Thirteenth International Conference on Religion & Spirituality in Society

Abstract

Nigeria is reputed for having a teaming population of deeply religious men and women. Religion appears to have permeated all aspects of its life and existence, thus exercising enormous influence and control on its social, political, and cultural life. It has actually become a thriving enterprise, even to the point of being commercialized. Rarely have researches on religion in the continent been directed to critically questioning the relationship between religious leadership and power, whether as ‘soft’ or as overt power. Yet it is clear that religious leadership cannot be divorced from the issue of power. The palpability of power exercised over the populace by religious leaders is glaring. It could and has been used to good effect, as well as for fuelling crisis and impoverishment of the masses. This paper concentrates on the examination of Christianity and interrogates the relationship between Christian leadership and power in Nigeria. It investigates how Christian leaders have understood and utilized their power as mutual empowerment, but also as a manipulative instrument, thus fuelling the popular Marxist ideology of religion being the opium of the masses. The authors work on the hypothesis that proper management of power by religious leaders has a long way to go in influencing development in Nigeria both on the personal, social, political, and economic levels/realms. They discuss how Christian religious leadership could be steered toward service-oriented endeavour, anchored on social prophecy and mutual empowerment. The methodology employed is a hermeneutical-critical analysis of existing literature on the subject matter.