Like Indian casinos, a key ingredient is a Group identity that creates a sharp and valuable distinction from the outside world.
Redemption city is the anti-Lagos https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2018/10/20/redemption-city-is-the-anti-lagos (via Instapaper) THE NEW church in Redemption City is only half-built. Already this great aeroplane hangar of a building measures 1.5km by 1km. Compared with it, Tesla’s “gigafactory” is a poky warehouse and St Peter’s Basilica is a quaint parish church. Yet the church is not the most extraordinary thing about Redemption City. Get our daily newsletter Upgrade your inbox and get our Daily Dispatch and Editor's Picks. In 1983 Enoch Adejare Adeboye, a former maths professor who had become General Overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, acquired a small patch of land north of Lagos, Nigeria’s biggest city. At first it was used for occasional prayer meetings. But as the church grew into one of the world’s largest under Mr Adeboye’s charismatic leadership, the prayer camp turned into a permanent settlement. Today about 12,000 people live in Redemption City, which sprawls over at least 2,500 hectares. The population is expected to double by 2036. Most African cities are messy, especially around the edges. Suburban roads are invariably crooked, unpaved and unsigned. Houses are plonked down wherever people can acquire land. Many homes are half-built, because their owners have no land titles and so cannot take out mortgages. To deter scammers, some of them are spray-painted with messages like: “This property is not for sale. Beware fraud”. In Redemption City the streets form a grid. The roads are signed, with names like Hallelujah Close and Praise Close. Some have speed bumps—things that would be wholly redundant on a normal African road. Every plot is the same size: 21.3 metres by 21.3 metres. There are few half-built houses, because the church checks that families have enough money to complete them, and sets a strict time limit. All the homes are in gated communities, numbering 15 so far. Everything tends to work. Whereas Lagos hums with diesel generators, Redemption City has a steady electricity supply from a small gas-fired power station. It also has its own water supply. “We make life easy,” says Pastor Fola Sanusi, the man in charge of Redemption City’s growth. The city also makes rules, of the kind that could never be enforced in the hurly-burly of Lagos. “No parking, no waiting, no trading, no hawking”, reads one sign. In theory, Redemption City is for members of the Redeemed Christian Church of God. When a family wants to move away, it is supposed to sell its house to the church, which will sell it on to a suitably pious person. Each house is supposed to have a “mission room” for the use of a church worker. In practice, however, the properties seem to be finding their way onto commercial estate agents’ websites. It is an odd place but not entirely exceptional. On the road between Redemption City and Lagos, other Pentecostal churches, such as the Mountain of Fire and Miracles Ministries, are building godly cities of their own. In Lagos, the large Deeper Life Bible Church has constructed traffic lights and a bridge, and has turned some parishioners into traffic wardens. Pentecostal Christianity has already remade many Africans’ spiritual lives. Now it is remaking their cities. This article appeared in the Middle East and Africa section of the print edition under the headline "The anti-Lagos" Sent from my iPhone -- -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
