On Tuesday, the 10th of January, 2024, I joined a panel at the Ghana premiere of a new documentary on the abuses perpetrated by the Nigerian “Prophet” TB Joshua.
All three parts of the documentary are now available on YouTube. It is an important piece of journalism put together by the BBC World Service Africa Investigations Unit, Africa Eye. Detailed work over two years saw the investigative journalists, including the famous Ghanaian undercover reporter, Anas Aremeyaw Anas, painstakingly go over evidence provided by dozens of informants, about 30 of which are featured in the film.
Asides the graphic testimonies of rape, torture, abduction, near-enslavement, and charlatanism ascribed to the Synagogue Church of All Nations (SCOAN) and its founders, the documentary also offers penetrating insights into how large human communities can be shaped into the plaything of a single, charismatic, individual.
Is religion a factor?
At the premiere, a debate ensued about whether the documentary can be reduced to a simple affair of human rights violations without any broader discussion about impact of religion on the psyche of a society as a whole. As a panelist, this author disagreed with the view that religion had nothing to do with the heart-rending material collated in the documentary.
It was clear from the accounts provided by the former SCOAN members that the church was a cult, in the purest sense. Those who have studied the formation and persistence of cults have concluded that religious belief is a major factor. At any rate, in what other kind of setting would someone like TB Joshua, who set up SCOAN at 25 years old with no training, education or prior accomplishments in any field, amassed the amount of power, influence and recognition he did over the personal lives of thousands of people? Apart from the religious that is?
True, we have seen fascist and other political movements serve as vehicles for charismatic individuals to acquire immense power. But how many such political movements can one fit into the average society? In the United States alone, estimates put the number of cults at 10,000, the vast majority of which are spiritual or religious in character.
Key Lessons from the Documentary
Unquestioned power of the kind seen in the case of the SCOAN cult is, obviously, the product of a breakdown of checks and balances at any social level. Only in an environment where even the most basic strictures of accountability have disappeared can a “Prophet” subject so many people to such intense dehumanisation for years on end. Two main themes emerged from the discussion around this self-evident reality: governance and safeguarding.
In this author’s humble view, religion presents an interesting challenge to both governance and safeguarding that can only be addressed when believers concede on the need to subject religious practices to standards that may not necessarily originate within religion itself.
When it comes to setting standards for religious practices, some believers cling to the view of “inherent unexplainability” of religion. They argue that beliefs about a higher order of reality, in the form of the supernatural, are not subjectable to audit because such beliefs do not conform to the principles of the natural world. Such views are, of course, debatable but they are easier to allow so long as they are not extended to also cover religious practices in wider society. Because in contemporary society, religionists almost always co-inhabit an objective reality with others who do not share the same beliefs as they do.
There is no delicate way to put it. Not all religious beliefs can be expressed in practice once this fact is acknowledged. A foundation for regulating and governing religion outside the bounds of religion itself is thus created. Common sense and other regulatory mechanisms for managing behavior then become applicable to religious practices. Whilst this may seem trivial, it actually raises very consequential matters about religious regulation according to objective standards. We will return to this point.
The fascinating thing is that when one observes those religions that have been around long enough to experience the ups and downs of religion’s interactions with an evolving wider society, it is clear that the principle of subjecting religious practices to broader “social rationality” is implicitly acknowledged by how such religions organise their internal regulations.
Take, for instance, the central phenomenon that defined TB Joshua’s power: miracles and prophecies. The main reason why presidents of Ghana, Malawi, Tanzania and various others became disciples of TB Joshua was their acknowledgement of his prophetic and miracle-working power.
Religious organisations like the Catholic Church have long been aware of the potential influence miracle-working and prophecy can have on the human and communal psyche. Catholicism has thus introduced a wide-range of auditing procedures that will be familiar to any secular/non-religious auditor.
When a miracle is claimed, the investigative process is not delegated to the supernatural.
Prophecies in Catholicism are likewise subjected to a wide-ranging set of rules from mystical theology to ensure quality-control.