September 9, 1925 - Christiana Abiodun and the Cherubim and Seraphim Movement
Agbala Igbala Aladura – Cherubim and Seraphim Church International, Ipaja, Lagos, Nigeria.
On September 9, 1925, a Christian prayer movement in Lagos, Nigeria, took an important step toward becoming one of Africa's most distinctive independent churches. At its center was Christiana Abiodun Akinsowon, a seventeen-year-old Yoruba woman whose reported visions helped launch what became the Cherubim and Seraphim movement. Its emphasis on prayer, prophecy and divine healing attracted thousands, but some of its beliefs and practices also troubled Catholics, Anglicans, and other Protestants who questioned whether the movement remained within historic Christian boundaries.
Abiodun was born on December 25, 1907, into a Christian family. Sources differ over some details of her early denominational affiliation, although she was associated with Anglican Christianity by the time the events that made her famous occurred. Her story took a dramatic turn on June 18, 1925, when she attended a Roman Catholic Corpus Christi procession in Lagos.
During the procession, Abiodun reportedly saw an angel and entered an extended trance. Family members and others attempted unsuccessfully to revive her before Moses Orimolade Tunolase was summoned. Orimolade was a Yoruba evangelist already known for preaching, prayer, healing, and accounts of supernatural experiences. He prayed for Abiodun, who eventually emerged from the trance.
The encounter brought together two unusual figures: an experienced itinerant evangelist and a teenage woman who claimed to receive visions and revelations. Their followers began gathering for prayer, and on September 9, 1925, the developing organization became associated with the name “Seraphim.” “Cherubim” was added the following year, creating the name Cherubim and Seraphim.
The movement belonged to the larger family of churches that became known as Aladura, a Yoruba term commonly translated as “people of prayer.” These churches emerged from an African Christian environment already shaped by Anglican, Methodist, Baptist, Catholic, and other missionary traditions, but they placed considerably greater emphasis on prophecy, visions, dreams, spiritual healing, fasting, and supernatural intervention.
Those emphases also created theological conflict.
Many Protestants maintained that Scripture should be the final authority for Christian doctrine and therefore regarded claims of new revelations delivered through prophets and visionaries with suspicion. Catholics accepted continuing ecclesiastical authority and the possibility of private revelation but distinguished such experiences from the public revelation entrusted to the church and did not regard individual visions as sources of new Christian doctrine. From either perspective, revelations attributed to contemporary prophets could become problematic when they appeared to establish beliefs or practices beyond those recognized by the older churches.
Divine healing created another point of disagreement. Healing through prayer was certainly not foreign to historic Christianity, and neither Catholic nor Protestant churches rejected prayer for the sick. Critics instead questioned the degree to which some Aladura Christians emphasized supernatural healing and associated rituals. Later theological studies of Aladura healing have similarly distinguished between practices that can readily be understood within Christian traditions of prayer for healing and practices critics regard as lacking adequate biblical foundation.
Other practices created still greater uneasiness. White garments, bare feet in sacred spaces, extensive use of dreams and visions, ritual cleansing, sacred objects, and practices resembling elements of Yoruba religious culture made the movement appear to some mission-church Christians to blur the boundary between Christianity and traditional African religion. Scholars continue to debate how these similarities should be interpreted. C&S Christians themselves strongly rejected traditional gods and occult practices, while some outside critics nevertheless accused African Independent Churches of syncretism because certain forms of ritual and approaches to spiritual power appeared culturally familiar. Research on C&S practices demonstrates that this relationship between Christianity, biblical imagery, and Yoruba culture was considerably more complicated than simply combining two religions.
The movement's use of the Ark of the Covenant illustrates the controversy. Abiodun's branch eventually incorporated an object known as the Apoti Eri, or Ark of the Covenant, into its religious life. C&S believers understood such practices through biblical precedents, particularly the Old Testament. Critics countered that reproducing elements associated with ancient Israel could assign spiritual significance to physical objects that historic Christian churches did not believe Christians were commanded to use. Significantly, debates over the theological legitimacy of the Ark have occurred even among C&S Christians themselves.
These differences explain why some twentieth-century Christians used much harsher terminology than historians generally use today. African independent churches were sometimes described as “sects” or “cults,” and Protestant observers occasionally questioned whether particular groups were orthodox Christians at all. Yet even evangelical assessments acknowledged that African independent churches varied enormously: some were regarded as heretical, while others clearly confessed Jesus Christ as God and Savior and were recognized as authentically Christian despite substantial disagreements over their practices.
The C&S movement itself maintained that the Bible was its standard of faith and that prophecy, visions, and healing represented the continuation of practices found among biblical prophets and apostles. From that perspective, these practices were not departures from Christianity but a recovery of supernatural dimensions of Christianity that African believers believed Western mission churches had neglected.
Abiodun and Orimolade eventually separated in 1929, and the movement subsequently fragmented into numerous branches. Abiodun continued leading the Cherubim and Seraphim Society and became one of the most prominent female leaders in twentieth-century African Christianity. By the time of her death in 1994, churches descended from the movement had spread beyond Nigeria into other parts of Africa, Europe, and North America.
Why It Matters
The emergence of the Cherubim and Seraphim movement illustrates both the rapid Africanization of Christianity and the theological tensions accompanying that transformation. Its history raised enduring questions about biblical authority, continuing revelation, divine healing, indigenous culture, and the boundaries of Christian orthodoxy. The movement's survival and international expansion also demonstrate that African Initiated Churches became a significant part of twentieth-century global Christianity rather than a temporary departure from European missionary churches.