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Anderson African Pentecostal Christians 1

What European Christians can learn from African Pentecostal Christians:


Issues of Plurality, Identity and Community

Allan Anderson
University of Birmingham

Introduction

In Kiev, Ukraine, possibly the largest and fastest growing congregation in Europe is
the Embassy of the Blessed Kingdom of God for All Nations. This church was founded
by a Nigerian Pentecostal, Sunday Adelaja in 1993 as the Word of Faith Bible Church.
Ten years later this single congregation of native Ukrainians had twenty thousand
members and had planted over a hundred other churches in the Ukraine and Russia,
in other parts of Europe and Central Asia and as far afield as the United Arab
Emirates and the United States. There is one other Charismatic megachurch in the
Ukraine, led by a Zimbabwean, Henry Madaba. 1 The largest single church
congregation in Britain today is the Kingsway International Christian Centre in
London led by another Nigerian, Matthew Ashimolowo, founded in 1992 and now
reputed to have some ten thousand members, the majority of West African origin.
The Redeemed Christian Church of God led by Enoch A. Adeboye, one of the largest
Pentecostal churches in Nigeria, recently reported over 150 churches in the USA and
many more in Europe. William Kimuyi’s Deeper Life Bible Church, with roots in
Nigeria’s Apostolic Church, had 150,000 members in its headquarters congregation
in Lagos and thousands of congregations scattered over Nigeria, other parts of Africa,
Europe and North America. The largest Protestant church in Ghana, the Church of
Pentecost, with one million members in Ghana, has commenced Ghanaian
congregations in many countries across Europe, currently (June 2004) having 176
churches and some four thousand members in twelve European countries. 2

These are some of the more remarkable instances of what has become a prominent
and rapidly growing feature of Christianity in Europe, seen by some observers as the
evangelization of the western world by Africans. Peter Wagner, controversial ‘church
growth’ guru, says that the ‘tables have turned’ and that (to paraphrase) ‘instead of
Africa’s being the mission field needing [‘western’] missionaries, [the North] is now
the mission field needing African missionaries’. 3 Ghanaian theologian Kwabena
Asamoah-Gyadu describes this as ‘mission in reverse’ and Gerrie ter Haar writes of
African migrants’ conviction of ‘Africa’s mission to bring the gospel back to those who
originally provided it’.4 Whatever our feelings in Europe about this, ‘African
missionaries’ certainly see this continent and North America in desperate need of
Anderson African Pentecostal Christians 2

their help. Some, Like Sunday Adelaja, give accounts of miraculous callings to be
missionaries in Europe, and in his case with a special responsibility to send
missionaries from the former Soviet Union ‘into the world, especially into China and
the Arab countries’.5 Sola Fola-Alade is a former medical doctor who pastors Trinity
Chapel in London, commenced in 1996 after his calling to be a ‘long-term missionary’
there.6 Others, like Nigerian pastor in Colorado Springs, Joseph Thompson, says that
the enormous expansion of Pentecostalism in Nigeria is a ‘sovereign move of God in
response to the fervent prayers of a spiritually, physically and emotionally tortured
nation’.7

It started with the so-called ‘spiritual churches’, an older form of African


Pentecostalism; and Nigerian ‘Aladura’ churches like the Christ Apostolic Church, the
Eternal Sacred Order of the Cherubim and Seraphim, and the Church of the Lord
(Aladura) planted churches in Europe in the 1970s. 8 The Redeemed Christian Church
of God, The Redeemed Evangelical Mission, and the Deeper Life Bible Church are
some of the prominent Nigerian churches that have been started in different parts of
Europe and North America mainly since the 1990s, but as yet, their impact has been
mainly among the migrant communities of African, especially of Nigerian origin.
African Pentecostalism is an important feature of European Christianity today. Ter
Haar calls this ‘nothing less than a new phase in the religious history of Europe’. 9
Wherever there are migrant African communities there are Pentecostal churches.
These burgeoning African churches have slowed the rate of decline in church
attendance in western Europe. Philip Jenkins suggests that ‘for the next few decades,
the face of religious practice across Europe should be painted in Brown and Black’. 10
These Pentecostal churches and their characteristic features, of course, have their
origins in Africa, even when (as often happens) the church established in Europe is
independent of any organization on the African continent.

This paper will look at the plurality and identity of these African Pentecostal churches
in Europe, and because my knowledge of the churches in Africa is better than that of
their offspring and mutations in Europe, I will concentrate here on briefly tracing
their emergence in Africa and conclude with suggesting some of the lessons this form
of Christianity has for churches in Europe.

The Identity and Plurality of African Pentecostalism

Pentecostalism is big business in Africa, and what is happening in Europe is but a


small reflection of what is happening on the mother continent. Understanding the
Anderson African Pentecostal Christians 3

different forms of Pentecostalism in Africa helps us also understand its present-day


proliferation in Europe. Statistics are notoriously difficult to calculate and verify, and
even more so in Africa. But the estimates for Christian affiliation at the beginning of
the twenty-first century reveal some amazing trends that any casual observer of
African Christianity will not find so incredible. According to one statistic that
included the predominantly Muslim north, 11% of Africa’s population was
‘Charismatic’ in 2000.11 Even if this figure is only roughly approximate, the
Pentecostal and Charismatic movements undoubtedly are becoming dominant forms
of Christianity on the continent, especially in the sub-Sahara. Whatever our opinion
or particular experience of Pentecostalism, it is a movement of such magnitude that
Christianity itself will never be the same. The mushrooming growth of Pentecostal
and Charismatic churches and the ‘Pentecostalization’ of older churches both
Protestant and Catholic, especially in Africa and other parts of the Majority World, is
a fact of our time. Ghanaian Presbyterian theologian Cephas Omenyo says that the
Pentecostal experience is becoming ‘mainline’ Christianity in Africa, ‘not merely in
numbers but more importantly in spirituality, theology and practice’. 12

The identity of African Pentecostals, whether in Africa or Europe, often depends on


who is making the definition and how this is achieved. 13 First of all, just as it is
difficult to speak of ‘European’ as some sort of monolithic whole, this is even more
the case with the term ‘African’, for there is far more cultural and ethnic
heterogeneity in Africa than in Europe. Identity is often related to structures of power
and oppression, and Europeans who study African Pentecostals need to make sure
that their studies do not impose or construct and identity that amounts to a subtle
form of marginalization. Nevertheless, prominent expressions of Christianity in the
sub-Sahara may be called ‘African Pentecostal’ churches because of particular,
common religious emphases that would in other respects be quite different. Despite
the inadequacies of such a generalized identity, the term ‘Pentecostal’ in this paper
refers to a divergent pluralism of African churches that emphasize the working of the
Spirit in the church, particularly with ecstatic phenomena like prophecy and speaking
in tongues, healings and exorcisms. These phenomena have been characteristic of the
development of Pentecostal and Charismatic churches throughout the world and are
widespread throughout Africa across a great variety of Christian churches, now
including many of the former European mission-founded churches. The movement
also includes thousands of African initiated churches (AICs) known collectively as
‘Spirit’ or ‘spiritual’ churches. The term ‘African Pentecostal’ also embraces two other
types of churches that are now growing more rapidly than the older AICs: those
churches of western, ‘Classical’ Pentecostal origin like the Assemblies of God and the
Anderson African Pentecostal Christians 4

Church of God, and the new independent Pentecostal and Charismatic churches and
‘ministries’ that have arisen since the seventies and of which the above-mentioned
churches in London and Kiev are prominent examples. Classical Pentecostal
denominations have been operating in Africa since 1907, when the first missionaries
from the Azusa Street revival in Los Angeles arrived in Liberia and Angola. The
Assemblies of God in particular has grown in almost every African country, with over
four million members estimated throughout Africa in 1994. 14 The several churches
emanating from West African revivals linking in the 1930s with the Apostolic Church,
a Classical Pentecostal denomination in Britain, are now enormous organizations
throughout this region, but especially so in Nigeria and Ghana, where churches like
the Christ Apostolic Church and the Church of Pentecost have membership
numbering millions.

But Pentecostal and Charismatic churches are actively growing throughout Africa and
have become a significant proportion of the population, especially in Kenya, the
Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa, Zimbabwe
and Zambia.15 This is an indication of the strength of African Pentecostalism today
and a reason for its spread with migration into Europe. I do not presume that African
Pentecostalism is anywhere near a homogeneous whole, as the variety and creativity
in African Christianity is remarkable. Most observers of African Christianity,
however, will admit that these churches have been in the forefront of the
contextualization of Christianity in Africa for over a century. The ‘Pentecostalization’
of African Christianity can be called the ‘African Reformation’ of the twentieth
century that has fundamentally altered the character of Christianity, including that of
the older, so-called ‘mission’ churches.16 No observer of African Christianity can
afford to ignore this important phenomenon. Jenkins says that ‘Africa has now for
over a century been engaged in a continuous encounter with Pentecostal fires, and
the independent churches have been the most obvious products of that highly
creative process’.17

There are thousands of these churches throughout the sub-Sahara, and although they
often do not call themselves ‘Pentecostal’ or ‘Charismatic’, most exhibit very similar
theologies and orientation; and it is their embellishments, not their fundamental beliefs,
that set them apart from more ‘evangelical’ churches. In several African countries,
independent churches of the older AIC and the newer Charismatic varieties form the
majority of Christians. This is also true of African Pentecostals in Europe. They all
practise gifts of the Spirit, especially healing and prophecy, and many speak in
tongues. Because of the ‘Spirit’ manifestations and pneumatic emphases and
Anderson African Pentecostal Christians 5

experiences of the African ‘Spirit’ churches, earlier studies on these movements often
misunderstood or generalized about them and branded them ‘syncretistic,’ ‘post-
Christian’ and ‘messianic.’ Unfortunately, these terms are still used pejoratively by
other African Pentecostals who see themselves as the ‘born again’ people of God,
while they see the others as not being ‘born again’, often based on misapprehension
and miscommunication. Part of the problem that outside observers have had with the
African independent churches is that they have often been seen as accommodating a
pre-Christian past, and to be linked with traditional practices like divination and
ancestor rituals. More recent studies have shown this to be a fallacy (in most cases)
and certainly not how these churches see themselves.

A Little African Church History

West Africa is one of the hot spots of the world as far as Pentecostalism is concerned,
which has rapidly become one of the most prominent and influential religious
movements across this region. African Pentecostalism has been there for almost a
century. Some of the first missionaries from the Azusa Street revival, including Lucy
Farrow (who first introduced revival leader William Seymour to Pentecostalism),
were African Americans who went to Liberia in 1907. Their stay was short-lived, some
died of tropical diseases (in at least one case, the Batmans, a whole family), and little
is known about their work or whether it even survived their departure. But the
complex West African Pentecostal history really begins with African preachers. One
of the most influential Christian prophets was the Grebo Liberian William Wade
Harris (1865-1929) who in 1913 began preaching in Côte d’Ivoire and on the west
coast of the Gold Coast (Ghana). He was a preacher of repentance and practised
healing and exorcism, and he is thought to have baptized some 120,000 adult
converts in a year. He is also reported to have spoken in tongues. French colonial
authorities deported him from Côte d’Ivoire in 1914, when village prayer houses set
up by his followers were also destroyed, but this was one of the greatest influxes of
Africans to Christianity ever seen. The Église d’Harriste in Côte d’Ivoire was only
officially registered in 1955, but by 2000 it had an estimated 200,000 adherents, one
of the four largest churches in the country. Other churches in the Côte d’Ivoire were
to emerge in the Harris tradition and Harris’ influence was to be felt in neighbouring
Ghana. There, the first ‘spiritual church’ to be formed was the Church of the Twelve
Apostles, begun in 1918 by Harris’s converts Grace Tani and Kwesi John Nackabah to
realize Harris’ instruction that twelve apostles should be appointed in each village to
look after his flock. This new church followed Harris’ emphasis on healing through
Anderson African Pentecostal Christians 6

faith and the use of holy water, administered in healing ‘gardens’ (communal
dwellings). In 1938 this church considered affiliating with the Apostolic Church from
Britain, a Classical Pentecostal denomination, but withdrew when their missionary
James McKeown insisted that tambourines be substituted for calabash rattles,
reportedly seen as an attempt to deprive Africans of the power to ward off evil spirits.

The four largest Pentecostal denominations in Ghana today are, consecutively, the
Church of Pentecost, the Assemblies of God, the Apostolic Church of Ghana, and the
Christ Apostolic Church. With the exception of the Assemblies of God with origins in
the USA, these churches originate in the work of a remarkable Ghanaian, Peter Anim
(1890-1984), and his Northern Irish contemporary James McKeown (1900-89).
Anim, regarded as the father of Pentecostalism in Ghana, came into contact with the
publication of the Faith Tabernacle church in Philadelphia, USA in about 1917 and
received healing from stomach ailments in 1921. He resigned from the Presbyterian
church to became an independent healing preacher who gathered a large following,
adopting the name Faith Tabernacle in 1922. Similar developments in Nigeria took
place at about the same time, when David Odubanjo became the leader of Faith
Tabernacle there. The USA congregation awarded recognition to these African
leaders entirely through correspondence, and no personal visits were ever made from
Philadelphia to West Africa. In the meantime, Anim’s evangelistic activities were
creating churches throughout southern Ghana and as far as Togo to the east. When a
report of the dismissal of the leader of Faith Tabernacle in Philadelphia reached Anim
in 1930, he broke the connection and changed the name of his organization to
Apostolic Faith, after a periodical he had read called Apostolic Faith from Portland,
Oregon (published by the Apostolic Faith Church founded by Florence Crawford,
another of the Azusa Street revival leaders). Two years later a Pentecostal revival
broke out in Amin’s church and many were baptized in the Spirit and spoke in
tongues. Nigerian leader Odubanjo made contact with the Apostolic Church in the UK
and Anim and two other leaders travelled to Lagos to meet their British
representatives in 1932. Anim affiliated with the Apostolic Church in 1935, and
negotiated with their Bradford, England headquarters for missionaries to be sent to
Ghana.

In 1937 James and Sophia McKeown arrived as these missionaries. When McKeown
contracted malaria soon afterwards, he was taken to hospital for treatment, a position
that Anim and his followers found deviating from their understanding of divine
healing without the use of medicine, and leading to their withdrawal in 1939 to found
the Christ Apostolic Church. McKeown himself came into conflict with the Apostolic
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Church and seceded in 1953 to form the Gold Coast (after independence, Ghana)
Apostolic Church. From the beginning, although McKeown was Chairman of the
church, he worked with an all-Ghanaian executive council, and Ghanaians took the
initiatives for the expansion of the church. To all intents and purposes this was an
autochthonous Ghanaian church. After a protracted legal battle over church
properties between the two Apostolic churches the name ‘Church of Pentecost’ (COP)
was adopted. In 1971 the COP affiliated with the Elim Pentecostal Church in Britain, a
cooperative arrangement that still exists. Elim have assisted in the areas of leadership
training, radio ministry, and publishing, and there is currently (2004) one British
Elim couple working in Pentecost University College, the ministerial training college
of the church now accredited by the University of Ghana in Legon. On McKeown’s
retirement and departure from Ghana in 1982, the COP was led by Ghanaians, as he
was followed as Chairman by Apostle F.S. Safo (1982-7), Prophet M.K. Yeboah (1988-
98), and Apostle Michael K. Ntumy, elected in 1998. Another Apostle, Dr Opoku
Onyinah, now Principal of Pentecost University College, completed his PhD in
Birmingham in 2002.18 In 1969 the three Anim-derived churches and the Assemblies
of God formed the Ghana Pentecostal Council. By 1998 150 denominations had
joined this organization, a remarkable and unusual feat of Pentecostal ecumenism. 19

In 1915, a popular Anglican revivalist preacher in the Niger River Delta of Nigeria,
Garrick Braide, preached the destruction of fetishes and healing through prayer. His
followers became the Christ Army Church, the first ‘spiritual church’ in Nigeria.
Braide himself was regarded as a threat to the British colonial authorities and was
imprisoned for seditious behaviour. In Yorubaland in western Nigeria, an Anglican
Church leader Joseph Shadare formed a prayer group in 1918 called the Precious
Stone Society to provide spiritual support and healing for victims of the influenza
epidemic. This group left the Anglican Church in 1922 over the issue of infant
baptism and affiliated with Faith Tabernacle, with an emphasis on divine healing and
adult baptism by immersion. Like in Ghana, the Nigerian leaders severed contact
with the church in the USA in 1925 over the matrimonial affairs of its leader. In the
same year, the Eternal Sacred Order of Cherubim and Seraphim Society was founded
by another Anglican, Moses Orimolade Tunolashe (who became known as Baba
Aladura, a title used by subsequent leaders of this church) and the fifteen year old girl
Abiodun Akinsowon (later called Captain Abiodun), for whom Orimolade was called
upon to pray for healing. Orimolade had begun preaching in about 1915 after partially
recovering from a long illness.20 This new movement emphasized prayer and so its
followers were called Aladura, (‘praying people’) a term that distinguished them from
other churches at the time. Orimolade and Abiodun parted company, but took the
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revival to other parts of Yorubaland, where the largest and most numerous AICs in
West Africa are now found.

A revival began in 1930 after a member of Faith Tabernacle, Joseph Babalola, came
into contact with Shadare and began preaching at Ilesha. Babalola heard a voice
calling him to preach using prayer and ‘water of life’ (blessed water) which would heal
all sicknesses. The church that Babalola helped establish had associated firstly with
Faith Tabernacle and then with the Apostolic Church after the arrival of British
missionaries in 1932. But in 1939 it followed Anim in Ghana and broke with the
Apostolic missionaries after they objected to the use of ‘ water of life’. The Africans in
turn objected to the missionaries using medicine and quinine for healing, a practice
they saw as compromising the doctrine of divine healing. 21 The Christ Apostolic
Church (CAC) was constituted in 1941 and is now probably still the largest
Pentecostal church in Nigeria and one of the largest AICs in Africa, with some two
million affiliates. This church follows the Apostolic Church in both polity and
theology but with significant modifications. Both in Ghana and Nigeria, after the
disagreements with European missionaries, the missionaries remained and formed
separate church organizations that still exist, the Apostolic Church being a significant
church in both countries.22 The Aladura movement in Nigeria, although influenced by
western Pentecostalism, was essentially an African Pentecostal revival mostly among
city people and marked by the rejection of traditional religionthe CAC also rejected
polygamy and the use of all medicine. In more recent times, the CAC in both Ghana
and Nigeria have modified their strict stance on medicine. By 1950 Aladura churches
were at the centre of Yoruba society and are still a significant and virile force in
Nigerian Christianity.

Since the 1970s, large independent Pentecostal and Charismatic congregations have
sprung up all over the world, particularly in Africa, beginning in Nigeria in 1971-2
with Benson Idahosa’s Church of God Mission International in Benin City and
William Kimuyi’s Deeper Life Bible Church in Lagos. These new churches often form
loose associations for co-operation and networking, sometimes internationally. 23 In
many parts of Africa the Pentecostal and Charismatic churches are the fastest
growing section of Christianity, appealing especially to younger, educated urban
people.24 West Africa, and in particular Nigeria and Ghana, has been the scene of an
explosion of a new form of Pentecostalism since the mid 1970s, to such an extent that
it may become the future shape of African Christianity, which turns increasingly
Charismatic.25 From West Africa this new Pentecostalism has spread rapidly
throughout the rest of Africa’s cities and new Pentecostal and Charismatic churches
Anderson African Pentecostal Christians 9

are becoming a major expression of Christianity in Africa. Their services are usually
emotional, enthusiastic and loud, especially as most make use of electronic musical
instruments. Some of these churches propagate the ‘prosperity gospel’, but
identifying them with this form of US Pentecostalism does not appreciate the African
religious context where prosperity and health has always been regarded as signs of
the blessings of God, nor does it recognise the reconstruction and innovations made
by these movements in adapting to a radically different context. The new Pentecostals
are increasing in popularity with educated and young professional people who
continue to give financial support and feel that their needs are met there. Methods
employed by these churches, like those of other Pentecostals, include door-to-door
evangelism, ‘cottage meetings’ held in homes of inquirers, preaching in trains, buses,
on street corners and at places of public concourse, and in ‘tent crusades’, both large
and small, held all over the continent. Access to modern communications has
resulted in the popularizing of some western ‘televangelists’, several of whom make
regular visits to Africa and broadcast their own programmes there. The strategies
employed by these evangelists are subject to criticism, but this new form of
Christianity has nevertheless appealed especially to the urbanized and more
westernized new generation of Africans. Many new Pentecostal and Charismatic
churches arose in the context of interdenominational and evangelical campus and
school Christian organizations like Scripture Union.

The growth of these churches has been most dramatic in Nigeria and Ghana where
Christianity has permeated every facet of society and is evident to any visitor. Small
businesses in West African cities proclaim its influence: ‘In the Name of Jesus
Enterprises’, ‘To God be the Glory Computers’, ‘Hands of God Beauty Salon’, ‘El
Shaddai Fast Foods’, and ‘My God is Able Cold Store’ are just a few of the hundreds of
names seen on visits to Ghana and Nigeria. Christian slogans are written all over cars,
vans and public vehicles. The commencement of this new Pentecostalism is probably
associated with the activities of the Church of God Mission International of
Archbishop Benson Idahosa (who died in 1998), with a ‘Miracle Centre’ headquarters
in Benin City, Nigeria. Idahosa briefly attended the independent Pentecostal college
of Christ for the Nations Institute in Dallas, Texas, in 1971 and then began the first of
many mass evangelistic ‘crusades’ for which he became well known. Idahosa’s wife
Margaret (now Bishop) heads the movement, which also runs the All Nations for
Christ Bible Institute, probably the most popular Bible school in West Africa, and one
of the means by which his message (and that of the new independent African
Pentecostalism) spread through West Africa. Idahosa had formal ties with other new
Pentecostal and Charismatic groups throughout Africa, especially in Ghana, where he
Anderson African Pentecostal Christians 10

held his first crusade in Accra in 1978. Another remarkable new church in Nigeria is
the Deeper Life Bible Church, which now has branches all over Africa and had over
half a million members in Nigeria only ten years after its founding. William
Folorunso Kumuyi, a former education lecturer at the University of Lagos, began
Deeper Life as a weekly Bible study group in 1973 and this soon spread to other parts
of Nigeria. When the first Sunday services were held in 1982, regarded as the
foundation date, a new church was formed, which now has some 800,000 affiliates.
In September 1999, a 50,000 capacity church sanctuary was dedicated for the Living
World Outreach (‘Winners Chapel’) of David Oyedepo, one of the largest church
buildings in the world. This organization commenced in 1989 and has spread to other
parts of Africa, most notably to Kenya. 26 The Redeemed Christian Church of God of
Enoch Adeboye has now probably the largest church sanctuary in the world at its
‘Redemption Ground’ between Lagos and Ibadan, to which literally hundreds of
thousands of people flock for a monthly ‘Holy Ghost’ service.

New Pentecostal and Charismatics are also prominent in Ghana. Bishop Nicholas
Duncan-Williams, leader of the largest and earliest new church founded in 1980,
Christian Action Faith Ministries, was a protégé of Idahosa (trained in his Bible
school) and formerly a member of the Church of Pentecost. Another large church is
the International Central Gospel Church founded in 1984 by Mensa Otabil, who has
recently opened a Christian university college. Christian Action Faith Ministries, the
International Central Gospel Church, Lighthouse International and of course, the
Church of Pentecost, are examples of some of the Ghanaian churches that have been
transplanted in Europe. The classical Pentecostals and the Spirit churches
undoubtedly have played a part in the emergence of these new groups in Africa. The
new Pentecostalism is a demonstration of a form of Christianity that appeals to a new
generation of Africans. Their more prominent preachers promote internationalism
and place high value on making overseas trips and hosting international conventions.
All this goes to show that African Pentecostalism is irrevocably part of the rapidly
changing face of twenty-first century global Christianity, and may be one of its most
important expressions.

The Lessons for European Christians

Some of the characteristics of the new African Christianity in Europe are also
characteristics of Pentecostalism as a whole: a belief in a divine encounter and the
involvement or breaking through of the sacred into the mundane, including healing
from sickness, deliverance from hostile, evil forces, and perhaps above all, a heady
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and spontaneous spirituality that refuses to separate ‘spiritual’ from ‘physical’ or


‘sacred’ from ‘secular’. I believe that there are many lessons for European Christians
to learn, and here I have highlighted only a few. This is not to suggest that African
Pentecostals are without their faults and failings or are to be exemplified in all
respects. I want to suggest the following features as important indicators of the need
for a steep learning curve within what remains of Christianity in Europe. There are
undoubtedly others, but these five are given as preliminary suggestions.

1. The African Christians have an infectious enthusiasm. Christian worship is a


joyful experience to be entered into with the whole person. No European can say
that the free, exuberant Christianity is merely because it is a cultural trait of
Africans to be enthusiastic, rhythmic and noisy. One has only to be at a premier
league football match to see that Europeans can have the same enthusiasm! The
problem is not the culture of the European masses; but it may have something to
do with the culture of our churches—perhaps this is one reason why the masses
are not attracted to them. A new emphasis on the role of the Spirit in the worship,
work and witness of the church is one of the main reasons for this enthusiasm,
and may be a neglected dimension in European Christianity. The experience of the
Spirit’s presence is seen as a normal part of daily life and is brought to bear upon all
situations. With a clear pneumatology, God’s salvation is seen in different
manifestations of God’s abiding presence through the Spirit, divine revelations
which assure us that ‘God is there’ to help in every area of need. Asamoah-Gyadu
puts it:

One of the major contributions of African Christians, particularly Pentecostals and


charismatics, to Western Christianity is the attention it draws to the fact that
Christianity is about experience and that the power of God is able to transform
circumstances that Western rationalist theologies will consider the preserve of
psychology and scientific development.27

Holistic, ecstatic, and experiential religious practices are found in Christianity


throughout the world today. The antiphonal singing, simultaneous and
spontaneous prayer, dance and motor behavior found throughout worldwide
Pentecostalism, all of which are also essentially African practices, emphasize the
freedom, equality, community, and dignity of each person in the sight of God. The
experience of the power of the Spirit can be a unifying factor in a global society
that is still deeply divided, and it can be the catalyst for the emergence of a new
society where there is justice for all and hope for a desperately violent world.
Anderson African Pentecostal Christians 12

2. With their enthusiasm, African Christians have a positive attitude to their


mission in Europe. Many come to Europe unencumbered by out-of-date
ecclesiastical structures and hierarchies. With a sense of divine call to do
something important for God, they see the success of other expatriate Africans
who have started significant churches and believe that they can do the same.
Pentecostals place primary emphasis on being ‘sent by the Spirit’ and depend
more on what is described as the Spirit’s leading than on formal structures.
People ‘called by God’ are coming to Europe simply because the Spirit directed
them to, often through some spiritual revelation like a prophecy, a dream or a
vision, and even through an audible voice perceived to be that of God. The result
is that African church leaders approach their ministry and involvement in the
church with abandoned commitment, often with self-sacrifice and hardship, in
order to see their divine vision realised. Not all have the success they dream of,
but their dedication to the mission of the church is exemplary. Those African
churches that have succeeded in Europe give us case studies for understanding
how churches can grow in this context. Despite important social and historical
factors, fundamentally it’s the ability of African Pentecostals to adapt to and fulfill
religious aspirations that continues to be their main strength. We should more
precisely define these aspirations, to help answer the question of whether
European churches are addressing these needs today. Years ago, Harold Turner
suggested that African independent churches offer solutions to problems existing
in all Christianity, ‘a series of extensive, long-term, unplanned, spontaneous, and
fully authentic experiments from which [Christianity] may secure answers to
some of its most difficult questions’. 28 This is just as true today of African
churches in Europe, which implicitly urge European Christians to seriously
reconsider the effectiveness, the content, and the relevancy of the church’s mission.
We must be humble enough to learn from this example, which makes full use of
opportunities to proclaim the gospel in word and deed. Whether in personal
counsel, or at night vigils, where the whole community gathers to comfort and be
comforted, or during church weekend conference celebrations, African Pentecostals
use these and many other occasions to zealously evangelize and minister to the felt
needs of people, resulting in the growth of the church.

3. The nature of church leadership is a fundamental historical difference between


Pentecostal and older European churches. In Pentecostal practice, the Holy Spirit
is given to every believer without preconditions. One of the results of this was that
the dichotomy between ‘clergy’ and ‘laity’ does not usually exist in Pentecostal
churches.29 Until comparatively recently, Pentecostals have not had a tradition of
Anderson African Pentecostal Christians 13

formal training for ‘ministers’ as a class set apart, and Pentecostal leaders are
those whose primary qualification has been a ‘call of God’ and an ability to preach
effectively. As Klaus and Triplett point out, the ‘general minimizing of the
clergy/laity barrier’ is because ‘the emphasis has been on the whole body as
ministers supernaturally recruited and deployed. Since the Holy Spirit speaks to
all believers equally, regardless of education, training or worldly rank, each
member is capable of carrying out the task’. 30 This strong emphasis on
charismatic leadership is a feature of African Pentecostalism today and is
accompanied by inevitable problems (especially the emergence of dictatorial
leaders), but it results in churches that are often well organised and where the
emphasis is on hearing the ‘word of God’ relevant to the daily needs of the
hearers.

4. The phenomenon of these churches in Europe indicates that there are unresolved
questions facing the church, such as the role of ‘success’ and ‘prosperity’ in God’s
economy, enjoying God and his gifts, including healing and material provision,
and the holistic dimension of ‘salvation now’. This seems to be a major cause of
concern for European observers, but many African Pentecostals see financial
success and prosperity as evidence of the blessing of God and the reward for faith
in difficult financial circumstances. However, this ‘prosperity’ is also seen as the
means for advancing the work of God and for the ability to give generously to the
needy. The ‘here-and-now’ problems being addressed by these new Pentecostal
and Charismatic churches are problems that still challenge the church as a
whole.31 One Nigerian preacher puts it like this:

We live in rather difficult times; dreams are constantly being dashed against the rocks
of adversity. People desperately need to know that things will get better. … We preach
that there is hope for tomorrow beyond yesterday’s failure. … We preach that miracles
still happen! God still fixes shattered lives. Often, the only thing that prevents a
suicide from taking place is one word of hope or comfort. This message of hope
transcends race, culture, class and creed. Everybody needs hope. A church that
preaches a message that gives people hope, encouragement and healing will never
lack for attendance.32

The remarkable growth of African Christianity in the midst of incredible


economic, political and natural adversity, and the corresponding decline in
membership among older churches in Europe means that the strategies of the
African churches should be examined. There might be something that they are
doing right from which all Christians can learn in the ongoing task of proclaiming
the gospel. And conversely, there might be something that the European churches
Anderson African Pentecostal Christians 14

failed to do or did wrongly which has resulted in their huge decline. Important
questions are raised about the relevance of the faith and life of older churches in
Europe. If outsiders perceive their teachings and practices as powerless to meet
their everyday felt needs, then these churches should not continue with ‘business
as usual’ in the face of such obvious shortcomings.

5. The church is seen as a community of God’s people, called out from the world
around it, and with a distinct mission. Like Pentecostal and Charismatics
everywhere, these new churches have a sense of identity as a separated
community whose primary purpose is to promote their cause to those outside.
‘Church’ for these Africans is the most important activity in life, and Christianity
is brought to bear upon every situation, whether it is obtaining a visa to remain in
the country, receiving employment, dealing with racism and rejection, finding
financial help, advice regarding marriage and family affairs, or healing from
sickness and other afflictions seen as the attack of Satan. In short, the Church
becomes a caring, therapeutic community for migrant Africans, and at once a
refuge from the storms and difficulties of a new life and an advice centre for every
possible eventuality. It serves as a tool to help integrate its members into the new,
foreign environment and to cushion them against its lurking dangers. But the
most important lesson must surely be that the European churches, influenced by
their individualistic and secular society, has largely lost this sense of therapeutic
community and belongingness that is so much a central characteristic of African
Christianity. European Christians are an endangered species that needs to regain
this essential feature of koinonia (togetherness, sharing) if they are to be at all
effective in the world of twenty-first century Europe. Indeed, it might be the way
to avoid further decline and possible extinction. African Christians might have
come to Europe for such a time and task as this.

© 2004 Allan Anderson


Anderson African Pentecostal Christians 15

NOTES
1
Sunday Adelaja, ‘Go to a Land that I will Show You!’, in C. Peter Wagner and Joseph Thompson (eds.), Out of Africa
(Ventura, CA: Regal Books, 2004), 14, 37-55; Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu, ‘Reversing Christian Mission: African Pentecostal
Pastor Establishes “God’s Embassy” in the Ukraine’, unpublished paper, May 2004.
2
These include the UK, Ireland, Belgium, Holland, Norway, France, Spain, Switzerland, Italy, Germany, Austria and Greece
(Email communication from Dr Opoku Onyinah, Church of Pentecost, Accra, Ghana, 11 May 2004).
3
C. Peter Wagner, ‘Introduction’, in Wagner & Thompson, Out of Africa, 8-9.
4
Asamoah-Gyadu, ‘Reversing Christian Mission’, 1; Gerrie ter Haar, Halfway to Paradise: African Christians in Europe
(Cardiff Academic Press, 1998), 1.
5
Adelaja, ‘Go to a Land’, 47.
6
Sola Fola-Alade, ‘Missionary to London’ in Wagner & Thompson, Out of Africa, 122.
7
Joseph Thompson, ‘Rising from the Mediocre to the Miraculous’, in Wagner & Thompson, Out of Africa, 34.
8
There is some debate whether these multifaceted churches should be considered ‘Pentecostal’. Following Walter
Hollenweger and Harvey Cox, I argue that they be considered ‘Pentecostal’ in view of their Spirit manifestations and in many
cases because of their historical and theological affinities to ‘classical’ Pentecostalism. However, most ‘Spirit’ churches do not
identify themselves as ‘Pentecostal’ and are usually not considered as such by other churches. See Allan Anderson, African
Reformation: African Initiated Christianity in the Twentieth Century (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2001), 16-17.
9
ter Haar, Halfway to Paradise, 3.
10
Philip Jenkins, The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 99.
11
Patrick Johnstone & Jason Mandryk, Operation World, (Carlisle, UK: Paternoster, 2001), 21.
12
Cephas N. Omenyo, Pentecost Outside Pentecostalism: A study of the development of Charismatic renewal in the
mainline churches in Ghana (Zoetermeer, Netherlands: Boekencentrum, 2002), 306.
13
ter Haar, Halfway to Paradise, 82.
14
Everett A. Wilson, Strategy of the Spirit: J Philip Hogan and the Growth of the Assemblies of God Worldwide 1960-1990
(Oxford: Regnum, 1997), 119.
15
The countries have over a quarter of the total population that can be classified as ‘African Pentecostal’. Allan Anderson, An
Introduction to Pentecostalism (Cambridge University Press, 2004), 103-4.
16
Harvey Cox, Fire from Heaven: The rise of Pentecostal spirituality and the reshaping of religion in the twenty-first century
(London: Cassell, 1996), 246; Anderson, African Reformation, 4-5.
17
Jenkins, The Next Christendom, 51.
18
Opoku Onyinah, ‘Akan Witchcraft and the Concept of Exorcism in the Church of Pentecost’, PhD thesis, University of
Birmingham, 2002.
19
E. Kingsley Larbi, Pentecostalism: The Eddies of Ghanaian Christianity (Accra, Ghana: Centre for Pentecostal and
Charismatic Studies, 2001), 99-294.
20
Harold W. Turner, History of an African Independent Church (1) The Church of the Lord (Aladura) (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1967), 6, 11-2.
21
J.D.Y. Peel, Aladura: A Religious Movement among the Yoruba (Oxford University Press, 1968), 91; Turner, History, 32;
Johnstone & Mandryk, Operation World, 488.
22
Turner, History, 22-5; Johnstone & Mandryk, Operation World, 241, 421.
23
Vinson Synan, The Holiness-Pentecostal Tradition: Charismatic Movements in the Twentieth Century (Grand Rapids, MI:
Eerdmans, 1997), 275-8.
24
Paul Gifford, African Christianity: Its Public Role (London: Hurst, 1998), 334-9; Simon Coleman, The Globalisation of
Charismatic Christianity: Spreading the gospel of prosperity (Cambridge University Press, 2000), 31-6.
25
Allan Anderson, ‘The Newer Pentecostal and Charismatic Churches: The Shape of Future Christianity in Africa?’, Pneuma
24:2 (2002), 167-84; Anderson, African Reformation, 167-90.
26
Anderson, African Reformation, 172-5; Johnstone & Mandryk, Operation World, 421, 488.
27
Asamoah-Gyadu, ‘Reversing Christian Mission’, 4.
28
Harold W. Turner, Religious Innovation in Africa (Boston: G.K. Hall, 1979), 209.
29
Willem A. Saayman, ‘Some reflections on the development of the Pentecostal mission model in South Africa’, Missionalia
21:1, April1993 (40-56), 43.
30
Byron D. Klaus & Loren O. Triplett, ‘National Leadership in Pentecostal Missions’, in M.A. Dempster, B.D. Klaus & D.
Petersen (eds) 1991. Called and Empowered: Global Mission in Pentecostal Perspective (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1991, 225-
241), 226.
31
Anderson, African Reformation, 175-86.
32
Paul Adefarasin, ‘The kingdoms of this world’, in Wagner & Thompson, Out of Africa, 144.

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