Priestly Dignity in the African Religious Context

Abstract

The mammoth crowd witnessed at the Christian religious gatherings on regular basis, generally tagged “Prayer Ministries”, around the towns and cities, goes strongly to confirm the view of scholars of Religion and Anthropology that “Africans are naturally religious”. Religion indeed makes a tremendous impact on the social, political and economic life of the Africans. The alarming rate of rush by people to these Prayer Ministries, to obtain divine favours and miracles from those of their religious leaders, whom they judge to be different from others in terms of possessing spiritual powers and aura of godliness, indicates the great influence that certain grade of leadership has in religion for them. In Christianity as in African Traditional Religion, religious leadership is generally provided by the priests. Against this back drop, this paper aims to highlight the priestly dignity as significant and important as well as symbolic for the Africans’ religious wellbeing. Consequently, while it appraises the priestly dignity as a “value” recommendable to the priestly office, it alerts the priests in the African context of the danger of abuses, manipulations and exploitations susceptible to this dignity. It also proffers a conscientious effort on the part of all towards a re-adjustment of the African Christians’ religious mentality to an authentic Christian faith focused on the triune God.