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By: Nestor B. Udoh
Shortly after Jesus Christ rose from death and ascended to heaven, his gospel began to grow in leaps and bounds.
Around 7AD, and for reasons only he could tell, a man name Saul rose against the Church, opposing the gospel, persecuting, torturing and killing Christians.
While travelling to Damascus one day, a light from heaven blinded him.
He was commanded by Jesus, the founder of the Christian religion, to go and preach the same gospel that he vehemently opposed.
He not only obeyed, he did it with even more vehemence with which he opposed the gospel.
The same Saul is now Paul, whose letters to different churches were incorporated into the Christian Bible and constitutes nearly half of the new testament.
I regard this personally as the first church reformation.
The sale of indulgences in the Catholic church started with Pope Paul X1X.
The practice was intensified by Pope Leo X, and by 1517, it reached it’s crescendo.
For those who do not know, especially non-Catholics, indulgence is an act you perform which was said to lead to remission of your sin before God.
Some said It led to salvation, and a few dared to say you could not enter heaven if you didn’t perform your prescribed indulgence.
It could include fasting, at the very least, to weighty acts like giving of specified alms or financial donations at the very most.
At the peak of of the sale of indulgences, the Catholic church used the proceeds from such sales to raise funds for the construction of St Peter’s Basilica in Rome. As I write, many Christians flock to savour it’s ethereal beauty as part of their religious pilgrimage.
The breath-taking edifice is where the Pope preaches, and is said to have been designed with inputs from Michaelangelo, an Italian, and one of the greatest architects of all time.
Like every other thing human, the sale of indulgences became abused. Some Catholic Bishops and Priests started to sell indulgences, not for the church, but to enrich themselves.
A Catholic monk named Martin Luther did not find this funny. Because he believed it was wrong, he made several representations to the Catholic authorities to abolish the practice.
All his representations fell on deaf ears. Then, on the 31st of October, 1517, he pasted a treatise on the door of the church in Wittenberg, Germany in frustration.
That treatise is popularly referred to as the 95 theses today. It raised these issues, and Luther’s intention was to bring them to public attention, and to call on the church to look at them critically, with a view to abandoning those practices.
What came out of this act surprised even Martin Luther himself, and changed the face of Christianity for all time.
The ensuing debate led to open protests and rebellion against the Catholic church and many of its doctrines.
Pope Leo X sent Catholic theologians to debate these issues with Martin Luther in 1518. Martin refused to change his position.
The Pope was so piqued he issued what catholics called the “Papal bull” in June 1520, threatening Luther with excommunication. This means you will be thrown out of the Catholic fold, and lose your membership, and all accrued benefits as a Catholic priest.
What happened next became a public drama.
Martin became so angry he publicly burnt the paper on December 10, 1520. A month after, in January 1520, he was officially excommunicated from the Catholic church by the Papacy.
Others who sided with Martin out of protest broke away from the Catholic church, opening the floodgate for the establishment of many other churches as we see it today.
This effectively broke the Catholic Church’s monopoly of the Christian religion, and led to the establishment, for the first time, of churches outside the Catholic church after 1,500 years of Catholic church dominance.
That was the beginning of Protestantism. But that was not all. It resulted in the Catholic church reforming of some of her church policies. The rest, as they say, is history.
I regard this personally as the second Christian reformation.
Shortly after the Second World War, an American televangelist named Oral Roberts began, in 1947, teaching what is now called “prosperity” or “wealth and wellness” gospel.
It centered around wealth creation, giving by payment of tithes, and sundry methods of fund raising.
It is not clear whether the intentions of the purveyor of this gospel was pure, especially as there is nothing to be said in praise of poverty.
What has become clear is that, like the sale of indulgences, prosperity gospel became heavily abused by all manner of people.
This is a story for those who may wish to tell it some other time, but we have evidence that the abuse was so much so that, in some churches, many members were beaten for failing to bring out money in a prescribed way.
Recently, one of the prosperity preachers named Abel Damina, a Nigerian, and an Uyo based pastor has recanted, and like Paul and Martin Luther, he is now preaching vehemently against what he once believed and practiced, that is, prosperity gospel.
It is not the intention of this article to hold brief for Abel Damina, or for that matter, those who say his preaching against some methods of raising funds in a church is self serving.
What we can say for certain is that his vehement preaching against some methods of fund raising in the church has caused a ripple which may not die down any time soon.
But could this be the beginning of the third church reformation?
No one can tell, as the answer to this question is securely buried in the belly of time.
All we know is that sooner or later, it will be delivered, either as a still born child or a live birth.
PS. Do no make any comments if you haven’t read this article. 🙏
copyright© Nestor B. Udoh, writes from Uyo, A’Ibom State.