Charles Phillips (bishop)
| Charles Phillips | |
|---|---|
| Bishop of Ondo | |
|
In office 29 June 1893 – 1906 |
|
| Personal details | |
| Died | 1906 |
| Nationality | Nigerian |
| Occupation | Clergyman |
Charles Phillips was a member of the Church Mission Society (CMS) based in the Lagos Colony who became Bishop of Ondo.
Charles Phillips was the son of a former Egba slave also called Charles Phillips who returned from Sierra Leone to work as a catechist at Ijaye. Phillips gained his secondary education at the CMS Training Institution at Abeokuta. He was taught by G.F. Buhler, who served from 1857 to 1864. For twelve years Phillips was catechist at Breadfruit Church in Lagos. Phillips was ordained as a Native deacon on 5 March 1876, with Daniel Coker and Nathaniel Johnson. In 1873 Captain Glover, the Governor of Lagos colony, helped to restore the deposed king of Ondo to his throne. In gratitude, the king invited the CMS to establish a mission in his city. The mission was opened two years later. In January 1877 Phillips took charge as pastor at Ondo.
Conversion of the "heathen" Yoruba was helped by similarities or analogies between Christianity and the traditional Yoruba religion. In 1878 Phillips wrote of an old woman who became convinced that "prayer is more efficacious than sacrifice" after her husband and her brother recovered from illness. On the other hand, Phillips reported that "the generality of our Lagos young men begin to think that polygamy is not opposed to the principles of Christianity".
In the 1870s there were several outbreaks of smallpox. In July 1879, a Sango priest from out of town called on Phillips, and cynically described how he had accepted gifts to suppress the disease, which would not in fact happen until it had run its course and destroyed all the witches and charm-makers in the country. Later Phillips lost three of his four children to smallpox. He noted that some of the believers of the traditional religion attributed the disease to tolerance of Christianity by the Yorubas. His son Thomas King Ekundayo Phillips, born in 1884, would become for many years organist and Master of the Music at the Cathedral Church of Christ, Lagos.
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