*Photo *Bamidele Johnson*
Back in 2005, a lawyer acquaintance introduced a man to me. He was a Catholic seminarian who had deconverted from Christianity and written a book about his deconversion. He wanted me to edit the book. Ernest Omoarelojie should remember him.
I read the manuscript and was struck by how well educated the man was. I wondered what the hell he was doing moving from Catholicism to traditional religion, of which I had a very dim view, arising from years of calumny by the major religions.
The man gave all sorts of reasons, among them the familiar one about finding “inner peace”. I had heard people in other faiths make the same claim. I had no way of knowing whether they had found inner peace or had only found a phrase that sounded good. Either way, it never meant much to me.
I eventually did not edit the book. The man had no money and I did not think there was any spiritual gain to be mined from editing somebody else’s theological autobiography pro bono. Ernest, if memory serves, interviewed him and we published the interview.
I do not remember the story generating much interest in the newsroom, let alone outside it. Perhaps that was partly because we did not yet have social media, that great machine that turns every unusual human decision into a theological, political or cultural bloodbath.
The equivalent story today is that of the Ondo pastor and church founder, Olabanjo Felix, who recently announced that he was leaving Christianity for Isese and now identifies as a Babalawo. This must be the fulfilment of the wet dream of many of the people I see on Facebook trying to re-invite attention to traditional beliefs and reboot interest in them. Wale Adedayo, this is right up your street.
The reactions of self-identified Christians on social media to the story have been ballistic. Predictably. The dominant response is that the man was never a Christian in the first place or that he was never genuinely called by God to be a pastor.
That response is almost automatic whenever a Christian publicly abandons Christianity. The apostate, we are told, was a fake Christian. The pastor was fake or was never a pastor. The conversion was never real. The calling was counterfeit. It does not matter that the person may have spent years preaching, praying, baptising, shiboroboing and shibarabaing, leading a congregation as well as publicly cursing those who do not tithe or sow seed.
The moment he walks away, the retrospective verdict is that he was never a Christian.
The Ondo case is particularly interesting because this is not just a church member changing his religious affiliation. Felix founded and pastored the Image of God Evangelical and Prophetic Ministries before publicly announcing that he had left Christianity and embraced Isese. His departure has opened the usual arguments about apostasy, authenticity, culture, spiritual deception and religious identity.
But should Christians who insist that he or anyone who makes that journey was never a Christian not pause for a moment and examine the logic of what they are saying? Do they actually believe it or is it simply a theological escape hatch?
Christianity, from the little I know, has a long and complicated history with this question. Apostasy is a recognised Christian concept precisely because the possibility of someone turning away from a faith he once professed has been taken seriously.
Christian traditions disagree sharply about what such a departure means. While some hold that a saved person cannot finally fall away because God preserves the elect, others teach that a believer can fall away and, therefore, must persevere in faith.
In other words, Christianity itself has never had one uncontested answer to the question of whether someone who abandons the faith was ever genuinely Christian. But popular Christian discourse often reduces the matter to the simplest possible formula, which is that if someone left, he or she was never really one of them.
There is something remarkably convenient about that position. It makes the proposition almost impossible to falsify.
If somebody converts to Christianity, the conversion is evidence of the truth of Christianity. If he remains Christian, the faith has produced a faithful believer. If he leaves Christianity years later, the response is that he was never a Christian. Whatever happens, Christianity wins the argument. That is a rather useful theological arrangement.
However, apply the same standard across religions and it takes very little time for the logic to become uncomfortable. Suppose a committed Isese adherent spends 20 years practising it, learning its traditions, consulting its priests, participating in its rituals and publicly identifying himself with it before announcing one day that he has become a Christian. Would Christians readily accept the argument that he was never really an Isese adherent? Or would they celebrate him as someone who had finally discovered the truth?
Also, if a Muslim who had spent decades identifying as a Muslim became a Christian, would Christians say he was never a Muslim? Very unlikely.
Twenty-one times out of 20, the Christian interpretation would be that he was once a Muslim but had now found Christ. So, why should the opposite journey require a different vocabulary? If a Muslim becomes a Christian, he has converted. If an Isese adherent becomes a Christian, he has converted. But if a Christian becomes a Muslim or an Isese practitioner, suddenly he was never a Christian.
That is an inconsistent principle and a conclusion designed to protect a prior belief. There is, of course, a perfectly legitimate Christian argument to make, which is that the pastor has made a terrible spiritual mistake, that he has apostatised, that he has been deceived, that he has misunderstood Christianity or that his new religious convictions are false. Christians are fully entitled to believe all of that.
Indeed, if Christianity claims exclusive truth, it would be strange for Christians not to regard a departure from it as spiritually wrong. What is more difficult to defend is the insistence that nobody who subsequently leaves Christianity could ever have been genuinely Christian.
There is an even deeper problem, particularly within Pentecostal Christianity, where personal testimony is often treated as a spiritual certificate of authenticity. Churches routinely celebrate dramatic conversion stories. Someone who says he was a Muslim, traditional worshipper, atheist or unbeliever yesterday and encountered Jesus today is welcomed as evidence of the power of the Gospel. His previous identity is accepted as real because the reality of his conversion depends upon it.
But logically, religious identity cannot become genuine only when someone is moving in the direction we approve of. If conversion is possible, deconversion must also be possible. Conceptually, at least. If a person can sincerely move from one religious conviction to another, then the honest response to his departure is to examine what happened rather than rewrite his entire history.
Ex-pastor Felix may never have been genuinely Christian. It is equally possible that he was.
His understanding of Christianity may have changed. His experience of Christianity may have disappointed him. His understanding of Isese may have changed. Or he may simply have reached a conclusion that Christians consider profoundly wrong.
We do not know enough to pronounce on the state of his soul. That, ironically, is where some Christians should remember their own theology. If God alone ultimately knows the heart, Christians should be rather careful about doing His job for Him. The more interesting question raised by Felix’s departure is, therefore, not whether he was ever a Christian, but why a man who spent years preaching Christianity could become sufficiently convinced that he should abandon it altogether.
That question may be uncomfortable, but it is a much more serious one. Discomfort, I believe, is not necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes a religious community learns more from the person who leaves than from the 1,000 people still remaining. Maybe instead of declaring him a fake Christian, Christians should first ask what happened to him. This is not because his conclusion must be right, but because if there is nothing to learn from the person who leaves, then the faith has made itself remarkably resistant to self-examination.