Sade Dawodu, spouse of a beloved bishop, has gone lacking. As investigative psychologist Philip Taiwo tries to uncover the reality, he exposes an unsightly underbelly of corruption and management. In this essay, writer Femi Kayode tracks his curiosity in the facade faith can present again to its supply.
After highschool, I grew to become swept away with the born-again pandemic that hit its peak in the early ’90s in Nigeria. I purchased into all of it: the rousing choir, the flamboyant pastors, the talking in tongues and the hug-your-neighbor-and-tell-them-Jesus-loves-them. Because I’m a closet voyeur, I attended solely the Pentecostal church buildings that had giant congregations. I’d stay on the edge of the crowd, shut sufficient to offer the phantasm of taking part, however nonetheless distant sufficient to watch.
I cherished the pastors; all the time neatly dressed, and nearly definitely with an American accent. They are nearly all the time males, with equally flamboyant wives who had been seated to the aspect of the altar, piously urging their husbands to “Preach it!” The sermons might make even the most assured slapstick comedian give up their crown; wry humor met with deep insights sprinkled with what I thought-about an unusual understanding of the human situation.
My spouse was raised Catholic. Since one of our shared philosophies is “A family that prays together, stays together”—quaint, proper?—and we had been all so joyfully (now, we’d say ignorantly) patriarchal, she began accompanying me to my church, which held providers in a music corridor on Lagos Island.
On this explicit Sunday, the pastor got here on stage, an brisk GQ cowl mannequin. The choir, resplendent of their robes, walked solemnly behind him. Absolute silence. The lights dimmed, and a highlight fell on the pastor. Boom! The backtrack of Kirk Franklin’s “Stomp” got here on, and the pastor started to rap! The entire church stood up, dancing.
Read our evaluation of ‘Gaslight’ by Femi Kayode.
The music ended. The pastor was sweating, respiration arduous. The congregation high-fived one another. The choir seemed like the Sound of Blackness once they had been handed a Grammy. Amid the thunderous applause, I shouted into my spouse’s ear. “Did you like it?” She answered, eyes alive with happiness and devoid of judgment, “It was a wonderful performance.”
That sincere response has stayed with me for the 20 years because it was spoken. Performance. Through a number of church attendances, throughout the totally different international locations we’ve got referred to as dwelling in the previous twenty years, I might by no means shake that phrase from the edge of my consciousness. Performance. The stage changed the altar. The lights meant to create a celestial environment grew to become props. The congregation on excessive alert, an viewers primed for the important occasion. The worth of entry was in the providing field. Action!
As this transformation unfolded in the theater of my thoughts, the author in me contemplated: What was occurring backstage? Do the pastors put on make-up? (I’ve since confirmed that many do.) Do they throw tantrums like petulant divas? Yes, certainly. These questions and plenty of extra saved me awake when sermons misplaced which means, choirs grew to become sound results and I grew too jaded to place my religion in the phrase of man. The sameness grated on me, like I used to be caught in the reruns of a blaxploitation TV collection. The recycled plot prompted my thoughts to journey behind the curtains, and I began in search of solutions exterior the script taking part in out in entrance of me.
Gaslight chronicles my journey behind the efficiency. It is a diary of my evolving religion. A journal of my steadfast perception that regardless of how nice the act, man just isn’t God.
Photo of Femi Kayode by Nicholas Louw.
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