When I Spoke in Tongues by JESSICA WILBANKS

Author:JESSICA WILBANKS
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Beacon Press

Chapter 11

Made in Nigeria

The more I read, the more I understood: the face of Christianity was changing. Long ago the first Christian missionaries had trickled into the headwaters of the Niger River in twos and threes, clinging to British trade ships and braving malaria to spread the good news to the so-called Dark Continent. But now, just over a century later, private jets left Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Lagos on a daily basis, ferrying Nigerian evangelists toward waiting crowds at churches in Europe, the United States, and elsewhere in the increasingly secular West. Of all the “mushroom churches,” as Pentecostal denominations were dubbed by Nigerians, Pastor Enoch Adeboye’s church seemed to be growing the fastest. There were six thousand separate congregations in Nigeria and over three hundred in North America. Reporters hadn’t been able to verify the church’s claim that six million people had once attended a single service in Lagos—but if it was true, that made it the largest Christian gathering in the world.

When I found out that the Redeemed Christian Church of God had spread all the way from Nigeria to Houston, I woke up early one Sunday morning and pulled out various dresses, checking hemlines and necklines until I found something that seemed modest enough to wear to a service. The Pavilion of Redemption rented a thousand-square-foot storefront space in an industrial part of southwestern Houston, about a half hour from my inner-loop apartment. The neighborhood was dotted with gas stations, cash advance depots, and stores advertising prepaid cell phones. As I slowed down on the largely empty highway and searched for the address, I noticed a Korean Pentecostal church and a Spanish-language Pentecostal church occupying the same block. Finally, somewhere off Bissonnet and Southwest Freeway, I spotted the logo of the Redeemed Church—a purple circle with a small white dove at its center.

When I opened the door of the storefront church, the tiny, carpeted room was filled with men and women and children, most in traditional Nigerian dress. Someone had used plastic columns and artificial plants and curtains to set a kind of stage apart from the rest of the room. I tried to hide in the back, but a stern teenage boy in a pin-striped suit escorted me to the very front row. Family after family came over to greet me before the service started, asking my name and what I was up to in Houston. The worship service began with a squeal of music—guitar, a keyboard, and tambourines. If it wasn’t for the talking drums—hourglass-shaped drums used for traditional Yorùbá songs—I could have been in the church I grew up in.

The pastor was a slight man in an ill-fitting suit, but his voice was like a thunderbolt. He changed tones easily, moving from gentle to fierce as he prayed over the congregation, and then picked up his gentle tone once again to announce that there would be no sermon today, as it was the first Sunday of the month. Instead, the service would be devoted to testimonies of the ways the Lord worked in our lives.

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