government is regularly found wanting. For instance, before the explosion in Pentecostalism, the orthodox traditional churches like the Catholic, Methodist, Anglican and Baptist churches had parishes in the cities and villages. T

hese churches provided educational, healthcare and other humanitarian services to the people, especially in the rural areas, either at no charge or at highly subsidized rates. Consequently, it was reasonable that the churches were exempted from paying taxes. But, what do we have now? To be candid, the new Pentecostal churches have become safe havens for "retired"people of questionable character who exploit the ignorance and poverty (both material and intellectual) prevalent in Nigeria to swindle gullible Nigerians.

Most of these churches have their headquarters and few branches in the urban centres, and do not, by any stretch of the imagination,provide humanitarian services to anyone. They cannot even be described as charity organizations. Adeboye seems to acknowledge this, when he talked about crooks in the churches as analogous to Judas Iscariot who betrayed Jesus. However, his analogy deliberately downplays the level of spiritual decay and moral crises within Pentecostal Christendom today. Instead of one Judas, we have many Judases betraying the fundamental rationale of religion, viz, spiritual enlightenment and growth.

The showy and materialistic lifestyles of Church leaders, particularly the pastors of Pentecostal churches, is a good reason for taxing their churches, because it is evident that the main focus here is to make enough money to "live big". Yet, I am not totally convinced that taxing the churches would help Nigerians in any significant way, because our government cannot be trusted to manage the money well – there are just too many kleptomaniacs in government. Pastor Adeboye made a category mistake when he argued that taxing the churches is equivalent to double-taxing the members.

If his argument is valid, then there is no reason to tax any firm or business organization, because those that transact business with them have already paid tax also. Pastor Adeboye conflated the taxable income of Church members with the income that accrues to the Church. Both are separate, and it is logically absurd to treat them as identical. No one likes a reduction in his or her income. Pastor Adeboye knows that if churches are required to pay tax, his income as the general overseer of RCCG will likely go down, a situation that might necessitate inconvenient belt-tightening measures by his family, and more ingenious ways of getting more money from RCCG members.

In Nigeria today, it is very difficult to see a Pentecostal pastor who lives a modest lifestyle different from the sordid "bread and butter" Christianity prevalent in the country nowadays. Whenever the issue of vain glorious materialism among the clergy and Christian elite rears up, Pentecostal pastors flip-flop, and misinterpret some verses of the Bible to justify their greed and acquisitiveness. Jesus of Nazareth, the founder of Christianity, at every opportunity, scathingly criticized the quest for material things. Pastors usually rail against materialism from pulpits. Nevertheless, their actions are the opposite of what they preach. Nowadays, "men and women of God" insist that the love of money is the root of all evil; but they are always willing to pal around and accept tithes, gifts and offerings from shady characters, including looters of public treasury. For example, sometime ago, a lowly paid worker in a Lagos Hotel was alleged to have given gifts amounting to N39million to his church, for which he received a letter of commendation from his pastor.

Therefore, Pastor Adeboye misses the point when he says that the churches of today "are doing better than the original one". If he means that the new churches are making more money and have more vociferous members than the older ones such as the Catholic and Anglican churches, he may be right. But that is if one neglects the most important criterion for evaluating religion: The level of spiritual enlightenment it inculcates in adherents which provides proper orientation for a life inspired by love and guided by knowledge.

On this criterion, contemporary Christianity is big failure. The overall tenor of Pastor Adeboye's response to the issues raised by Sunday Vanguard's reporter resonates with unreasoning acceptance of Christian dogmas as preached by the swanky pastors. The rising popularity of the new Pentecostalism, which Adeboye celebrates, should, instead, be a source of spiritual disquiet for sincere Christians who are genuinely concerned with spiritual, not material, prosperity. In practically all its mode of worship, contemporary Christianity has deviated substantially from the teachings of Jesus. Although one may explain such deviations as the consequence of adapting Christian religious worship to the demands of the time, I believe that the deviations indicate fundamental changes in the spirit or motivation of Christianity.

Pastor Adeboye's church and all Christian denominations pray in a manner contrary to how Jesus prayed and admonished his disciples to pray as well. Alfred Reynolds has provided an interesting perspective on this issue. In his work, Jesus Versus Christianity, he quoted copiously from the New Testament which proved that the noisy, showy and ostentatious mode of prayer, which presently dominates Christianity, is spiritual unsatisfactory. Jesus says: "And when thou prayest rest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are; for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the street, that they may be seen of men.

Verily I say to you, they have had their reward. But when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou has shut the door, pray to thy father which is in secret and thy father which seeth in secret shall reward thee"(Matt, 6:5-6)". Indeed, there is a consistent pattern of behaviour which shows that Jesus considered prayer as a personal affair between a man and his God. It is hard to find in the Gospels any record where Jesus actually prayed in public. We usually read that "he left them," "he departed", "he went a little further", "withdrew himself," to pray.

The Synoptic Gospels consistently recorded that Jesus considered prayer, fasting and alms-giving as matters between God and man which, in their most spiritually rewarding form, should be performed without witness. However, contemporary Pentecostal pastors think otherwise. Prayer, fasting and alms-giving must receive the widest publicity. Even, they issue commands to God, like military dictators, and consider it an act of piety to pray noisily and aggressively both at home and in the Church. Pastor Adeboye missed a good opportunity to call on his colleagues to turn away from "bread and butter" Christianity, and strive for spiritual excellence. He merely reminded us that there is a Judas in every twelve, and deliberately glossed over the mercantilist attitude of pastors to Christianity.

Those who call themselves Christians these days believe that God's grace, not good works and love of fellow human beings, is the most essential factor for spiritual growth. Self- styled " Bible – believing" Church members, encouraged by their general overseers, are convinced that material prosperity is a sure sign of genuine Christianity. All these are contrary to what Jesus taught, and how he lived. Where as Jesus taught that "by their fruits we shall know them, " pastors of Pentecostal churches teach that "by their tithes and gifts to the pastor we shall know them." Jesus was clear and unequivocal on his condemnation of riches and wealth.

The new churches preach prosperity and financial breakthroughs. These churches have enormous properties and revenues. The pastors and general overseers are involved in all sorts of financial transactions and extractions which have rendered them spiritually blind and impotent. Should it surprise any one, then, that, in spite of the increasing number of churches, corruption, hatred, armed robbery – indeed all symptoms of spiritual retadation – are increasing in Nigeria ? I suggest that Pastor Enoch Adeboye and his colleagues should embark on an honest soul-searching exercise to ascertain whether they are really helping people to grow spiritually or whether they are out to make " a quick buck ", as the Americans would say. But, surely, by their fruits, we already know them!

mazaje:

hey will you stop giving credibility to a man that lied that he travelled for over 300km on an empty tank?

Fool didnt elijah of the bible ran faster than the Chariots of Ahab with bare foot or didnt Philips ran up to the ethopian man, read ur bible

jayon:

Fool didnt elijah of the bible ran faster than the Chariots of Ahab with bare foot or didnt Philips ran up to the ethopian man, read ur bible

Why the man come dey use car then? why him no kuku dey waka up and down since him leg fast pass car? or more importantly why nobody else dey there to verify this thing?

jayon:

Fool didnt elijah of the bible ran faster than the Chariots of Ahab with bare foot or didnt Philips ran up to the ethopian man, read ur bible

Yea and I move at the speed of sound. Read your bible.

Huxley,

Please if you feel churches should be taxed, why don't you sponsor a bill to that effect and test how popupar your opinion is, instead of writing about it on nairaland.

abi

Sorry, I couldnt read at all. Too long for my liking.

The man is going to continue making money from gullible nigerians, drive bentleys on empty gas tanks. They are not going to see the light, so arguing with them is just an exercise in futility.
I just make fun of them.

Martian:

The man is going to continue making money from gullible nigerians, drive bentleys on empty gas tanks. They are not going to see the light, so arguing with them is just an exercise in futility.
I just make fun of them.

ad lib
, change the weather from cold to hot in the USA because he hates cold, make a short man taller because he was straining to see the GO[/b]at, fly his car over a trailer on a narrow bridge during a head to head collission, have his tea sipped by God because he invited God to partake in his breakfast,   

[b]THIS MAN IS A THIEF, NO BE LIE! 

jayon:

Fool didnt elijah of the bible ran faster than the Chariots of Ahab with bare foot or didnt Philips ran up to the ethopian man, read ur bible

i will take this as a joke .  also keep in mind that pastor adeboye lied to the former governor of ogun state when he told him that his god spoke to him and told him that the guy was going to win his re-election bid, only for the guy to loose to gbenga daniels. why does his god keep urging him to tell lies to people?

thetruth90:


ad lib
, change the weather from cold to hot in the USA because he hates cold, make a short man taller because he was straining to see the GO[/b]at, fly his car over a trailer on a narrow bridge during a head to head collission, have his tea sipped by God because he invited God to partake in his breakfast,   

[b]THIS MAN IS A THIEF, NO BE LIE! 

I can't understand how anybody believes he drove for 200miles on empty. He has these people wrapped so tight around his finger that they call him daddy. I mean WTF?

Martian:

I can't understand how anybody believes he drove for 200miles on empty. He has these people wrapped so tight around his finger that they call him daddy. I mean WTF?

he is their daddy but he does'nt give them any money when they are in need of money instead they are the ones that give him all their monies, daddy indeed.

Most prostitutes also have a man they call Daddy, and they also give their daddy all of their money.

Pastor AIO:

Most prostitutes also have a man they call Daddy, and they also give their daddy all of their money.

i will take this as a lame attempt at a joke. besides most prostitues do not claim to be gods of men men of god.

does the name enouch mean a " castrated man"?

God help us wit all these men who proclaim to be of God perhaps we shld find out of which god they claim!!!

22 people play the game, a referee and 2 assistant officiate, several thousand pay to watch others make all kinds comment. How many win the gold and get paid in the various currencies?

If Church is a good business start your own now and see how easy it is to get called daddy, make money and ride in Bentleys.

Friends, if you see the ark moving ( pray you know what that means) and you don't know what to write fold your fingers. Leave them to God and if you can't, call the police instead of wasting precious time disccusing men making waves in the world.

You catching fun talking about church leaders? They too ( Pastors) like what they do and also get paid for it. So keep talking.

Is it that easy to blindfold people's mind?

pope 1:

22 people play the game, a referee and 2 assistant  officiate, several thousand  pay to watch others make all kinds comment. How many win the gold and get paid in the various currencies?

how those this explain pastor adeboyes lies?

If Church is a good business start your own now and see how easy it is to get called daddy, make money and ride in Bentleys.

i'll start mine when i get back to naija and i will buy a g5 not a bently

Friends, if you see the [b]ark [/b]moving ( pray you know what that means) and you don't know what to write fold your fingers. Leave them to God and if you can't, call the police instead of wasting precious time disccusing men making waves in the world.

is it the same wooden ark that the biblegod once lived inside? men making waves in the world or frauds making waves in the world. fraudsters are the only people that lie that they travelled for over 300km on am empty tank with a straight face.

Is it that easy to blindfold people's mind?

sure all you need to do is meet some ignorant and close minded people(nigerians), sweet talk them into believing what ever you say and you are done.

Lied? Ok o. I rather fall for his lies than for the truth of some.

Thumbs up Pastor! May you arrive safely. Can't wait for the inuguration of your business enterprise.

pope 1:

Lied? Ok o. I rather fall for his lies than for the truth of some.

Thumbs up Pastor! May you arrive safely. Can't wait for the inuguration of your business enterprise.

I hope you're joking.

i knew right from day 1 that he be big damn liar!!!!!!!