Aladura

The Aladura - Churches ( Yoruba: Aladura = " owners of prayer " ) are a widespread mainly in West Africa, particularly in Western Nigeria flow in Christianity that places special emphasis on the possibility of spiritual healing.

Origin and proclamation

The movement emerged after the devastating flu pandemic ( Spanish flu ) had called for countless deaths of 1918 in Nigeria. This hitherto unknown plague here completely distraught Africans deeply and let them, their traditional religious beliefs in accordance with, look for a rescue by supernatural spiritual beings out. Large parts of the population were Christianized at that time, and the mission churches behaved spiritual healing practices towards cautious, as they mainly saw it as a relapse into pagan traditions. In fact, this quest sprang the religious practices and needs of the pre-Christian tradition.

In this situation, where individual charismatic lay preacher and were relying on the traditional New Testament healing stories a rapidly growing and fast ecclesiastical forms accepting movement outside the Western mission churches.

For special awareness came the cherubim, founded in 1925 by the seventeen year old Abiodun Akinsowan and Seraphim Church, one of the largest Aladura churches with several million members today. These churches became established, especially in the cultural area of the Yoruba, but stretched despite the many cultural ideas and traditions of this ethnic group arrested proclamation and practices beyond from.

On the part of the traditional churches they threw the Aladura churches christian masked repeats a relapse into paganism before, and they settled in the area of syncretic cults to. Well look Aladura churches to justify their practice biblical and distance themselves decided by pre-Christian ideas. However, apparently there is a Christian transformation of the pre-Christian world view and his cult practices. The spontaneous prayer healings, although attested biblical, let the mold after in which they take place, pre-Christian origins guess. So on comes a "ghost prostration " the people in the manner traditionally known, but it is now interpreted as the action of the Holy Spirit.

Proclamation and objectives of Aladura churches do not differ in substance from those of incumbent large churches; these in turn have received many pagan practices in its infancy and reinterpreted in their canon.

Because of the emphasis on the Christian charisms, such as prophecy and speaking in tongues, the Aladura churches are often associated with the charismatic movement, however, came as such until the 1960s.

Significant Aladura churches

  • Aladura churches
  • Independent African Church
  • Christianity in Nigeria
Yoruba language 1918 flu pandemic Eternal Sacred Order of Cherubim and Seraphim
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