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Most Igbo are Roman-Catholic. In the areas of South-Eastern Nigeria known as Igboland Protestants are a marked minority. In the villages, the local parish is the third part of a triad with the home and market in functioning as a locus of activity. It is the church, of course, but also next to the local nursery and primary school, the football pitch and sometimes even the primary health care. I was determined to be a boy at a Holy Cross, confirmed as a Catholic at St Johns, had my mumps treated at the Annunciation hospital and my first Secondary School was called Sacred Heart, all this in one state. This movement through uniquely Catholic institutions across various stages of ones life was certainly not unique to me.Catholicism due to the Portuguese was the earliest variant of Christianity to make its way to the Guinea zone. There were missions established by the Capuchin brothers in Benin by 1647 and Warri by 1650. The general decline in the power of the Iberian States and the rise of racism dealt the movement a double blow. Missionaries were not sponsored for long stretches, isolation led to temptation and many Priests succumbed, taking concubines at best, becoming slave trading warlords on the other extreme. Old converts died, their beliefs morphed into localised tradition and when new Priests returned, they often kept themselves apart from the locals, as an appendage of the colonial superstructure, they sought only to minister to the colonialists.While the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith and Pope Innocent XI had condemned slavery in the closing stages of the 17th century mostly due to the appeals of a former slave Lourenço da Silva, it took a combination of the English anti-slavery movement and the advent of industrial capitalism for change to happen. The anti-slavery movement and a renewal of the missionary spirit went hand-in-glove.A key component of this renewed missionary movement was the focus on the utility of local languages, an idea traced to an English clergyman, Thomas Thompson. Most indigenous African languages are Latinised for the simple reason that most of their roots lie in the language dictionaries of the early missionaries.Second in influence to the missionaries in propagating Christianity were the slave repatriates. In this endeavour, Sierra Leone was to be the beachhead. One of the many African returnees to Sierra Leone was a certain Harry Washington but more important to this story was a boy freed by British anti-slavery squadron and sent first to Sierra Leone from where he made his way back home, Samuel Ajayi Crowther.The bible in his hand is likely in Yoruba. He translated the Bible to the language, standardising it in the process.When Samuel Ajayi Crowther was made the bishop of the West Niger province in 1864, he became the first black Bishop since Henrique of Utica in 1521. Christianity was back in the Guinea, but it was rather different. Henrique was the son of King Affonso of Kongo, granted his bishopric by Leo X, a Medici. Bishop Crowther, on the other hand, was the son of peasants.In the time between Henrique and Crowther, the Bastille had fallen and the “self-evident” principles which the repatriates brought back with them from the USA were a key part of the new evangelism. In the past, missionaries had focused on converting Kings, an uneasy proposition for people whose power were so tied up in the slave trade, that also explains the easy erasure of the hold of past missions. This time the evangelists would remember again that they were to be fishers of men—the outcasts and the downtrodden were to be the first line of appeal. The Catholic missionary to pioneer this approach for Catholics was a Jewish convert from Alsace, Francois Libermann, the [second] founder of the Holy Ghost Fathers.This world was gone by the return of the missionariesBishop Crowther had made his name as one of the members of the successful Niger expedition of 1841 that led to the establishment of the first Christian missions in Igboland. But it took the Baikie expedition to prove that the Niger could both be navigated successfully and without casualties. Britain in Igbo translates as Baikie’s land which ought to please the Scot.The Red Coats followed.At this point, the vast majority of the people were still pagan but the long British conquest of Igboland flipped the social position of what were previously ostracised Christians. As British flying columns roamed the land, soldiers did as soldiers do, except with the Christians. A simple matter of sharing a language and Christians knowing the channels through which to report misdemeanor as well as the District Officers recognising that the Christians would be a key source of support. From the outside looking in, however, the usefulness of Christianity received a boost. The mission house became not just a badge of honour but a symbol of security.Invitations to Christian missions went out, but ah, which ones?From the outside looking in a Christian is a Christian correct? But it was not so and hadn’t been since after the twelve apostles. The villages looking to convert didn’t have the time for the fine theological arguments, they were utilitarian and sought the missions to provide them with the greatest value. The flexibility imbued in the Spiritans by Francois, the leadership of Father Joseph Shanahan and the influence of the method of British conquest all combined to give Catholics the advantage.The British did not conquer Western Nigeria, it became a protectorate. There is a fine line to be drawn here. The British conquered Lagos and made it into a colony. Hence the people of Lagos were in effect British citizens, possessing the rights those entailed. The territories gained by treaty were ruled by its traditional institutions with advice from the British Resident. Conquered territory was conquered territory, the rule determined by its conqueror. In Northern Nigeria, also conquered territory, the people retreated into sullen non-cooperation. In Igboland, they became bourgeois.This is important in order to "detrivialise" the point on which the issue turned. Due to the fact that the Protestant missions had initially been in the lead, they were simply unused to a people who made their acceptance of a mission contingent on the teaching of the English language. Missionary policy before then was that the natives be taught in their local languages. The locals did not much mind that. This was understandable, the West was populated with Saros[Sierra Leoneans] seeking to “reconnect”, its traditional authorities as in the North were respected—Although the North was conquered too, because of India, the British were always conscious of offending the “Musulman”.To the Igbo though, whether as a court messenger or a Catechist or a clerk, clearly the new route to progress in this new world lay in the English language. It was either have one of your own whispering in the ears of the District Officer, writing letters to the court or some Sierra Leonean with an axe to grind. The Protestants were unwilling to teach in English, the Catholics did and not just English either, unlike the Protestants with an aversion to “secular” subjects like English, Maths and the technicals which the government wanted to form the education policy, the Catholics taught those. That led to Government subsidies and increased expansion. So the first generation of children taught to rise promptly for the Angelus at 12 and 6 were welcomed into the fold in their hundreds then thousands. By 1911 average school attendance at the Roman Catholic schools was 5421. It was just 156 in 1900.It is in its own way a rule of history that ties which were born in frivolity are bound solid by the fires of war. In this case, it was the civil war that did it. When it started, with the eyes of the world mainly on Israel’s six-day stomp and in the opening stages of Vietnam. It was the Catholic Church that went above and beyond to lead a relief column. After the war two things became staple in Igboland: The Church and Stockfish—easily preserved, portable source of protein and salt. You don’t stop to think how important those two are until you really need to.The military did not forget the Church’s role and as punishment expropriated all Church-owned schools. Resolving that and getting our very own Saint were the focus of campaigns in the post-war era.Blessed Cyprian Michael Iwene TansiThe start of the 21st century was not an auspicious time in Nigeria. Military rule had been rapacious. In the midst of economic and social decline, the Protestant fightback started. They advanced the concept of the “generational curse”. Lots of commentaries have been written on Nigerian prosperity gospel, but it ain’t Joel Osteen. In between sermons on the gifts of God to the tithing faithful, hearty calls are made for enemies to die! Chains are shattered! Familial curses are shrivelled! For, “From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven has been subject to violence, and the violent lay claim to it”.So the strength of your appeal becomes measured by the violence of your request. And it seemed to work, there were testimonies of miraculous new jobs, cripples were tossing their wheelchairs aside, the blind seeing and instead of the jazzy sort of intonation that was a staple of mass, there was the equivalent of a heavy metal rock-out just before the casting and binding. Compared to Priests castigating you for mixing up your Nicene with the Apostle’s, well…Unlike in the rest of the world where the exodus was from Catholicism to nothing, among the Igbo, it was mainly from Catholicism to Protestantism, although the Protestants are still in a minority, that is where we find ourselves today.