The spread of African Christianity to Europe (including Britain) and North America over the last six decades has heralded a distinctive phase in global church history. Religion, which had been hitherto ignored as one of the motivations for migration, is gradually becoming a major mover in the global proliferation of African Christianity to the point that it is now a transatlantic phenomenon. Britain’s Black Majority Churches (BMCs) make use of self-representation and symbolic mapping in their discourses. The image of Britain as a post-Christian nation is projected with such epithets as “dead continent,” “prodigal nation,” and “secularized Britain.” It is apt to note that Britain’s BMCs are but one case of reverse mission that, in reality, more resembles migrant sanctuaries all across the Western world. The lack of understanding of the British culture, flawed church-planting strategies, and the operational methods employed by these churches have severely hampered the BMCs’ missionary endeavors in Britain.
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M. Gornick, Word Made Global: Stories of African Christianity in New York City (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2011).
P. Brierley, 21 Concerns for 21st Century Christians (Kent: ADBC Publishers, 2011), 3; see also P. Brierley, ed., UK Christian Handbook: Religious Trends, vol. 5 (Worcester: Christian Research, 2005), and P. Brierley, ed., Religious Trends in the UK (Worcester: Christian Research, 2006).
A. F. Walls, “Mission and Migration: The Diaspora Factor in Christian History,” Journal of African Christian Thought 5, no. 2 (December 2002): 10.
G. Ter Haar, Halfway to Paradise: African Christians in Europe (Cardiff: Cardiff Academic Press, 1998), 3.
P. Jenkins, The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 125.
Edward Blyden, cited in J. Hanciles, Beyond Christendom (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2008), 350.
P. Freston, “Reverse Mission: A Discourse in Search of Reality,” PentecoStudies 9, no. 2 (2010): 158.
J. Swanson, Echoes of the Call: Identity and Ideology Among American Missionaries in Ecuador (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 139.
S. Adelaja, Church Shift: Revolutionizing Your Faith, Church, and Life for the 21st Century (Lake Mary, FL: Charisma House, 2008), xxvi.
A. Adogame, “Up, Up Jesus! Down, Down Satan! African Religiosity in the Former Soviet Bloc — the Embassy of the Blessed Kingdom of God for all Nations,” Exchange Journal of Missiological and Ecumenical Research 37 (2008): 317; see also A. Dobrovolsky, ed., Olorunwa: There is God — Portrait of Sunday Adelaja (Kiev: Fares Publishing, 2007).
O. Kalu, “The Third Response: Pentecostalism and the Reconstruction of Christian Experience in Africa, 1970-1995,” Journal of African Christian Thought 1, no. 2 (1998): 3-16.
C. Währisch-Oblau, “From Reverse Mission to Common Mission . . . We Hope: Immigrant Protestant Churches and the Programme for Cooperation between German and Immigrant Congregations of the United Evangelical Mission,” International Review of Mission 89, no. 354 (July 2000): 260.
J. K. Asamoah-Gyadu, “African Pentecostal on Mission in Eastern Europe: The Church of the ‘Embassy of God’ in the Ukraine,” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 27, no. 2 (Fall 2005): 314.
C. Währisch-Oblau, “‘Getting Ready to Receive?’ German Churches and the ‘New Mission’ from the South,” Lausanne World Pulse (July 2008), available at http://www.lausanneworldpulse.com/themedarticles.php/971/07-2008?pg=all (last accessed October 23, 2011).
V. Y. Mudimbe, cited in R. Marshall, Political Spiritualities: The Pentecostal Revolution in Nigeria (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 54.
M. Frost and A. Hirsch, The Shaping of Things to Come (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2003), 12.
E. Gibbs and I. Coffey, Church Next: Quantum Changes in Christian Ministry (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2001), 226.
N.T. Wright, The Radical Evangelical: Seeking a Place to Stand (London: SPCK, 1997), 8.
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The spread of African Christianity to Europe (including Britain) and North America over the last six decades has heralded a distinctive phase in global church history. Religion, which had been hitherto ignored as one of the motivations for migration, is gradually becoming a major mover in the global proliferation of African Christianity to the point that it is now a transatlantic phenomenon. Britain’s Black Majority Churches (BMCs) make use of self-representation and symbolic mapping in their discourses. The image of Britain as a post-Christian nation is projected with such epithets as “dead continent,” “prodigal nation,” and “secularized Britain.” It is apt to note that Britain’s BMCs are but one case of reverse mission that, in reality, more resembles migrant sanctuaries all across the Western world. The lack of understanding of the British culture, flawed church-planting strategies, and the operational methods employed by these churches have severely hampered the BMCs’ missionary endeavors in Britain.
All Time | Past Year | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 725 | 134 | 11 |
Full Text Views | 247 | 16 | 2 |
PDF Views & Downloads | 212 | 47 | 6 |