{"id":7053,"date":"2017-11-11T01:00:11","date_gmt":"2017-11-11T01:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/amazingproperty.com.ng\/blog\/our-churches-and-their-money\/"},"modified":"2017-11-11T01:00:11","modified_gmt":"2017-11-11T01:00:11","slug":"our-churches-and-their-money","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amazingproperty.com.ng\/blog\/our-churches-and-their-money\/","title":{"rendered":"Our churches and their money\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\n<\/p>\n<div itemprop=\"description\" readability=\"105\">\n<p>By Morenike Taire<\/p>\n<p>At least one reason \u00a0 we Nigerians go to church is the same reason we go to the beer parlour- there isn\u2019t much else to do. Church is the Sunday morning equivalent of the beer parlour on Friday and Saturday nights.<\/p>\n<p><!-- between content ad --><\/p>\n<p>We are not generally big on hobbies; we don\u2019t do hunting or hiking or stamps collection that white people and the idle rich religiously engage in. Our religion is hope or disremembrance\u00a0\u00a0 and we practice it with a passion. The men go and drown their sorrows on Friday; their wives go and complain to God about them on Sunday, and so the cycle continues.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_144043\" style=\"width: 480px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/cdn.vanguardngr.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/money.jpg?resize=480%2C270&#038;ssl=1\" data-lazy-src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.vanguardngr.com\/wp-content\/plugins\/lazy-load\/images\/1x1.trans.gif?ssl=1\" class=\"size-full wp-image-144043\" alt=\"\" width=\"480\" height=\"270\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.vanguardngr.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/money.jpg 480w, https:\/\/www.vanguardngr.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/money-300x168.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 480px) 100vw, 480px\"\/><noscript><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-144043\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/cdn.vanguardngr.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/money.jpg?resize=480%2C270&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"480\" height=\"270\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.vanguardngr.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/money.jpg 480w, https:\/\/www.vanguardngr.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/money-300x168.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 480px) 100vw, 480px\"\/><\/noscript><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Naira notes<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Or used to. These days the economy appears to have woken up a giant that had been asleep so long that it must have been thought to be dead. There is trouble in the paradise pentecostal pastors have built for themselves and the disquiet is growing daily.<\/p>\n<p>The grumble this time has emerged from the least likely quarters \u2013 on air personality Ifedayo Olarinde , better known as Freeze or Daddy Freeze who has insisted that the payment of tithes to churches is illegal not only secularly but spiritually as well.<\/p>\n<p>Earlier in the year a phenomenon known as Hallelujah Challenge had millions of the faithful staying up night after night, gaining so much traction that CNN and other international media agencies followed its progress.<\/p>\n<p>Two things are clearer now than ever before. One is that Nigeria is divided along religious lines more\u00a0\u00a0 sharply than we had thought. The other is that whether it be the brewery or the church, when it has to do with money, people pay attention.<\/p>\n<p>While the intellectual\u00a0\u00a0 basis for a debate on tithes\u00a0\u00a0 appears nonexistent, there is more than enough financial basis. Whole industries have been built around our churches, featuring\u00a0\u00a0 the same paraphernalia as you would see in show business. The setup is basically the same.\u00a0\u00a0 Minor celebrities\u00a0\u00a0 take the stage to start with, heating up the crowd and building up the excitement. When the hour has come and the crowd is salivating , the superstar steps on to the stage \u2013 the one for whom the majority came for the show in the first place. The crowd is ecstatic.<\/p>\n<p>Like the super star celebrities, like the super star \u2018men of God\u2018. The stage is set and the lesser \u2018men of God\u2019 parade it. The excitement is built up gradually until the super star\u00a0\u00a0 \u2018man of God\u2019 appears in a blaze of glory.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 The goal is the same \u2013 to persuade fans or rahter the faithful to part with their hard earned and not so hard earned money through glib talk and suave persuation.<\/p>\n<p>The most prominent pastors have lent their voices to the tithes debate, not least because they take the most <a href=\"https:\/\/amazingproperty.com.ng\/blog\/get-quick-loan-for-real-estate-investment\/\">funds<\/a> in. Today, certain churches own or have stolen more <a href=\"https:\/\/amazingproperty.com.ng\/blog\/property-center-nigeria\/\">real estate<\/a> than many industries, and\u00a0\u00a0 they feel entitled to it. And while individuals reserve the right to give to any cause about which they are persuaded , this is not as much a matter for individuals as it is about the collective and about society.<\/p>\n<p>If our holy books are available to be consulted, the controversy around\u00a0\u00a0 church <a href=\"https:\/\/amazingproperty.com.ng\/blog\/construction-loans-for-commercial-and-residential-builders\/\">financing<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0 ought to be navigated\u00a0\u00a0 with a lot more clarity than presently being done, including even the emotional bits. The fact that dogma and cynicism are the only things driving the tithes debate says a lot about us as a people; and the fact that all the tithing\u00a0\u00a0 has not changed our finances as a nation shows how individualistic we all are.<\/p>\n<p>The trouble, where the against camp is concerned, is not as much the taking of tithes\u00a0\u00a0 as the basis for which it is demanded and paid. The humongous takings recorded by these places of worship\u00a0\u00a0 might be used to further any objectives for which the givers gave them,and it would be nobody\u2018s business\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 as such. The main concern really should be that such a massive pool of resources is not only untaxed, but mostly unregulated to boot. What this means is that the people to which these sums are entrusted possess a great deal of unmerited power wich they can and actually do as they please.<\/p>\n<p>The simple solution to that of course is to tax the ones who cannot prove that they are charities; but would that happen? Maybe sooner than we think.<\/p>\n<p>It would appear that many Nigerian churches have actually built their kingdoms here on earth.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><a hre=\"https:\/\/www.vanguardngr.com\/2017\/11\/our-churches-and-their-money\/\"> Vanguard <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Morenike Taire At least one reason \u00a0 we Nigerians go to church is the same &hellip; <a title=\"Our churches and their money\u00a0\" class=\"hm-read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/amazingproperty.com.ng\/blog\/our-churches-and-their-money\/\"><span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Our churches and their money\u00a0<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7054,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[522,84],"class_list":["post-7053","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opportunities-in-new-markets","tag-nigeria","tag-real-estate"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/amazingproperty.com.ng\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/money.jpg?fit=480%2C270&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amazingproperty.com.ng\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7053","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amazingproperty.com.ng\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amazingproperty.com.ng\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amazingproperty.com.ng\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amazingproperty.com.ng\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7053"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amazingproperty.com.ng\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7053\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amazingproperty.com.ng\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7054"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amazingproperty.com.ng\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amazingproperty.com.ng\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amazingproperty.com.ng\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}