Most Rev Emmanuel Chukwuma
Most Rev Emmanuel Chukwuma is the
Archbishop of Enugu Ecclesiastical Province, Church of Nigeria
(Anglican Communion) and Bishop of Enugu Diocese. He tells RAPHAEL EDE
about the effects the COVID-19 pandemic has had on Christendom
You
were reported to have said it was wrong for the government to stop
worship services and that what they should have done was enforce
hygiene. However, another report said you denied saying that. Which
should Nigerians believe?
I said you cannot shut down the church
because the church is not the building. The church is the people and no
government or security can stop people from praying either online or in
their houses. You can shut the building but not the people because
people who believe in Jesus Christ are the church. I pray with my family
at home; you can’t come and shut it down.
The bible says ‘where two or three are
gathered in my name, there I will be’. When I was in Bauchi, they burnt
our church building and we were still worshipping before I built a
bigger cathedral. They thought the church was dead; you can burn the
church building but you cannot burn the church. The people will rebuild
the church.
When you reportedly said the
last thing you would do was close down churches, even on Palm Sunday
and Easter, people were surprised. How have you been observing worship
services?
Now I have a chapel in my compound. My
family and I worship in the chapel and put it online. We allow our
priests to follow the directive of the state government and cooperate
with them to fight this pandemic. I just finished a two-storey building
which I am offering as a testing centre in Enugu to the Presidential
Task Force on COVID-19 to use temporarily.
What do you think about the COVID-19 pandemic?
COVID-19 is a pandemic from China which I
think God has brought to the world to teach us a lesson like he did in
the time of the Israelites because the whole world was in disarray. We
had become very disobedient, proud, arrogant, unruly, and immoral,
among others. There is bad governance, cheating and so much injustice
in the country and the whole world.
Many a time, we think we are greater
than God and God has now made us humble. It is a disease that has come
to humble everybody. It has come to also teach that some people’s
prophecies can be faulted. All these people who make false prophecies
and fake miracle workers or healers; this coronavirus pandemic has come
to prove them to be liars and God has come to let us know that He is
greater than everybody. It has also sensitised us, particularly
Nigerians, to be conscious of our health and know that health is
important because when it first started, evidence showed that we were
not ready at all. Imagine the capital of Nigeria, Abuja, not having a
good isolation centre which made the late Chief of Staff, Abba Kyari, to
be taken to Lagos. Why should somebody at that level be taken to a
private hospital and not a government hospital? It means we have failed.
Nigerian government has failed to take healthcare delivery in the
country seriously.
But what some people believe
is that the virus has debunked the beliefs various religions have that
there is a supernatural power as clerics and other adherents are
afraid…
I have already said people who claim to
be miracle workers, why are they not saying they can cure the disease
and then go to isolation centres and heal people? This coronavirus has
proved that those who call themselves miracle workers are fake. I see no
reason why places like Lagos, Abuja and Ogun that have so many of
these healers have been recording more and more increase in the number
of coronavirus patients.All of them and even witch doctors, wizards
and babalawos cannot come out to say they have an answer to the
problem. It is a big disgrace and it has exposed most of these people;
we also believe in healing definitely, but we believe in God’s gradual
healing. We don’t believe in deceiving or hypnotising people in the name
of healing. So this thing has come to expose them and also some
professors and scientists who think they know more. Why shouldn’t there
be a research within a short time to develop a vaccine that should be
able to stop this pandemic? So it has exposed everybody that we are very
much vulnerable.
Some humanists and atheists
have also said the virus has caused the evaporation of faith in the
supernatural healing powers as Vatican, Mecca and other major religious
centres have been under lockdown, what do you think about that?
Well, they may not be correct because
they were precautionary measures taken to protect people. That doesn’t
translate to evaporation of faith because as far as I am concerned, God
is the same yesterday, today and forever. And God sometimes give a time
for retreat; it is a time to know that there is salvation in any place
like in Mecca or Jerusalem or Rome or wherever you are. Wherever you
are, God can heal you and touch you. Like I said, you cannot shut down
the churches, you can only shut down the building. The people are the
church – the Christians. The people who believe in Christ can call upon
the name of God anywhere and God will answer them. That is what I was
saying and was misquoted. Nobody can shut down the church; you can shut
the building but the church is not the building. The faith is not in
the building – the faith is in the hearts of people who trust in God,
believe in God and worship God in faith and truth.
You cannot say that faith has evaporated
because buildings were shut down because the centre of salvation is in
Jesus Christ and our faith and trust are in Jesus Christ. So we should
trust in God Almighty.
They say it has debunked the
general belief that God resides in those places and that one wonders
if those places are not in direct communication with God over cure for
COVID-19. How would you respond to that?
It has now shown that that is not a
place of salvation. When you go on pilgrimage to those places, it does
not mean that God resides there. They give historical perceptive – you
have read about these things, so going to those places elevate your
faith and make you know that what you have read is not fiction but
something that happened because you can see those places with your eyes.
You said what you meant was
that God is in us and not in buildings, do you think the virus has
demonstrated the lack of potency in the powers associated with religious
centres around the world as the atheists claim?
No, the unfortunate thing is that it has
more or less kept people away from the church. I believe if many
people could go to church, you would see the result of the prayers of
the faithful. When the children of Israel experienced this type of
thing, they gathered together and found people who stood in the gap for
them, prayed and God removed the plague for them. If churches had been
allowed to pray, you would have seen the work of the prayers and cries
to God. That could have been more effective than just individual and
group prayers. Iron sharpens iron.
The government must have realised it made a mistake by saying,
‘Don’t meet in the church,’ whereas you
allow markets to open. People meet in the market and stay there for a
long time. They go to banks and so many places. People still go to the
pharmacy and many other places where they meet and congregate but the
place where we can call upon the name of God to save us, you say people
should not congregate there.
Meanwhile, we had already arranged some
of our church seats in line with the social distancing protocol. For
Holy Communion, people use separate cups and people who come are not
more than 50. We have sections for prayer and services and even
different buildings where people can hold services without coming
together in large numbers. But the government is making a mistake by
saying markets should open. People move in large numbers on the roads,
but in the church where people can call upon God, you have relegated it
to the background; that is the problem. You have now made the spiritual
aspect of healing to be more or less neglected, which is unfortunate.
This is where the government has failed.
But atheists have been
asking what has happened to the healing powers of the supernatural and
deities that humans have been worshipping?
Atheists themselves know there is a
spiritual part of healing, only that they expected that these things
should have manifested in a real sense more than ever before; and that
is why we must examine ourselves and find out if we truly have the
spirit of God. When Peter and John came out of beautiful temple, they
healed a cripple. They only used the name of Jesus; they were already
spiritually prepared to use that name. But now, many people are using
the name of Jesus and are not spiritually prepared and sanctified to
make effective healing happen. That is where the problem lies.
So you find out that many people are
just worshipping Jesus Christ and commercialising the church; that is
why people have begun to laugh at the church because there is too much
commercialisation going on in the church today. Rather than feeding the
sheep, people are feeding on the sheep. God will still perform miracles
if you offer yourself spiritually and you are righteous, but how many
people are righteous today? We have all sinned and come short of the
glory of God; that is the problem. In the church today, we have envy and
jealousy; people don’t even want to love one another as it should be.
We just perform outward religiosity and formalism. There are too much
sycophancy, hypocrisy and cosmetic worship in our churches today.
Some people believe that
when this is over, it will change how many people worship as they will
believe if they can stay from religious houses during the pandemic, then
they could do so after the pandemic. How would you react to that?
After Stephen was murdered, the
Christians in the Diaspora went with their faith, believing in Jesus and
they were able to plant churches in many places. God may use this to
say, you have been congregating in one place, now, go out.
The church, under the power of the Holy
Spirit, should be outgoing and not static. Many of our members have
grown used to seating in one place and not moving out. Probably with the
house fellowship families do now, more men will make themselves the
pastors of their homes.
Your wife should be like an assistant
pastor to teach your family. So it has now shown that we have a
spiritual family responsibility to perform for our family, which is very
good. That will make us to be more spiritual and closer to God by the
time the whole thing is over.
Do you think atheists will
have the final say in this matter if religious leaders do not show proof
of the power the supernatural being they follow possess at this time?
Atheists cannot claim anything because
everybody, as far as I am concerned, are subjects to God’s control.
Atheists, you and I do not have the power of God; it does not mean that
you have lost control. Many a time, people fail to know that God is the
one that is in control. You cannot manipulate God; nobody can
manipulate God. We should stop this type of manipulation and thinking
we can operate God like a computer. God is the one who knows how and
why the thing (pandemic) happened and is the one who is going to make
it go away at His time.
We should leave God to do His thing at
His own time; that does not mean that the church has failed because when
we pray to God, God can answer yes, no, or say wait. Those are the
ways He answers prayers and that does not mean that God has turned a
deaf ear to our prayers. Really, we have sinned against God. It is a
time to repent, humble ourselves and turn away from our wicked ways as
it has been said in 1 Chronicle 7 :14 ‘that if my people who are called
by my name will humble themselves and turn away from their wicked
ways, that I will hear their cry and heal their land’. Simple!
The Federal Government has said it has been giving palliatives, how would you assess that?
They are going to the sheds of the
Nigeria Customs Service to bring out rice seized from innocent Nigerians
and call it palliatives. You seized something from somebody and you
are distributing it; it is a sin. The Federal Government should know it
is a sin. You are giving out the rice brought in by traders without
their consent; God is not happy about it.
Secondly, the palliatives they are
sharing don’t belong to the government. The government is also sharing
money without equity and justice because most of these things are done
in a one-sided manner. For instance, the South-East is marginalised.
Then you find out that these palliatives do not go far because the
population of Nigeria is bigger than the palliatives. They are giving
people peanuts and they think they have done something, but what they
have done does not satisfy the yearnings of the people.
People are hungry; there is ‘hunger
virus’ now because somebody who used to go out to look for food has
become a criminal now because idle hands are the devil’s workshop. Many
of them are not even bothered about your palliatives but need their
freedom. Some palliatives are even contaminated.
You said that you have a structure you want to give to the government to use temporarily. When are you going to do that?
It is ready; I am calling on the
government through you to come because the building is available. They
were asking people to donate structures for testing centres and I am
helping with that because we must work with them and complement their
efforts. People should not be discouraged; they should worship in their
homes and online with their pastors.
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Source: Sunday PUNCH
