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OF AKINFENWA AND AJAYI CROWTHER’S LEGACY
‘Passing the Baton’ adds to the growing scholarship on the life and times of Bishop Samuel Ajayi Crowther, writes Jacob K. Olupona
The book, ‘Passing the Baton’ by The Most Rev. Joseph Olatunji Akinfenwa is a multipurpose text which will not only serve scholars of African Church History and Religion but lay people, particularly parents who are concerned with raising upstanding, fully committed lifelong Christians. In this book, Archbishop Akinfenwa adds to the growing scholarship on the life and times of Nigeria’s very own Bishop Samuel Ajayi Crowther. As an addition to any university and seminary library, this book is a gift to scholars of Nigerian, West African, and African church history in the contemporary period.
While several texts speak to the origins of Christian theology deeply rooted in Roman North Africa, this text joins others in putting a spotlight on one of the first Africans to hold a leadership role in the Anglican mission of evangelizing West Africa, Bishop Samuel Ajayi Crowther. Crowther occupies a central place in this work. Akinfenwa’s biographical spotlight on Bishop Crowther’s descendants up until today create a wonderful opportunity for more scholars of African Church History to continue the work of documenting the family trees of significant players in the narrative of the larger African church community. I recall that as a young lecturer at The University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile Ife, I encouraged several young students to do their B.A honors thesis on the life and times of great church leaders of the time.
Akinfenwa’s primary thesis of ministerial succession raises many questions as well as points of personal reflection. Many of the issues the author raises resonate clearly in my upbringing and deepened interests in the church for me as the son of a clergyman myself, as well as an academic researcher on discourses on native Christianity in Yoruba land. I recall that it is a common wish of most clergymen in the Anglican mission for at least a son to be called to holy orders. The popular lyric ‘Omo ni yio j’ogun, ise iye ti mo yan, omo ni yio j’ogun, ise Olorun (It is my children who would inherit my holy calling. It is my children who would inherit this work of God) is from a hymn I enjoyed singing during the morning prayer meetings growing up in the Anglican church in the 1960s. This powerful Anglican and Christian lyric summarizes an essential part of Archbishop Akinfenwa’s thesis. The rightly guided missionaries of past and present prayed that their noble work of evangelization (ise iranse) would be inherited by their children. They do not expect their demise to end the noble profession of the priesthood.
Rightfully, Akinfenwa cites countless examples of ministerial succession as written in Scripture, as well as those found amongst the indigenous religious tradition of the Yoruba people where the priesthood is passed down from father to son. It is appropriate that sons and children of pastors are not guaranteed to be called to ministry. For one thing, it is true that for institutionalized Christianity, the call to ordination is fundamentally understood to be an agreement between individuals and God.
Setting aside ordination, a point Akinfenwa makes which is most useful to non-academic and lay people seeking applicable wisdom from this text is his manual for intentional Christian parenting. Akinfenwa is correct in dismissing the notion that Christian parents will raise Christian children. As many of us are aware, either from personal experience or from the perspective of a close relative or friend, there are times when even the children of the most orthodox and devout Christians grow up and leave the church of their parents. This is the story of many children of celebrated Anglican priests who are now members and ordained Ministers of Pentecostal Churches. What Akinfenwa offers in this text is the notion that intentionality is paramount. Introducing children to the practice of being a good Christian is paramount to ensuring the multigenerational commitment to Christ, and as such as Bishop Crowther’s descendants remain paramount today.
The central focus of the book is on Bishop Samuel Ajayi Crowther’s life ministry in Nigeria, particularly the enormous influence he wielded in the expansion of Christianity in the country, his legacies, and the lessons for the church today. Of particular importance to the author, at the core of this text is the reason why and how Bishop Crowther’s family and their descendants have remained active in the church and society at large. Underlining this wonderful work is the feeling and the idea that some of us share, that the church is not just a faith tradition and a culture, but a way of life, a heritage, and our inheritance, that carries us through life, and even into the afterlife.
Those who were lucky enough to experience the Anglican faith tradition and culture of their grandparents, and children who were born into a Christian family would undoubtedly clamor for the old-time religion where the church provided deep confidence and trust in believers, and when the Christ way, times, and life, as narrated in the Synoptic Gospels became the model of faith and living culture. This deep experience of Christianity as a faith, a heritage, and a legacy was expressed in songs, and danced to during celebrations, such as Christmas, Harvest, and Easter, during our upbringing.
This book, like many other books, also raises several fascinating questions about Bishop Ajayi Crowther and the family he left behind. At the core of the book is the million Naira question: “Is ministerial succession in Christian families and Christian organizations desirable and helpful?”
The author argues that as much as it is desirable it is indeed very difficult to “perpetuate ministerial succession”. As he rightly outlines, there are, abounding in the Anglican Communion, several bishops and many clergymen who were and are tied to parents who also served in Christ’s vineyards, sometimes even in cases where both father and son were elected as Diocesan Bishops.
The beauty of this work also lies in the detour and the comparative elements the author makes to biblical antecedents of the Nigerian case studies. I have always been concerned with the question of the “calling” in Christian ministerial tradition, and the negative story of the children of Eli in the Old Testament narratives provides an apt example of how family succession may be difficult and unprofitable. I often raise the question, in my sober moments, as I reflect on the church today, that in our contemporary period, of the few who wear church robes, it is possible that a few were never “called” by God in the real sense of the word because they lack the basic elements of the Christian ethos of love, forgiveness, and even obeying the imperative to do the work of the Evangelist, as St Paul commanded.
It is this kind of situation that sometimes make members of the laity resort to the popular saying, perhaps with their frustration with the church, that “Only Christ knows those who worship him in truth and his holiness”. It is a powerful indictment of the life of unholiness sometimes noticeable among Nigerian Christians today, and particularly the people of the holy order.
The life and times of Bishop Crowther must remain a cardinal focus of contemporary Anglicanism in Nigeria as the lessons from his priesthood remain relevant to the church today. For church leaders who think that the Nigerian and African churches should remain subservient to white authorities in Europe and America, it should be a reminder that the battle that the likes of Crowther, Samuel Johnson (Holy Johnson), and others fought remains with us till today. It is also a reminder that we do not take the lessons of African Church History seriously.
The emergence of African churches, African Independent Aladura churches, and even some of the Pentecostal churches are linked to episodes that involved mainline mission churches. Some of the new churches were established to protest foreign leadership and the European structure of colonial Christian tradition. There is nothing more critical than the lower place given to the vernacular languages in today’s mission churches. A concern that Bishop Crowther championed in his monumental work on the translation of the Bible into the Yoruba language.
In my memoir, ‘In My Father’s Parsonage: A Story of an Anglican Family in Southwest Nigeria’, I recalled a 1961 encounter with an old woman concerning my oriki (praise poetry relating to my parentage). In 2000, I used this very dear memory to represent myself when the college historian at the School of Divinity, Edinburgh University phoned me asking for a very brief description that he could use in a citation he was composing about me, as the university wanted to honor me with a Doctor of Divinity degree. I quietly shared with him this memory and took some time to explain the significance and meaning of this Yoruba Christian oriki to him. This is what Archbishop Akinfenwa’s significant work has laid out for us, and the reason why this scholarship will be deeply appreciated for years and decades to come.
- Excerpts from the foreword by Professor Olupona of Harvard University, to Akinfenwa’s book that will be publicly presented Tomorrow at the University of Ibadan