African Pentecostalism a Case Study of the Redeemed Christian Church Of God Nigeria
1.1 Background to the study
The motto of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG) is “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today, and forever”. This is a text derived from New Testament book of Hebrew (13:8). This text summarises the central rule of behaviour as well as organising principle of the church. However, the same “changelessness” which is attributed to Jesus Christ by the text of the church’s motto, cannot be said of the church itself.
Established fifty-one years ago in a suburb of Lagos, Nigeria, the RCCG has gone almost gone full circle through the vicissitudes of “days of small things” to periods of intense evangelistic fervour and search for doctrinal anchor and purity, to the present explosion into socio-political power, economic privilege and spiritual aristocracy.
This history of the RCCG bears out a central truth of the New Testament, which is summarised neatly thus: the world as we know it is changing (1 Cor. 7:31b). This study investigates and documents the changes that have taken place in the history of RCCG from inception to the present.
At the beginning of the present study in 2000, the basic facts about RCCG could be stated thus: The RCCG is a church in Nigeria established in 1952. It is a member of the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria (PFN), the umbrella body of pentecostal churches in the country.
African Pentecostalism a Case Study of the Redeemed Christian Church Of God Nigeria
RCCG’s founder and first leader was the Reverend Josiah Olufemi Akindayomi. He was converted into Christianity from Yoruba traditional religion, particularly Ogun worship by the Church Missionary Society (CMS) in Ondo town in the early 1920s.
Some years later he joined the Eternal Sacred Order of Cherubim and Seraphim movement (C&S), one of the early Aladura movements in Yorubaland and rose to the rank of apostle and prophet. In 1952 he left the C&S authority and he established his own religious group which became known as
the Redeemed Christian Church of God. When this founder died in 1980, the group had grown to have 39 branches in the southwest region of Nigeria. Before Josiah died, he had appointed a successor, Dr Enoch Adeboye, who was then a lecturer at the University of Lagos, Nigeria. In 1981 the successor took over office as leader. It was during this period that the church rapidly expanded both in Nigeria and outside the country. By the middle of