By Moses Oludele Idowu
The Internet is presently agog with the interview of Professor Wole Soyinka on CNN where he declared his preference of the Orisha religion to Christianity and Islam. For him he preferred the religion of the Yoruba to the Christianity and Islam that he called foreign religions. For those who have followed his utterances over the years that is not too strange.
Two years ago
on Sunday, 20 November 2022 at the public presentation of his two-volume collection of essays, “Of Power and Freedom” he said he was neither a Christian, Muslim nor Orisha worshiper.
Kunle Ajibade had asked him: “You say in one of the essays in Of Power and Freedom that you are not a Christian, you are not a Muslim and you are not an Orisa worshipper. And that you use the gods of these religions merely as mythological constructs. But what exactly is your religion?”
Hear him: “Do I really need one (religion)? I have never felt I needed one. I am a mythologist. I believe that people have a right and cannot help creating mythologies around themselves., around their experience about what they project from the inner recesses of their minds as answers to questions.
“And so I find nothing wrong with utilizing mythologies as part and parcel of my creative warehouse.
“But religion? No, I don’t worship any deity. But I consider deities as creatively real and therefore my companions in my journey in both the real world and the imaginative world.”
That was two years ago.
However in the recent interview with CNN’s Larry Madowo he actually prefers the Orisha religion and considers it better than Christianity and Islam.
This last confession is more in tune with what he has always been from the very beginning and consistent with his fascination with Yoruba ancestor- divinities especially Ogun and Sango, his patron deities.
In an earlier interview with the TELL magazine he also confessed that from childhood he found out that his nature and passion drew him towards Ogun, the Yoruba god of iron and that during childhood he was always longing for visits to Isara their ancestral home to be connected with the traditional religion of his ancestors, which was not possible at Abeokuta with the Christian religious barricades erected by his parents.
Sincerely Soyinka has never hidden his love for the Orisha worship and the deities of Orisha religion especially Ogun. If you can’t discern this then you have not read Soyinka nor encounter the complex character that goes by that name. His work of poetry titled “Idanre” was actually a celebration of this deity above others. Even when he was given the Nobel Prize in 1986 he told his sister to make sure she sacrifice a goat before stepping on the plane. He does not play with the entity of Ogun whom he considers in another interview like his “elder brother.”
In 2005 when the Obasanjo administration toyed with the idea of abolishing the Federal Road Safety Commission Soyinka threatened to curse whoever dares such with Ogun and that the curses of the deity are irrevocable.
Thus when he said in 2022 that he was not a Christian, Muslim or Orisha worshiper but a mythologist it may be confusing to the uninitiated and some may find it even disingenuous. This latter confession on CNN is more to the core of the real humanity of Soyinka.
Let me begin by saying that I love Professor Wole Soyinka and cherish his contributions to this nation and to Humanity at large. One thing I cherish about him is his downright honesty and openness about his beliefs. You may call him many things but he is certainly not a hypocrite – one who professes something and lives contrary to what he professes. And I can’t say that about many Nigerians including many professing Christianity.
Soyinka is also a complex figure but complexity is one of the features of genius, anyway. And he is full of ideas and energy too even at his age. But also energy is also a dimension of genius. As Malcom Cowley noted in his Introduction to Leo Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina”:- Genius is energy – mental energy first of all, but sometimes this is combined, as in Tolstoy, ( and even Soyinka too) with physical, emotional and sexual energy…”
It is not all the time that you have a 90- year old man conducting interviews and still writing and engaging other minds on contemporary ideas and issues. That is energy. That is genius.
I have followed Professor Wole Soyinka in most of his essays and memoirs over the years, not all of them to be precise; and I have been fascinated by his simplicity, candour about his beliefs and also the contradictions in some of his utterances about those belief. But one thing stands out in all his public utterances and even works which should be clear to anyone: he is not a Christian. In point of fact he has never been.
When he said he has never been a Christian he told the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth; and we must congratulate him for this.
Years ago in an interview with Ulli Beier he said the following:
Ulli Beier: You never really took to Christianity at any stage…?
Wole Soyinka: Never really – not even as a child. I remember distinctly my first Essay Prize at Secondary School – that was in my first year. My essay was entitled: “Ideals of an Atheist.”
He was only 11 when the incident in question happened meaning that even from childhood and even “those legislative phases” of early adolescence our esteemed professor had broken with Christianity, the religion of his parents. When he therefore says he has never been a Christian and has never believed in the Christian God he was telling the truth. Sure, he read the Bible and attended Christian religious services but this has never permeated into the interior core of his humanity and the essence of his spirituality as a person.
This is where my trouble is really. This is what I find difficult to understand about the Soyinka enigma.
I want to examine two questions in this essay vis- a-vis the public utterances revealed in the interviews above.
In the current interview now going viral on the Internet Soyinka says that he finds the Orisha religion much more artistic, mysterious and creative and that he could not find these elements in Christianity.
You want to hear him? This Is what he said:
“I was fortunate to be born in two worlds – the Christian world and traditional Orisha worship.
“For me it ( Orisha worship) was more artistic, creative and also more mysterious. I don’t find much of the mysterious in Christianity and even less in Islam…”
Now two questions I have here. If Soyinka has never been a Christian as he himself has severally confessed and noted, how did he know the level of creativity and artistry in Christianity? How, if he has never really been a real Christian and has never believed in the God of Christianity, then did he know that there is more mystery in the Orisha religion than in Christianity? I find this difficult to fathom that someone is making an authoritative pronouncement about a faith tradition that he has never really been a part of except as a distant observer. I find it difficult to understand how a man can fully describe the taste of a delicacy that he has not even tasted.
Can a man standing on the shore tell how deep a river is?
Augustine (354-430 AD) theologian and philosopher says a person must “first believe in other to understand.” It is a fallacy to think you can understand a faith or religion that you never believed in. Faith before understanding.
But post – Enlightenment Rationalism says you should understand first before you believe. But that is not the way of Christianity, Apostolic Christianity. The one who will know the God of Christianity must first believe in Him, then he would see His wonders and mysteries. Since Soyinka never believed he could not see the amazing wonders of this religion that has baffled philosophers, confounded sages, mesmerized thinkers and wise men. It is why he erroneously concluded that there was more mystery in the Orisha religion than in Christianity when in actual fact Christianity – authentic Apostolic Christianity – is the Land of Mystery and the Mysterious. Rudolf Otto in his book “The Idea of the Holy” has developed this element of mystery that runs throughout Christianity and especially the God of Christianity which he calls the mysterium tremedon est fascina –
“The mystery before which humanity both trembles and is fascinated, is both repelled and attracted.” The God who can appear both as wrathful or awe-inspiring, full of Mercy and yet known for severity and a Consuming Fire when crossed.
Is there a mystery greater than the Incarnation, the Virgin Birth, Resurrection, the Burning Bush, the Sinai Revelation and Disclosure etc? Professor Williams James in his magisterial “Varieties of Religious Experience” has in a carefully prepared study and research of many years documented the life of faith and experiences of many saints full of mysteries and the mysterious. I do not know any religion known to man and I am open to debate on this that has provided and produced more mysteries and the mysterious as in the annals of Historic Christianity. Christianity itself is a mystery, product of Mystery and developed in mystery. Once the element of mystery is missing what you have is no more Christianity and I admit there are more counterfeit forms of Christianity now in Nigeria and worldwide.
Thus I consider it a form of libel to say that there is more mystery or even artistic creativity outside of Christianity. Even this is a denial of History.
This last point leads me to the next question that I want to raise. How much of Christianity does Soyinka really know and has encountered? So far as we know and as we can gather from his history and biography his knowledge of Christianity is derived primarily from the Mission Christianity especially the Anglican brand of Christianity which was the version that intruded to his Abeokuta subregion beginning from 1842 and which Soyinka grew up to know in the 1940’s – 50’s. Thus whenever he speaks of Christianity he was speaking of the Anglican brand of Christianity, the only version he knew and which, very unfortunately, he has taken to be normative of all that is Christianity.
We commend the efforts of the votaries of mission Christianity and their labours but we also add that the brand of Christianity that they brought was defective both in its spiritual content and even supernatural elements. It is one of the reasons that the adherents of Anglican Christianity started some of the cultic fraternities, freemasonry and occult societies in our nation, cities and campuses – perhaps looking for the “mysteries” that the Anglican Christianity – with all its drawbacks, defects and shortcomings both in its orthodoxy and orthopraxis- failed to give them. The failures and shortcomings of mission Christianity has been documented by various scholars both foreign and indigenous – [ See Howard Turner, 1967, John Peel, 1968; E.A. Ayandele, 1970; Robert Mitchel, 1970; Bolaji Idowu, 1970; Omoyajowo, 1970,1971; Olayiwola, 1980; Oshun 1981] – that I don’t have to waste time here to add to them. Professor Ogbu Kalu one of the best and finest Church historian captures the failure of the mission Christianity in a beautiful sentence: “It was not spiritually alive in a spiritually – alive culture.” This was the Christianity Soyinka knew in the years of childhood and from where he has drawn his knowledge and verdict. This was the defect Soyinka saw in his childhood as a precocious child and why he longed for the religion of his ancestors. It was the same defect Professor Bolaji Idowu disdained in his book “Toward an Indigenous Church” (Oxford University Press, 1970)
Thus Soyinka was right in his assessment of Christianity – that is Anglican Christianity and it is a measure of his genius that he could observe these even as a child. But he was wrong and dead wrong to use the Anglican Christianity as normative of all and everything that Christianity is and was.
Even at the best of time Anglican Christianity was only one version of Christianity. It was one of the branches of the Reformation and therefore one leg of the five branches that broke away from Established Christianity that constitute Protestantism. It is therefore wrong to transplant the defects and shortcomings of a branch of Christianity to all Christianity.
These spiritual shortcomings and defects were the reasons why the Aladuras, the Apostolic etc pulled out of Anglican Church beginning in the first decades of the last century. The Garrick Braide Movement, the Orimolades, Babalolas, Odubanjos, Shadares, Odunlamis, the Oshitelus etc all left or were expelled from the Anglican mission Christianity over this same issues.
These Revival Movements represented a more virile form of Christianity, much closer to the original of the religion of Peter and Paul. And it is not surprising that it was from among these people that Nigerians witnessed the very first form of religious awakening, the demonstration of religion of power and the power of religion – the kind of mystery and creativity that Soyinka yearns for in his childhood.
I am surprised that Soyinka is not aware of these and it has no mention in the childhood stories of his early years. Abeokuta, his place of birth was the scene of a mighty religious awakening of Christianity- a demonstration of the power of the God of Christianity, Apostolic Christianity. That is why today you have a CAC church right in Ake and directly opposite the Alake palace. Because when the Alake, Oba Ladapo Ademola saw the mighty works of Joseph Ayo Babalola and Daniel Orekoya in Ibadan and Ilesha in 1930 he invited them to come to Abeokuta too for a repeat performance – a wise king. That was in 1930, just few years before the birth of our legendary writer, Soyinka. It is amazing that this story was never told him and it is deeply saddening that our universities has nothing in form of extant records on this event. I have documented this in a book based on archival materials and research – ” The Great Revival of 1930.”
What did Oba Ladapo Ademola see in Prophet Orekoya and Apostle Babalola that was missing in the votaries of Anglican Church that made him to invite them to Abeokuta? Mystery.
Christianity is full of mysteries and the land of mysteries. The God of Christianity is the end of all mysteries and searching. Whoever has not seen this has not encountered Christianity. He has not even touched the tip or the fringe of its peripheries.
Every time I think of Professor Wole Soyinka I always have this concern, this sorrow that somehow he had never really encountered real Christianity – not the intellectual, mental religion that begins and ends in temples and reading of prayers from books written in antiquity and singing. The kind of religion that doesn’t affect the life of the practicioners, that doesn’t stop them from participating in Occult practices and patronizing witch doctors and herbalists. That is not Christianity. A religion that is not in consonance with creeds and actions or that is Orthodox in creeds but heterodox in practice. That is not Christianity and what mystery fo you expect there?
I have heard many former students of Professor Soyinka talking about his kindness, deep humanity, faithfulness, truthfulness and even empathy and generosity and I asked: how could a man possess all these goodly virtues of real Christianity and still find the God and religion of Christianity offensive and unappealing? There is probably one answer.
When people who profess a religion and who preaches it themselves live contrary to what they profess it becomes an obstacle to an intelligent person. When there is a disconnect between being and doing, between actions and ideals it sets up powerful psychological barriers in the imagination of a child. Soyinka has spoken in his Memoirs of the hypocrisy of some of the Christians he knew. Tai Solarin, another Iconoclast and self-confessed atheist has written in his autobiography of the betrayers of Christians during his studies in England which must have driven him farther to the arms of irreligion.
Karl Marx equally observed the contradictions between the lives of Christians and their beliefs and what they preached. It is significant that he did not adopt the religion of his father or mother.
Friedrich Nietzsche who calls himself “the Antichrist” and who has produced the greatest attack against Christianity ever was the son of a pastor. And Fela Anikulapo Kuti with his “yabis” and insults against Christianity and blasphemies against the God of Christianity was the son of Anglican Reverend.
Porphry who wrote the first greatest attack against Early Christianity in the Roman Empire was the student of Ammonius who himself broke away from Christianity to embrace Philosophy.
What drove all these people from the arms of Christianity? It is what I am still researching, why children find the Faith if their parents offensive to them.
It is significant however and a thing of joy and celebration that Soyinka in all his utterances and writings has not crossed this line. What he has done at best is a deconstruction of Christianity. A deconstruction? In the present case under review a misrepresentation would be a more appropriate word .
Although he did not believe in Christianity or the God of Christianity but he was not at least against them unlike Nietzsche and Fela, his cousin. I have never once at least heard him or read him speak disrespectfully and reproachfully of the God or religion of Christianity. Unlike Nietzsche at least. For this we must thank him.
Two years ago he said he didn’t believe in any deity or religion. Now he believes that the Orisha religion is better. Pray, who knows, in another two years he may see more of the mysteries and the mysterious in Christianity and the God of Christianity and change his views. The human mind is not fixed and capable of changing and expansion for further development. I am aware of two of his daughters who are “born- again Christians” (whatever that means) and who would no doubt be praying for their father and for his reconciliation with his Maker before crossing the Earth Realm. And anything can still happen for good. That would be the greatest news of all.
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© Moses Oludele Idowu
October 12, 2024
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