HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DRAMA

Actually, the History of Christian Drama started as long as the world began and if we want to tell the story of Christian Drama you can imagine that all the book of this world can never contain the outcome from Genesis to Revelation. To learn more about this refer to my write up on Origin of Christian Drama and Film.

Now let's take a brief look on what has happened in Christian Drama World after Bible time. I categorized this into three major period of time, namely;

i.      Medieval Period

ii.  Puritan Period

iii. Modern Age

MEDIEVAL PERIOD: During this period of time Churches in Europe frequently performed what they called Mystery Plays. It is about retelling different stories of the Bible. This can also be referred to as Liturgical Plays because it was totally based on everything pertaining to Church mode of worship which was developed totally on presentation of Bible stories in churches accompanying by hymns and other kind of Christian Religious Songs. As the drama became more popular in those day it became more secular as well because many un-church people and non-clergy also showed interest and began to participate, this lead to its movement from the church by the year 13th or 14th century, which was later took over by the guilds, each guild, each guild took upon itself a particular piece of scriptural history and is why it was called Mystery Play through guild control.

According to Wikipedia:

"The mystery play developed into a series of plays dealing with all the major events in the Christian calendar, from the Creation to the Day of Judgment. By the end of the 15th century, the tradition of acting these plays in cycles on festival days (such as the Feast of Corpus Christi) was established across Europe."

 During this same medieval period, Mystery Play was developed into what was called Morality Play. these were allegories in which the protagonists represented or personified  various moral attitudes and this promoted the effects of living a life of virtue and good character worthy of emulations.

PURITAN AGE: During this age that fell between sixteenth and eighteenth century, the work of drama or theater was generally seen as wicked, ungodly and unscriptural, this made church of God made serious attempts to do away with it and pronounced it illegal.

Wikipedia has it that in the United States around eighteenth century the condemnation of drama or theater was widely spread which led President Timothy Dwight IV of Yale College to declare in one of his "Essay on the Stage" that "to indulge a taste for playgoing means nothing more or less than the loss of that most valuable treasure: the immortal soul."

Imagine the meaning of that sentence deeply. The essay simply waged severe war on drama or going to the theater. The man said in another words that to get yourself involve in drama or theater going was like playing with your eternal and invaluable soul meaning that doing so would lead you to hell.

MODERN AGE: The twentieth churches now rediscovered the use of theater as a kind of unique form of outreach to win soul for Christ: most especially evangelicals.

In Britain during this period it was illegal for any human actor to portray a divine personality on stage, this place a severe restrictions on Christian theater. Does it possible for Christian Drama ministers to act without presenting God, Jesus or Angel?

Wiki then has it that; in 1941/1942 there was a ground breaking radio drama called 'The Man Born to Be King" that destroyed the ban by including Jesus as character and even given him ordinary speech rather than biblical language. The law didn't cover Radio Portrayals then. Though the piece drew a lot of complaints, but there was nothing anyone can do, that was how that barrier was broken. See how God used the weak thing of the world to cause breakthrough in the world of Christian Drama.

The play of T. S. Eliot called Murder in the Cathedral explore Christian theme of martyrdom and sacrifice; brought into lime light what has happened in  the church history.

Many plays were also produced explaining Christian subjects, remarkably revealing Jesus Christ Superstar and the Gospel or Godspell. This brought many churches again to be turning to the use of drama as a means of reaching out to others about their faith in Christ. And small Christian theater began to spring up in Britain and America. Heaven’s Gate, Hell’s Flames were used for evangelism and a company called Covenant Players was founded 1963 for the purpose of producing Christian plays written by  its founder. The same way Truth Star Productions’ ICT Research Institute was founded in Nigeria for the purpose of online and offline research and to produce Christian movie across the earth apart from its own ministry’s film; The Pillar and Ground of the Truth (PGTM) Films in 1990. During this twentieth century as well in Nigeria we have many hero of drama, those who supposed to be called pioneers of Christian drama, Duro Ladipo, Hubert Ogunde, Moses Olaiya, etc. I learnt that most of them began their theatre career in the church but later end up in the secular. We also thank the Almighty for raising the real pioneer of Christian drama; Mount Zion Faith Ministry in 1985. The Pillar and Ground of the Truth Ministry in 1990, EVOM World Network, and others for the propagation of the gospel through drama, theatre and home video films.