World Cup Churches: 26. Cameroon

Continuing a series of blogs heading round the 32 qualifying countries in the 2022 World Cup - I will pick out one church in each one.  I am not going to choose only churches that are to my liking.  This is an exploration not a recommendation! To see all in the series select the label 'World Cup Churches' below.

Cameroon, with its mix of French and British colonial influences and accessibility in Central Africa, has a vast array of interesting churches.  I've gone topical with the one that appears on this old stamp, but which continues to exist today.

The story begins in relatively straightforward fashion.  St Demetrius church in Cameroonian capital Yaounde represents something of an outpost of the Orthodox Church in Africa.  Sub-Saharan Africa is dominated by Catholicism or Protestantism, but the Patriarchate of Alexandria in Egypt sees Africa as its own.  It has some justification for this given the antiquity of the See of Alexandria (which is just about in Africa - top right corner of course) and predating the Schism with Rome, let alone Protestantism.

Then Russia invaded Ukraine.  No - wait - that must belong somewhere else in another blog.  

But no.  St Demetrius has also kind of been invaded by Russia - and in the mind of the Patriarch of Alexandria so has the whole of Africa. 

If you know a little about Orthodoxy you'll know it is deeply cultural, political and hierarchical.  Patriarch Kirill, the Russian Orthodox Patriarch, has gained infamy for his explicit cheerleading of Vladimir Putin in general and his invasion(s), most lately of Ukraine, in particular.  Both Kirill and his Church are fabulously rich and able to project their power quite easily.

So when the Patriarch of Alexandria supported the relative independence of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine from Moscow, the Russian Orthodox Church declared an Exarchate in Africa.  In other words, made Africa a part of its 'world'. Orthodox outliers, such as priests in Cameroon, who had been expected to work voluntarily under Alexandria have been invited to Moscow for training and paid handsomely to be Russian Orthodox rather than Greek Orthodox.

And St Demetrius and its Archbishop find themselves facing a powerful invader in an ecclesiastical imitation of the people of Ukraine.

World Cup Churches: 25. Brazil

Continuing a series of blogs heading round the 32 qualifying countries in the 2022 World Cup - I will pick out one church in each one.  I am not going to choose only churches that are to my liking.  This is an exploration not a recommendation! To see all in the series select the label 'World Cup Churches' below.

A few years ago I was going about my business in Wood Green Shopping City a mile or so from where I live.  A young woman was enthusiastically giving away a free newspaper and, either because of something she said or by glancing at the paper, I realised this was a kind of Christian thing.  

The initials UCKG meant nothing to me.  Once I worked out that U stood for Universal I was quite suspicious as for some reason that is a word favoured at the cultic and extreme margins of Christianity.  

As the conversation continued it became clear that the girl was not antagonistic to someone from a Baptist Church (of course not knowing I was a Pastor).  This was a good non-cultic signal.  Yet at the same time she was not remotely interested in my church or anything about it: she was there solely to recruit to whatever the UCKG was.

Curiosity led me to find out later what I had met with - as I still didn't know.  I learned that this was a Pentecostal denomination founded in 1977 in Brazil and part of the great, growing exponentially, get-rich-quick Protestant movement in formerly Catholic Brazil.

Which brings me to a church in Brazil built 2010-2014, the HQ of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, and a larger-than-life rebuild of the Old Testament Temple of Solomon:

The eccentricities of this campus are legendary, but before we dismiss its (unintended) hallmarks of parody we should note that it has been visited by two Brazilian Presidents.  In its homeland it is a serious business.

You may feel that imitating Solomon's Temple is a bit grand, even for a money-spinning Neo-Pentecostal enterprise.  In which case you'd be underestimating the enterprise because this building together with its imitation Ark of the Covenant is way bigger than poor old king Solomon's effort - we are trying to impress a lot more than the Queen of Sheba these days.  Indeed so much bigger that Solomon's original build was more like a large scale model prototype.

This may seem out of step with the supposed founder of its faith, a carpenter from Nazareth.  But it is well in step with the founder-pastor of the enterprise itself who is 'worth' over a billion dollars.  Though we may want to tease out the meaning of 'worth' in this context . . .

And perhaps it is better to remember that Solomon's temple was not a prototype of a church building but of Christ himself and his people.

World Cup Churches 24. Croatia

Continuing a series of blogs heading round the 32 qualifying countries in the 2022 World Cup - I will pick out one church in each one.  I am not going to choose only churches that are to my liking.  This is an exploration not a recommendation! To see all in the series select the label 'World Cup Churches' below.

For this blog  I'm pleased to move from buildings to people of faith: Zagreb Baptist Church shares some of its testimonies online:

ZORAN: I was so dissatisfied with life that at one point I even thought about suicide. Yet I did not have the courage to do it. Thus began my search for the answers to questions about life that had plagued me. My friends and my environment didn't help me much because they mostly avoided those questions and told me that I was still young and that I shouldn't bother with all that. Dalibor the computer salesman]  gave me the New Testament and a few books which I started reading. I sought the truth with a truly open and sincere heart. And then everything suddenly opened up. It was enough for me to read the first few pages of the Gospel of John when my hair literally started to rise on my head and I suddenly realized who Jesus was and what he wanted from me.

STEPHANIE: After years of spiritual death, over a period of months, I began to think about the truth of what others were telling me about Jesus. Nothing happened abruptly - it was as if Jesus' gentle voice was slowly calling to his lost sheep. My spiritual skeleton slowly began to gain flesh and skin, and God then breathed His Spirit into me. My perspectives miraculously changed.  Now I understand that living with Christ means living with full lungs, that it is a life in which there is no emptiness because He is always there.  When I look back I see that I am truly born again, because the old me certainly couldn’t have imagined that I would be what I am and where I am now.  This is my greatest testimony - I was dead, but Christ brought me to life!

TAMARA: As I grew, I faced many things apart from the fact that my parents were separated. I have even attempted to commit suicide in the past as an attempt to punish my father for what he had done.  I was a very angry person and for everything I blamed my father and I blamed the woman he was with. 

Soon after I gave my life to Jesus, I was in Church one day and a preacher said “there is someone who is filled with hatred towards another person, God wants to set you free today”  I grew so angry at that very moment and I was offended by Jesus that He would even suggest such a ridiculous thing. As I struggled to let go of what happened to my mum, somehow I felt like my forgiving was letting my mum down, but He told me vengeance is His.  Then the Lord asked me to go to this woman’s house and I said to God “ I really hope I heard right because I don’t know what I’m doing here.” How do you walk up to someone's house and say “I forgive you" when they never apologised to you?  As she opened the door I felt something like a fire fill my body and my body just leapt forward, and I just hugged her. I remember as I turned and walked away that I had never felt joy like that in my life. For 14 years I had been imprisoned and that was my first moment of freedom. I felt like I was walking on air. I couldn’t stop smiling and laughing, I couldn’t imagine that I could be this free. I felt like I had not been living up until that moment. It’s 10 years later and I can tell you God has blessed me so much.

World Cup Churches 23. Morocco

Continuing a series of blogs heading round the 32 qualifying countries in the 2022 World Cup - I will pick out one church in each one.  I am not going to choose only churches that are to my liking.  This is an exploration not a recommendation! To see all in the series select the label 'World Cup Churches' below.

Morocco, like its North African neighbours, is not an easy place to be a Christian.  Having said which, it is probably currently the easiest setting outside Egypt (though Egypt is far from easy) because of its latest change of government.  More business-orientated than Islamist, it pays less stringent attention to issues around Christian life and witness.

Tangiers, the city over the water from Gibraltar, has a considerable Christian history, though one scattered with persecutions and problems.  In 298AD Marcellus, a Roman Centurion, was put to death because he refused to join in the sacrifices to Roman gods in celebration of the Emperor's birthday.  Others appear to have been killed in the city.

Tangiers' colourful history has seen it belonging to Portugal, Spain, England and as an International City.  Mostly, however, since the 8th century, it has been an Islamic city and there have been various persecutions as typical of North Africa.  But also, as this church indicates, times of generosity and accommodation.

Set in beautiful city-centre parkland it could easily be assumed this is an slightly strangely whitewashed English parish church perhaps on the south coast of England, benefiting from the historic land-owning established church. 

But of course, no.  The generosity that gave St Andrew's Anglican Church its remarkable setting was that of the then King of Morocco.  The complex relationship of generosity and antagonism between Islam and Christianity would provide never-ending study material, not least in Tangiers.

From the earliest days of Jesus and the apostles there are so many stories of unlikely helps in the work of God.  You'd almost think God was bigger than the Church . . .