Transnational Nigerian-Initiated Pentecostal Churches, Networks and Believers in Three Northern Countries

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Transnational Nigerian-Initiated Pentecostal Churches, Networks and Believers in Three Northern Countries

Professor André Droogers
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology

Postdoctoral researcher: Dr. Kim E. Knibbe
Investigator A: Prof. Dr. Michael Bergunder, University of Heidelberg
PhD candidate: Anna Quaas
Investigator B: Prof. Dr. Allan Anderson, University of Birmingham
Postdoctoral researcher: Dr. Richard Burgess

Contact: af.droogers@fsw.vu.nl

How do transnational Pentecostal churches, networks and believers from Nigeria operate in public space in Germany, Britain and the Netherlands, and to what extent are they representatives of religion as a re-emerging social force? This was the question central to the project on Nigerian-initiated Pentecostal churches that took place from 2007-2010.

Forms of global Christianity that originate in the Southern Hemisphere are increasingly negotiating public space in the Western European religious landscape. In the Southern Hemisphere continents, Pentecostalism is the fastest growing religion, its membership having multiplied in thirty years by a factor 7, now possibly numbering an estimated half a billion people (Anderson 2004:1).

Nigeria has an established Pentecostal landscape, arguably the most dynamic in the whole of Africa often with a significant missionary impulse and theological influence on other African Christians. These churches also circulate large amounts of printed and audio-visual material, providing ample sources for researching religious identity production (Hackett 1998, Ukah 2005).

Pentecostalism is by origin a global movement with a worldwide mission. Pentecostals often view themselves as world citizens - as is expressed in church names such as Jesus House for All Nations. Although many migrants come to Europe for economic or educational purposes, they sometimes reformulate their life-story in religious terms, interpreting their migration as directed by God to reclaim secularized Europe for Christianity. Central to the project was a focus on one particular Nigerian-initiated (Yoruba) church, the Redeemed Christian Church of God, active in all three countries.

This church, like other Nigerian-initiated Pentecostal churches operates effectively with a transnational strategy. Through their activities in Europe, they are tied in with other large scale processes such as migration, globalisation, the deprivatization of religion and the reconfiguration of urban spaces. The research of this project shows that they are quite clearly a social force in Europe: they are expanding, finding new ways of being present in public spaces and engaging with society, and are instrumental in constituting the spaces of the African Diaspora and shaping the self-conception of their members as valuable members of their host society. Furthermore, they contribute to the awareness of the European mainline churches that Christianity’s centre of gravity is moving south. All this is visible quite strongly in Britain, to a lesser extent in the Netherlands, and least in Germany.

Results were presented jointly during the annual GloPent conferences organized in Heidelberg in 2007, in Birmingham in 2009, at the concluding conference of this project in Amsterdam, and at the NORFACE conferences. The researchers have also disseminated their findings through individual presentations at conferences, public lectures and in numerous publications.

Selected publications:

Burgess, R. (2008) Freedom from the past and Faith for the Future. Nigerian Pentecostal Theology in Global Perspective. PentecoStudies, 7 (2), 29-63.

Burgess, R. (2009) African Pentecostal Spirituality and Civic Engagement: The Case of the Redeemed Christian Church of God in Britain. Special Issue on Global Pentecostalism, Journal of Beliefs and Values, 30 (3), 255–73.

Burgess, R., Knibbe, K. & Quaas, A. (2010) Nigerian-initiated Pentecostal Churches as a Social Force in Europe: The Case of the Redeemed Christian Church of God. PentecoStudies, 9, 97-121.

Knibbe, K. (2009) We came here as landlords, not as tenants: Nigerian Pentecostal churches and the power of maps. African Diaspora, 2 (2), 133-158.

Knibbe, K. & van der Meulen, M. (2009) The role of spatial practices and locality in the Constituting of the Christian African Diaspora. African Diaspora, 2 (2), 125-130.

Quaas, A. & Haustein, J. (2009) Die Pfingstbewegung. In Mühling, M. (ed.) Kirchen und Konfessionen. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 170-185.

Quaas, A. (2010) Transnationale Pfingstkirchen. Christ Apostolic Church und Redeemed Christian Church of God in Nigeria und Deutschland als Teil internationaler Netzwerke. Diss. University of Heidelberg.