“It attracted me”: Inside a fellowship for non religious Nigerians

Lagos, Nigeria (Minority Africa) — As a child, Maro Okiti and her family attended a Pentecostal church and would spend significant time at the church’s camp. She joined her mother in being active in church and started teaching Sunday school at a young age. However, as Okiti, now 21, grew in her faith, so did her doubts and questions.

“I always questioned some of the doctrines and it would be shut down by the church. [They’d]say don’t question God or challenge spiritual authority,” she recalls. At that time, she was attending a liberal school, which further fuelled her curiosity. One incident in school that stands out for her was during her A-Levels when she was picked to participate in a debate that posed the question: Is science the new religion?

“I was arguing that science is not a new religion. I knew that this debate would cause some controversy,” Okiti says. “I spoke to the reverend [in residence] for some advice and she said that what most people hate to realise is that Christianity is a spectrum. And that was my big eureka moment. That I don’t need certain dogma to follow Jesus Christ.”

As Okiti began to think about her faith differently, she shared her beliefs online. “I started deconstructing accidentally actually. I always had unconventional views about Christianity but I had a core fundamental in the two commandments – love thy God and love thy neighbour,” she says. “My Christianity is very affirming. So I started using my Instagram as a platform to share my views on certain aspects of Christianity and one of my friends asked if I was [a] deconstructionist and not knowing what it meant I said yes. 

“I researched it after, went down this rabbit hole and I realized that’s what I was doing, I just didn’t have the language. There’s a lot of beauty with deconstruction that I’m so in love with. It’s given me a lot of freedom.” 

Okiti’s journey has led her to other people who, like her, “loved Jesus but rejected dogma.” Among these people was Kamsy Anyachebelu, one of the founders of The Table Community. The virtual group was born in 2021 as a result of the need for a community of people who, according to Anyachebelu, want a safe place for nuanced conversations. 

“Ore [Eni Ibukun], my co-founder, would always talk about the lack of community and how we only had individual friends we could talk to,” Anyachebelu says. Following a Twitter conversation, the duo decided to start The Table, which was inspired by the writings of Laura Jean Truman, an Atlanta-based queer writer, preacher and former chaplain.  “In June of 2021, we sat down in three days, built the website and wrote everything. We went on to our online platforms and invited people we knew were going through the same, and that’s how it started.” 

Having gone through their deconstruction journeys by themselves, Ibukun and Anyachebelu wanted to create a welcoming place that didn’t exist at the beginning of their journeys.  They also wanted to make a home for the people living on the outskirts of acceptance in a highly religious country like Nigeria.  

“Nigeria is a very religious country so most people are coming out of the trauma of that faith system. So we created a space for that healing,” Anyachebelu says. “Healing in community feels safer.” 

Nigeria has three main religions: Christianity, Islam and Traditional Religion. Of these, Christianity and Islam are the most popular and everything else, including traditional religion is mostly frowned upon. Last year, Mubarak Bala, a self identified atheist was sentenced to 24 years in prison for “blaspheming Islam” after being in detention since 2020. 

This harsh blow on religious objection makes the space the Table community provides even more poignant. Today, the online community has about 95 members. Most of the growth has been organic and has come as a result of the connectivity from social media and word-of-mouth referrals. Anyone can join their WhatsApp or Geneva groups through their Instagram account. The community is hosted on these three platforms: Instagram, WhatsApp and Geneva.

Each The Table Community member cherishes the community for different reasons but it all cuts across having a space with people who share similar religious experiences and a desire for critical conversations. 

The community usually holds online gatherings on Sunday evenings of every month on Geneva; there is always a theme for every month, which guides the discussions as people share their experiences.  The community is a fellowship where different people with different points of view and different spiritual backgrounds meet to tackle issues important to their moral and spiritual growth. 

The Table Community is now transitioning to new activities. They held their first physical event in May 2022 and they are currently running a new speaker series where they invite people to talk about finding self, deconstructing theology and growing spiritually outside religious walls.

Daniel, one of the members of The Table Community, says that the objective and nuanced conversations they have is what attracted him to the group in the first place. “Every time I had to express an opinion, I had to do it through a certain lens and filter to avoid upsetting religious sensitivities. I had to find an accepting and open-minded community,” he says.

Daniel was first introduced to the community in 2021 by a work colleague who was a member. “At the meeting, they were talking about sexuality. And it was weird to see a religious group talk about sexuality through such a  different lens. It attracted me,” he recalls.

He remembers a thread on Twitter where a guy was on a bus and some Christians, recognizing their worship as default, began to pray. He didn’t join in the prayer and began getting funny stares. Afterwards, he decided to pray traditionally; he muttered their religious prayers and incantations. After he finished, a woman that was praying with the Christians hissed and said something nasty in Igbo. This, for Daniel, was a clear example of how anything different from the religious norms is seen as something to pity or frown upon. Yet, Christianity, one of the most practiced religions in the world, intersects with a lot of society structures, policies and lifelines that it shouldn’t have to. 

“In religion, highly educated people forcibly suppress their intelligence and training to believe in certain things. But people in this group [The Table Community] tend not to do this. They kind of marry it,” Daniel asserts.

However, Daniel doesn’t consider The Table Community as only just a safe space. ”I look at it as a space where people are beginning to ask questions and I can say certain things I won’t say in public because I consider it less painful for the people in [The] Table Community than the everyday person outside,” he says. 

This encapsulates the entire concept that Anyachebelu and Ibukun are trying to create with the community. “Other spaces tell you what to believe or construct your theology for you,” Anyachebelu says. “We believe we’re a priesthood of believers. Nobody is above anyone. We’re just sharing what we know as truth, what we’ve come to understand and trying to understand.” 

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“No one here has a shared belief. People are coming from all these different thought processes and mindsets to learn from each other. It’s interesting to just learn and unlearn. There’s this Jewish thing called Midrash where people sit around and debate things all day. They don’t necessarily conclude but learn from the experience of the conversation. And that’s what we’re trying to do here.” 

Today, the fellowships with The Table Community have changed the way Daniel relates with other people around him and how he even approaches relationships. “My parents were not fanatical but my mum is emotionally connected to her faith so there’s a limit to what I can say,” he says. He once lost a romantic relationship due to his spiritual beliefs. However, through the different connections and interactions with the different members of the community, the topic of religion is something he now even anticipates when meeting someone new. 

“Most people are religious so it’s difficult for me to find personal connections because sooner or later it becomes a problem,” he says. For friendships, Daniel employs a new tactic. “I used to avoid these conversations but I noticed that eventually, a conversation will go in that direction. So now I tackle them as soon as they come up. I prefer the animosity and shock to come in the beginning stages.”

Maro Okiti also felt a strain in a couple of her relationships after she shared her views about Christianity. “Normally I talk about social issues and feminism on my Instagram. I was posting resources and one of them was called Queer Theology. They dragged me. They said I can’t serve two masters and that I was leading people astray,” she says. “I was so triggered because I genuinely felt I was doing a good thing. But people felt that queer people finding a space in God was provocative and that the only way they can do it was through a homophobic lens. My friends insulted me and I started to question if I was wrong. So that was painful.” 

“I remember one incident where I posted about not believing in submitting to my spouse. Then one of my friends posted that feminists can’t have a godly marriage. And I just knew that post was concerning mine. People were taking digs at me.”

Despite these incidents, through her interactions with other members of The Table Community, Okiti admits that she has grown and evolved in regards to her faith.

“I’ve come to the point where I realize who I’m talking to are not the orthodox Christians or the people who don’t need to question dogma,” she says. For Okiti, the people she seeks are those who are inquisitive and refuse to be held down by societal and religious constructs.

Edited and Reviewed by: PK Cross, Caleb Okereke, and Uzoma Ihejirika.