Faithists’ are spiritual warriors across religious divides pushing the debate whether the raging Coronavirus pandemic is a manifestation of some supernatural diabolism requiring spiritual counter-attack arrowheaded by them, or a natural emergency to be met with humanistic counteraction where health workers and political leaders lead the charge.
This is the crux of the contention whereby the prescription of social distancing that has necessitated the shutdown of churches and mosques, among other public spaces including workplaces and markets, has been viewed as an affront by secular authorities. To those motivated ostensibly by religious concerns, it is an affront to the essential tenets of association and fellowship involved in worship rites. But there are another kind faithists – economic faithists – whose concern is for basic survival hinged strictly on their daily income, hence they defy the stay-at-home directive by government to promote social distancing with fatalist confession that Coronavirus is ‘not their portion.’
Faithists have questioned why worship centres are being ordered shut by secular authorities, when what is really needed is to confront the viral invasion with ‘the power of the anointing.’ Some have doubted that the virus has potency of infection on ‘believers’ as is being alarmistly touted. They have prescribed spiritual means of tackling the pandemic rather than the physicality of contact-curtailing rule of social distancing. They predict that the pandemic will vanish on its accord, or at best by providential intervention, and not by human efforts being made to arrest it. Largely, however, many faith leaders have complied with government directive that worship assemblies harbour no more than 20 congregants at a time, though there are a few who defied that directive.
If we take the words of some faith leaders literally, the Coronavirus pandemic ought to be history by now. But maybe we should second-guess that they had other connotations from what their words ordinarily denote, since they could argue that spiritual things are not literally decoded. For instance, prominent cleric and founder of the Synagogue Church of All Nations, Pastor T.B. Joshua, recently said the panic over the health scourge should fizzle out soonest because the disease itself has abated, with mere aftereffects now posturing as the substantive threat.
“The noise (about) Coronavirus would be silenced before the end of March 2020,” the cleric wrote on his official Facebook page while answering questions related to the virus infection, adding: “I say again, it is the remnants we are seeing. The real Coronavirus is gone. But what the Coronavirus has caused – economic backlash, fear – will linger until the end of the year.” He described the whole crisis as a “test of faith” that Jesus Christ forewarned His followers about, saying he saw nothing to panic about as God’s promise to believers is that they will overcome.
Well, this is now the end of March and we truly wish the pandemic were indeed history by now, even if trailed by lingering aftereffects. But that does not seem to be the case, given the ballooning cases of confirmed infections in Nigeria that were inching higher as at the weekend.
Another faith leader is the Spiritual Director of Adoration Ministry in Enugu, Rev. Father Ejike Mbaka, who was reported saying the viral pandemic would “die off” like past health challenges such as the Ebola and bird flu epidemics. “Ebola came, it died off. This one will also die off. It is like the bird flu disease, it has come and it will go. I know that the whole world is waiting to hear the message that will come out from this place, but the message I have is that this disease will soon go,” he said at a recent special prayer session for the elimination of the pandemic.
We believe with Father Mbaka that the viral scourge will abate shortly. But will it be by fatalistic expectation that the siege will lift, which it must sooner or later since no human condition lasts forever, or do we have roles to play in hastening it off on its way? It would’ve helped if the clergyman detailed his followers more on this.
Pastor Chris Oyakhilome of the Christ Embassy, also known as the Believers’ Love World, sees diabolic shenanigans of spiritual forces in the Coronavirus pandemic. He denounced the outbreak as ‘demonic work’ in a video on his social media page where he was binding and casting the disease. Affirming that Christians have been given power over unclean spirits and diseases, the cleric declared: “In the name of Jesus, we come against Coronavirus from the very cores of it, from the very roots of it, and we come against the devils, the demons of darkness that spearheaded this project.” He further commanded the disease to stop its operations over the governments of the world.
I am a Christian and do not have the slightest doubt about ‘spiritual wickedness in high places,’ which is invariably subject to the potency of divine power and supernatural deliverance. But satanic agents do exploit human indiscretions to perpetuate their evil work. Ask Italians and they would tell you it was open to them to have avoided taking the road that has now led to recording some 87,000 Coronavirus cases and more than 9,000 deaths as at the weekend, but they unwisely chose to spurn that avoidance path until it was too late. It is incumbent on faith leaders to underscore the importance of discretion and civic obedience on the part of their followers in impeding the devil from doing his work.
Thankfully, none of these faith leaders have encouraged their followers to defy government curb on congregational worship aimed at promoting social distancing. Prominent religious leader, Bishop David Oyedepo of the Living Faith Church, who was widely reported as defying the directive penultimate Sunday has since explained that it was no defiance. He said the assembly held was rather a fallback arrangement to educate the church’s members who were until then unaware of the government’s directive on the new order of things, and to encourage them on the imperative of civic compliance.
But there are other faithists for whom the discretion of compliance with the stay-at-home directive is for real an ill-affordable luxury. They live on daily rake-ins from their businesses, and failure to ‘hustle’ on any day could truly mean lack of food to eat for them and their dependents on that particular day. For them, even the rallying cry of ‘life first’ is hollow and hypocritical. Some of these that I had occasion to speak with in the few days past argued with amazing forthrightness but ill-informed conviction that they were no candidates for Coronavirus infection. One of them pointedly said it is a disease of the bourgeoisie, especially as most of the confirmed cases are people in the upper class who are beyond subsistence living and have enough to globe trot.
These are a segment of the population the government and endowed private sector interests need to succour as tighter curbs are being contemplated to enforce a lockdown aimed at arresting the spread of Coronavirus. They pose a volatile point in the architecture against the viral pandemic because they aren’t just highly vulnerable – they do not have the funds to kit up with face masks, gloves and sanitisers and might not even care to report early symptoms of infection – they are to boot irrepressible owing to existential motivation.
Combating the Coronavirus pandemic without taking care of the subsistence population is like a team manning its goalmouth with one flank left widely open. That isn’t a winning plan, is it?
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