We are, of course, still very far from arriving at anything close to an empirical assessment of Joshua’s ministerial impact, and extremely far from justifying our opening statement claiming Joshua to be the most significant Christian minister in modern times. But there is much evidence to be considered and we have barely begun.
While it is not totally insignificant for example to consider the dollar worth of his ministry to Nigeria’s massive burgeoning economy, even though SCOAN commanded 60% of tourist traffic inland, Nigeria is oil rich. We might want to consider by way of comparison the impact to any island nation in the Caribbean of a single church that could bring in similiar traffic.
But of course, Jamaican Jesus, in fact Caribbean Jesus is nowhere near anything that could remotely be considered a tourist attraction. In fact, many Jamaicans do not find Jamaican Jesus attractive at all. Perhaps because Jamaican Jesus is an import shipped in from the Metropole and vastly inferior to the ‘real MCcoy’ readily available on the continent, which most of our tourist traffic actually come here to escape. You will forgive my crass language, but I consider some utility in employing commercial values to describe religious movements I have elsewhere coined ‘Colombian’ and ‘Cromwellian’ Christianity. My intention is not to needlessly offend, but to awaken an awareness consonant with a more realistic evaluation of religion and its positive or negative contribution to social and economic development, and it does require unfortunately some world-view assault.
But it is not yet time to consider these things. We are still in the process of hearing witnesses: Frederick Chiluba, past president of Zambia.
YeKengalé 