Wordliness and the Secularization of Contemporary Nigerian Gospel Music: Implications for Censorship and Consumption
Endong, Floribert Patrick Calvain
Citation : Endong, Floribert Patrick Calvain, Wordliness and the Secularization of Contemporary Nigerian Gospel Music: Implications for Censorship and Consumption International Journal of Research in Sociology and Anthropology, 2017;3(3): 32-43.
Over years, it has been difficult for the Church in Nigeria to totally be unaffected and uncorrupted by the world. In tandem with this, secularism - in multiple forms - has crept into and been firmly entrenched in the church, thanks partly to the ingenious or careless attitudes of many church leaders. This secularism is reflected not only in the conduct of some important churches' affairs and spiritual programs; but equally in most communications (including gospel music) by Nigeria based religious bodies or Christians. This paper identifies the importation of (questionable) traditions - such as worldly rhythms, materialism, the avid search for fame and earthly glories as well as other controversially aggressive musical cultures - as the major indexes of secularism in the Nigerian gospel music. It argues that these phenomena somehow indicate that contemporary Christianity in Nigeria is no longer sufficiently equipped to fruitfully function as a credible censorial force. The Church has intrinsically - though inadvertently - facilitated spiritual bareness by lending support to impure music enterprises in the form of consumption, promotion and mass distribution of contaminated gospel music. The paper recommends that true Christians seek to be spiritually equipped with the TRUE Holy Spirit to be able to effectively discern and sort secularism from spirituality in gospel music; and regulate their consumption of the genre. This argument/recommendation is based on the biblical illumination that spirituality is spiritually discerned and not apprehended through human philosophical constructions and subjective reasoning as most observers seem to believe.