By Ugochukwu Ugwuanyi
Nostalgia drove yours sincerely to St Andrew’s Church, Ogudu, Lagos, on Wednesday evening for a feel of the good old Passion Week. During the service, I was pleasantly surprised to hear the preacher chide those who cling to religion as a means to salvation. Here I was thinking that religiosity is the currency by which the denomination operates. This man of the cloth must be cut from a different cloth, I muttered to myself.
While preaching on “betrayal and being on the Lord’s side”, the reverend canon warned against recourse to religion, pointing out that those who worship idols are equally religious. Therefore, according to him, Christians who relate with God based on religion aren’t different from the animists. He warned the congregation against being like Judas Iscariot, who, though religious, disbelieved in Jesus and quickly traded the Master for 30 pieces of silver. This and more were unpacked within 15 minutes.
Before going any further, let’s properly situate the caption: I’m essentially saying that the conservative Christian community will do more in expanding God’s kingdom on earth by devoting themselves to doctrine than dogma. Doctrine is the revelation of the Lord Jesus through the Word of God, while dogma refers to vain religious rites, rituals and traditions based on man’s beliefs and philosophy.
Paul, the Apostle, succinctly differentiated the two when he wrote in Colossians 2:8: “Don’t let anyone capture you with empty philosophies and high-sounding nonsense that come from human thinking and from the spiritual powers of this world, rather than from Christ.” (NLT). While dogma illustrates religion, doctrine illuminates the Word of God in man’s heart.
As I was saying, it was heartwarming to hear an avant-garde priest preach the unusual in an Anglican Order, which is deemed to be highly religious. But what can one say? As their liturgy reads: the Spirit moves us in sundry places. It pleased the Holy Ghost to teach the congregation in that instant that God is seeking those who would worship and relate with Him in spirit and truth, not guided by irritating religion.
The spiritual nourishment I came away with from that service sans Holy Communion sharply contrasts with the disappointment of the lady who recently returned from a Mass and went online to express how the homily left her hollow. Here’s partly how she explained her feeling “cheated” (to borrow from NKJV rendition of the above scripture): “Coming back from church, and I feel like my spirit was not fed today. Honestly, the gospel in the Catholic Church doesn’t cut it for me. Catholic priests should go for pastoral teachings to learn how to dissect the Bible in order to satisfy their parishioners spiritually.”
The Anglican Communion and the Roman Catholic Church are believed to be on the same pedestal in terms of high orthodoxy. One of the respondents to the young woman’s POV, @OlusolaAR, noted this much by tweeting: “She is saying the truth and it’s not just Catholic even Anglican, most of the priests there are not biblically sound and don’t know how to pass their message. It’s more of ceremonial events than spiritual these days.” An interesting retort came from @Danielbeloved28, who argued that, “Saying that Catholic priests should go for pastoral school is the funniest joke of the century. So the 10 years they spend in seminary school learning the Bible in Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, Latin etc. is not enough pastoral school? I think there’s something inhibiting most Catholic priests from crossing their limits perhaps.”
The inhibition is caused by dogma. However, it is crucial to acknowledge that the years of training priests undergo in the seminary pale into insignificance before a Spirit-led pastor. This conclusion is because the Holy Ghost has been proven to be the best teacher (John 14:26, Luke 12:12). Actually, prolonged training only yields philosophies that propel the dogma we are discussing. By the way, what’s the essence of studying the Bible in different ancient languages if that knowledge cannot be applied to rightly dividing the Word of Truth for the spiritual nourishment of parishioners?
Given the similarities between both denominations, if an assisting priest in St Andrew’s Archdeaconry could have the latitude to correct how most of the laity serve God (he even cited those who don’t eat meat during the Holy Week as a way of identifying with Jesus’s passion), reverend fathers should as well go off the cuff and be enlivening in their homilies through the Holy Ghost. Thankfully, the popular @FrEvaristus Bassey didn’t consider the lady’s truth as a rebellion but provided incisive insight and context to the matter. He stated by saying, “One thing we learned in school is that we cannot argue with religious experience because it is subjective. So this lady may be speaking her truth. There may or may not be others in the parish who feel the same way.”
The cleric went on to say, “In the Catholic Church, worship is divided principally into two segments: the Liturgy of the Word and the Liturgy of the Eucharist (Holy Communion). Most Catholics have grown up being satisfied with the nourishment that comes from the brief sermons and the Holy Communion they receive each time they go to church. The Eucharist is the source and summit of the Catholic faith…” There goes dogma being placed over doctrine. The standard flies in the face of Jesus’s preoccupation while he walked the earth. Not even the time He spent working miracles (bread for the children) compares to how engrossed he was with teaching the crowd about the Kingdom of God whenever the opportunity presented itself.
Pray, how do we reconcile the Eucharist being the summit of the Catholic faith with the Master’s assertion that “man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God”? Despite the Lord demanding that we “do this in remembrance of me,” religious ritual can’t override the crux of John 6:63, “It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.” Well, it’s relieving to hear that lengthy preaching still features in the Catholic Church during retreats and other programmes.
Father Bassey did the Lord’s work by charging his colleagues to “prepare prayerfully for the sermon, no matter how brief it is. He (the priest) should speak to the soul and spirit of the person, and this can only be done with the unction that comes from the Holy Spirit.” That’s how doctrine can prevail over dogma in the conservative Church so that parishioners won’t feel empathy after coming before the Lord. This calls to mind Apostle Paul’s admonition in 1 Timothy 5:17, “Let the elders that rule well be counted worthy of double honour, especially they who labour in the word and doctrine.”
VIS Ugochukwu is a Sage, Narrative Architect and Branding Strategist who responds to feedback via X @sylvesugwuanyi
