Out of sight, but an earful
I first learnt of the
Celestial
Church of Christ, an African initiated church in the 1970s when I spend
short school breaks at my cousin’s in Sagamu.
The church was
situated at the end of the road with a stream running by the church into a
dense forest, they could have been unnoticeably ensconced there without
disturbance.
Yet, it was
impossible to ignore them, at almost half a mile away, their daily rumpus or
dare I say worship was loud, agitated and quite a public nuisance.
Embrace silence
It came to a head one
morning when the head of the house sent a cease and desist notice to the church
to maintain a sense of considerate neighbourliness in their activities by
lowering the volume of their orgies. God, we must appreciate is not hard of
hearing.
Now, that was
courageous, daring and bold, for anyone to challenge a religious establishment
in that manner. It worked, they were quite amenable to the idea, probably under
duress and with the knowledge that the aggrieved was a lawyer.
Mind the fine
Later, towards the
end of the 1980s, I was a ward of some senior members of the Celestial Church
of Christ, they were quite obliging to allow me attend the church of my choice
rather than force me to align to their tenets, for that, I am exceedingly
grateful.
However, the reason
why we have this recollection of events past is because this morning I read in
the newspaper that the pastor of a Celestial Church of Christ branch in Grays,
Essex had been fined a total of £1,241.50 including costs for conducting
unbearably loud services four times a week well into the early hours of the
morning; 4:00AM that is. [Metro]
The neighbours had
endured this public nuisance for months and one really wonders why any
religious activity needs to be broadcast beyond the confines of the walls of
the meeting place except for the need to use the sound to keep the members
alert throughout the interminably long services.
Just unacceptable
More pertinently,
what this suggests is a lack of understanding that what is tolerable and
allowed in the hyper-religious Nigerian society borne of Lord Lugard’s
suggestion that we have a vague
dread of the supernatural, is hardly acceptable in many Western societies.
People are not as
religiously imbued and those who have any sort of religious affiliation tend to
go about their devotion with consideration and moderation, too high a bar of
expectation required of an almost fanatical claque.
If this sanction does
not serve as a deterrent, the council has suggested that the church might have
to lose its sound equipment. Knowing that I have lived in a part of Essex where
there was at least 6 non-establishment churches within 500 yards of our
apartment, I was fully persuaded to veto an application to site another church
nearby just because the existing ones had already exercised our tolerance to
the point of intolerable.
For all the celestial
aims of the church, there are terrestrial norms expected of any gathering for
any purpose they might be persuaded to pursue. This one like many that have yet
to be called to order around the UK has become a congregation of the Terrestrial
Church of Cacophony.