The Challenge of Nigerian Pentecostal Theology and the Perspicuity of Scripture

Abstract

The emergence and entrenchment of the Aladura (Praying) Churches in southwestern Nigeria in the 1920s and 1930s prepared the way for the charismatic renewal or Pentecostal teSmgence of the 1970s. The Pentecostal outburst of being filled with the Holy Spirit, speaking in tongues and prophesying. faith healing and display of charismatic gifts swept through a number of Afiican countries including Nigeria. The socio-ec:onomic conditions that confronted Nigerians after the Civil War of 1967-1970 helped the Pentecostal experience to spread as fast as the harmattan fire especially in the East which existed as the blockaded Republic of Biafra. The evangelical dimension of being 'born again' championed by Bill Roberts of the Scripture Union set the spiritual music which the youths tenaciously embraced to sing and dance indispensably. All the efforts of the mission Churches to stem the tide of Pentecostalism proved abortive, the more they tried, the more the remaining Peiltecostal groups tmned to new churches. The details of how the different leading Pentecostal Churches in Nigeria started either as Bible study groups or persecuted minorities from mainline churches are all already documented by many scholars and church historians. It will, therefore, not be very necessary to try repeating the stories here. It is pertinent to note that a11 the reasons for the emergence of different Pentecostal churches can be swmnarised into three main causes. The first is the sincere desire of the 'born again' Christians to return to biblical or New Testament Christianity, which desire provoked hostilities from the authorities of the mainliile churches. The second reason was that the persistence of the