Reacting to Ojogbon’s posting “Germany's empty churches repurposed as congregations shrink”
Cornelius Hamelberg
Reacting to Ojogbon’s posting “Germany's empty churches repurposed as congregations shrink” - to the chagrin of the surviving remnant
This is of course in stark contrast with latest developments in Ojogbon’s Nigeria where the Christian missionaries have succeeded spectacularly, succeeded beautifully beyond the devil’s expectations, and where in spite of allegations of an ongoing genocidal decimation of Christians, the mega-churches are currently filled to overflowing, just as the Psalmist boastfully proclaims in Psalm 23 (King James Version) “Thou anointest my head with oil, and my cup runneth over ”
I occasionally listen to the avuncular Bishop David Oyedepo, Nigeria’s crown prince of Pentecostal preachers, mainly for his urbane, always delightful, sensitive rhetorics to an always entranced, spell-bound congregation. So I intuit, if the preachers in the German churches were charismatic like him, their churches would not be half empty.
Like that humorous story about a preacher and a taxicab driver at the Pearly Gates
Maybe, Nigeria should start sending missionaries to the US and to Germany ….
Charity begins at home and with Jesus in mind, that would be in once upon a time Bethlehem, Nazareth, Galilee, Palestine, but in the context of the ongoing ideological war between Christianity and Islam - for spheres of influence - in Africa it’s mostly understood to be “suffer suffer for world , enjoy for heaven” - and more suffering caused by e.g. an extremist Christian terrorist group such as “The Lord's Resistance Army”, in contrast with Christianity’s avowed salvific mission , to save the souls of Africans.
Very often, when we're talking about Nigeria, Africa and the world's most populous Black nation, some of the smallies such as Ghana, said to be “one of the most religious countries in the world”, start feeling jealous and left out, as if they don’t know that when it comes to Christianity in Africa South of the Sahara, it’s the Democratic Republic of the Congo that are the champions, since over 95% of the population in the Democratic Republic of Congo is Christian and that they also have famous pastors and preachers, not to mention marvellous Choirs and Gospel Music…
Islamic dawah missionaries would like to convert the whole lot from Cairo to Cape Town, put an end to Kufr, establish the whole of Africa as Dar al-Islam and declare the post-jahiliyyah era forever. With regard to DRC the Dawah people are biding their time, they know that the fitrah of polygamy is on their side and that the greatest hurdle that has to be overcome in propagating Islam in that part of the world is that Islam has declared alcohol HARAM whereas the Brethren in the Congo love songs such as buvez beaucoup, boire beaucoup !
Not to worry. Time must let my people loose
Time is moving fast, the times they are a-changing even faster than lightning, and only goodness knows where the current state of affairs is heading. Already, in the UK a few decades ago - no miracle - the trend was visibly disappearing churches, and, like original sin, it would seem that lured by the subtile serpents of modernity, churches were and are gradually falling into darkness, despair and desuetude. Some people blame it all on the modern era of paedophile priests, others blame it on immigration, that without unbridled immigration there’s no way Sadiq Khan would now be luxuriating and lording it over his Christian countrymen and countrywomen as Mayor of London, and here too for a surety, every once on a while in the subterranean caverns of his warmongering brain Donald J Trump must be thinking and sometimes openly swearing that - the Statue of Liberty and Emma Lazarus’ poem The New Colossus notwithstanding, but for unbridled, wanton immigration he wouldn’t be having to be shaking hands with one smiling Zohran Mamdani who is the Muslim Mayor of what the Rev Jesse Jackson once described as ““Hymietown” - town of the “Hymies”, plural of Hymie
Once upon a time, Bobby Dylan chimed,
“Well, I don’t know, but I’ve been told
The streets in heaven are lined with gold
I ask you how things could get much worse
If the Russians happen to get up there first
Wowee! pretty scary!”
I suppose that for Trump, if he survives further fallout from the unholy Epstein Files things could only get much worse after he loses the midterm elections and he survives to behold Hakeem Jeffries and the likes of Ilhan Omar leading the war of words against him in Congress and in her Minneapolis where an innocent Renee Nicole Good h<s just been killed by one of his ICE agents…
In the late 80s of the last century, I attended a lecture at number 277 Seven Sisters Road in London - an address that was once a church - that had been purchased by a Malaysian prince and handed over to his Naqshbandi Sufi Sheikh, Nazim Haqqani and converted into a Sufi hospice; as I approached the premises, I could see from a distance, all that remained of its previous Christian identity was the steeple.
I have previously reported the visit to that Sufi hospice, somewhere here
When it comes to functionality in connection with the deserted churches, in various parts of Europe, there are suggestions about converting Churches into hotels and refugee camps
Published more than 250 years ago and still enough to make some weep:
Oliver Goldsmith : The Deserted Village
The sociologists will give their reasons for Christianity's decline in what remains of King Henry VIII’s inheritance - some may blame it on Bertrand Russell’s seminal essay, “Why I am not a Christian”, and more recently may blame it on The Four Horsemen of the Anti-Apocalypse - the hydra-headed quartet led by Richard Dawkins and his still influential “ The God Delusion” aided and abetted by Sam Harris and his best-seller
The End of Faith - before that the late Christopher Hitchens , and from a purely Islamic point of view his delusional and blasphemous polemic titled “ God Is Not Great” - which somebody gladly ( triumphantly) gave me as a birthday present back in 2008. I am less familiar with Daniel Dennett the third horseman of the anti-apocalypse and suffice it to say that preceding all of them was the cursed and excommunicated Baruch Spinoza who, to his credit, never denied the existence of the Almighty….
The politicians and churchmen must be vowing to do something positive about the decline ;.
sadly (not gladly) in the Trump Christian territories in the US the rumour is that the megachurches are fading…if you listen to Trump’s man Vince Ellison on the American Churches you may find more reasons to send a few contingents of Nigerian missionaries to the rescue….
Oluwatoyin Adepoju
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