Pentecostal Christianity has corrupted our way of living. The damage that Pentecostal pastors have caused with their exploitative sermons will take decades to undo. Right across the continent, their sermons have destroyed critical thinking and produced a generation of Africans who are magical thinkers. The corruption is pervasive. It is in government, our schools, businesses, in our homes and even in our universities – the seat of all learning and philosophy. It is everywhere.
Our universities are populated by “intellectuals” who not only believe but also teach that witches are real, that prayers can bring dead people back to life and cure all diseases and make cars drive without any fuel. Our Vice President is a professor of law and he is an ardent follower of a pastor who claims he has all these powers. We are now at a point where the generation that has suffered the most brainwashing is at the helms of our affairs. And they are spreading their corruption. If the person who teaches you science discredits evolution but argues their pastor’s car can drive without fuel or that their pastor has resurrected people and cured every disease through prayers and fasting, what values are they imparting to you? The purpose of education is to overcome ignorance, not to validate it.
Of what use is the kind of education that does not cause us to examine our prejudices? If I received a penny for every time a fellow Nigerian medical doctor argued that prayers cure cancer or resurrect people or that witches and demons are real, I would be a millionaire today. Their evidence is usually stories that have been narrated to them by their pastors, friends and families or the bible. And when I say to them the bible mentions talking snakes and donkeys they tell me I am spiritually blind and cannot understand the things of God. I think it is possible to believe in the existence of God without all that literalism but this is a subject for another day. But what value has pentecostalism added to our society? I can think of none. We are still one of the most corrupt nations on earth, the majority of our citizens subsist on less than one dollar/day, workers are owed wages sometimes running up to six months in arrears, the elderly cannot access their pensions, and our unemployed youths are forced into prostitution and armed robbery.
