Our History
From Moses Orimolade Tunolase's beginnings in Ikare-Akoko to the movement's founding in Lagos in 1925, the registration of Unification in 1999, and a century of witness marked in 2025.
The founder
Moses Orimolade Tunolase was born in 1879 as Orimolade Okejebu, of the Tunolase branch of the Oshodi Dynasty of Ikare-Akoko, in present-day Ondo State. He took the name Moses at his Christian baptism. Before 1924 he travelled as an itinerant evangelist through what are now Kogi, Kwara, Oyo, and Osun States, arriving in Lagos in 1924.
A movement born in Lagos, 1925
In June 1925 came the encounter, described in the church's own account as mysterious, between Orimolade and Christiana Abiodun Akinsowon, out of which grew a prayer and revival fellowship led by the two of them. On 9 September 1925 the movement was founded, first bearing the name Seraphim; Cherubim was added to the name before the end of that year.
From that beginning grew one of the great families of the Aladura tradition, Nigerian-founded churches marked by white garments and by prayer at the centre of everything.
Growth, and division
In 1929 an internal dispute divided the movement into two groups, one led by Orimolade and the other by Abiodun; further divisions followed, creating the many organized C&S church bodies that exist today, each with its own conferences, congregations, and leadership, in Nigeria and across the world.
Unification: registered 9 September 1999
On 9 September 1999, the 74th anniversary of the movement's founding, Cherubim & Seraphim Unification Church of Nigeria was registered as an umbrella body: a conference of conferences through which organized C&S bodies work, in the words of the church's own account, to "restore the unity of the C&S", to standardize liturgy and practice as far as possible, and to propel the development of the C&S "to an enviable standard".
Unification's members are organized church bodies, not individuals, and not every C&S church worldwide belongs to it. Each constituent body keeps its own identity and governance; Unification is the table they share.
A century of witness: the 2025 centenary
On 9 September 2025 the wider movement marked one hundred years since its founding. The centenary belonged to the whole Cherubim & Seraphim family in all its branches, a moment of thanksgiving now part of the movement's history. It was the movement's anniversary, not the anniversary of Unification's own 1999 registration.
The facts above are as published on the current official website and are flagged for confirmation. A fuller, officially reviewed history, including the stories of the constituent bodies, will be published with the heritage archive.
For the fully cited reference version of this history, see the encyclopedia article.