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| Abidemism | |
|---|---|
 Members of the Abidemist Church celebrating Nativity Day | |
| Type | New Sotirian religious movement |
| Classification | Bahian-initiated church |
| Theology | Pentecostal[Note 1] |
| Region | Asase Lewa |
| Language | Asalewan |
| Founder | Abidemi Omolayo |
| Origin | January 1913 |
| Members | 7 million |
Abidemism is a millennarian and Charismatic Sotirian new religious movement in Asase Lewa founded by Abidemi Omolayo in 1913. A postmillennial faith, Abidemism regards Abidemi as an incarnation of the Holy Spirit sent to prophesy an imminent apocalyptic war taking the form of an anti-colonial and class war that would inaugurate the Millennium, followed by the Second Coming and Last Judgment. Abidemism synthesizes this millenarian doctrine with Pentecostal liturgical practices, most prominently footwashing, glossolalia, Baptism with the Holy Spirit, and faith healing, and with highly Puritan ethics, including the practice of vegetarianism and community of goods and strict prohibitions on alcohol, tobacco, polygamy, magic and witchcraft, and dancing.
Originating in the early twentieth century as an outgrowth of the Oathing movement, Abidemism has historically suffered from intense state repression in Asase Lewa. Its revolutionary and millenarian doctrines meant Abidemism received significant suppression by Estmerish colonial authorities soon after it became widespread; Abidemism first competed with the Asalewan Section of the Workers' International for the affections of the early twentieth-century Asalewan lower classes before Abidemists joined the Section in large numbers in the 1920s and 1930s, before being purged during the Lokossa Rectification Campaign in the late 1930s and early 1940s. After the Rectification Campaign, the Abidemist Church was intensely suppressed by the Asalewan Section and early revolutionary socialist state as part of its policy of state atheism. Nevertheless, the religion survived decades of persecution; the Lokpa Spiritual Freedom Army adopted a variant of the faith during the Lokpaland insurgency in the late 1980s and 1990s, and the Pyschological-Technological Revolution resulted in the legalization of the pro-government Revolutionary Abidemist Church in 1982. One of the largest Bahian-initiated churches outside the Brethren Church, Abidemism is today the only growing major religious denomination in Asase Lewa and its adherents in the country number approximately 7 million people, roughly one-tenth of the country's population.
History
Origins and colonial period
Abidemism traces its origins to the global spread of Pentecostalism in the early twentieth century. Soon after the birth of Pentecostalism at the Not! Azusa Street Revival in [Insert Country Here], some of the earliest Pentecostal missionaries in Bahia arrived in the Estmerish colony of Odo, contemporary Asase Lewa, in 1909. Primarily thanks to its predictions that the end times were imminent—resonating with the local attitude in a society that had witnessed considerable social disruption thanks to colonialism—Pentecostalism spread quickly in Odo, and Abidemi Omolayo, a Gundaya peasant and the son of a traditional religious leader, became one of the earliest Pentecostal converts and one of the first natively-ordained Pentecostal preachers and missionaries in the colony.
Simultaenous to the growth of Pentecostalism, native Odonian society witnessed rising social discontentment and political agitation in the first two decades of the twentieth century. Amongst native elites—particularly the intelligentsia and an embryonic national-bourgeoisie—anti-colonial Pan-Bahianism took root, particularly after the Alààyè Massacre of nationalist protestors and market women in 1912 led to the mass radicalization of Odonian opinion. Simultaneously, increasing dispossession of the peasantry to establish plantations worked on by wage laborers generated intense social discontentment amongst the peasant majority of Odonian society. The largely disorganized peasant Oathing movement drew upon and radicalized the traditional practice of oathing to protest peasant dispossession. Like Pentecostal missionaries and preachers, most adherents of the Oathing movement expected that some sort of apocalyptic, millennarian event was imminent.
It was in this incendiary social context that in January 1913 Abidemi received spiritual visions, both sober and while under the influence of ibogaine, a drug commonly used in Odonian religious ceremonies, that led him to launch Abidemism. According to Abidemi, these visions led him to believe that he had become filled with and an incarnation of the Holy Spirit sent to prophesy an imminent apocalyptic war that would lead to the Millennium and Second Coming. Abidemi connected these visions, and his emerging spirituality, to Odonian tradition and contemporary Odonian social issues; he identified oathing, including its politicization, with Baptism in the Holy Spirit, the prophesied Armageddon with a violent war of national liberation and class struggle, and the Millennium with liberation of Bahians and the establishment of a utopian Sotirian socialist society. His message swiftly led to his excommunication from the mainstream Pentecostal church in Odo; nevertheless, his popularity grew with stories of various miracles attributed to him, most notably the healing of a prostitute with end-stage syphilis. More broadly, Abidemi's millennarian and militant political message aligned well with Odonian opinion at the time, and scholars usually consider early Abidemism a classic example of millenarianism in colonial societies.
In subsequent years, Abidemism expanded rapidly and became articulated much more extensively, resulting in Puritan campaigns against elements of traditional Odonian society considered sinful, an articulated postmillennial doctrine, and members' practices of teetotalism and vegetarianism. By 1916, colonial authorities estimated that Abidemi's followers numbered perhaps 250,000 people, almost all of whom belonged to the rural poor. Though during his lifetime Abidemi did not actively set in motion a revolutionary uprising, his public predictions of, and rhetoric supporting, such an uprising alarmed colonial authorities, which criminalized the public recognition of the religion and arrested and executed Abidemi in August 1916.
Though Abidemi's execution led to much of the Odonian public seeing Abidemi as a martyr, and precipitated mass rioting and upheaval in rural areas in the already-combustile atmosphere, Abidemism—which had only a minimal level of organization thanks to its rapid growth—declined soon after the colonial crackdown, thanks to the crackdown itself and the disorganization in the wake of Abidemi's death, as he had no issue or anointed successors to assume leadership of the faith after his death. By 1919, however, a council of elders made up of Abidemi's extended family and close friends assumed leadership of the remnant Abidemist movement. By 1919, the Asalewan Section of the Workers' International—which in the mid-1910s had competed with Abidemism for the affections of the rural poor, but during the mid-1910s was primarily supported by the intelligentsia, urban proletariat, and seasonal agricultural workers who worked on plantations during peak season but worked most of the year in urban areas—gained widespread support in rural areas as well as urban ones, and had begun actively fomenting people's war by proclaiming the Asalewan Revolution and forming the People's Revoutionary Army in 1918.
Based upon this growing popularity and militancy, Abidemist elders identified the Section and its attempts at fomenting revolution with Abidemi's prophecies of, and support for, an apocalyptic anti-colonial revolution and class struggle and consequently encouraged Abidemists to join the Section en masse. Subsequent to this reorganization, Abidemists played a major role in the Section's revolutionary efforts throughout the 1920s and 1930s, in turn receiving relative toleration and the ability to reestablish clerical organization in Sectoin-controlled rural revolutionary base areas. Subsequent to the end of the Great War, however, the re-entry of Estmerish forces to the country—though considerably weakening all Section and PRA forces—caused special devastation to Abidemist forces in particular, with People's Revolutionary Army divisions predominantly comprised of Abidemists routed at the Battles of Ikirun and Bohicon in 1936 and 1937, respectively.
This devastation to Abidemist forces substantially strengthened the position of orthodox Nemtsovist and Councilist leaders in the Section relative to their Abidemist counterparts, as did the influx of aid from new revolutionary Councilist states such as Chistovodia and Dezevau. Furthermore, the Abidemist doctrine of vegetarianism conflicted with the Section's attempt to appeal to Pygmy groups in the Highlands; while plants traditionally comprised the vast majority of agrarian Lowlander communities' caloric intake even before Abidemist vegetarianism, Pygmies' traditional hunter-gatherer lifestyle meant that meat was a far substantial part of Pygmies' caloric intake during this period. It was in this context that secular Nemtsovists Edudzi Agyeman and Adelaja Ifedapo launched the Lokossa Rectification Campaign from 1938 to 1943, enforcing state atheism in Section revolutionary base areas and systematically purging or re-educating Abidemist members of the Section and People's Revolutionary Army.
Early socialist period
Though the intensity of Section repression of Abidemism decreased following the Lokossa Rectification Campaign's conclusion, the Section's policies of state atheism and Desotirianization continued after it seized state power in 1953, with Abidemism remaining outlawed. Nevertheless, the religion survived the socialist state's repression just as it survived the colonial state's, with Abidemists adopting a highly decentralized, Congregationalist, cell-based form of organization. While greater state capacity in urban areas meant the state was largely able to successfully the faith in urban aress during this period, its reduced state capacity in rural areas—and, especially, officials' greater interest in more immediate concerns, such as land reform, collectivization, and thought reform and ensuring citizens' loyalty to the new government—meant the suppression of Abidemism was a low priority. Furthermore, by the 1950s and 1960s the experience of the Lokossa Rectification Campaign meant that Abidemism had become largely depoliticized, and thus did not ideologically compete with Nemtsovism in the way it did in the 1930s.
Following the outbreak of the Protective-Corrective Revolution in 1965, however, popular persecution of Abidemists intensified drastically; large numbers of Edudzist rebels engaged in mass communal violence and attacks on Abidemists, and other organized religious groups, during this period. However, reduced state capacity and greater political decentralization during this period also temporarily reduced the state's capacity to repress Abidemists, and the largely popular-initiated persecutions of the late 1960s had far fewer resources at their disposal than the state in repression of Abidemists. Furthermore, the Protective-Corrective Revolution also witnessed the birth of Edudzist Abidemism, an extreme outgrowth of Edudzi Agyeman's cult of personality that synthesized Abidemism with this cult of personality and viewed Edudzi as an incarnation of the Holy Spirit, or in some cases as the Second Coming; members of this sect remain a prominent minority of Abidemists to this day.
Following the cessation of mass political violence with the Protective-Corrective Revolution's conclusion and Asase Lewa's transition to a council republic in 1969, popular persecutions of Abidemists decreased considerably; Edudzist Abidemism, also, became de facto legal during this period, its secular politics dovetailing closely with the political consensus in Asase Lewa at the time. Throughout the 1970s, Orthodox, Mainline Abidemism remained strictly illegal and repressed; however, the faith also grew considerably amongst dissident factions in Asalewan society; in particular the faith's combination of communistic economics and strong support for strict family structures meant it substantially grew in popularity amongst rural Asalewans who fundamentally supported Asase Lewa's socialist and Councilist economics and politics, but fiercely opposed the family abolitionist and communal sleeping measures championed by the radical political organizations that dominated Asalewan politics during this period.
Today
Doctrine
Charismatic practices
Abidemism traces its historic religious roots to the early Pentecostal movement, as some of the earliest Pentecostal missionaries in Bahia converted Abidemi Omolayo to Sotirianity in 1909 and Abidemi subsequently worked as a Pentecostal preacher and missionary until founding Abidemism in 1913. Based upon that Pentecostal, Ebidemi subsequently incorporated Pentecostal and Charismatic practices into Abidemist liturgy that remain until this day; practices such as footwashing, laying on of hands glossolalia, Baptism with the Holy Spirit, and faith healing all figure prominently in the Abidemist spiritual experience. Abidemists view these practices as spiritual gifts that reveal the divine in everyday believers' lives, revive what Abidemists believe to be the practices of Early Sotirianity, and imbue believers with spiritual power so that they might use such power during the end times and Armageddon, which Abidemi believed to be imminent, literal, and necessary for inaugurating the Millennium and Second Coming.
Role of the Holy Spirit
Consistent with Abidemism's Pentecostal origins, the sect attaches extensive importance to the role of the Holy Spirit. Like mainstream Pentecostals, Abidemists ascribe to the Holy Spirit an essential role in allowing individuals to be born again and to be endowed with spiritual gifts through Baptism with the Holy Spirit. However, Abidemists go further in arguing that the Holy Spirit itself has possessed specific individuals for lengthy periods of time, particularly during periods of strife and being led astray from true Sotirianity, with these avatars of the Holy Spirit then becoming prominent Sotirian prophets. While Abidemism most famously and prominently ascribes this role to Abidemi Omolayo himself, Abidemi is not the only human held to be possessed by the Holy Spirit in this way; rather, Abidemism holds that numerous other famous Sotirian prophets and religious leaders, including Johanne Stearn, Paul the Apostle, and Simon Peter all became avatars of the Holy Spirit at different points in their lives.
Puritanism and lifestyle
In accordance with classical Pentecostal and Westmarckian ethics, Abidemism instructs its believers to maintain outward holiness, or modesty in dress, appearance, and speech, and to abstain from dancing, alcohol, other drugs, including tobacco and khat, both of which are commonly used in Asase Lewa. Furthermore, Abidemism places an emphasize an emphasis—at least theoretically—on Puritan ethics aimed at purifying Asalewan life of Fetishist and, more broadly, worldly and material practices. As such, the sect prohibits traditional practices such as polygamy and magic and witchcraft, and its clerics have frequently been much harsher in denunciations of syncretism of Sotirianity with Bahian Fetishism—a common practice in Asalewan Folk Sotirianity—than many Mainline Amendist clerics.
In addition to classical Pentecostal and Puritan ethics, Abidemism's literal interpretation of the Bible, including passages heralding universal vegetarianism among all species, has led the sect to mandate vegetarianism. Though other Sotirian sects have strongly discouraged the consumption of meat, encouraged pescetarianism, or mandated vegetarianism on special occassions such as fast days or Lent, Abidemism is distinct in that its prohibition on meat consumption is both absolute and moralistic; though the perceived health benefits and self-sacrifice associated with vegetarianism that motivated other Sotirian sects to encourage the practice are not disregarded by Abidemism, Abidemists argue that vegetarianism is an absolute moral necessity, and Abidemist preachers, including Abidemi himself, have identified non-human animals as part of the larger category of the poor and oppressed. Consequently, Abidemists in modern-day Asase Lewa have become early and notable advocates of animal rights and to a lesser extent environmentalism in the country.
In addition to its promotion of vegetarianism, Abidemism is distinguished from other Sotirian sects in its promotion of community of goods. In accordance with its call to live according to the perceived uncorrupted ways of Early Sotirianity, and passages in Acts that spoke of early Sotirians holding possessions in common, Abidemism promotes—at least nominally—common ownership of property, and Abidemi prophesied that the Millennium would be basically communistic.
However, Abidemism differs from other Sotirian sects promoting community of goods in that it historically has not emphasized the voluntary organization of its members into autonomous, self-reliant communes for practical reasons; because its followers primarily came from the lower classes, during the Toubacterie Abidemists' landlessness and indigence, combined with colonial practices of forced labor and severe restrictions on Bahian ownership of land, meant that founding self-reliant communes was virtually impossible. Instead, Abidemi encouraged his followers to struggle towards a society based on communal ownership, leading Abidemists to join Asalewan Section of the Workers' International in large numbers before their purge from the Section in the late 1930s. Because such a society has been constructed in modern Asase Lewa—but by the secular Asalewan Section rather than by Abidemists— contemporary Abidemists have debated the legitimacy of communal Asalewan society.
Though during its prohiition most Abidemists were either passive or moderately opposed to common ownership at the hands of the state and, later, Workers' Councils, the majority position of most Abidemists following legalization has been supportive of secular common ownership, as an economic system equivalent to that prophesied to exist in the Millennium. Because its practical position on common ownership has changed radically in its accordance with the political situation of the time—from incorporating it as part of a broader anti-colonial millennarian program in the early twentieth century, to embracing secular common ownership as part of an increasing friendliness with the Asalewan state in the modern day—some scholars have argued that its commitment to common ownership has been more theoretical than practical, and a far less important element of its ethics than classical Pentecostal ethics and vegetarianism.
Eschatology
Abidemism is distinguished from other Pentecostal churches in that it rejects dispensationalism and instead adopts a postmillennial eschatalogy. While it regards the Millennium and end times as divinely preordained—and that the divine indeed sent Abidemi Omolayo, an incarnation of the Holy Spirit, to prophesy and hasten these events—it believes that the Millennium must ultimately be achieved by human action through the establishment of a society founded on Sotirian ethics and social justice.
However, as a millennarian sect, Abidemists differ from traditional postmillennialists and agree with the Pentecostal and dispensationalist notion that the Great Tribulation, Armageddon, and the end times more broadly, are both literal and imminent, though it believes that the Great Tribulation, Armageddon, and the Millennium are all prerequisites to the Second Coming. Abidemists also agree with traditional dispensationalists and Pentecostals, and disagree with many postmillennialists, in viewing the Great Tribulation and Armageddon as literal and the Millennium as something not established through gradual, peaceful means, but as necessarily established through violent struggle at Armageddon.
In addition to its postmillennial view, Abidemism's interpretation of eschatology and Armageddon is basically historicist and humanistic in nature. In its early-twentieth century form—and in the interpretation of most mainstream and Edudzist Abidemists today—Abidemism equated the Great Tribulation with colonization, and the Antisotirias with Estmerish colonists and missionaries who advanced an interpretation of Sotirianity congruent with colonialism. Consequently, Abidemism argued that Armageddon would specifically take the form of an anti-colonial and class war—first as a war against colonialism in Asase Lewa, and second as a war of the global Subaltern and working class against Euclean elites–that would lead to the establishment of a utopian Sotirian socialist society in the Millennium, followed by the Second Coming and Last Judgment.
Status of women
Consistent with Pentecostalism's outgrowth from the Westmarckian tradition, the faith has consistently permitted the ordination of women without restrictions since its foundation. Women were essential to the early spread of Abidemism, and many took on key leadership roles in the movement at a time when ordination of women was uncommon outside of churches that did not have roots in the Westmarckian or Witterite traditions. Many women became attracted to early Abidemism, especially, thanks to its emphasis on female participation and ethical mores that preached against polygamy and against female genital mutilation, alongside opposition to circumcision and a broader opposition to body modifications, ranging from these modifications to modifications such as piercings and tattoos. Early Abidemism, therefore, is generally considered to have had a relatively progressive attitude towards gender and the status of women relative to Odonian society more broadly.
However, contemporary Abidemism is frequently considered to have highly conservative views on gender relative to the broader Asalewan population. Though early Abidemism's emphasis on female participation has not changed since the early twentieth century, this emphasis on female participation and empowerment has become generally accepted by most of Asalewan society and is no longer distinctive. Furthermore, most Abidemists have maintained their historic opposition to abortion and divorce at a time when such things have long been legalized and uncontroversial amongst Asase Lewa's majority. Furthermore, though the mainstream and Edudizt Abidemist sects have maintained their historic opposition to body modification, including female genital mutilation, many Lokpa Abidemists are unopposed to body modifications; indeed, opposition to the strict government prohibition of female genital mutilation was one of the key grievances driving the Lokpaland insurgency.
Sects
Mainline Abidemism
Mainline Abidemism is the line of the Abidemist Church that traces its lineage to the original doctrines of Abidemi's teachings in the early twentieth century before becoming conslidated as a Presbyterian polity, albeit under state supervision, in the 1980s following Abidemism's legalization. Consistent with its historic association with the state as a precondition for its legalization,, Mainline Abidemists view Abidemi's prophesied violent revolutionary struggle as coming partially true in the violent struggles of the Asalewan Revolution and other Councilist revolutions in the early twentieth century. However, Mainline Abidemists view these struggles as incomplete because they were not global and thus did not result in world communism and were atheistic; furthermore, Mainline Abidemists do not necessarily attach spiritual significance to non-Abidemist revolutionaries themselves, arguing that Abidemi prophesied these revolutionaries' actions, and that these actions did help lay the foundation for the Millennium, but that the revolutionaries' atheism meant they were mere virtuous pagans and thus their actions were not divinely inspired.
The largest variant of Abidemism, approximately half of all Asalewan Abidemists, approximately 3.5 million people, belong to the Mainline tradition, with the tradition particularly popular in the rural Lowland areas—particularly in rural Ashanaland—in which Abidemism originated. In addition to this number, a large number of Lokpa Abidemists also informally associated with Mainline Abidemism following the 2000 Peace Agreement between the Asalewan state and the Lokpa Spiritual Freedom Army's moderate factions. At the national level, the bulk of Mainline Abidemist clerical leadership has historically been comprised of the descendants of Abidemi's relatives and close friends, though the Mainline Abidemist Church's presbyterian character means that decision-making power is relatively devolved to local levels.
Lokpa Abidemism
The newest sect in Abidemism, the informal term Lokpa Abidemism refers to the sect of Abidemism that developed in Lokpaland in the 1980s following the legalization of Abidemism and spiritual visions by the Abidemist preacher and Lokpa farmer Mawuena Amoussou. Amoussou claimed to be an incarnation of the Holy Spirit in much the same way as Abidemi, and strongly rejected the pro-state and Section positions of Mainline Abidemism, instead holding that its atheistic character meant that the Asalewan Section and state were instead another sinful, worldly institution whose defeat was a necessary precondition for the Millennium. Amoussou prophesied another violent revolutionary struggle that would lead to the liberation of the Lokpa people from Asase Lewa and would pressage Armagedddon and the Millennium. Amoussou also extensively synthesized Abidemism with traditional Lokpa beliefs, mysticism, and superstition. Lokpa Abidemism also especially emphasized the religion's traditional vegetarianism, and harshly criticzed traditional hunter-gatherer Pygmy diets for having meat as a far higher source of caloric intake than the largely plant-based diet of the agrarian Lokpa.
Lokpa Abidemism's combination of secessionist and anti-Pygmy rhetoric proved immensely popular among the Lokpa people during the 1980s, thanks to the prolonged economic and political crisis facing Asase Lewa following the Mabifian Civil War and Recession of 1980 , and, especially, growing tensions with Pygmies owing primarily to growing reforestation efforts sponsored by the central government with substantial Pygmy support that greatly decreased the amount of available arable land for Lokpa farmers in the region. Though Amoussou's advocacy for a violent war of independence resulted in her execution in 1985, the movement continued to spread, with the flow of arms from the Second Tiwuran Civil War resulting in the Lokpaland insurgency in the early 1990s, as the Abidemist Lokpa Spiritual Freedom Army fought for the region's independence. However, the bulk of the LSFA layed down arms following the 2000 Peace Agreement, which resulted in the cessation of war in exchange for wide-ranging amnesty, increased autonomy for Lokpaland, and the legalization of Abidemist political factions in electoral politics. Though a minority radical faction continues fighting, the insurgency substantially decreased in intensity and became contained to remote regions of Lokpaland following the Peace Agreement, and the vast majority of Lokpa Abidemists today do not endorse secessionism or action against the Asalewan state. Today, approximately 2 million Lokpa Abidemists live in Asase Lewa, approximately one-quarter of Lokpaland's total population.
Edudzist Abidemism
The smallest sect of Abidemism at approximately 1.5 million people, or slighly more than one-fifth of the total Abidemist population in Asase Lewa, Edudzist Abidemism is a militant sect of Abidemism which disagrees with Mainstream Abidemism in holding that Asalewan Revolutionaries, including secular ones, did indeed receive divine inspiration and that the Revolution was not merely a secular event helping create the conditions of a social justice necessary for the Millennium, but a decisive, divine event in the war between God and Satan. More extensively, Edudzist Abidemists also argue that after Abidemi Omolayo's death, the Holy Spirit transferred its soul directly to Edudzi Agyeman, whose body thus became a vessel of the Holy Spirit until his death more than fifty years later.
Edudzist Abidemism historically originated during the Protective-Corrective Revolution, when Edudzi Agyeman's cult of personality reached its apogee. In this political ferment, the original followers of Edudzist Abidemism preached that Armageddon was imminent and some even abandoned Abidemism's traditional Postmillennialism, holding that Edudzi Agyeman was himself the Second Coming and would the people to world revolution and the Millennium. Folowing Edudzi Agyeman's death, however, these notions declined considerably, but the original core of the sect—namely, holding that the Asalewan Revolution and Section were divinely inspired and that Edudzi Agyeman was a literal incarnation of the Holy Spirit—remained. The sect thrived and grew rapidly throughout the 1970s and, despite Asase Lewa's official state atheism and anti-clericalism during this period, received far less repression from the state than did other sects owing to its pro-Revolutionary character. Organized according to a Congregationalist polity, the sect remains today, with scholars viewing its apotheosis of Edudzi Agyeman as a prominent case study of an extreme interpretation of a political cult of personality.
Abidemism Outside Asase Lewa
Notes
- ↑ While Abidemism maintains Pentecostal and Charismatic liturgical practices, most Pentecostal churches do not consider the Abidemist Churchpart of the Pentecostal tradition, as its theology differs significantly from most Pentecostal churches.