‘Recognizing Christianity’: How African Immigrants Redefine the European Religious Heritage

Professor Ramon Sarró
University of Lisbon, Institute of Social Sciences

How do African Immigrants shape novel forms of Christianity in European contexts?

Through an ethnographic analysis of local ‘politics of recognition’, i.e. how some churches fight for recognition and interact with mainstream Christianity, this project explores the role of religion in African diasporas and their capacity to help reconfigure the European religious heritage, influence national and regional identities within the continent, and establish connexions between Europe and Africa, but also across Europe.

We are engaged in a comparison of three national settings with a strong African presence (Portugal, United Kingdom and the Netherlands), each with its own colonial past and Christian traditions. We tackle the following sub-questions:

How does religion serve as resource for social and spiritual empowerment of African Christian migrants in European societies, in terms of citizenship, civil participation and social action?
What kind of identity formations can be seen among African Christian migrants and how are these formations related to the above-mentioned questions of empowerment?
How do African migrants and hosts, in particular the ‘European’ churches, interact with each other in terms of a ‘politics of recognition’ and ‘culture politics’?
What is the place of religion in the interplay between African migration and gender?

In order to address these questions, the following case-studies are to be undertaken: Kimbanguist and Tocoist movements in Lisbon and their relation with Catholic communities; the Celestial Church of Christ parish in Amsterdam; and the Redeemed Christian Church of God based in London. These case-studies will be put into dialogue in order to build an empirical framework that will provide the comparative basis for a common theoretical discussion.

Research Teams

In Portugal, the team is composed by Dr. Ramon Sarró (Lisbon), the PI of the whole project, Fátima Viegas (Lisbon/Luanda) and Dr. Ruy Blanes (Lisbon/Leiden). They are doing research on two churches that are historically linked: Kimbanguism and Tocoism, both born in Colonial Congo and Angola among Kikongo-speaking groups. They are already doing multisited ethnography between Angola and especially Lisbon. Ruy Blanes is a Post-doctoral fellow with a double affiliation (Lisbon and Leiden, where he is working on African Christianities under Prof. Peter Pels’ sponsorship). Fátima is doing a PhD on gender and healing in Kimbanguism and Tocoism in Luanda and in Lisbon.

In the UK the team is composed of Prof. Simon Coleman (Sussex) and Katrin Maier (PhD, Sussex). They will conduct research in the Nigerian Pentecostal Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG) in London and Nigeria from early summer onwards. At the moment they are concentrating on networking with academic experts and Nigerian community organisations throughout the UK. Apart from an overview of the role of Christianity in the Nigerian communities in London, their main interests are gender politics and dynamics in the migrant church, especially discourses and practices on body, purity and family, as well as the connections between the church and other activities of members in the urban context. More generally, they are interested in the links between religious belonging and spatial imaginaries within and beyond the city. All of these themes link in turn to the politics of recognition theme by raising issues about visibility within, and potential perceived compatibility with, ‘mainstream’ churches and other social bodies.

Although they aim to do detailed case studies in two of the RCCG branches in London later on, differently from the other two projects, they start off outside of the church itself, in the wider community.

In the Netherlands, Prof. Dr. Martha Frederiks (Utrecht) and Nienke Pruiksma (PhD, Utrecht) are working on the Celestial Church of Christ (CCC) in the Bijlmer district of Amsterdam. The CCC originally is an Aladura church founded in the 1940s in Benin/Nigeria. The research will offer an insight into the history, the hierarchical, inter- and transnational structures, the praxis and beliefs of the church. Nienke Pruiksma will conduct a case study on the particular issues women bring to the CCC beliefs and faith praxis: how these are affected by their specific context, namely of African women living as migrants in the Netherlands and how they contribute to the inculturation of the CCC’s structures, theology and inter-church relations in a new context. She will also pay attention to the interactions between the so-called migrant churches in general and the CCC in particular and the Dutch churches and ecclesial networks, asking in how far churches acknowledge each other and co-operate outside their denominational and cultural comfort zones.

The project team includes an advisory committee composed of Prof. Rijk van Dijk (Leiden) and Kristine Krause (Oxford, Berlin), who will participate in meetings, provide feedback and help us build networks with other research centres and projects.

Methodology

Our approach will be ethnographic, producing extended case-studies in each country. We shall carry out participant observation in churches, relevant public places and homes as well as collecting narrative and conducting semi-structured interviews. Additionally, print materials and websites will be analysed. To complement the participatory approach, we shall provide overviews of the spread of churches and relevant African diasporas within the urban contexts examined. To understand the role the researched religious groups play in a transnationalised religious context, multisited research is deployed, following biographies and networks of church members and authorities.

A significant aim is to put the three national contexts into dialogue. They provide diversified empirical contexts, with different historical and religious experiences, but all share the same challenges put by these new religious networks. Together, they address common issues about the re-emergence of religion - not only about its role among immigrant populations, but also in the reactions and forms of recognition they provoke in their host countries.

Because the three research teams are in constant exchange with each other, it is possible to gain insights into the vast religious landscapes all over Europe and West and Central Africa.