Let’s Ponder On This
DChristianity have to be complicated; or is it the people who complicate Christianity? Much attention and interest has been afforded to Unyazi Lwezulu Shembe, leader of the Nazareth Baptist Church, since his arrival in Eswatini on Monday. Of great interest is the manner in which the members of the church react towards him.
This has stirred curiosity among the general populace and, mostly, Christian believers. The main questions have been: Is this a Christian church? And, do members of this church believe in Jesus Christ or in Shembe, their leader?
There are those who have even questioned the title of ‘His Holiness’ that is attached to Unyazi Lwezulu, birth name Mduduzi Shembe. They see this as wrong and view it as equating himself to God.
They forget though that he is not the only religious leader who wears this title. The Roman Catholic Church refers to the Pope as ‘His Holiness’.
According to the Arlington Catholic Herald, addressing or referring to the Pope as ‘His Holiness’ can be traced back several hundred of years and is used in honouring its supreme religious leader with that title.
The Catholics explain that by attaching this title to the Pope they are not making any judgment on his personal sanctity because only God is by His essence holy, but all who believe in a divine being are invited to thrive for that ideal.
“The title ‘Holiness’ denotes the fact that the Pope, by virtue of his election, belongs to God in a special manner and is called to practice exceptional sanctity,” writes the Arlington Catholic Herald.
OES BIBLICAL
This, should remind every Catholic to pray regularly for the man who bears that heavy responsibility.
It adds by citing the words of Ronald Knox, a British biblical scholar who was a convert from Anglicanism, when he wrote that: “Perhaps it would be a good thing if every Christian, certainly if every priest, could dream once in his life that he were Pope, and wake from that nightmare in a sweat of agony.”
Whatever Knox meant there, it is clear that being Pope is not for everyone and anyone. So too is being leader of the Nazareth Baptist Church. The Catholic Church and the Nazareth Church are not the only ones who attach the ‘His Holiness’ title on their leaders.
The Dalai Lama of the Buddhist Church wears that title too. But for whatever reason, it is the Shembe leader who is being questioned for this title. Is it because he is black?
The way members of the Nazareth Baptist Church queued outside the Lavumisa Border Gate to welcome the leader also became the subject of much debate. Bringing their children and bringing water to be prayed for, or to be ‘blessed’, by the Unyazi Lwezulu was also questioned.
There has been talk that the members are equating him to Jesus Christ. Are they? Eswatini is predominantly Christian, hence much scrutiny is apportioned to every other belief, whether it aligns itself with Christianity or stands opposed to it.
The Nazareth Baptist Church, therefore, is no exception. But are they a Christian church? To get answers to this, one needs to look at what a Christian is. One of the greatest evangelists of our lifetime, Billy Graham, once put it this way: “A Christian is a person who is trusting Jesus Christ for their eternal salvation, and is seeking to follow Him in their daily life. To put it another way, a Christian is committed to Jesus as both their Saviour and their Lord (or master).”
MIRACULOUS
Graham also answered the question ‘So what is a Christian?’ by referencing that Jesus said that His true followers are those who have been ‘born again’ by the Spirit of God.
“When a Jewish religious leader named Nicodemus came to talk with Jesus one night, he declared that God was with Jesus because of all the miraculous signs Jesus performed. Jesus had this penetrating response: ‘I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again. … Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit”
Graham said.
He said a Christian, therefore, is a person who is born again by the Spirit of God as he or she wholeheartedly trusts in Jesus Christ and seeks to follow Him in obedience. He said there is no other way to the Father, no other way to be a Christian, than through personal faith in the
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Son of God.
“I am the way and the truth and the life,” Jesus said. “No one comes to the Father except through me”
Does the Nazareth Baptist Church stand for this? Author Joel E Tishken, in his paper titled ‘The Nazareth Baptist Church as Subordinationist Christianity’, summed up that when contextualised within Christian history, Shembe and the Nazareth Baptist Church would best be understood as an alternative and latent form of Christianity that has surfaced at multiple points in Christian history.
He said the early Nazareth Baptist Church, as previous scholarship insisted, represents neither a syncretic deviation from orthodoxy nor an oasis of indigenous cultural preservation, but was rather an alternative form of Christianity.
(John 14:6). ORTHODOX
“However, unlike neighbouring churches in colonial-era South Africa, the early Nazareth Baptist Church has much in common with other forms of Christianity that do not follow the orthodox consensus.
“Thinking of Shembe and the Nazareth Baptist Church in this comparative manner enhances our appreciation of their Christianness and more closely resembles how the members of the church wished to be understood,” Tishken wrote.
To get a much deeper perspective of the Nazareth Baptist Church and Shembe, one can look to the writing of Ricardo Coka - Sandanezwe Temple - Nazareth Baptist Church eBuhleni boKuphakama. In explaining the historic roots of this church, he wrote this:
“There are three historic roots of ubuNazaretha. Firstly, Mosaic law. UbuNazaretha is governed by Moses’ laws as Shembe explained in verse 3-4 of the Sabbath liturgy. This serves as our scriptural evidence showing that ubuNazaretha is also based upon the teachings of the Old Testament.
“Secondly, ubuNazaretha is based upon Jesus’ teachings and his Apostles. In most cases when Shembe delivers his speech at the congregation he would quote so often from the teachings of Jesus and His Apostles. Hymns of the Nazarites show that particular significance to Jesus Christ, this is our further evidence showing that ubuNazaretha is also attached into the teachings of the New Testament.
“Shembe built the Nazarites congregation in accordance with the Zulu nation customs, which are not contrary to the laws of God. As we have mentioned early on, ubuNazaretha is built under the rigid laws of Jehovah that He wrote through his Servant Moses.
Shembe stated very clearly in his teachings that when a person practices ubuNazaretha in contrary to Mosaic Law, God will never answer his or her prayer, and God will not pour blessings upon them. Look, when your prayers are not being answered and acceptable to God, what is the use of your faith then?
“Thirdly, even though we are allowed to preserve and practice our customs, however we are warned not to practice those which are contrary to the laws of Jehovah.
“When it comes to the laws of Jehovah, one should not for whatsoever reason compromise these laws with peoples’ customs or the teachings of any ethnic religion. People deliberately impose their customs into the Nazarine religion, which is unacceptable.
DOMINATED
“Ethnic religion enforces what is moral acceptably to those people of that particular culture and this kind of religion is built specifically on peoples’ practices which are mainly dominated by their beliefs, and has no instruction from God. When the time goes on, religions of this nature become a religion of the universe, because people adapt to it as their lifestyle.
“The distinction between Nazaritism and any other religion is that, Nazaretism is built through the command of God, instructions from the Word of Heaven (Izwi leZulu). So the founder of Nazaritism is Isaiah Shembe who personally met with God, and God gave him laws which govern the church of Nazareth. Therefore, the will of God can’t be hindered by peoples’ beliefs, because ubuNazaretha just remains as God wants it to be, and should never be integrated to any cultural religion!
HUMANISTIC APPROACH
“Cultural religion delves on preaching things that are totally incongruent to the teachings of Nazaritism , such as izulu lomndeni (Kinship Heaven). This means that after death, a person goes to a certain place where people are assembled in kinship groups. However, the church of Nazareth that is built through the teachings of the Bible does not teach anything of this kind, but it embraces one thing, Jehovah’s Heaven.”
There you have it, the intricacies that Shembe and the Nazareth Baptist Church bring to the Christian faith.