This week on the Chronic online, we look at the beliefs that bring us to our needs. Who do we pray, what do we pray for and what does that mean about how you position yourself in the greater cosmology of faith and criticality?

In Nigeria’s Superstar Men of God, Yemisi Aribasala listens to the sermons, counts the money, watches the high-flying life of Nigeria’s mega-preachers and wonders.  “The hardships of the Nigerian environment have undoubtedly driven Nigerians to an increasing fervour in the practice of religion. The progression from there is often downhill to the loud boisterousness of a marketplace dominated by large numbers of self-regarding and mechanical devotees. The hagglers are aggressive because they are convinced the stakes are high. Some say it’s about rescuing the souls of men from hell, and showing the way to a God-appointed prosperity here on earth, prosperity of the soul, mind and body”.

• Read the rest: Nigeria’s Superstar Men of God

Wendell Hassan Marsh maps the trajectories of Islam as it evolved in the New World and the limited definitions of Muslim communities in the African-American consciousness. In Re-Membering the Name of God, Marsh recounts the very personal story of his father finding his way to Islam, and through it “a foundational encounter that would inform a consciousness he has held for the rest of his life”.

“There is no god, but God, the man told my father. That one of his peers, another black man, had knowledge of a foreign language in an even more foreign script amazed my father. To know that God had a name that he didn’t know left him as thirsty as a man lost at sea. Soon thereafter, in search of the sweet taste of knowledge, my father started attending the lessons on theology, history, and language provided by the Nation of Islam at its Mosque No. 15. Though he never converted, he studied, and for the first time in his life found himself in the world of ideas, diving into the depths of a divine knowledge in the sea of words. For him, this story has always been as close as a non-Muslim could come to a shahada story, the account of when a Muslim makes their first declaration of faith.”

• Read the rest here.

In My Life as a Seventh Day Adventist,Paula Akugizibwe dives deep into the waters to discover if Jesus in fact lies in wait in the swimming pool.

“Jesus waits in the swimming pool. The tenth commandment lies in pieces all over my sinful heart as our queue snakes towards salvation. We are facing the pastor one by one, waist-deep in water warm and dirty from all the sinners that went before. Around the pool, the congregation is gathered, singing languidly as they hold up bibles to shield their faces from the sun: Coming home, coming home, never more to roam, Open wide Thine arms of love, Lord, I’m coming home.”

• Read the rest here