I have always been fascinated, like a host of intellectuals, philosophers and theologians, by the place of religions in the human search for meaning. Even more than this, I have been intrigued by the role that religion and its complexities play in the national consciousness of a plural and fragmented nation like Nigeria, or any other nation for that matter. This plays into a kind of a general pattern of investigation for an institutional reformer who is consistently intent on those variables that are conducive to building a formidable set of institutions for making a nation work.

But beyond this professional interest, religion and spirituality have featured as fundamental dimensions of my philosophical search for meaning in life. It seems almost inevitable that humans would confront and engage the divine, given the complexity of the universe and the diverse experiences that life involves.

Christianity plays a very significant role in the human search for meaning in a world of meaninglessness. It is a unique spiritual formation that embeds theological, existential and philosophical concerns that serve as a source of eschatological comfort and reflective interests for millions all over the world. I have narrated the story of my Christian journey and spiritual trajectory many times.

Christianity possesses two significant meaning for me. On the one hand, it has been a source of a deep, stimulating and continuing experience of faith that holds a person in awe of the divine and allows for personal and spiritual development. On the other hand, Christianity also possesses an intellectual interest that is stimulated by existential challenges, especially of the kind that a postcolonial lifeworld generates for those trying to make sense of their existence.

For me, the relationship between these two dimensions of my relationship with Christianity reflects the perennial question of how faith and reason relate. This is a question that defines a long trajectory of theological discourses in medieval philosophy. From the theologians and philosophers to the apologetics, reason has served as one critical tool for understanding the “why” behind the architecture of belief. St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, for example, hold quite some philosophically fascinating framework that allow reason and faith to sit together as the manifestation of divine intelligence.

For Augustine, faith is needed to guide reason into virtuous action. For Aquinas, faith and reason are two complementary ways for apprehending divine truths. For Tertullian the Apologetic, on the other hand, faith and reason are critically opposed. When he asked, “What has Athens got to do with Jerusalem?” he was asking if there could be any form of relationship between reason and faith.

In my lifelong search for discernment, I have articulated a frame of reference that enables me to hold strongly to my Christian faith while allowing my intellectual quest for enlightenment to continue without ceasing. Reason challenges my intellectual curiosity and allows me to increase learning in terms of how faith, knowledge and existence relate especially for billions of people across the world.

Like the medieval churchmen, keeping faith and reason apart or in delicate balance has not always been easy for me. This is because my keen intellectual curiosity keeps exploring the boundaries where reason and human experiences challenge faith and spirituality.

In this piece, permit me to reflect on such boundaries that, I believe, would further contribute to how religion, spirituality and Christianity can enable us to think about living together and building not only a personal but also a collective and ecumenical framework in a multi-religious space.

My first question is how to understand Christianity’s relationship with non-Christian beliefs, especially in contexts where Christianity has to jostle for religious dominance with other religious belief systems? This is a fundamental question that bothers on how Christianity is diluted, concretised or complemented when it arrives in a different context in the process of its universal spread. Take the practice of Christianity in Nigeria as a good example. This raises three cogent concerns for me. One, how does Christianity relate with African cultures in ways that “culturalised” the faith without stigmatising the cultural practice as fetish or idolatrous?

The phenomenon of African Indigenous (or Independent) Churches (AIC) has been studied by scholars working in the area of African Christianity and Pentecostalism. The idea of the Aladura Church and the Christ Apostolic Church, for instance, provides a strong religious and spiritual framework for answering my question. But that of the Reformed Ogboni Fraternity does not. The ROF seems to represent an unsuccessful attempt to graft Christianity into a framework of esoteric and cultural framework.

Two, the contextualisation of Christianity—especially Pentecostal Christianity—within Nigeria’s tough postcolonial context of struggles and search for meaning has given birth to all sorts of caricatures that generate deep queries about the social mission of Christianity itself. No two people have spoken to this challenge as deeply as Karl Marx and Fela Anikulapo Kuti. On the global scene, Marx considers religion as the opium of the people; a delusional tool by which the priestly class keeps the masses on a leash to an ideological frame that keeps exploiting them.

In Africa and Nigeria, Fela lambasted the political and religious classes for deepening the crisis of meaning confronted by the people. “Shuffering and Shmiling” is Fela’s classic and devastating complement to Marx’s criticism. It is so easy, within this context, to see how Nigeria’s development condition could have served as the instigator for the dominance of the prosperity theology and the miracle mentality that have unfortunately become commercialised.

From Christianity to Islam, we now have a huge cohort of charlatans and impostors who have beclouded the genuine spiritual experience of salvation and enlightenment for millions. And now we have abject Christians who are shrouded in sham religiosity devoid of deep spirituality that connect personal growth to collective responsibility towards others, and towards one’s nation.

Prof. Olaopa is chairman, Federal Civil Service Commission and Professor of Public Administration, Abuja.