DISRUPTIVE IMPACTS OF SECULARIZATION ON THE CONTEMPORARY CHURCH IN NIGERIA: A HISTORICIZATION

CHUKWUEMEKA IFEANYI GODCAN –EZE

Abstract


The contemporary church in Nigeria is currently experiencing worrisome fundamental religious change occasioned by the impactful influence of globalization and secularization. Consequently, new trends and anti-clerical post –modern secular values hitherto unknown in the history of the church have infiltrated into her hallowed system. A more distressing effect of the religious change is the entrenchment of the corrosive culture of materialism in the post-modern church. Globalization is said to have reduced the modern world to one market of world best commodities and have sharpened the consumptive appetite of the modern world with passion for “consumerism†And the post-modern church appears to have been caught in the web. As a result, the church given a divine mandate to spread the counter culture of Christianity at the local, national or cross-cultural levels through a process of inculturation has developed ambivalent attitude towards the mandate because of worldliness. This ill wind of secularization that is blowing in the postmodern church has permeated the entire ecclesiastical system, including the clerical hierarchy and the laity. This paper therefore, investigates the underlying factors behind the secularization process and equally analyzes the far reaching implications of this sociological phenomenon on the post-modern church. The paper further sensitizes the Christian community on the destructive impacts of secularization on the spiritual life of the church. As a panacea to the rising secularization trend in the 21st century church, the paper recommends some de-secularizing antidotes, including a re-awakening of ecclesiastical orthodoxy and a sustained process of religious revivalism. The paper concludes that the secularization ravaging the contemporary church in Nigeria is mainly driven by internal forces within the church rather than the external forces of modernity and globalization which can easily be controlled by the charismatic forces of the church if effectively mobilized.

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