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The "Holy war" is executed on two separate battlefronts. On one front, the battle is raging between Christians and the last-standing adherents of the Traditional African Religions who are protecting their traditional belief system against the foreign Christian principles. And then, there is the second battle that is internal among Christians themselves, who disagree on some basic principles of Christianity, especially as they affect the culture of the land. Grievously, mischievous Christians hide behind the confusion to prey on their emotionally vulnerable brethren to make a living. So, now we have pastors whose money-making specialty in Nigeria is to desecrate all the elements of the African Culture, with "holy water" and "anointed oil" in hand, and an army of ignorant and destructive followers behind him. The ultimate interest of the funky pastors is m-o-n-e-y! Yes indeed, the pastors in Nigeria get paid for the culture-demolition escapades; and I mean huge fees! The more successful ones do not only make a living through pastorship, mind you; they live in outlandish jet-paced affluence like ancient Roman Emperors, all in the name of God!

My interest in the Culture-versus-Religion war was kindled in December 2007. I was visiting my remote village in a town called Nnewi, which is situated in the Southeastern State of Nigeria called Anambra State. It all started when a group of Christians woke up one day and decided to put a ban on a cultural element of art and entertainment called masquerade. They believe, and insisted that all the cultural festivities and other elements associated with masquerades, which make us who we are-Africans-must be abolished, in the name of Jesus. Naturally, another group in the village, all Christian, too, said no to the ban, and...bang! A war broke out in the village, and I was right in the middle of it. The Progressives insisted, and still insist that the masquerades must be retained for their primary purpose of cultural entertainment, and if any particular masquerade is found to be wanting in any form, then it should be purified, sanctified or modernized where necessary. It goes without saying that I was on the side that said that the masquerade culture has to stay.

The pertinent question in the entire disagreement has to be: How does the cultural entertainment tradition of masquerade go against the teachings of Christ and the Holy Bible? I approach this question starting with the definition of the word masquerade. Various dictionaries and scholars define a masquerade variously as: Impersonate; Pretend to be; Make-belief; Disguise, subterfuge, to pick just the five. In essence, a masquerade is what the masquerader says that it is; what the "pretender" says that he is pretending to be, and nothing more. In other words, the masquerade itself (the "make-up") has no intrinsic value. If we say that a masquerade is an element of cultural entertainment, then that is what it is. There are entertainment masquerades all over the world, and they are made in the likeness of reptiles such as crocodile; mammals such as elephant, and other conceivable creatures on earth, including man. Dragons and some sort of worms are common features in masquerades in Asia.

Indeed, a masquerade may represent or pretend to be a bad deity, but this does not always mean that it venerates the deity. It can be a work of art employed to insult, mock, or ridicule the bad deity as it entertains, in which case, a discerning Christian should see it as a positive tool to promote Christianity. And if indeed a masquerade gets possessed by a demon, then the thing to do is to exorcize it, get rid of the demon, and not destroy the masquerade. If it is too bad for reformation, then discard that particular masquerade, and don't even think about the abolition of the entire concept! Ultimately, masquerades all over the world, in the context of this discourse, are primarily for cultural entertainment.

It is a fact that a masquerade as a concept cannot possibly be an evildoer, because it does not possess either life or power to do anything whatsoever, good or evil. It is also a fact that a person that wants to do evil would always find a way to do it, with or without a masquerade. And so, if indeed masquerades constituted any danger, or did anything un-Christian anywhere in Nigeria, it could never have been the costumes called masquerades. The culprits would have to be the masqueraders (people) inside the masquerades. As the late Nigerian Afro-Beat music legend, Fela Anikulakpo Kuti once put it in a different context, "Uniform na cloth, na tailor de sew am," meaning that 'a (police) uniform is merely a piece of cloth sewn together by a tailor.' The policeman inside the uniform still remains what he had always been before he ever got hold of the uniform. If he was evil before he picked up the uniform, then an evil policeman he is. And if he was a good man, then he makes a good police officer. In Fela's context, the man is not a big deal; he is just another guy, uniform or no uniform.

Similarly, interest groups and individuals in the USA who campaign for a citizen's right to bear arms have popularly and successfully argued that "guns do not kill people; rather, people kill people, using guns." The point in this argument is that the evil man is our problem, and not the gun. Sure, there are instances where easy availability of a gun can be a factor. However, the argument is that human nature always has pros and cons in every matter, and we cannot go about abolishing everything that has some 'cons.' If we do, then we will have no to abolish every concept we presently hold as humans, because they all come with good and bad. For instance, the contraption called airplane crashes and kills people almost every other day, but we have never considered scrapping air transport in the world. What we do is keep improving on the concept, including better training of pilots, hoping to perfect it all one day, if ever possible.

The argument, therefore, is that a person that wants to control the rate of shooting deaths in a society should control the people's attitudes, and not the inanimate gun. Hence, the masquerader is our problem, and not the concept known as masquerade. A person that wants to control witchcraft should control the masquerader, and not a mere inanimate costume called masquerade, which cannot make any move on its own. The way to eliminate evil, therefore, would be to change the behavior of the evildoer inside the masquerade, and definitely not by destroying the masquerade and all its positive values.

Let's face it, if we destroy the masquerade, the guy inside it, if evil, simply changes his method of doing evil, period. As the saying goes, once there is the will; there will always be a way. If one way closes, then the man with the will finds another way. Sure, there were masquerades in the past that were supposedly very powerful in the hocus pocus world of the spirits and wizardry. But all they did, if and when they did, was to, supposedly, engage one another, amongst themselves, in spiritual power tussle.

In the festivals that I personally experienced as I grew up in Nigeria, I did not notice anything out of the ordinary to suggest convincingly, that some spiritual warfare actually went on among the masquerades, but I am willing to accept other people's word who witnessed manifestations. Besides, I believe that it probably did sometimes, because, since I believe in Christ and God, and believe there is Satan, I believe that the spirit world does exist. What I did see and experience for sure, however, were wonderful, memorable moments of exciting, fun-filled cultural entertainment offered by masquerades in my town.

I am proud to announce that the pro-culture Christians in my village won the first battle in the masquerade tussle. We do have the tradition still going on in the village. Following the incident, the detail of which I reserve for another edition, I commenced a research on the culture-annihilation phenomenon in Nigeria, and I have since come across a few ugly incidents of communal clashes between Christians of divergent views on the tenets of Christianity in the country. In essence, most often, all the conflicting parties are Christians who disagree on exactly how to be Christian.