Renie Chow Choy, Ancestral Feeling: Postcolonial Thoughts on Western Christian Heritage, (London: SCM Press, 2021)

by Philip Lockley

This is a profoundly stimulating and personal book examining the complex feelings that Christians from elsewhere in the world can have about the European heritage of the faith which they or their families received through colonial missionary movements. Renie Chow Choy is a historian of medieval Europe and teaches church history at St Mellitus College. The “ancestral feeling” Choy explores has multiple meanings. It is a sense of connection (or otherwise) to the Christian forebears she studies, teaches, or remembers when visiting heritage sites such as ruined monasteries, ancient churches or John Wesley’s London home. It is also the emotions evoked by contemplating family origins and faith stories – in Choy’s case, her grandparents’ migration from rural China to colonial Hong Kong, her parents’ Christian formation in Hong Kong and Canada, and her own moves and sense of home in the UK.

Choy begins by recognising a tension and an irony in the notion of “Christian heritage” in the West. Political rhetoric defending Europe and North America’s Christian heritage tends to carry racial and nationalistic implications. These are designed to exclude immigrant or non-white groups from a sense of belonging. And yet the West’s colonial past also generated missionary movements that produced today’s global majority Christians. Millions of Asian, African and South American Christians can themselves feel significant attachment to Western Christian heritage and consider it their own faith heritage too. An array of denominational affiliations – Catholic, Anglican, Baptist, Methodist, Reformed, Pentecostal and more – have each generated an instinctive affinity to the West through inherited hymns, devotional literature and ecclesial architectural styles. Western theologians and church founders, as well as pioneer missionaries, are all felt to be their ancestors in the faith too.

Choy acknowledges the postcolonial critique of such affinities as a hold-over from empire, meaning colonised people lose not only their land but also their history. Christian historiography can in this sense be a form of colonial hegemony. However, Choy strongly rejects an assumed corrective to this will come from tracing and narrating an alternative Chinese Christian history for the Chinese, or African church history for Africans. Adopting such a remedy, Choy asserts, “only serves to divide, alienate, marginalize and tribalize, and it is a thin disguise for exclusionary habits” (p.22). Instead, Choy seeks through her book to “find a way to think about the history of Western Christianity that promotes an inclusive memory and fosters belonging” (p.25).

Choy sets about this by weaving together reflections on the history of Christianity (especially the forms of Protestant Christianity exported to British colonies) and strands of narrative recovering the personal experiences, trials and commitments of her biological ancestors. The result is consistently thought-provoking, admirably deft in its handling of a range of sociological and cultural theories, and wonderfully fresh in the perspective it offers.

Not long before Choy will have been finishing Ancestral Feeling, the Church of England’s Racial Justice Commission published a report, From Lament to Action, which acknowledged racism’s influence in the church extended to the process of remembering and retelling the church’s story. Racism has shaped what and who is remembered and forgotten, and to whom a church’s history is perceived to belong. From Lament to Action calls for a healthier focus on memory and history, and an opening up of new avenues for dealing with aspects of the past understood and shared differently. Ancestral Feeling delivers such a focus and such an avenue for understanding in an exemplary way. The book is recommended to anyone interested is discovering how a creative historian has served this important work for the health and future of the global church.

More from this issue

The post Book review: Ancestral Feeling appeared first on Church Mission Society (CMS).

Sustainability, African identity and climate justice: reframing the climate conversation

by Israel Oluwole Olofinjana

Introduction

As an African missionary pastor resident in the UK, the area of my scholarly research has been examining the reverse mission of African Christians in Britain. Reverse mission in this context is understood as a divine strategy to establish or usher in God’s kingdom in the West. This is not to say that God’s kingdom is not already present, but that the migration of Majority World Christians brings a missiological significance in terms of God’s multi-ethnic kingdom. But a further question I have been wrestling with is: what crucial role does African identity play in the mission of African Christians in Britain? How does African identity impact their mission? Does it enhance or hinder it? Part of answering these questions has been to develop what I refer to as African British theology, which posits that confidence in African identity is essential for the success of the African missionary enterprise in a contested multicultural British society, but that this is not a substitute for a contextual approach to mission.^[1] African British theology is essentially developing African theology in Britain as an intercultural missiology and public theology.

As a postcolonial theology, one of the major preoccupations of this theological thought is interrogating western public theology as it relates to racial justice and climate justice concerns. This paper therefore examines western notions of sustainability and offers new insights on how we can define and measure sustainability. It shifts the conversation on sustainability from an economic perspective to an anthropological perspective. The paper further proposes that we need a new understanding on how we tackle climate justice that incorporates racial justice thinking. This is in developing a brown theology that resonates with the brown agenda. This is different from a western green theology, which situates conversations on the environment in the green agenda. Too often our conversations on climate justice are rooted in ecology, but if we are going to tackle the intersection of climate and racial injustice, we clearly need an approach to climate justice that is rooted in anthropology: a theological anthropology that seeks the redemption of the collective notion of humanity through a reconciled community.

A working definition of racial justice in this essay is the strategic thinking and action to combat institutional, structural and personal racism that dehumanises people of colour created in God’s image. Climate justice as used in this paper refers to our shared responsibility to speak up and take action to safeguard the rights and dignity of those disproportionately affected by climate change. Climate change in this context is understood as the results from the impact of our actions and inactions on our world.^[2]

Western notions of sustainability

The climate crises affect us all and we are increasingly seeing the impact on every continent, biodiversity and ecosystems. Coral reefs are declining, floods have increased in different parts of the world, bushfires are becoming rampant, famines are impacting people’s livelihood, storms are accelerating, erratic weather conditions are becoming normal, and the levels of our CO2 have skyrocketed due to greenhouse emissions and other factors. As a result of the climate crisis, we now have climate refugees who are fleeing their countries because they have lost their homes, businesses and livelihoods to the devastating effects of environmental crisis. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned us just before COP 26 (the global climate summit in Glasgow in 2021) in a report on the current state of the climate:

It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land. Widespread and rapid changes in the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere and biosphere have occurred.^[3]

In essence, humans have caused unprecedented and irreversible change to the climate. The recent report in April 2022 gave a starker and final warning that we need a radical step if greenhouse emissions must peak by 2025.^[4] In the light of these warnings, what is the prophetic role of the church? Due to the climate and environmental crisis that faces humanity, one of the buzzwords that has gained ascendancy in our vocabulary is sustainability. In an attempt to survive by seeking alternative, reliable and efficient energy to power our planet, there are lots of conversations on sustainable development, sustainable products, sustainable energy, sustainable energy engineering, sustainable future, sustainable planet and so on. Western notions of sustainability embody three concepts that always seem crucial, namely the environmental, economic and social aspects. The United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted in 2015 give us a better and holistic way of understanding how we can sustain our planet because they give a framework that balances social, economic, political and environmental sustainability. For example, Sustainable Development Goal 7 focuses on affordable and clean energy, therefore aiming to provide affordable, reliable and sustainable energy for all. Sustainable Development Goal 13 talks about climate action, highlighting the need to take urgent steps to tackle the impact of the climate crisis.^[5] However, Sustainable Development Goal 8 focuses on decent work and economic growth with the aim to foster inclusive and sustainable economic growth. But economic growth sometimes has echoes of colonialism, with big western corporations extracting wealth from developing countries while leaving waste, environmental damage and health crises in their wake. The ongoing funding of fossil fuel extraction is manifestly unjust because the emissions from continued fossil fuel use are having the greatest adverse impact on Black and brown people in deprived communities across the globe who have least contributed to and benefitted from the cumulative emissions that have brought us to this state of emergency.

The problem as I see it is that our idea of sustainability is still rooted in economic growth, so that even when we talk about sustainable development or sustainable economic growth, we are still preoccupied by how we address economic growth through efficient extraction, transportation and consumption of resources. It is ultimately ingrained. The other problem is that our idea of sustainability is still largely driven by the West with its history of economic dominance and exploitation, and it therefore begs the question: why should the world at large follow western notions of sustainability if at the end of the day it is communities from the Majority World that continue to suffer disproportionately from the impact of the climate and environmental crisis?

If western ways of measuring sustainability are so intricately bound to economic growth, are there other ways of measuring sustainability? An example of a different way of measuring sustainability that is not rooted in economic growth but in well-being can be found in the South Asian country of Bhutan, which measures sustainability through well-being and human flourishing. Their Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is measured by the Gross National Happiness (GNH) index on well-being and happiness of its citizens. This was first introduced in 1972 by King Jigme Singye Wangchuck, the fourth king of Bhutan. Is there something we can learn here on a different set of parameters of measuring sustainability?

African identity, enslavement and colonisation

To advance a different model of measuring sustainability, it is important to consider the complex history that fragmented African identity as well as the intersection of racial and climate injustice to better understand western economic exploitation and dominance. African traditional identity before enslavement was diverse with different tribes, kingdoms and languages. This traditional African identity, while not homogenous, has a shared root on the geopolitical continent of Africa. The transatlantic slave trade with its brutality fragmented African identity and dislocated it so that today we speak of an African tripartite identity:^[6] African diaspora in the Americas as African Americans, in the Caribbean islands as African Caribbeans, and those who remained on the mother land as Continental Africans. This dislocation of the African family has done almost a permanent damage in the sense that while this tripartite identity is now fully accepted, nevertheless there are ongoing differences and tensions between Africans, African Caribbeans and African Americans. A further fragmentation of African identity took place with the colonisation and partitioning of Africa by seven uninvited European powers, namely Britain, France, Belgium, Portugal, Italy, Spain and Germany. The continent was carved out during the scramble for Africa in 1884–85 on new lines of European powers and languages, thus displacing traditional boundaries, ethnic languages and customs of the people of Africa. The consequences are that firstly, the African mind was colonised, but the land and its resources were also taken; however, far more insidious is that African identity was fragmented along European identity and languages so that today Africans are multilingual, speaking their indigenous languages but also the languages of their colonisers. While this makes us international and helps us navigate the global and transnational processes, the negative is a constant reliance on the West for its deliverance. This is part of the reason why the West has a large percentage of so-called economic migrants, refugees and asylum seekers, thus leading to a large diaspora community in the West.

Theological reflection on Hebraic identity

A biblical precedence of diaspora community is the Jewish community, who, in similar fashion, has experienced and continues to experience fragmentation and dislocation of Jewish identities. A quick theological reflection on diasporic identity by looking at Hebraic identity in the Scriptures is therefore crucial to this conversation. This is in the true fashion of African theology, which takes its point of departure from Scripture. Hebraic identity in the Old Testament, while not homogenous, has a shared commonality in the centrality and worship of Yahweh (see Deut. 6:4). Kingdom politics and tribal loyalties among other things led to a divided kingdom around 900 BC with Judah in the south and what emerged to be Israel in the north. These two kingdoms had their distinctive identities in terms of government administration, religion and culture. Two centuries later, a powerful nation – the Assyrian empire – conquered and exiled the people of the north, repopulating it with people from other cultures; thus Samaria, the capital city in the north, was perceived by the southerners as corrupt and confused (see 2 Kings 17). Around 586 BC, the people of the south were also conquered and exiled by the Babylonian, later Persian, kingdom. This created a sort of tripartite Hebraic identity with Samaritans (people of the north), Judah or Jews (people of the south) and those in diaspora, who were exiled into Babylonia and later Persia. This tripartite Hebraic identity is seen at play throughout the inter-testamental period otherwise also known as Second Temple Judaism and the New Testament. For example, when the exiles from Judah returned to rebuild the Temple, city and city walls, they were opposed by the Samaritans, who did not share their loyalty (see Ezra 4–5; Neh. 4–5). We also see similar tensions in the early church in Acts 6 when the Grecian Jews (Jews born in the diaspora) complained of being marginalised by the Hebraic Jews (Jews born in the land of Israel).

In summary, in similar fashion to Hebraic identity, African traditional identity – while not homogenous – has a shared root on the continent of Africa. But like the Jews due to conquest, enslavement, colonialism, migration and neocolonialism, this heterogeneous identity on one continent was displaced so that the African diaspora was created in the West Indies as African Caribbeans and the Americas as African Americans. The transatlantic slave trade that fragmented African identity cannot be dichotomised from its link to racial and climate injustice.

Racial injustice: climate crisis

The transatlantic slave trade as a global economic system and institution prospered because of racial ideology that conceived Africans as objects and properties that needed to be dominated because they were inferior and not intelligent. Sometimes Christian mission, with its understanding that Africans were heathens and pagans that needed saving, colluded with colonial authorities to propagate the gospel. The transatlantic slave trade was also an integral part of the Industrial Revolution from the 1750s onwards. One of the first scholars to identify the links between racism and capitalism was Eric Williams (1911–81), the first prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago. Williams uncovered slavery’s role at the heart of the Industrial Revolution. He states in his book Capitalism and Slavery, which was his published doctoral thesis:

The triangular trade thereby gave a triple stimulus to British industry. The Negroes were purchased with British manufactures; transported to the plantations, they produced sugar, cotton, indigo, molasses and other tropical products, the processing of which created new industries in England; while the maintenance of the Negroes and their owners on the plantations provided another market for British industry, New England agriculture and the Newfoundland fisheries. By 1750 there was hardly a trading or a manufacturing town in England which was not in some way connected with the triangular or direct colonial trade. The profits obtained provided one of the main streams of that accumulation of capital in England which financed the Industrial Revolution.^[7]

While many western historians would separate the history of the Industrial Revolution from that of slavery and colonialism, Williams’ ground-breaking work was one of the first to integrate our thinking on this. A further step I am identifying in this essay is the link between racial injustice and climate injustice that is historically rooted in slavery, colonialism and the Industrial Revolution and which continues to shape current injustices around climate conversations.

Firstly, the Industrial Revolution prospered on the back of slave labour (the Atlantic economy). This was because cotton, which was the major product replacing wool during the industrial age, was imported from slave plantations. Industrialisation being powered by steam and water has led to what we now refer to as the climate crisis. Secondly, this historic connection of the fragmentation of African identity, racial injustice and climate crisis continues to today because poverty and economic instability in the Majority World means that Africa, Asia and Latin America suffer disproportionately the effects of the climate crisis.

It is interesting to know that slavery was later labelled an illegitimate trade only to be replaced by so-called legitimate trade through colonialism and partitioning of Africa, which further fragmented African identity as discussed above. Legitimate trade – that is, trading with Africa through colonisation – has also been replaced with what I refer to as controlled trade in neocolonialism, sometimes through aid, globalisation and international development. This sometimes leads to a dependency factor on the West by African countries.

Thirdly, western solutions to the climate crisis are not holistic and focus too much on the green agenda. Before describing what the green agenda is, it is worth summarising with clarity the intersectionality of racial injustice and climate injustice.

Enslavement: Slavery provided the slave labour and raw material for industrial change
Colonialism: Colonies were the early seeds of a capitalist economic system that finances and enhances industrialisation
Industrial Revolution: Steam power accelerated and increased our pollution and climate crisis

Climate justice and reparative justice^[8]

I am going to digress briefly to share my own experience and journey into climate justice to illustrate some crucial points. My experience of climate change started with the fact that I grew up in an area of Nigeria where flooding was a constant occurrence. We played in it as we walked back home from school. Along the way I saw bridges collapse, roads torn apart, shops destroyed and businesses disappear as a result of these floods. The question of why we had so much flooding in my area lingered in my mind as I grew up and was not fully answered. Later, as a committed member of an African Pentecostal church in my area, our church, including myself, was so preoccupied with our spiritual and economic survival that issues that caused the flooding did not really surface in our conversations. While I continued to wrestle with why we had so much flooding, there were certain practices that my family and I engaged in that, on reflection, I did not realise were environmentally friendly or green. We planted our own tomatoes, and we had our own poultry. I remember my first job was working for my mother with our poultry looking after chickens and collecting and selling eggs.

It was while studying Religious Studies at the University of Ibadan that I was introduced to African theology and African religious traditions and culture. The implication of this exposure was that I began to realise that God cares for his creation and that humanity has a part to play. The introduction to African theology and the African religious world view educated me about the different West African names of God. What is striking about these names is that several African names for God demonstrate God as the creator of heaven and the earth, but more importantly they evidenced that he is involved in such a way that God cares for his creation. A Biblical theology of creation affirms this because Scripture says, “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it.”^[9] Some of the names go further to assert that God cares and sustains his creation. Take, for example, the Edo name for God: Osanobuwa. This means “the Source Being who carries and sustains the universe”. Other African names for God, such as Olodumare (Yoruba), Ngewo (Mende), Nyame (Akan) and Odomankoma (Akan), reveal that God really cares and is interested in maintaining the universe.^[10] While African cosmology is rich in an understanding that sees God as the creator and carer of his creation, some African Pentecostals are somewhat disconnected from this narrative because of the colonial residue that sees everything in African religions and spirituality as evil. One of the consequences is a lack of engagement with climate justice issues.

It is therefore exciting for me as an African Pentecostal after being on this journey to be a part of the Christian Aid working group on climate justice with some Black Majority Church leaders, activists and theologians. My brief story serves as an example of an African that has experienced the effects of the climate crisis but did not have the resources or enough understanding to deal with the issue. In a recent survey poll done by Christian Aid into the views and attitudes of Black British Christians on climate change, 66 per cent of those polled are more aware that the impacts of climate change disproportionately affect people from the Majority World (Africa, Caribbean, Asia and Latin America) compared to the British public at 49 per cent. This is because being born in a climate vulnerable country, or through family connections, boosts awareness of the climate crisis.^[11] This data confirms my own experience but also raises the issue of why we are not visible when it comes to government policies and conversations on climate change. It is the poorer countries in the world that suffer more the effects of climate disasters; therefore, while animal conservation, protection of endangered species and our environment are all important in their own right, my approach to climate justice is the brown agenda and not the green agenda.

The brown agenda in this instance is understood as the impact of ecological degradation on people,^[12] particularly people from the Majority World, who have suffered from systemic and structural injustices such as colonialism and imperialism.^[13] In this respect, there is a connection between racial and climate injustice because people who suffer more from the effects of the climate crisis are usually communities that had been impoverished due to legacies of enslavement, colonialism and imperialism. The green agenda in this respect is associated with “nature conservation and addresses specific issues such as the preservation of wilderness areas, endangered species, animal poaching, cruelty to animals, invader species, and in general, the impact of mining and industry, industrialised agriculture and urban trends on the habitats of plants and animals”.^[14] My observation is that it is easier for people who live in the West, particularly in the countryside or rural areas, to be green, whereas those who live in crowded urban centres will naturally gravitate towards the brown agenda. This is because of urban factors such as homelessness, deprivation, overpopulation, poverty and so on, which are often linked to the impact of climate on poorer communities. To be green sometimes could also be expensive because you either have to drive a hybrid or electric car if you choose to drive. There is the option of cycling, which a lot of people now do. Maintaining healthy eating habits and lifestyle does not come cheap, and neither does living in an area that has poorer air quality due to pollution. Across the world being brown often means to live below the poverty line, lack resources and options, and lack education. This is not always the case because not all people classified as brown are poor or uneducated. I am also aware that we need both agendas and that they are not always mutually exclusive. I am clarifying here my own position and approach to the subject based on my journey and experience.

If the brown agenda offers us a holistic way of addressing the link between climate and racial injustice, what does it offer us in terms of reframing the debate on sustainability? Here I propose reparative justice as a way of repairing the damage of slavery, colonialism and Industrial Revolution in order to have a reconciled humanity who can then build a future together in hope.

Reparative justice: the brown theology on sustainability

Returning to the conversation of how best to measure sustainability, especially in the light of the intersection between racial injustice and climate injustice, requires a new theological framing. This is where insights from an African theological perspective can be fresh and innovative. Often conversations on sustainability, such as talks around a sustainable future, focus on the future. But what about a conversation on sustainability that looks backwards into the past? This will mean understanding sustainability as the necessity of repairing the past so that we can correct the present and repair the future together. This will mean employing an African philosophy and Bantu world view of the principle of unity of life, which views the dynamic union of past, present and future. In essence, time is integrated in this principle. As articulated by the late African Catholic theologian Bishop Tharcisse Tshibangu (1933–2021), the African philosophy of the principle of unity of life affects the life of a single human, of a community, and of nature and the world. It was commonly known as a holistic vision of life. Tshibangu emphasised the principle of unity of life as an epistemological principle marking African cultures in their internal coherence.^[15] Another African theologian who gives us an innovative epistemological framing on time is the late John Mbiti (1931–2019) in African Religions and Philosophy:

The most significant consequence of this is that, according to traditional concepts, time is a two-dimensional phenomenon, with a long past, a present and virtually no future. The linear concept of time in western thought, with an indefinite past, present and infinite future, is practically foreign to African thinking.^[16]

In another place Mbiti talks about “history moving backwards from the Sasa period (now/period of tenses, that is the immediate) to the Zamani (a form of English past with its own past, present and future), from the moment of intense experience to the period beyond which nothing can go”.^[17] In essence, African philosophy describes the integral nature of past, present and future and the concept of time as moving backwards rather than forwards, and therefore people set their minds not on future things, but chiefly on what has taken place. Another African world view that helps us in this conversation is the Twi word Sankofa, which literally means San (return), Ko (go), Fa (look, seek and take).^[18] Sankofa therefore means going back for something you might have left or going back to our roots. On the one hand, it offers us a lens into digging deep into African history and tradition, and on the other it enables us to look back to repair the damage in the past so as to achieve restorative or reparative justice. Adopting such a world view will mean addressing the intersection of racial and climate injustice resulting from the past connection of enslavement, colonialism and Industrial Revolution. One way of addressing this is known as reparative justice, or in climate language, loss and damage. Climate loss and damage is, however, different from climate finance, where rich nations offer financial support to help climate-vulnerable countries meet their carbon reduction targets and adapt to climate change impacts. Reparative justice is a controversial term as it is usually associated with monetary compensation. It is often understood in terms of redistribution of wealth, so that those who are descendants of the enslaved who continue to suffer the legacies of slavery and colonialism are compensated financially. But another way of understanding reparative justice is repairing justice;^[19] that is, repairing and addressing the past so that reconciliation, healing and peace can take place. This approach will be holistic, looking at reparation not only in financial terms but also through holistic healing that embraces spiritual, psychological, social and environmental restoration from a traumatic past. This understanding of repairing justice is similar to restorative justice, which seeks to rehabilitate the offender so that the victim and the offender can both experience healing. After all, society is not truly healed until the oppressed and the oppressor are healed. This notion of repairing justice will be akin to the New Testament understanding of reconciliation, which has repentance, forgiveness and restitution at its core. The story of Zacchaeus in Luke 19:1–10 illustrates this so beautifully because as Zacchaeus encounters Jesus and forgiveness, he, in return, out of conviction decides to go on a journey of restitution. Three key elements of repairing justice are therefore repentance (forgiveness), lament (which incorporates resistance, justice and hope) and restitution.

So where do I see a current example of a model of practice that is beginning to address racial and climate injustice? This is where the significance of the Christian Aid working group with Black Majority Church leaders, activists and theologians becomes important. To understand the context of this, Melanie Nazareth, a member of the group, has written a reflective piece.^[20] The objective of the group can be summarised into two. One is to find creative ways to educate and therefore engage Black Majority Churches on the subject of climate justice and racial justice. The other is to be able to engage in some ambassadorial work that ensures that the brown community and agenda is well represented in conversations with climate activist groups and governmental policies that shape this agenda. The importance of this work is that in bringing together theologians to work on some of the discipleship resources to engage churches in the UK as well as in the Global South, it has required the collective thinking of Black theologians and African theologians, whose voices are usually marginal in climate conversations and environmental theology. It has been a joy to participate in meetings where we hear the voices of African theologians advancing African religious world views as essential thinking in tackling climate concerns and in the same space hear the voices of Black theologians framing climate justice in liberative praxis terms. Another significance of this work is that this group is helping Christian Aid to develop their campaign on climate loss and damage through the lens of reparative justice. This aspect of its work is in its early stages and the work of the group is still in progress, but I offer this as an example of what a brown theology on climate and racial justice could look like in practice.

Concluding reflection

This essay has examined the interconnection of the fragmentation of African identity, racial injustice and climate injustice. This has been investigated through considering the impacts of the transatlantic slave trade, colonialism and the Industrial Revolution on people of African descent. The paper therefore proposes a new approach to climate justice that addresses the racial injustice element in this history. This is the brown agenda, which adequately situates the conversation in addressing the ecological impact and exploitative economies on people of colour. This is different from the green agenda, which focuses on tackling conservation and the preservation of green spaces, wilderness areas and endangered species.

This approach to climate justice also gives us a new way of measuring sustainability. While western notions of sustainability are rightly often rooted in finding alternative, renewable energy for our future, a different approach considered in this article is measuring sustainability by addressing the past through climate loss and damage. This is through a reparative justice lens, which seeks to advocate for the acknowledgement of and compensation for the descendants of the enslaved who continue to suffer the legacies of slavery and colonialism and the climate crisis. I have adequately termed this repairing justice as a way of repairing the past so that reconciled, restored humanity can address the future together. One example of a group that is employing a brown agenda in their approach to climate justice is the Christian Aid working group, which centres racial justice as an important element in climate justice conversations.

About the author

Revd Dr Israel Oluwole Olofinjana is the founding director of the Centre for Missionaries from the Majority World (CMMW) and the director of the One People Commission of the Evangelical Alliance. He has written extensively and is well published in the areas of mission, African Christianity and African theology.

More from this issue

Notes

[1] Israel Oluwole Olofinjana, ed., African Voices: Towards African British Theologies (Carlisle, Cumbria:Langham Monographs, 2017). Also see Israel Oluwole Olofinjana, “Reverse Mission: Towards an African British Theology,” Transformation: An International Journal of Holistic Mission Studies 37, no. 1 (2019): 52–65.

[2] My definitions of climate justice and climate change have followed that offered by the Christian Aid Working Group, comprising Black Majority Church leaders, theologians and activists.

[3] The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, “Summary for Policymakers,” in Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, ed. V. Masson-Delmotte, P. Zhai, A. Pirani, S. L. Connors, C. Péan, S. Berger, N. Caud, Y. Chen, L. Goldfarb, M. I. Gomis, M. Huang, K. Leitzell, E. Lonnoy, J. B. R. Matthews, T. K. Maycock, T. Waterfield, O. Yelekçi, R. Yu, and B. Zhou (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2021, in press): 4.

[4] The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, “Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change: Working Group III Contribution to the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report,” IPCC, 2022, https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg3/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGIII_SPM.pdf; Fiona Harvey, “IPCC report: ‘now or never’ if world is to stave off climate disaster,” The Guardian, 4 April 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/apr/04/ipcc-report-now-or-never-if-world-stave-off-climate-disaster, accessed 8 April 2022.

[5] “Take Action for the Sustainable Development Goals,” Sustainable Development Goals, United Nations, https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-development-goals/, accessed 8 April 2022.

[6] I ought to say something about the word tripartite here and how I am applying it. The word tripartite in theological circles is usually associated and used in conjunction with the doctrine of the trinity as it pertains to the nature and identity of the Godhead being one in essence, purpose and unity, but three distinct persons. It is also used in Christian anthropology to describe the composite nature of human beings in three distinct components but one: spirit, soul and body (see 1 Thess. 5:23). There are those who view and argue that human beings have two distinct natures: body and soul. I am using the word tripartite here to describe diasporic identities, firstly applying it to Hebraic/Jewish identity and then to African identity.

[7] Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery (Milton Keynes: Penguin Classics, 2022), 48. This book was first published in the United States in 1944 but was not published in the UK until 1964 (and was then out of print again until now) due to some of the controversial themes the book addressed around slavery, the abolition of slavery and the Industrial Revolution.

[8] Disclaimer: The reflections on reparative justice in this section are in no way the views or position of the Evangelical Alliance on reparations. They are that of the author, who is also on a journey exploring this subject.

[9] Ps. 24:1 (NRSV).

[10] John S. Mbiti, African Religions and Philosophy (London: Heinemann Educational Books Ltd, 1969). Omosade Awolalu and Adelumo Dopamu, West African Traditional Religion (Ibadan, Nigeria: Onibonoje Press and Book Industries Limited, 1979).

[11] Report on Views and Attitudes of Black British Christians on Climate Change, Christian Aid Survey Poll, 2020, https://mediacentre.christianaid.org.uk/black-history-month-poll-shows-british-public-think-white-people-around-the-world-are-most-impacted-by-climate-change/.

[12] Ernst Conradie, “The Environment” in African Public Theology, ed. Sunday Bobai Agang, Dion A. Forster and H. Jurgens Hendriks (Plateau State, Nigeria: Hippo Books, 2020), 159.

[13] Israel Oluwole Olofinjana, Discipleship, Suffering and Racial Justice: Mission in a Pandemic World (Oxford: Regnum Books International, 2021), 113.

[14] Conradie, “The Environment,” 159.

[15] Francis Anekwe Oborji, “Tribute to Msgr. Tharcisse Tshibangu (1933–2021): Promoter of Theology with an ‘African Color,’” Journal of African Christian Biography 1, no. 7 (2022): 12–17, https://open.bu.edu/ds2/stream/?#/documents/425563/page/16, accessed 11 April 2022.

[16] Mbiti, African Religions and Philosophy, 17.

[17] Ibid., 23.

[18] “Sankofa,” The Sankofa Collective, https://sankofacollective.org/about, accessed 28 May 2022.

[19] Karen Campbell, Secretary for Global and Intercultural Ministries for the United Reformed Church (URC), talks about repairing justice in the context of reparative justice in a webinar titled “Reparation and Economics: What Do I Get?” This webinar is part of a series of webinars organised by the Racial Justice Advocacy Forum (RJAF) in partnership with the Movement for Justice and Reconciliation and the National Church Leaders Forum (NCLF). The other two webinars are titled “I Will Repay: The Church and Reparations” and “Setting Us Free: How to Repair the Damage of Four Hundred Years of Slavery to Black Christians”. Details of these webinars are available at: “Resources,” Baptists Together, https://www.baptist.org.uk/Groups/365942/Resources.aspx, accessed 11 April 2022.

[20] Melanie Nazareth, “Climate Justice. A Monochrome Movement?” Christians on the Left, 31 March 2021, https://www.christiansontheleft.org.uk/latest/climate-justice-a-monochrome-movement, accessed 8 April 2022.

The post Sustainability, African identity and climate justice appeared first on Church Mission Society (CMS).

African congregations adapting to COVID-19: Conversations with African Christian nurses in Britain

by Harvey Kwiyani and Paul Ayokunle

This article is about COVID-19 and the African diaspora churches. It discusses the impact of COVID-19 on some African congregations in Britain, with a particular focus on the ways in which those congregations have adjusted to the scary reality of the coronavirus pandemic that started in the UK during the early months of 2020.

The research that informs the article started out as informal conversations with African health workers in north-west England, most of them Malawian, Zimbabwean and Nigerian. Later, a two-phase formal research project was carried out in six congregations in Liverpool, using semi-structured interviews and participant observation as tools for data collection. The first phase explored the general adaptive changes that the congregations were making in response to the pandemic, especially when it became evident that Black and brown people were disproportionately affected by the virus. The second phase focused on the theological disruption caused by the virus among African Pentecostals, for whom God is believed to be Jehovah Rapha – “God, our Healer”. We spoke to seven African hospital nurses and their pastors to hear about how they reflected on God in their preaching in the context of the virus. The choice to speak to nurses was very intentional – they lived at the intersection between the Pentecostal faith of an African Christian (which places a great emphasis on God’s healing power) and the frontlines of the fight against COVID-19 in hospitals where they see first-hand the havoc that was caused by the virus. This article is about the first phase – the shifting posturing of the African churches in the UK towards the pandemic. It is about the changes that African congregations made in response to the virus. For this reason, this article is divided into three sections. The first section discusses the general theory of adaptive leadership as a basis for our discourse on the changes that the congregations have made to adjust themselves to the threat of the virus. The second section discusses the changes made by the congregations – reorganising themselves to meet online, silent prayer meetings in family bubbles, using face masks and hand sanitisers during their services – plus many more and how they have justified these among their members. The third section discusses the ongoing implications of these changes in African diaspora ecclesiology.

Disruptive challenge of COVID-19

Coronavirus has been the greatest disruptive challenge of the century so far. It has touched the entire world and has fundamentally changed the way we live. When COVID-19 started out in China in 2019, long before it reached the shores of Britain, its implications on our Christian ecclesiology were clear. By the time Britain entered its first lockdown in March 2020, the challenge of not only the virus itself but also the threat of countless deaths among congregational members, and the challenge lockdown (with the subsequent limitations on fellowship) posed to African churches, were immense. The sense of despair was beyond anything we could imagine. Many of them feared for their congregations here in the UK while also trying to stay strong for their communities back in Africa. It was a scary time. Among their many concerns, they wondered how they could continue to be church during the lockdown. Would their fellowships survive the weeks or months of no physical meetings? How many of their members would still be there when the pandemic came to an end? Most importantly, how would their members continue to support their churches financially? In many ways, most of these concerns remain unresolved at the end of 2021. With the benefit of hindsight, we know that when the lockdowns lifted, the government discouraged congregants from singing. How could we have a singing and dancing congregation of the Church of Pentecost, for example, without music? How could they worship in a strange land without singing the songs of the Lord? For the African churches in general, prayer times are quite vocal, usually just as loud as singing, and therefore they needed to find new ways of praying. In addition, social distancing meant neither handshakes nor hugs were allowed and for Africans used to a communal culture, that was not a small challenge.

Between the first lockdown (March 2020) and the last one (May–June 2021), it became extremely evident that COVID-19 affected Black and brown people more adversely than white people across the country. Research upon research proved that African and Asian communities were often at the frontline of the battle against the virus, and many of them lost their lives in the process. The Government reports:

During the first wave of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic (24 January 2020 to 11 September 2020), people from all ethnic minority groups (except for women in the Chinese or “White Other” ethnic groups) had higher rates of death involving the coronavirus compared with the White British population. The rate of death involving COVID-19 was highest for the Black African group (3.7 times greater than for the White British group for males, and 2.6 greater for females), followed by the Bangladeshi (3.0 for males, 1.9 for females), Black Caribbean (2.7 for males, 1.8 for females) and Pakistani (2.2 for males, 2.0 for females) ethnic groups.¹

For Africans, most of those deaths disrupted congregational lives. Churches lost many leaders, pastors, mothers and fathers – most of whom were frontline workers like doctors, care workers, shop assistants and many others. For a community far away from home, all those deaths had massive implications. Each death, often buried in seclusion as it were, left unimaginable pain in congregations and communities and, for many of those, no possibility to find closure. Yes, coronavirus has affected everyone in the UK, having killed more than 130,000 people in 18 months,² but the African community has suffered the worst, and the African congregation in the UK has both taken the beating and been the mainstay of the African community, and, in a sense, has literally weathered the storm.

As we write this article in the summer of 2021, Britain has been on and off in lockdowns for more than one year. The social climate of the country seems to be changing, with the economy opening up again, and congregational life in all churches slowly returning. The true image of the African church in Britain after COVID-19 is yet to emerge. Summer holidays affect church attendance; many pastors are not sure who is coming back and who is not. As will be argued later in the article, it appears to us that the pandemic has left the African church, in general, feeling isolated and vulnerable. This is also the general feeling among Black people, especially those of middle age and older. In addition, there is a wider-spread pandemic fatigue among African church leaders and their members in Britain. Our interviewees were clear on this, and that they needed to find new ways to energise their congregations for life after COVID-19.

Engaging adaptive challenges

One of us (Harvey) has argued elsewhere that migration itself is a form of adaptive challenge that many African pastors leading churches in Britain never get to process well.³ Adaptive leadership theory understands problems to be either technical or adaptive challenges though, of course, sometimes, problems can be both technical and adaptive.⁴ Technical challenges are complex problems, but which are easily diagnosed and addressed through an organisation’s existing repertoire of skills. They are those problems that the leader’s authoritative expertise or the routine operating procedures of the organisation can handle.⁵ Adaptive challenges are often complex multilayered problems with no clear-cut definitions or easy identification. Unlike technical challenges, adaptive challenges lack straightforward solutions. Organisations facing them have to look beyond their structures, procedures or resources. In fact, the task of dealing with such problems lies beyond the leader alone; they must be shared with whomever they are leading. Adaptive challenges, by definition, have no known solution readily available and, thus, demand experimental behavioural or core value changes in an organisation, often leading to new discoveries. As Richard Pascale et al. put it,

[Adaptive] challenges often demand a leap in capability, and solutions are unproven or unknown.… Facing such an adaptive challenge, we must throw out… familiar organizational principles and processes and adopt strange and unfamiliar ones.⁶

They are different from technical challenges for which leaders already possess the skills needed to find an applicable solution.⁷ Rather, they reveal the weaknesses of an organisation’s once-effective values, practices and survival strategies, which are now rendered ineffective in the organisation’s current context.⁸ They require organisations to reimagine themselves into new being – new knowledge, new habits and new practices – from both the leader and their staff. They are not easy to tackle. In fact, resistance often arises due to the sacrifices, trade-offs and changes in people’s beliefs, values, priorities and roles that these challenges require.⁹ This process of directly confronting difficult issues leads the people to make critical and uneasy adjustments that are often “value laden and stir up people’s emotions”.¹⁰ For instance, the changes may involve the preservation of some organisational heritage while trading off certain legacy practices, traditional values or professional identities. As such, adaptive changes are tough and require sacrifices.¹¹

Tackling adaptive challenges is a major rationale behind the development of adaptive leadership. This kind of challenge is not easy to spot and defies solutions within current organisational structure, knowledge or resources.¹² Although Ronald Heifetz’s Leadership Without Easy Answers was the foremost literature to express the basic idea of adaptive leadership,¹³ and his theory was to a considerable extent informed by Margaret Wheatley’s Leadership and the New Science,¹⁴ it was in The Practice of Adaptive Leadership that the scholar and colleagues developed a framework for the concept.¹⁵ Drawing from systems and service orientations, and biology, Ronald Heifetz and colleagues speak of adaptive leadership as the “practice of mobilizing people to tackle tough challenges and thrive”.¹⁶ Thriving, here, comes from evolutionary biology, in which an effective adaptation involves three processes: preservation of essential DNA for a species’ survival, doing away with non-essential DNA for the current needs of the species, and development of DNA arrangements that best serve the species’ present realities. Successful adaptation – thriving – would involve taking the best from history (whether living systems or organisations) into the future.¹⁷ Again, adaptive leadership is never an individual adventure. By implication, the leader is never solely responsible for providing solutions to challenges. Indeed, responses to challenges are jointly discerned by both the leader and the people.

Treating adaptive challenges as technical problems remain the most common cause of failure in leadership.¹8 In other words, nothing fails like success, for when organisations leverage on past successes, failing to sustain invention and creativity in responding to newly emerging challenges of different nature, doom is most certain.¹⁹ Hence, adaptive leadership must be meticulous enough to differentiate between technical problems and adaptive challenges when addressing tough situations. Of course, more often than not, a blend of the two kinds of challenges could occur. In this case, problem definition is clear but no direct solution is available from the existing repertoire of resources and skills.²⁰

Again, leadership failures often occur when adaptive problems are treated as technical in nature.²¹ Of course, adaptive challenges require new learnings from both the leader and the people; hence, tackling this sort of problem becomes difficult.²² Additionally, as the forms of changes needed in adaptive leadership process are often “value-laden, and stir up people’s emotions”,²³ the changes could involve sacrificing legacy practices or traditional values around which people have developed strong connections. Nonetheless, if these new learnings are permitted by both leader and the people, adaptive work is achieved. This is the goal of adaptive leadership. The leader mobilises the people to define and directly confront adaptive challenges towards this end.²⁴

COVID-19 as an adaptive challenge

The pandemic is an excellent example of an adaptive challenge. To begin with, it has radically changed the way congregations behave, forcing them to shift some aspects of their worship services to online platforms. For instance, many African congregations in Britain have continued to do their Bible study or conduct their prayer meetings online or, where possible, using a hybrid platform. When they meet for worship, many are still practising social distancing in church – the members sit in family bubbles with minimal contact with other families. Family visits are yet to resume for most pastors and, when pastors visit their members, extreme care is taken to make sure everyone is safe. Thus, COVID-19 is not a technical challenge. By all means, it has been an adaptive one and the African church’s response in the UK has comprised letting go of what used to be and learning new skills, habits and practices for the new context. Our research brought to our attention many surprising themes related to African congregations’ response to COVID-19 in the UK. For the remainder of this article, we will focus on three key issues:

1. theology (and this includes their sermons and their talk about mission and evangelism);
2. aspects of their communal life as a fellowship; and
3. their response to government guidance on the pandemic.

Theology

We learned about the theological convictions of our research participants largely from the members of the churches themselves, in addition to the pastors’ sermons (which we sampled mostly from their websites and by attending their online services (via Zoom or Facebook Live). Right from the start, these theological convictions were very evident to us as we heard congregational chatter about the virus. Most African pastors and church members did what they best do when helpless – turn to prayer and spiritual warfare. They were not flippant about it; they knew it was real. Unlike others who believed COVID-19 to be a conspiracy, and that it was simply about population control,²⁵ our participants did not think of the virus as a hoax. They took it rather seriously, but they believed it to be a spiritual problem that could be resolved through prayer (that includes fasting and binding of the demon of coronavirus). Our participants reported hearing both from their own pastors and from many other African leaders a theological thought that said all that was needed to defeat coronavirus was spiritual warfare. For example, Pastor Matthew Ashimolowo of the Kingsway International Christian Centre (in London), one of the most popular African preachers in the UK, posted several statements on the pandemic during the first lockdown (March–April 2020) that indicated that COVID-19 is not only a medical challenge but essentially a spiritual challenge of eschatological significance. Using images on Facebook, Ashimolowo added that COVID-19 was inferred in the reference to the “evil one” mentioned in 2 Thessalonians 3:3 and as being part of the eschatological “birth pangs” of Matthew 24. As soon as the first lockdown was imposed, Ashimolowo established a daily prayer meeting with his church members and social media followers from 6 a.m. to 7 a.m. every Monday to Friday. His wife, Yemisi, also began an online gathering for women once every week tagged “When Women Wait” (WWW). Other churches, like the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG) and the Church of Pentecost (COP-UK), responded in a similar manner. The RCCG’s Central Office hosted a series of conversations to explore various implications of COVID-19 to church life. In addition to prayers, the COP encouraged its members to adhere to the government’s policies, celebrate the NHS and frontline workers, and publicised how they had been helping various communities in the pandemic crisis. They encouraged people to pray for George Floyd’s family, for the prime minister and for those who are sick or lonely.

This belief in waging spiritual warfare against coronavirus was, for our participants, based on two theological convictions that, we believe, are characteristic of African Christianity. There was the belief that God has power over all things, including viruses and that, therefore, through the prayers and supplication of God’s children, God could break through into the world to stop the pandemic. This belief is rather common in African Pentecostalism and is used against all types of problems. Several nurses repeated a dictum that was a mantra in some churches in the north-west, saying, “Jesus defeated death, what can ‘corona’ do?” They were all quick to acknowledge that while they were singing “What can the ‘’rona’ do?” at church, they were witnessing what it actually did in the hospitals, and that it did not discriminate according to religious beliefs. It affected Christians and non-Christians alike. They all admitted to being unsettled though when they realised that, as suggested earlier, the virus was significantly discriminating against Black and brown people.

As weeks of the pandemic piled up into months, and it became clear that the pandemic would keep devastating the world, our African congregations did not stop praying. However, the theological implications of God seemingly not answering their prayers to stop the virus were immense. They all knew of preachers, prayer warriors and healing prophets who died of COVID-19 in Africa. How could this be? How could God not heal? How could God let millions of people die simply because of a virus? Most importantly, many wondered how God could let this small virus close churches and disrupt worship. Nevertheless, their general response shifted from “What can corona do?” to following all government guidelines, and some more, in order to stay safe. Many of them realised the threat of loss of life, either theirs or that of their friends, was real and serious. As such, they all became protective of their own – several nurses said they forced their families, especially husbands, to stay in isolation for most of 2020. In addition to being as cautious as possible, many of them used herbal concoctions, both to ingest and inhale, as a preventive measure.

Fellowship

Africans are notoriously communal. Social distancing and isolation are strange concepts that would make even the most selfish African feel lonely. Yet, the virus made it necessary that people, including Africans, in the UK avoid physical contact with others. The implications of social distancing went against what is African about these African churches. How could they come together without shaking hands and hugging? How could they worship without singing? Pray without shouting? Fellowship without sharing meals? The chaos that followed the start of the first lockdown was extremely disorienting to even the most experienced African pastor. They all had to find ways to stay connected to their members during the lockdown – YouTube, Facebook Live and Zoom provided a temporary way out. Many ran their services just as they had done before, with little regard to the change of medium. This time around though, their members could choose from thousands of other services being streamed online and, before long, congregational engagement dwindled for many. Of course, a bad sermon preached online is still a bad sermon. A bad sermon delivered online with bad audio needs a special anointing for it not to chase listeners away. The same goes for worship music. In this age of Hillsong, Bethel and Maverick City dominating Christian worship on YouTube, it was rather a surprise to us how many African churches were unprepared for online delivery of their services.

Some congregations found a way and played to their strengths. Many of those churches used their online time more for connecting, catching up and praying, not singing or preaching. They also added onto their online fellowship an open access platform for constant communication, especially on WhatsApp and Facebook. Our nurses were confident that WhatsApp was their congregation’s best surviving strategy during the pandemic. One called it their congregational lifeline. They were in constant touch with their leaders and were all kept abreast and involved in caring for the vulnerable – those who were old, sick or needy – among them. Their congregations continued to share meals online, and for those in need, meals were delivered to their doorsteps with no contact at all.

One nurse in a Nigerian congregation in Liverpool talked about how her congregation grew during the pandemic. In her words, her pastor realised early in the lockdown that what the congregation needed was not an online version of their usual church service but a fellowship space where they could get together to see one another. They did not need online sermons. They could get better sermons from many other platforms. They did not need worship music either. YouTube has numerous worship videos. As a result, they shaped their online fellowship primarily as a place where they could attend to each other’s well-being. They cared very little for the normal churchy stuff like sermons and worship. Because of this, the fellowship attracted many new members to the church, most of whom are not in Liverpool at all. It doubled in size in the 12 months between March 2020 and March 2021. When we asked her for her explanation of this miracle, she said this was most likely because many Africans felt isolated and lonely and, therefore, needed an online place to connect. Some who joined their fellowship were of other faiths – Muslims, Baha’is and many others. This was the only congregation in our research that grew during the pandemic.

Government guidelines

African churches in Britain have an ambivalent relationship with the government. On the one hand, they have to live with the need to constantly negotiate their immigrant-hood and everything that the status of being an immigrant entails. As they are immigrants, the government has a lot of power on their livelihood. Many members of African churches have issues with the Home Office. Some live with the fear of being deported. Others live with the threat of racial profiling by the police. All of them have to make a living in the context of constant systemic racism. The lingering damage caused by the Windrush Scandal and Theresa May’s hostile environment policies made Black people even more suspicious of the government. We still had almost all COVID-19 restrictions at the end of May when George Floyd was killed in Minnesota, sparking a worldwide protest movement against racism. Thus, Black Lives Matter shaped a great deal of African perception of the government in the UK in 2020. Overarching all this is the story of the brutality of British slavery and colonialism in Africa and Central America as well as the racist anti-immigrant rhetoric that forms the backdrop to Brexit. As such, there is always a general suspicion that the government does not have the interests of its Black subjects in mind when making policies and issuing guidelines. Thus, it took a long time for African churches to trust that the government cared for the struggles they went through in the pandemic. The most difficult concern was the fact that most of the key workers who needed to continue working in the pandemic were Black and brown people. Thus, generally speaking, it did appear for a while like white people were able to shelter in while Black and brown people kept on working, serving others (the white people who were sheltering) and putting their own lives and families at risk. Our nurses testified that it did seem, at times, to them that Black and brown people had been thrown to the frontlines and left there while white people withdrew to the safety of their homes. Across the Atlantic, Trumpian politics seemed to confirm the conspiracy theories of intentionally sacrificing Black and brown people (and the old) for the sake of the economy.

Overall, the African church in Britain remained wary of the government’s motives. A Malawian nurse stated that her church found its own ways of dealing with the virus largely by listening to Black and brown doctors and scientists in their own communities. They took the virus seriously not because of the government’s directives, but because of the advice of fellow Africans in the medical profession. Another, a Zimbabwean male nurse, talked about the potential dangers of the vaccines on Black people – either to be used for population control in Africa by donating malicious doses to Africa in abundance (for instance, to make people impotent to slow down population growth in the continent) or withholding it, as we are witnessing now, to let the Africans die.²⁶

As African researchers, we understood the trepidation. History makes it difficult for Black and brown people to trust the British government. However, we expected that the suspicion would subside as the situation with the pandemic changed. We were surprised to see that even as the vaccines reduced the number of COVID-19 deaths in the UK, Black and brown people continued to distrust the government. We perceived that the Black Lives Matter protests increased their awareness of the implications of their status as Black immigrants in Britain and the Windrush Scandal made them realise that they could never be completely at home in UK. While we did not agree with everything that was said in this regard, we found the discourse quite informing. This state of unsettledness not only has great implications on how Africans establish their churches and participate in God’s mission in Britain, but also how they respond to COVID-19.

Implications

All in all, it appears to us that African churches in the UK have adjusted themselves significantly to the pandemic. They have figured out that the pandemic means that their worship services have to change. It may have been a difficult transition, but they all found ways to stream their services. They have understood that as streaming online means stiff competition, both the message and medium need to be on point. Their members have an endless pool of sermons and worship music to choose from. Some are yet to learn that relationships are key – that strong relationships will offset any shortcomings in the online delivery of their services and, to the contrary, that good delivery will not make up for weak or bad relationships. This is exactly why only one congregation in our study grew during the pandemic and the remaining five are still in decline.

Reflecting on the research, one of the key issues that stood out to us is that, overall, the pandemic has made the African church in the UK more African. We understand the social need for this – they had to dig deep within themselves in order to survive the pandemic. In situations like the pandemic where migrant communities find themselves feeling more marginalised than normal, they tend to huddle closer together. Our nurses said that their churches felt so much more isolated during the pandemic than before. In fact, one lamented, “Only God cares for us, the world is trying to throw us down the abyss.” A Nigerian nurse suggested in an interview that her congregation felt like they are all alone in the world. Their intracongregational talk reflected a sense of liminality. They believed only God could help them because everyone else is out to get them. While we understand the social need to huddle, we wonder how this cultural and social isolation will affect the African churches’ sense of mission across the UK. Even more, we wonder whether their feelings of abandonment (not only by the British government but also by some British Christian circles) would also affect how they talk about evangelising in Britain. How do they evangelise those whom they believe abandoned them in the pandemic? We are yet to see how they will turn this around. God’s love compels them to love, especially in situations like these.

Conclusion

In conclusion, we are confident that we have seen a great deal of adapting among African churches. A huge proportion of that adapting happened naturally, in a reactionary manner. Most of it was done in a haphazard manner. As such, there is still need for many of these churches to adapt intentionally for the mission that God has for them in the UK. Strategic adapting will ensure that whatever positive changes have emerged during the pandemic will be sustained. There is a real danger of them returning to pre-COVID-19 normal in a society that has forgotten how they lived before 2020. In this sense, we realise that adaptive leadership theory is helpful to African churches in the UK. Intentional forward-looking adapting is needed to help them thrive wherever God has planted them. That said, we also trust that the plight of migrant communities in the world during the pandemic moves Christian communities to compassion. Followers of Jesus have a call to be hospitable to strangers, and that hospitality is critical in times like 2020. God help us all.

About the authors

Harvey Kwiyani is a Malawian missiologist and theologian who has lived, worked and studied in Europe and North America for the past 20 years. He has researched African Christianity and African theology for his PhD, and taught African theology at Liverpool Hope University. Harvey is CEO of Global Connections, programme leader for the Africa Christian Diaspora route of the CMS Pioneer MA, and founder and executive director of Missio Africanus, a mission organisation established in 2014 as a learning community focused on releasing the missional potential of African and other minority ethnic Christians living in the UK.

Paul Ayokunle is a doctoral student at Liverpool Hope University currently undertaking his research on church growth in African diaspora Christianity. Paul’s other research interests include African perspectives on leadership and mission. In addition, he enjoys working with second generation diaspora Africans on issues of their religious lives. He currently serves as the teenagers’ pastor at Pentecost Baptist Church, Liverpool.

More from this issue

Notes

1 Office for National Statistics, “Updating ethnic contrasts in deaths involving the coronavirus (COVID-19), England: 24 January 2020 to 31 March 2021,” Office for National Statistics, 26 May 2021, https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/articles/updatingethniccontrastsindeathsinvolvingthecoronaviruscovid19englandandwales/24january2020to31march2021. Also see Sala Abdalla, “A reflection on the plight of black, Asian and minority ethnic communities during the COVID-19 pandemic,” Royal College of Surgeons of England, 20 August 2020, https://www.rcseng.ac.uk/news-and-events/blog/a-reflection-on-the-plight-of-the-bame-community-during-the-pandemic/.
2 138,852 as of 19 October 2021 according to https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/deaths.
3 William Doe Kugbeadjor and Harvey C. Kwiyani, “Exploring Adaptive Challenges Faced by African Missionaries in Britain: The Case of the Church of Pentecost,” Missio Africanus Journal of African Missiology 1, no. 2 (2016): 4–15.
4 Sharon Daloz Parks, Leadership Can Be Taught: A Bold Approach for a Complex World (Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 2005), 10.
5 Ronald Heifetz, Alexander Grashow and Marty Linsky, The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World (Boston, MA: Harvard Business Press, 2009), 19.
6 Richard T. Pascale, Mark Milleman and Linda Gioja, Surfing the Edge of Chaos: The Laws of Nature and the New Laws of Business (New York: Crown, 2000), 13–14.
7 Ronald A. Heifetz and Marty Linsky, Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive Through the Dangers of Leading (Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 2002), 13–14.
8 Kugbeadjor and Kwiyani, “Exploring Adaptive Challenges Faced by African Missionaries in Britain,” 7.
9 Peter G. Northouse, Leadership: Theory & Practice, 7th ed. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc., 2016), 262.
10 Ibid., 264.
11 Gabrielle Ka Wai Wong and Diana L. H. Chan, “Adaptive Leadership in Academic Libraries,” Library Management 39, no. 1/2 (2018): 108, doi.org/10.1108/LM-06-2017-0060.
12 Glenda Campbell-Evans, Jan Gray and Bridget Leggett, “Adaptive leadership in school boards in Australia: an emergent model,” School Leadership & Management 34, no. 5 (2014): 546, http://doi.org/10.1080/13632434.2014.938038.
13 Ronald A. Heifetz, Leadership Without Easy Answers (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1994). The concept of adaptive leadership would later be expounded by Pascale et. al. in Surfing the Edge of Chaos.
14 Margaret J. Wheatley, Leadership and the New Science: Learning About Organization from an Orderly Universe (San Francisco, CA: Berrett- Koehler, 1992).
15 Heifetz et al., The Practice of Adaptive Leadership, 9. Some of the works which immediately evolved to build on the subject are Ronald A. Heifetz and Martin Linsky, Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive Through the Dangers of Leading (Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 2017); Dean Williams, Real Leadership: Helping People and Organizations Face their Toughest Challenges, 1st ed. (San Francisco, CA: Berrett- Koehler, 2005); Parks, Leadership Can Be Taught.
16 Heifetz et al., The Practice of Adaptive Leadership, 14.
17 John Roberto, “Becoming an Adaptive Leader: Based on the Work of Ronald Heifetz and Marty Linsky,” Lifelong Faith 5, no. 1 (2011): 26, https://www.lifelongfaith.com/uploads/5/1/6/4/5164069/becoming_an_adaptive_leader.pdf.
18 Heifetz et al., The Practice of Adaptive Leadership, 19.
19 Kerry Patterson et al., Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High, 2nd ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2012), ix.
20 Campbell-Evans et al., “Adaptive Leadership in School Boards in Australia,” 546.
21 Heifetz et al., The Practice of Adaptive Leadership, 19.
22 Northouse, Leadership Theory & Practice, 262.
23 Ibid., 264.
24 Ibid., 271.
25 For instance, see André Gagné, “The ‘Spiritual Warfare’ Worldview of Trump’s Conspiracy Doctor is Part of a Transnational Movement,” Religion Dispatches, 14 August 2020, https://religiondispatches.org/the-spiritual-warfare-worldview-of-trumps-conspiracy-doctor-is-part-of-a-transnational-movement/.
26 As of 1 October 2021 only 4.4 per cent of the population of Africa are fully vaccinated https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/56100076.

The post African congregations adapting to COVID-19 appeared first on Church Mission Society (CMS).

Finding my place

by Rosie Hopley

In this article, I’m going to explore why I have chosen to return to formal study, after being in the world of work, volunteering and pioneering mission for the last 30 years. I’ll point to some of the opportunities and challenges likely to emerge, as well as what makes me hopeful.

At the end of September 2021, I started my MA in Theology with CMS, following the African Christianity track. Standing on the threshold of academic learning, finding my place within the African Christian diaspora in Britain and wanting to broaden the voices I’m hearing in the church, I’m excited to be here.

It’s a privilege to be able to pivot at this stage of life, and yet there are three challenges I’m grappling with that my recent journey into learning seeks in part to address:

• Discerning the opportunities in the midst of rapid change
• Identifying missing theological voices and perspectives
• Being willing to be repositioned.

Why I chose to apply for the CMS MA: African Christian diaspora route

For several years, I’ve been observing the impact of racial division in British society. Until the end of January 2021, I was CEO of a Christian charity I founded called Beloved,¹ which works with women in prostitution in Bristol. While on outreach visits to women working in brothels and massage parlours across the city, I’d be asked the question: “Isn’t Christianity the white man’s religion?”

I don’t believe it is, but I understand why someone might ask this question. There is a need to be able to come up with a compelling response for those who are curious, as well as those in the church who are also grappling with this nagging doubt. I want to get a broader, wider and more global understanding of Christianity through the eyes and ears of non-western teachers.

Seeing the context of mission in Bristol, with the city’s historic links to the transatlantic slave trade and legacy, it seems all the more pressing to have a better insight into global theological teachings. This will help me, and I hope others like me, to speak into these doubts and to offer a compelling, authoritative answer.

Discerning opportunities in times of rapid change

It is an exciting and challenging time to be embarking on study, at an important juncture for the church. With the movement of people globally, and increasing diversity in the UK, our teaching, theology and witness would do well to reflect these changes. In Bristol, the largest city in the south-west, where I’m based, a growing number of our nearly 470,000 residents belong to a Black or minority ethnic group.² For many years, as a church we have asked for the Lord to send us to the nations. Well, the nations are here! According to local data:

The population of Bristol has become increasingly diverse. The proportion of the population who are not “White British” has increased from 12% to 22% of the total population. In Bristol, there are now at least 45 religions, at least 187 countries of birth represented and at least 91 main languages spoken.³ So what does this mean for us as believers in the city? And further afield in cities and towns across the UK? Surely, this represents a massive opportunity. To welcome the stranger, to clothe the needy, to be places of hope and transformation. Yet we’d be making a mistake to stop here.

I believe there are hidden gifts – treasure, you might say – among us, whether it’s long-term neighbours, or new arrivals to the city. I’m convinced there are hidden talents among the body of Christ, which we need to unearth and make the most of. The African diaspora in Britain has many gifts to offer to churches, as well as to our wider communities. Indeed, churches founded by those from the African diaspora have been serving, reaching the lost, preaching the gospel and reinvigorating the UK’s Christian witness. I’m looking forward to exploring and discovering more from fellow believers and being blessed by their giftings. For years, we have been praying, “Lord, send the workers.” Praise God – he’s been sending workers to us from many places, including African nations.

What’s missing?

For over 30 years, my learning and teaching has been western and European-/US-focused. Not necessarily a bad thing, per se, as I can truly say I have flourished under the teachers I’ve had over the decades, and I thank God for them. They have been wonderful.

But given the statistics quoted earlier, I need to hear more Black, African and Middle Eastern voices, to allow them to shape my theological learning too.

Last year, due to the opening up of events through Zoom – a necessity in the first year of the COVID pandemic – I was able to be part of Meachum School of Haymanot’s inaugural gathering of the Society of Gospel Haymanot (SGH).⁴ With teaching from some of the leading Black US theologians and scholars, I felt I had stumbled into a banquet, and I emerged so well nourished! It was a joyful and worshipful gathering, and I’m excited to be joining the Society of Gospel Haymanot again this October presenting a Practical Theology paper on Isaiah 61 and God’s mission call.⁵

I also recognise my own part in this challenge – to take responsibility for broadening my diet of spiritual nourishment. Which churches am I visiting? For example, there are plenty of majority Black churches in the city. Which books am I reading? Which lectures am I tuning in to? Which conferences am I attending? I have agency and choice in this, and it’s up to me to exercise it, and wisely broaden my diet.

Taking steps into this vast globalised pool of theological voices, there’s the challenge of being overwhelmed by the myriad of choices! I look forward to being guided by people like Harvey Kwiyani and Cathy Ross, as well as local church leaders who have been serving faithfully on the ground in Bristol for decades.

I’m particularly excited to be joining my fellow CMS students on the MA course, several of them joining from a variety of nations via Zoom. It feels like a whole host of vistas has suddenly opened up before me, and there are nuggets and treasures of learning and wisdom to discover.

Being willing to be repositioned

Last year was a tumultuous time for millions as the pandemic began to grip the world. It was also a time of protest and lament, following the shocking murder of George Floyd. Many people were horrified by the scenes of a man’s life taken at the hands of a police officer, all caught on camera.

A personal challenge for me was that while I was leading a pioneering work among women in Bristol massage parlours and brothels, I also grappled with the wider societal conversations, or the silence as people were scared to step into awkward conversations around race, racism and whether we truly are a post-racial society.

Over a period of time, I had a sense that God was calling me to pass on the baton of leadership of the charity to others, and that handover was completed at the start of this year. At times it was an uncomfortable process, but being obedient is always better than being comfortable!

I’m immensely grateful for the other seasoned and wise leaders who gathered around me and helped me to discern the Lord’s leading. It’s a delight to see Beloved continue to flourish in its mission among the precious women in the parlours, seeing them come to know Christ’s transforming love and freedom.

As that door of leading has closed, other doors of learning and writing have opened up. Being out of my comfort zone is something I can see I’ll need to get used to, and that’s not a bad thing.

Humility to work together

When I hear reports of church leaders and church congregations coming together to share what they have to bless communities around them, seeing the work of Christ as he builds his church, it makes me hopeful. Whether it’s two long-standing leaders from different cultural backgrounds joining together in missions into prison work, or churches opening up the pulpit or preaching platform to leaders from other nations, it causes me to rejoice. Or people from churches in one area of the city, praying faithfully together for years for their community – what blessing there is.

The Lord in his infinite wisdom has caused us to need one another, to bring gifts that we will find through each other and alongside each other. Is it going to be hard, and will we make mistakes along the way? Yes, there will be challenges; as God disturbs our comfort, it will be hard at times, and of course we’re bound to make mistakes. But what joy there is to be found as we seek the kingdom of God together, preferring one another, listening to one another in love and humility.

I’m excited that from what I can see, the Lord has been sending in his reinforcements for the local church in the guise of those who we mistakenly think are the least, the lost or “not like us”. It’s my prayer that God will open our eyes to what he is doing, that we will discern the opportunities around us and listen to a more diverse range of Christian voices. May we be humble, rejoice and be obedient to join in with the work of the Holy Spirit.

About the author

Rosie Hopley is the founder and former CEO of the charity Beloved, co-founder of a social enterprise, LoveWell, and co-founder of Bristol city prayer gathering Vision for the Vulnerable. Prior to Beloved, she ran her own communications, PR and research business, mainly working with government bodies, the NHS and private healthcare organisations, and universities.

More from this issue

Notes

1 Beloved is a ministry that supports women working in prostitution, in particular those in commercial massage parlours and brothels. Outreach teams are recruited from local churches, trained and equipped to share the gospel, support women to exit the sex trade, and provide support and comfort. For more information see https://beloved.org.uk.
2 “The Population of Bristol – September 2021,” Bristol City Council, 4, https://www.bristol.gov.uk/documents/20182/33904/Population+of+Bristol+September+2021.pdf/e6cb7ac8-278c-c351-9dcc-07a83fb4fe23?t=1632843439676.
3 Ibid.
4 Meachum School of Haymanot’s inaugural gathering of the Society of Gospel Haymanot (SGH). Meachum School of Haymanot (Ge’ez word meaning faith, or theology) exists to “bring biblical, graduate-level theological education to African-American, ethnic minority and lowincome communities in a contextualized and affordable manner.” While the centre of teaching resides in St. Louis, Missouri, USA, all classes and programmes are available online.
5 Find out more about the Society of Gospel Haymanot, and their conference, which took place on Friday 22 October and Saturday 23 October 2021, at https://meachum.org/annual-meeting.

The post Finding my place appeared first on Church Mission Society (CMS).

Rivers in the desert: the story of African Christianity in Britain

by Sheila Akomiah-Conteh

Do not remember the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I will do a new thing, now it shall spring forth; shall you not know it? I will even make a road in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.

Isa. 43:18–19, KJV

Introduction

It is undeniable that the landscape of Christianity in Britain has changed drastically in the last 60 years. The predominant drivers of these changes have been secularisation and migration. British Christianity has seen steep numerical decline because of secularisation, and great diversity and some numerical growth at the same time, as a result of international migration.

The disintegration of Christendom from the twentieth century can be seen in the drastic decline in the power and popularity of the church. This “social process of religion losing power, popularity and plausibility” is what is widely referred to as secularisation.¹ While various commentators may disagree about the timing, causes and measurement of secularisation, it is generally acknowledged and accepted as the most prominent cause of the demise of Christianity in Britain in the post- Christendom era.²

Britain’s era of Christendom with its widespread social appeal and church attendance was premised on certain structural and ideological social conditions that are no longer in place. We now live in a radically transformed sociocultural and political era and must therefore begin to consider the available agencies of our age that promote or can potentially restimulate Christian growth. The former archetype of Christian Britain may be slipping away, but as Isaiah 43:18–19 highlights, to comprehend and embrace the new thing God is doing, it is sometimes necessary to let go of the past and forget the former things. Such renewal and refocusing of the mind can lead to clarity and appreciation of the new move of God. In this regard, Stuart Murray notes, in Church After Christendom, “Christendom is fading. We may grieve or celebrate its passing, but we cannot revive, restore or recover it.”³ A paradigm shift regarding the extant and future British church is already underway. It is time to stop talking about historic decline and start thinking about what is new in contemporary British Christianity.

In this article, I trace the development of one of the most significant contributors to numerical growth and ethnic and theological diversity to British Christianity in recent times. I highlight some of the distinct contributions and ongoing impact of African and other Black Majority Churches on Christianity in contemporary Britain.

The phenomenon of Black church growth in Britain

The prospects for the church in Britain have been defined by an enduring narrative of decline for many decades but something new is happening. The presence and influence of old and established institutions is undoubtedly waning, but many new and innovative groups are emerging. New forms of Christian growth are occurring all over the country amid the general climate of decline. These pockets of growth are like ways in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. One of the most significant contributors to these pockets of church growth in contemporary Britain is immigration, with a consequent rise of new churches, especially those from ethnic minority backgrounds.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines ethnic minority as “a group within a community which has different national or cultural traditions from the main population”.⁴ This includes Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) and “Other White” communities. According to the Institute of Race Relations, BME is the terminology normally used in the UK to describe all people of non-white descent.⁵ The term “Other White”, on the other hand, is a classification of ethnicity in the United Kingdom, referring to persons who consider themselves “white” but are neither British nor Irish.⁶ There has been an explosion of BME and Other White churches in all the major regions of the UK in the last 40 years.⁷

One of the most recent regional investigations into the phenomenon of new churches was undertaken in Scotland in 2019.⁸ Here, it was discovered that 65 per cent of all new churches planted in the city of Glasgow in the years 2000–16 were ethnic minority or BME churches. In the BME church category, those that are led and primarily attended by Black or Black British Christians of Caribbean and sub-Saharan African heritage are often known as Black Majority Churches (BMCs). Some Black church leaders resent this designation due to the fact that it is not they themselves who have called their churches “Black churches” or their version of the Christian faith “Black Christianity”. These names have been created and imposed to a large extent, by white commentators and observers. Black church leaders feel therefore that Black people should not assume that the intention behind these names is positive or favourable.⁹ Although this assigned description is controversial and has been widely challenged by several Black church leaders and advocates in the past and present,¹⁰ I will maintain it for the sake of clarity, and to serve as the provisional starting point for our discussion.

BMCs are currently some of the fastest growing churches in Britain. They also have some of the biggest congregations in many urban centres in the UK. For instance, the 2012 London church census reported a 16 per cent increase in church attendance in the city since the last count in 2005. This growth was mainly attributed to the proliferation of new BMCs in the capital. BMCs were responsible for 28 per cent of overall church attendance in London, and nearly half (48 per cent) of all church attendance in inner London. Overall, it is estimated that one in five (19 per cent) Black Londoners go to church every week.¹¹

Another detailed study in the London borough of Southwark found that at least 240 new BMC congregations had been founded in the borough.¹² In her report in The Guardian in 2016, Harriet Sherwood highlighted that the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), a West African-originated denomination, is now thought to be the fastest growing church in Britain, with over 700 branches nationwide.¹³ In the same report, British church statistician Dr Peter Brierley also observed that RCCG has now overtaken longer-established Pentecostal churches in the UK such as the Assemblies of God and Elim.¹⁴

In the Scottish region, new research shows that 79 per cent of the new ethnic minority churches founded in the city of Glasgow in 2000–16 were African Churches.¹⁵ Modern-day discussions of mission and Christianity in the UK will therefore be incomplete, unbalanced and even misleading without the mention, inclusion and acknowledgement of the growing presence, prominence and contribution of new churches, and Black Majority Churches in particular, to the contemporary historiography of British Christianity.

Historical development and origins

The rise of Black Majority Christianity in Britain is usually traced to the late 1940s mass migration of Caribbean peoples to the UK and, later, the arrival of other Black Christians from various countries in Africa. The rejection and difficulties faced by these new migrants as they sought to integrate themselves into the local culture and into existing Christian congregations subsequently resulted in the foundation of various independent, Black-led churches. These new groups also arose to serve the distinctive spiritual and social needs of the new Black Christians, hitherto unfulfilled by the existing British churches. The inability or unwillingness of British churches to meet the distinct spiritual and social needs of Black migrant Christian communities remains one of the core reasons for the continued existence and massive growth of Black Majority Christianity in contemporary Britain.

The origins of Black Majority Churches in Britain, however, date further back to the beginning of the twentieth century when one of the first Pentecostal churches in Britain was established by an African businessman in Peckham in 1906.¹⁶ Thomas Kwame Brem-Wilson was born into an affluent family of merchants in Dixcove, in Ghana, West Africa, in 1855. He served as the schoolmaster of a missionary school before his migration to Britain in 1901. The Revd Brem-Wilson was one of the first people to be baptised in the Holy Spirit during the inception of Pentecostalism in Britain.¹⁷ In response to the Pentecostal revival, he founded the first Black-led Pentecostal church in Britain, then known as Sumner Road Chapel, in 1906, leading it until his death in 1929.

After the death of Brem-Wilson, the church’s leadership dynamics changed as several white ministers took over its management because of its affiliation to the Apostolic Church and Assemblies of God denominations. This may have blurred the historical origins of the church as the first Black-led Pentecostal Church in Britain. Now rebranded as Sureway International Christian Ministries, the church is still active and is now led by the Revd Dr Steve Armah, another Ghanaian missionary.

Unlike its successors, therefore, the first Black church in Britain did not develop as a response to social struggle but primarily from a missiological initiative. That is not to say that the development of the later Black churches was not missional, but it highlights the primary impetus behind the rise of the Black churches in the UK at different points in history. Additionally, although it was colloquially referred to as the “Black man’s church” in those days (mainly because it was Black-led), Brem- Wilson’s church was a very multicultural church with a diverse ethnic mix.¹⁸ Apart from Brem-Wilson, the academic Roswith Gerloff also notes that there were traces of indigenous African Christian faith in Hornsey in the 1930s.¹⁹

The re-emergence of Black Majority Churches in Britain from the Windrush era in the late 1940s was therefore a radical expansion of the Black church movement on a much larger scale and under a different set of circumstances. As previously highlighted, this development was largely the result of Black Christians feeling alienated and marginalised in British society, both secular and religious. It was also in response to the desire to maintain a sense of cultural identity and support in an unfamiliar world. BMCs served and still serve as places of refuge for many new migrants to Britain.

In summary, two main types of Black churches have developed in Britain: those established through purely (largely?) missional imperatives in the 1900s like Brem- Wilson’s church, where issues like racism were not an underlying cause for their foundation, and those born out of social struggle, identity and need, as well as mission, from the 1940s. The latter include those formed through migration from the Caribbean and the many Black African churches that formed from the 1980s onwards. In more recent times, several new, independent and mainly African-led churches have been founded here in Britain with distinctly missional agendas, such as “reverse mission”, in a bid to re-Christianise Britain. However, the main driver of all of these movements has been migration.

The significance of Black Majority Churches in Britain

Having considered the origins of BMCs in Britain and the migratory trends in their formation, it is important to ask to what extent and in what ways they are transforming the landscape of Christianity in Britain.

The earnestness of Black Christianity’s missionary outreach both to Black people and to others is an area of British Christian life not often well acknowledged but one that has been a great success story. The religious associations of minority groups are usually treated as marginal and as having little impact on the religious establishment of the dominant society,²⁰ but this has not been the case with Black Christianity in Britain. Black Caribbean and African Christian migration has brought many dynamic, unique and enduring changes to British Christian life and British Society in general. I will highlight a few of these distinctive qualities and contributions.

Resacralising sacred places

The physicality of churches and chapels play a powerful role in popular perceptions of religion in Britain. As such, empty churches are frequently cited by critics and the media as evidence of large-scale religious decline in the United Kingdom. The conversion of places of worship into places of secular use such as houses, offices and entertainment venues is now a common occurrence in Britain, but some new churches are reversing this trend. One of the most significant but rarely known contributions of Black Majority Churches to Britain’s Christian heritage is the acquisition of historic and closed or out-of-use church buildings. Because they are newcomers, one of the challenges frequently faced by new churches in Britain is obtaining suitable places for worship. Many resort to renting public spaces or sharing church buildings with other existing congregations. Increasingly, however, many BMCs in particular are procuring spaces for themselves on the Christian landscape by buying church buildings from dwindling, historic congregations. Although creating their own worship space is the foremost motivation, another key reason for this is to prevent historic church buildings from being lost or sold for secular uses.

Therefore, in their bid to create spaces for themselves, BMCs are also helping to preserve the heritage of British Christianity. There are numerous examples of this in parts of the country where BMCs have a strong presence. Here in Scotland, almost all the major West African Pentecostal Church denominations, such as the Church of Pentecost, Deeper Christian Life Ministry, the Redeemed Christian Church of God and Mountain of Fire and Miracles Ministries, own and worship in buildings acquired from historic church groups. The Church of Pentecost, a denomination that has its origins in Ghana and over 20,000 members in the UK, raises annual funds (“Project Offerings”) to support the acquisition or refurbishment of such buildings for worship. In this regard, BMCs are resacralising or restoring sacred spaces in Britain as places of divine worship.

Furthermore, by buying historic church buildings, BMCs are establishing themselves as permanent members of the British Christian community. They are sending out the message that they exist for serious mission and are here to stay. They are also integrating and establishing themselves as authentic members of local communities. The designation of “immigrant” churches commonly assigned to BMCs and other ethnic minority churches in Britain can give the erroneous impression that they are merely exclusive cultural groups, not authentically British and do not do authentic mission. An overwhelming majority of the members of these churches are, however, legal British citizens, including their second-generation members, many of whom are British-born. In this vein, the difficulties, harshness and rejections faced by the Windrush Christian generation may not be as acute in this era. Nonetheless, contemporary Black British Christians still struggle for acceptance as authentic members of the British Christian community and, most importantly, as authentic partners in mission. Hence, the Swiss theologian Hollenweger wrote, “Christians in Britain prayed for many years for revival, and when it came they did not recognise it because it was black.”²¹

One of the criticisms often levelled against BMCs in Britain is that they have not been successful in attracting or proselytising white populations. Their congregations are usually Black and may also be mono-national. Admittedly, many BMCs have had little success in this area although it is their ultimate missional goal to “win” white British souls for Christ – and there are many reasons for this deficiency. Nevertheless, it is of equal importance to note that they are still reaching and meeting the spiritual and social needs of a distinct and authentic British Christian community – one that the traditional British churches have also so far been wildly unsuccessful in attracting or catering for. Therefore, a Congolese church discipling and reaching out to other British Congolese Christians and non-Christians alike in their community is still doing mission in Britain. Some critics shun the growth and success of BMCs in Britain with comments such as “they are only reaching their own people” – as if mission in Britain is only valid if it is targeted at white Britons. God’s mission is to everyone, everywhere, and people are of equal worth in terms of salvation, regardless of where they are “fished”. The missional accomplishments of BMCs in Britain therefore deserve equal recognition and celebration.

Sacralising secular spaces

The increasing presence and activity of BMCs is making Christianity more physically visible in contemporary British society. Latest figures from the city of London show that Black Christians attend church more than any other group on a given Sunday.²² Although they make up just 14 per cent of the population, they account for at least 48 per cent of all church attendance in the city. It is not an uncommon sight to see smartly dressed African families or individuals commuting to church on a Sunday in many urban cities in the UK.

In his project Being Built Together, Andrew Rogers of Roehampton University counted a minimum of 240 BMCs in Southwark, South London. These churches were predominantly African majority, especially West African. The area is now believed to have the greatest concentration of African Christianity outside of Africa, not only in Europe but in the world. Signs of this dramatic development are clearly evident walking down the Old Kent Road, a major artery of the borough, where one can locate at least 25 African churches in just a 1.5-mile radius. Black Christianity is therefore not only making Christianity more visible in Britain but also transforming the geographies of local communities.

BMCs in Britain also hold church services in some of the most unlikely locations. Due to space constraints, BMCs will worship anywhere they can find accommodation. This may include public or community halls, schools and even hotels. African churches are particularly adept at adapting unusual spaces for worship purposes. In my research on new churches in Glasgow, I came across several African churches that worshipped in unusual places such as converted warehouses, industrial offices, transformed garages, adapted residential homes and in shops on the high street. The most interesting example I found of this phenomenon was a Nigerian church that worshipped in a converted shop sandwiched between a butcher’s and an off-licence on a busy street. Members of local communities are therefore encountering Christian worship in places where they least expect it. In this way, BMCs are creating a visible Christian presence (sacralising secular spaces) in the community.

The lack of suitable premises to use as places of worship also gives BMCs high mobility. It is not unlikely for an African church to worship on multiple sites before finally settling down in a permanent location. This is also one of the key reasons why they are easily missed and consequently, undercounted in large-scale surveys. Multiple and at times no known addresses can make them hard to locate and verify. Many BMCs, especially less established first-generation ones, may also have minimal official presence on the internet or in other parachurch statistics. Such undercounting is therefore difficult to avoid without researchers taking to the streets on a Sunday and conducting small-scale, grass root-level research. The high mobility of BMCs similarly promotes the visibility of Christianity. However, it may also hinder churches from building strong ties and lasting relationships in local communities because they are not always there for long.

In conclusion, BMCs are not detached groups or “holy huddles” isolated from the rest of society. They are interactive, dynamic and recognisable communities in many societies. Their growing presence and activities in the public arena are also helping to make visible the continued presence and practice of Christianity in post-narrative of regression and the disappearance of faith communities from public life.

Revitalising British Christianity

One unique feature of BMC Christianity is its vibrancy and liveliness. African Christian expression is particularly bold, bright and loud. Church meetings are happy gatherings, the dress code is bold and beautiful, praise and worship is a passionate whole-body exercise, preaching is interactive and dynamic, offering is generous, and prayer is serious and involves all. Almost all the duties performed in African churches are also voluntary including, at times, the ministry of pastors and other key leaders. For example, more than 90 per cent of the African churches investigated in Glasgow during my research had pastors who were also full-time workers, ranging from nurses to professional bankers.

The liveliness of African churches has sometimes earned them the description “happy clappy churches”, although this is at times used in a derogatory sense. Nonetheless, African Christian worship services are gatherings of upliftment, inspiration and joy. Their members do not go to church just to fulfil some burdensome religious duty. They choose to go because they find church fellowship and theology practically useful and enjoyable. This enthusiasm and general excitement about faith brings vibrancy to local communities and also has the potential to invigorate other churches and Christians. For instance, the minister of a neighbouring church used to attend the service at my church (an African Pentecostal church) every Sunday morning particularly during praise and worship time because it made him feel spiritually and physically energised. He then hoped to transmit this energy into his own church service and to his congregation.

The vibrancy and enthusiasm of African churches is further conveyed into evangelism and missional activity. African Christians in particular have a natural missional imperative. For most of them, evangelism is second nature. In fact, many African churches in the diaspora are started by ordinary individuals who feel a sense of duty to share the gospel wherever they are. The evangelistic strategies employed by African churches are therefore bold, confident and people-centred. Traditional styles such as tract distribution, door-to-door, open-air street evangelism and personal interaction are commonly used.

Evangelism is also usually targeted at white British people. This is where a mismatch between methodology and goal may be affecting success. The traditional evangelistic approaches used by most African churches are tried and tested methods that are usually very successful in the African context – but not so much in a postmodern, post-Christian, privacy-cherishing society like contemporary Britain. African churches therefore need to learn, create and adapt appropriate evangelistic approaches for reaching people in the British context.

Diversifying British theology

BMCs have brought not only cultural but also theological diversity to British Christianity. Specifically, they have brought Pentecostal theology to the forefront of contemporary British Christianity. The majority of new African churches in Britain are Pentecostal churches. Consequently, Britain is now home to hundreds more Pentecostal denominations and thousands more Pentecostal churches than it had 50 years ago. The 2016 Scottish Church Census also found that the number of Pentecostals in Scotland has tripled since 1984, growing at a rate of 3.8 per cent per annum.²³

Pentecostal denominations are also leading church planting across the UK. The RCCG, a Pentecostal denomination from Nigeria, is now the fastest-growing church in Britain. Started in Britain in 1988, they have now planted around 760 churches all over the country. The traditional British church denominations are in general planting less.

In Scotland, only 6 per cent of the 110 new churches started in Glasgow in 2000–16 were planted by the established denominations.²⁴ Specifically, seven of the new churches belonged to four established or historic denominations in Scotland. These were the Church of Scotland, the Free Church of Scotland, the Reformed Presbyterian Church and the Baptist Union of Scotland. The Church of Scotland established one new congregation in the Whiteinch area of Glasgow in 2000. It was the only new church plant by the denomination in 16 years. Pentecostalism is generally the fastest-growing expression of Christianity globally and particularly in Africa. British Christianity must generally embrace more closely and learn from the attributes that make Pentecostalism such a successful global trend. African Pentecostalism and African Christianity in general have many practical and theological lessons to teach the British church about faith and about living in faith in a post-Christian context. The concept of embodied faith – faith that is tangible, practised and worked out through our lived experiences – will be one such lesson. Many Africans understand faith and religion not as merely abstract but as lived experience. Religion must therefore have real-life implications like meeting real needs – be it rain during a drought or healing when one is sick. Such an outlook breeds constant expectancy, excitement, reverence for God and vibrant faith.

Conclusion

The proliferation of Black Majority Churches, and African churches in particular, is undoubtedly one of the most notable developments in contemporary British Christian history. Whereas all the older and traditional Christian denominations in Britain are in serious decline, there is little evidence that BMCs are slowing in their growth. The concentrations of BMCs in British urban centres may well have an impact beyond their numbers in terms of stimulating the wider church. Their continued growth also points to a rather more nuanced picture of church growth and decline in the UK, where urban religious landscapes have now changed dramatically over recent decades due to rapid BMC expansion. No space is out of bounds for the Black Christianity movement in Britain. Like rivers in a desert, African churches in Britain continue to be key sources of hope for the future of British Christianity, and refreshment for dry and thirsty souls.

About the author

Sheila Akomiah-Conteh is a Ghanaian scholar based in Scotland. Her doctorate thesis explored the changing landscape of the church in Scotland with a specific focus on new and emerging churches in the city of Glasgow. She is a researcher and tutor in religious studies and philosophy.

More from this issue

Notes

1 Steve Bruce, “The Secularisation of Scotland,” International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church 14, no. 2 (2014): 193, doi.org/10.1080/1474225X.2014.931183.
2 Callum G. Brown, The Death of Christian Britain: Understanding Secularisation 1800–2000 (London and New York: Routledge, 2001); Steve Bruce, God is Dead: Secularization in the West (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002).
3 Stuart Murray, Church After Christendom (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2012), 7.
4 “Meaning of ethnic minority in English,” Oxford Dictionaries, accessed 6 August 2021, https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/ethnic_minority.
5 “Definitions,” Institute of Race Relations, accessed 6 August 2021, http://www.irr.org.uk/research/statistics/definitions/.
6 Office for National Statistics, “Ethnic group, national identity and religion: Measuring equality: A guide for the collection and classification of ethnic group, national identity and religion data in the UK” (London: Office for National Statistics, 2013): 22.
7 David Goodhew, ed., Church Growth in Britain: 1980 to the Present (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012).
8 Sheila Akomiah-Conteh, “The changing landscape of the church in post-Christendom Britain: new churches in Glasgow, 2000–2016” (PhD diss., University of Aberdeen, 2019).
9 Patrick Kalilombe, “Black Christianity in Britain,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 20, no. 2 (1997): 306–24, doi.org/10.1080/01419870.1997.9993963.
10 Joel Edwards, ed., ‘Let’s Praise Him Again’: An African–Caribbean Perspective on Worship (Eastbourne: Kingsway Publications, 1992), 12–35.
11 Peter Brierley, Capital Growth: What the 2012 London Church Census Reveals (London: ADBC Publishers, 2014).
12 Andrew Rogers, “Being Built Together: A Story of New Black Majority Churches in the London Borough of Southwark” (University of Roehampton, 2013), https://www.roehampton.ac.uk/globalassets/documents/humanities/being20built20togethersb203-7-13.pdf.
13 Harriet Sherwood, ”Pentecostal church looks to white Britons to boost congregations,” The Guardian 30 December 2016, accessed 10 August 2021, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/30/pentecostal-church-looks-to-white-britons-to-boost-congregations.
14 Ibid.
15 Akomiah-Conteh, “The changing landscape of the church in post-Christendom Britain”.
16 Babatunde Adedibu, “Brem-Wilson, Thomas Kawa,” Dictionary of African Christian Biography (2018), accessed 16 August 2021, https://dacb.org/stories/ghana/brem-wilson/.
17 Thomas Ball Barratt, When the Fire Fell: An Outline of My Life (Oslo: Alfons Hansen & Sønner), 1927), 150.
18 Adedibu, “Brem-Wilson”.
19 Roswith I. H. Gerloff, A Plea for British Black Theologies: The Black Church Movement in Britain in its transatlantic cultural and theological Interaction with special reference to the Pentecostal Oneness (Apostolic) and Sabbatarian Movements (Frankfurt: Peter Lang., 1992), 44.
20 Steve Bruce, “Secularization and Church Growth in the United Kingdom,” Journal of Religion in Europe 6, no. 3 (2013): 277.
21 Walter J. Hollenweger, “Foreword” to Gerloff, A Plea for British Black Theologies, ix.
22 Peter Brierley, Capital Growth.
23 Peter Brierley, “The Fourth Scottish Church Census: The Results Unveiled” (Brierley Consultancy: 2017): 20, https://www.dropbox.com/s/4tb7ehkxtt6yjwv/The%20Fourth%20Scottish%20Church%20Census%202016.pdf?dl=0
24 Akomiah-Conteh, “The changing landscape of the church in post-Christendom Britain”.

The post Rivers in the desert appeared first on Church Mission Society (CMS).

Editorial: The gift of African diaspora churches in the UK | ANVIL vol 37 issue 3

by Harvey Kwiyani and Colin Smith

Christians in Britain prayed for many years for revival, and when it came they did not recognise it because it was black.

Walter Hollenweger¹

This latest edition of ANVIL explores the contribution of African diaspora churches to the realities of church and mission in Britain. It is particularly timely for CMS, following on, as it does, from the highly successful launch of an MA programme in African Christianity. It also comes on the heels of Black History Month. Those combined themes of interrogating history and learning from the distinct experience, insights, wisdom and gifts of African Christianity are evident in the articles that follow.

One wonders how Black History Month was marked in theological colleges, programmes and churches up and down the country. Was there a Black Church History Month with a serious exploration and appreciation of gifts of African theologians to the world church, from Clement and Origen to the present day? Where do the pioneers of Black and African Pentecostal churches in Britain figure in considerations of the historical development of contemporary church life in Britain? Is it just possible that there were Christians across Europe and North America who embraced or voiced support for a Black History Month while simultaneously failing to recognise and appreciate the fundamental importance of Black and brown theologians, religious leaders, prophets and martyrs in the history and development of Christianity right up to the present day?

Since the early part of the last century, African Christianity has been profoundly influencing and shaping the landscape of church and mission in Britain. Large-scale migration from Africa into Europe in the past 50 years has been the driving force behind that change. In his case study of the Apostolic Pastoral Congress in Britain, Israel Olofinjana notes the tendency to overlook the sheer diversity of African Christianity in Britain. Such diversity is unsurprising given that contemporary Africa not only has the world’s largest Christian population but also its most diverse. African diaspora churches bring to Britain a diversity in theologies, ecclesiologies, mission and cultures that is often overlooked in favour of more homogenising narratives.

That diversity is also expressed in the intergenerational nature of many African churches. In his article, Joseph Ola explores the experience of African millennials in the diaspora and the ways in which culture and identity shape and influence faith and worship. He considers the way a younger generation of African Christians in Britain face the challenges of a sense of dual identity, but also powerfully points to the importance of younger African Christians retaining an unashamedly African Christian identity, seeing that Africanness as a gift both to themselves and the wider church.

It is this gift of African Christianity to the church in the West that Sheila Akomiah-Conteh points to – identifying the missional contributions of African churches to urban life, drawing particularly on her own doctoral research on churches in Glasgow. She argues that African Christianity is a revitalising force in British Christianity, resacralising the sacred spaces of abandoned church buildings and sacralising urban spaces as churches are planted and develop in what she identifies as secular spaces.

The distinctive gifts and the challenges faced by African Christians in Britain is taken up by Harvey Kwiyani and Paul Ayokunle. Their research into the way health workers from African Pentecostal churches responded to the COVID-19 pandemic offers insights into the ways in which African Christians, their churches and local communities were so deeply affected by it and how they responded to its impact. The article identifies the distinct way in which the pandemic was understood and confronted as both a spiritual and medical battleground. It goes on to explore the theological and existential questions raised by a virus that disproportionately disrupted the community life and worship of African diaspora churches in Britain and served only to emphasise the inequality and discrimination in British society.

The theme of inequality and discrimination is taken up in the video interview with Dupe Adefala, a pastor, church planter, prison chaplain and former student at CMS. The interview explores the research process and some of the findings from her MA dissertation on the legacies of five Nigerian women pioneer ministers in London. Here she seeks to break some of the silence around women’s voices and women’s experience, highlighting a largely untold story of the distinctive and pioneering contribution of African women to mission and church planting in London.

In our other video, entitled If we kept silent the stones would cry out, Gospel artist and praise and worship minister Ahmed Conteh reflects on the way that the distinctive gifts that African Christians bring to church life in Britain is particularly evident in the spirituality and vibrancy of worship and music.

The final article is written by Rosie Hopley, an MA student studying African Christianity with CMS. As the founder and former CEO of a Bristol-based charity, Beloved, she is mindful of the contribution of African diaspora churches to her community, but also aware that so much of that is hidden or overlooked. The inspiration to dig deeper into African Christianity came from the questions of women working in brothels and massage parlours across the city, who asked her, “Isn’t Christianity the white man’s religion?” The quest to respond to that question by unearthing a broader, wider and more global narrative about Christian faith in Britain is illustrated throughout this edition of ANVIL.

About the author

Harvey Kwiyani is a Malawian missiologist and theologian who has lived, worked and studied in Europe and North America for the past 20 years. He has researched African Christianity and African theology for his PhD, and taught African theology at Liverpool Hope University. Harvey is CEO of Global Connections, programme leader for the Africa Christian Diaspora route of the CMS Pioneer MA, and founder and executive director of Missio Africanus, a mission organisation established in 2014 as a learning community focused on releasing the missional potential of African and other minority ethnic Christians living in the UK.

Colin Smith is dean of mission education at Church Mission Society. He teaches on the Pioneer Mission Leadership Training programme and also oversees training for CMS people in mission, including the mission partner pathway. He is author, with Cathy Ross, of Missional Conversations.

More from this issue

Notes

1 Walter J. Hollenweger, “Foreword” to Roswith I. H. Gerloff, A Plea for British Black Theologies: The Black Church Movement in Britain in its transatlantic cultural and theological Interaction with special reference to the Pentecostal Oneness (Apostolic) and Sabbatarian Movements (Frankfurt: Peter Lang., 1992), ix.

The post Editorial: The gift of African diaspora churches in the UK appeared first on Church Mission Society (CMS).

At the end of September 2021, I started my MA in theology, ministry and mission with CMS, following the African Christianity track. Standing on the threshold of academic learning, finding my place within the African Christian diaspora in Britain and wanting to broaden the voices I’m hearing in the church, I’m excited to be here.

By Rosie Hopley

Why have I chosen to return to formal study, after being in the world of work, volunteering and pioneering mission for the last 30 years?

For several years, I’ve been observing the impact of racial division in British society. Until the end of January 2021, I was CEO of a Christian charity I founded called Beloved,¹ which works with women in prostitution in Bristol. While on outreach visits to women working in brothels and massage parlours across the city, I’d get asked the question: “Isn’t Christianity the white man’s religion?”

I don’t believe it is, but I understand why someone might ask this question. There is a need to be able to come up with a compelling response for those who are curious, as well as those in the church who are also grappling with this nagging doubt. I want to get a broader, wider and more global understanding of Christianity through the eyes and ears of non-western teachers.

Seeing the context of mission in Bristol, with the city’s historic links to the transatlantic slave trade and legacy, it seems all the more pressing to have a better insight into global theological teachings. This will help me, and I hope others like me, to speak into these doubts and to offer a compelling, authoritative answer.

Discerning opportunities in times of rapid change

It is an exciting and challenging time to be embarking on study, at an important juncture for the church. With the movement of people globally, and increasing diversity in the UK, our teaching, theology and witness would do well to reflect these changes. In Bristol, the largest city in the south-west, where I’m based, a growing number of our nearly 470,000 residents belong to a Black or minority ethnic group.² For many years, as a church we have asked for the Lord to send us to the nations. Well, the nations are here! According to local data:

The population of Bristol has become increasingly diverse. The proportion of the population who are not “White British” has increased from 12% to 22% of the total population. In Bristol, there are now at least 45 religions, at least 187 countries of birth represented and at least 91 main languages spoken.³

So what does this mean for us as believers in the city? And further afield in cities and towns across the UK? Surely, this represents a massive opportunity. To welcome the stranger, to clothe the needy, to be places of hope and transformation. Yet we’d be making a mistake to stop here.

I believe there are hidden gifts – treasure, you might say – among us, whether it’s long-term neighbours, or new arrivals to the city. I’m convinced there are hidden talents among the body of Christ, which we need to unearth and make the most of. The African diaspora in Britain has many gifts to offer to churches, as well as to our wider communities. Indeed, churches founded by those from the African diaspora have been serving, reaching the lost, preaching the gospel and reinvigorating the UK’s Christian witness. I’m looking forward to exploring and discovering more from fellow believers and being blessed by their giftings. For years, we have been praying, “Lord, send the workers.” Praise God – he’s been sending workers to us from many places, including African nations.

Missing theological voices

For over 30 years, my learning and teaching has been western and European-/US-focused. Not necessarily a bad thing, per se, as I can truly say I have flourished under the teachers I’ve had over the decades, and I thank God for them. They have been wonderful.

But given the statistics quoted earlier, I need to hear more Black, African and Middle Eastern voices, to allow them to shape my theological learning too.

Last year, due to the opening up of events through Zoom I was able to be part of Meachum School of Haymanot’s inaugural gathering of the Society of Gospel Haymanot (SGH).⁴ With teaching from some of the leading Black US theologians and scholars, I felt I had stumbled into a banquet, and I emerged so well nourished! It was a joyful and worshipful gathering, and I’m excited to be joining the Society of Gospel Haymanot again this October presenting a Practical Theology paper on Isaiah 61 and God’s mission call.

I also recognise my own part in this challenge – to take responsibility for broadening my diet of spiritual nourishment. Which churches am I visiting? For example, there are plenty of majority Black churches in the city. Which books am I reading? Which lectures am I tuning in to? Which conferences am I attending? I have agency and choice in this, and it’s up to me to exercise it, and wisely broaden my diet.

Taking steps into this vast globalised pool of theological voices, there’s the challenge of being overwhelmed by the myriad of choices! I look forward to being guided by people like Harvey Kwiyani and Cathy Ross at CMS, as well as local church leaders who have been serving faithfully on the ground in Bristol for decades.

I’m particularly excited to be joining my fellow CMS students on the MA course, several of them joining from a variety of nations via Zoom. It feels like a whole host of vistas has suddenly opened up before me, and there are nuggets and treasures of learning and wisdom to discover.

Being willing to be repositioned

Last year was a tumultuous time for millions as the pandemic began to grip the world. It was also a time of protest and lament, following the shocking murder of George Floyd. Many people were horrified by the scenes of a man’s life taken at the hands of a police officer, all caught on camera.

A personal challenge for me was that while I was leading a pioneering work among women in Bristol massage parlours and brothels, I also grappled with the wider societal conversations, or the silence as people were scared to step into awkward conversations around race, racism and whether we truly are a post-racial society.

Over a period of time, I had a sense that God was calling me to pass on the baton of leadership of the Beloved charity to others, and that handover was completed at the start of this year. At times it was an uncomfortable process, but being obedient is always better than being comfortable!

I’m immensely grateful for the other seasoned and wise leaders who gathered around me and helped me to discern the Lord’s leading. It’s a delight to see Beloved continue to flourish in its mission among the precious women in the parlours, seeing them come to know Christ’s transforming love and freedom.

As that door of leading has closed, other doors of learning and writing have opened up. Being out of my comfort zone is something I can see I’ll need to get used to, and that’s not a bad thing.

Humility to work together

When I hear reports of church leaders and church congregations coming together to share what they have to bless communities around them, seeing the work of Christ as he builds his church, it makes me hopeful. Whether it’s two long-standing leaders from different cultural backgrounds joining together in missions into prison work, or churches opening up the pulpit or preaching platform to leaders from other nations, it causes me to rejoice. Or people from churches in one area of the city, praying faithfully together for years for their community – what blessing there is.

The Lord in his infinite wisdom has caused us to need one another, to bring gifts that we will find through each other and alongside each other. Is it going to be hard, and will we make mistakes along the way? Yes, there will be challenges; as God disturbs our comfort, it will be hard at times, and of course we’re bound to make mistakes. But what joy there is to be found as we seek the kingdom of God together, preferring one another, listening to one another in love and humility.

I’m excited that from what I can see, the Lord has been sending in his reinforcements for the local church in the guise of those who we mistakenly think are the least, the lost or “not like us”. It’s my prayer that God will open our eyes to what he is doing, that we will discern the opportunities around us and listen to a more diverse range of Christian voices. May we be humble, rejoice and be obedient to join in with the work of the Holy Spirit.

A fuller version of this article will be published in the upcoming edition of Anvil, which explores the contribution of African diaspora churches to the Church and mission in Britain. To be notified when Anvil is published, be sure to join our email list.

Notes

1 Beloved is a ministry that supports women working in prostitution, in particular those in commercial massage parlours and brothels. Outreach teams are recruited from local churches, trained and equipped to share the gospel, support women to exit the sex trade, and provide support and comfort. For more information see https://beloved.org.uk.
2 “The Population of Bristol – September 2021,” Bristol City Council, 4, https://www.bristol.gov.uk/documents/20182/33904/Population+of+Bristol+September+2021.pdf/e6cb7ac8-278c-c351-9dcc-07a83fb4fe23?t=1632843439676.
3 Ibid.
4 Meachum School of Haymanot’s inaugural gathering of the Society of Gospel Haymanot (SGH). Meachum School of Haymanot (Ge’ez word meaning faith, or theology) exists to “bring biblical, graduate-level theological education to African-American, ethnic minority and low-income communities in a contextualized and affordable manner.” While the centre of teaching resides in St. Louis, Missouri, USA, all classes and programmes are available online. Find out more about the Society and their conference, which took place on 22-23 October 2021, at https://meachum.org/annual-meeting

Related stories

Get our email newsletter:

SIGN UP

The post Finding my place appeared first on Church Mission Society (CMS).

A first-of-its-kind Master’s programme led by a renowned African academic is the first step towards a movement of post-colonial missionaries, where mutual learning across cultures is embedded from the start.

“I grew up in Africa, so I know what an empowered African church can do,” says Dr Harvey Kwiyani, who has been officially announced as programme lead for the MA in Theology, Mission and Ministry with a focus on African Christian Diaspora at Church Mission Society.

This new MA pathway, part of CMS’s Pioneer Mission Leadership Training, brings together the unique mission focus of CMS training with the fastest growing part of the church in Britain – the African diaspora. Ten students have joined the new African MA pathway, alongside 23 other starting new courses with CMS this year, from undergraduate-level study to doctoral research. Specialised modules will take these students on a journey through African church history, Pentecostalism and African traditional religions.

“I hope this Master’s will help empower and equip the African church in Britain,” says Dr Kwiyani, “and that will help in the re-evangelisation of Britain. But I’m also excited that we are creating an intentional space within CMS where African and British students can learn together and learn from each other.”

The widely recognised shift in the centre of gravity of world Christianity towards the global south has clear implications: “Fifty years ago, a typical missionary would be a white European working somewhere in Africa,” says Dr Kwiyani. “Now Africans have to engage in mission in ways they have not done before.”

Dr Kwiyani is himself an example of this: a Malawian missiologist and theologian who has lived, worked and studied in Europe and North America for the past 20 years. His new part-time role as programme lead at CMS goes alongside another new part-time role, as CEO of Global Connections, the UK network for world mission, cementing his place as a key figure in the global mission conversation.

Jonny Baker, director of mission education at CMS, said: “We’re really excited about this new programme of study and the mix of students it will bring. We hope and expect that it will change us, as well as equip a wider range of students for pioneering mission.

“We are dreaming that in the coming years we will be able to introduce similar pathways with an Asian and a Latin American focus, to create the broadest possible inter-cultural conversation about mission today.”

Dr Kwiyani underlines the ambition of the project: “The hope is that with this Master’s, putting together Africans and British Christians, we create a movement that will be able to articulate what’s going on for the wider body of Christ. We’re hoping to create a movement of post-colonial missionaries who will be able to work across cultures and races.”

Find out more

Explore the study options with CMS.

More about pioneer training

Related stories

Get our email newsletter:

SIGN UP

The post Start of a new movement? appeared first on Church Mission Society (CMS).

Excerpt from the Just Imagine series of webinars hosted by Jonny Baker and friends in January 2021.

This video features Lusa Nsenga-Ngoy, BAME mission and ministry enabler for Leicester Diocese, talking imagination as a desire to live in a transformed world

Do you consider yourself creative? That is a question Jonny Baker, director of mission education at CMS, explored in a series of webinars earlier this year, Just Imagine. Inspired by his personal call into creative pioneering and more recently by the writings of former CMS general secretary John V Taylor, Jonny and his guests shared insights and ideas to nudge us into action.

We feel the series is too good to miss, so this video brings some short highlights.

More resources

Get our email newsletter:

SIGN UP

The post Just Imagine – Afrofuturism appeared first on Church Mission Society (CMS).

Stephen J. Patterson, The Forgotten Creed: Christianity’s Original Struggle against Bigotry, Slavery, & Sexism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018)

by Paul Thaxter, CMS

This is a real gem of a book of 176 pages which I enjoyed reading, particularly in the current circumstances of the Covid-19 pandemic, where significant inequalities globally and within nations and neighbourhoods have been highlighted.

Furthermore, the Black Lives Matter movement has made our understanding of Galatians 3:26–28 even more urgent.

I remember reading these verses when I first became a Christian, believing that it was an early church mantra about the new humanity and I wanted to be a part of it. Listen to these extraordinary words from Paul the apostle:

So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptised into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

Gal. 3:26–28

Patterson argues that this was a very early Christian creed, if not the first baptismal creed. If so, the implications remain profound today and require us to reinstate this liturgy into our practices again.

This biblical passage speaks into the heart of so many issues today as it did then in the Roman Empire to multiple communities and vested interests. Patterson appeals to us to re-examine this forgotten creed.

He carefully presents his case for claiming this is a creed where he considers v27 to be explanatory and inserted by Paul into the flow of the creed, shown by its text parallelism. Whether it is or not, he argues v27 is about baptism and the author believes that Paul quoted this creed as it would perhaps not be one he would devise himself. Patterson argues that Paul was ardent about neither Jew nor Greek, about which he directed his missionary activity, but with a less pronounced emphasis on the two latter phrases neither slave nor free, nor male and female. Paul is presented as a revolutionary in regard to the first but more reticent and more culturally conforming on the other two dyads. He argues that verses 26 and 28b have an identical structure and were the opening and closing of the credal statement perhaps with the modified Pauline Christ Jesus rather than Jesus Christ. Certainly a Pauline understanding of baptism is affirmed in this text.

If the creed preceded Paul then it would be very early indeed. Paul used older formularies and hymns and other tradition in his letters and in his mission context. Of course “the oldest cliché” “in the annals of ancient bigotry” is a man in Greek culture who was grateful not to be born a brute (slave), nor a woman nor a barbarian. In the Jewish Tosephta there is a revealing prayer that reflects earlier views and is attributed to Rabbi Judah:

There are three blessings one must pray daily:
Blessed (art thou), who did not make me a Gentile;
Blessed (art thou), who did not make me a woman;
Blessed (art thou), who did not make me uneducated.

The author comments that when this is repeated in the Talmud, the word uneducated becomes slave and attributed to Rabbi Meir.

These are the categories of dividing people into us and them – race, class and gender. They are the other to an educated man – the foreigner, the slave, the woman. Paul contrasts this bigotry with “you are all one in Christ Jesus.” In whatever regard this credal statement is revolutionary and presages a new humanity who all have one Father, one Saviour and one Spirit and all are children of God.

The author explores the notion of becoming children of God in chapter three and then elaborates on each dyad of verse 28 in three following chapters. All of them are exceptional and fascinating reads into the classical Greek and Roman and Jewish worlds. Careful historical research, selective use of sources, keen insights and densely packed ideas make this book a reference text for me. I learned so much more and it has provoked me to read more on some issues such as gender as perceived in the classical world, so that I can consider Patterson’s work more accurately.

Patterson’s succinct conclusion says he wrote this on the eve of 2018 when “all over the world race, gender, and class differences are once again exploited to divide and denigrate foreigners, women, and the poor.” In the USA “they even elected a president who rode to power on a foul wave of racist, sexist rhetoric” – supported by many conservative Christians who endorsed this resurgent popular bigotry. The book is not replete with contemporary applications but it lays a significant foundation to re-appraising early Christian faith and drawing out from it profound missiological and societal Christian implications that would make the world a far better place – if only Christians would re-discover this forgotten creed.

More from this issue

The post Book review: The Forgotten Creed appeared first on Church Mission Society (CMS).

Christine Caine and Dr Anita Phillips, Body Language: A Conversation on Race and Restoration in the Body of Christ, https://youtu.be/W1P6AXjXnXc (1 June 2020)

by Emily Roux, CMS

This heart-provoking and honest conversation between two champions of our faith, Christine Caine and Dr Anita Phillips will move every listener to wake up and reconsider how we must lay down our individual cultural perspectives in order to tend to the whole body of Christ. Phillips (a leading African-American mental health and trauma therapist and preacher) explains to Caine (Australian-born Greek, preacher and founder of global anti-trafficking organisation A21) how our own ethnic heritage “shapes the way we do Christ”. This key part of the 90-minute YouTube talk was very impactful, as Phillips went on to detail how our implicit cultural memory informs our worldview, which we as Christians then assume is a Christian worldview. Caine encourages believers to look inward and to assess how our own culture and background may have shaped the beliefs we have in Christ differently, which is vital in understanding race and restoration as the body of Christ. Indeed the notion that we “each wear Christ differently” could be strange to many Christians.

The most eye-opening part of the conversation was when these different views were highlighted in the context of George Floyd’s death. Phillips suggests that to restore the church, it is no longer about calling out those who are explicitly racist. It is deeper than this, as the dehumanization of black people since the era of slavery in America has crept into the American subconscious, including the American Christian subconscious. I was impressed by Phillips’ boldness to speak on the concept of how our pre-existing worldviews mean we emphasise different elements of scripture when we read it through our own lens. She goes on to share that her white brothers and sisters address issues of race and racism with their worldview of individualism and deep respect for authority, so when they see an act such as the killing of George Floyd, they first ask for the facts to see the individual’s context and do not want to criticise the police until they see the ‘whole picture’. It was almost excruciating, and yet so important for me as a white woman to hear Phillips then add that this white ‘trait’, as it were, wouldn’t be so bad if white people were moved and crying while asking for the facts but, and she says, “I’ve never seen anyone say ‘wait for the facts’ who looked upset.”

Phillips addresses further how this dehumanization is at work in this context and goes on to detail fascinating psychological studies that have been conducted over many years revealing the subconscious attitudes towards black people from seemingly well-meaning and not explicitly racist Americans – all due to these inherited worldviews carried right into the country and right into our churches.

Beautifully, scripture helps us understand that this is about restoration not reconciliation, in the body of the Church. “You cannot reconcile something that was never ‘conciled’”, says Caine. Phillips suggests that reconciliation is a white, western construct as it works along the lines of the individual focus instead of the group or community level (which is more significant in African worldviews). When we look at 1 Corinthians, however, we see that God knew humanity struggles with unity, so much that he warns us through Paul’s words that, “if one part [of the body] suffers, every part suffers with it” (1 Cor. 12:26 NIV).

This helps us to understand why we don’t just want black people to ‘get over it’. “There is a gaping wound that is constantly being opened,” says Phillips, and that is in the same body as our own as we all seek to be Christ’s church on Earth.

This is where Phillips’s professional mental health perspective is so informative in the talk. She advocates that the Church adopts the “trauma-informed approach” used to bring restoration and healing to victims of trauma, suggesting that the white, western church can use this too to bring healing to the wound caused by racism. She is currently developing the trauma-informed approach to be accessed on the group level and is training ministries to more effectively get to the deeper level of addressing group trauma and the wounds of racial injustice in the church.

I felt empowered by the suggestion to consider healing before reconciliation. Caine humbly related to this when she compared it to her own work with sex-trafficking victims, as her team would not first force victims to face their abusers and encourage them to forgive and seek reconciliation, but rather their first priority is to try to bring them healing for the wounds that have been caused.

We are left considering three key challenges when it comes to our own perspectives and actions: to trust and empower the voice of the wounded before asking the “why did this happen?” question; to create safe spaces and relationships – the ‘doing’ rather than simply the thinking (after all, as Phillips said, “actions is the African people’s love language!”); and to practise cultural humility and lay down my own cultural perspective. In the typical Caine style of preaching, she adds that, “Faith without works is dead and most people’s faith is not working because they don’t put their faith to work!” – something she passionately advocates for around the world, that is perhaps more true than ever in the context of how Christians should consider the Black Lives Matter movement.

I am so grateful to have been able to witness what one could say is a historic conversation between these two ‘greats’ of our generation in the church. Indeed, perhaps the ‘white’ church is finally waking up to speak out against racism and is willing to suffer alongside others in the body of Christ. I trust God that I will live to see the tide turn and witness the church leading the way for healing and acting with a new voice, a new type of ‘body language’ that perhaps the world hasn’t seen yet.

More from this issue

The post YouTube review: Body Language appeared first on Church Mission Society (CMS).

A.D.A. France Williams, Ghost Ship: Institutional Racism and the Church of England (London: SCM Press, 2020)

by Jonny Baker, CMS

I really loved reading Ghost Ship by A.D.A. France Williams. I read through it in just over a day – in other words I didn’t put it down a lot! It’s addressing institutional racism in the Church of England but it’s not quite what you think. A book like that sounds like it’s going to make a case, an argument and dare I say be a bit dry and perhaps overly earnest (sorry if that is a thought I shouldn’t be having). But it’s far from that…

First up I loved the style of writing of the book. It’s playful, cheeky, provocative, powerful and has you nodding along and then slaps you round the head. It reminds me a bit of going to poetry gigs where that happens all the time – poets seem to move really fast from one mode to another like no other kind of speech in my experience. Maybe that shouldn’t be a surprise because Azariah is a poet and there are several of his poems in the book. There’s metaphor, poetry, story, anecdote, vulnerability, theology (that is inside the flow of local, contextual, liberation theology), exegesis, research, history, moving personal testimony with heart on the sleeve writing that is vulnerable and questioning with raw honesty. It’s inspiring, challenging and moving. It’s a work of practical liberation theology (if that is a genre?!) in that it is very much a conversation between experience/context and the tradition/bible/theology. It’s very much theology done from below, through the eyes and experience of the oppressed calling for change, liberation, freedom, an end to the domination system. For me it’s the kind of theologising I wish there was a whole lot more of.

One of the stylistic things I particularly loved was the way he sits inside a story or metaphor and sticks with that language and carries it through into a repeating motif almost – it’s probably more commonly used in oratory than writing but it really worked for me to the degree that I have made a mental note to try and do it more myself both in writing and speaking. So for example, he tells the story of Samson in the Bible, someone subjugated to a dominant aggressor. He reads it back through a lens of Samson being a black slave and the Philistines being the slaver class. This is a story black theologians in America in particular have often turned to, so Williams locates himself in the trajectory of black theology here. At one point in his telling of the story where Samson sets a riddle, he imagines the Philistine slavers put their drinks down, wipe the froth of their mouth and have him repeat the riddle. Later in the text when he describes discussing his writing with a white area bishop he says, “he put his drink down, wiped the froth off his mouth, looked me in the eye and said….” I loved those kind of moves which are playful in style but so powerful and well done. There are surprises all the way through. He follows up on Samson with a spin on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – I won’t do a plot spoiler but it is a great piece of storytelling and research.

The message, which perhaps I should have led with, is pretty clear and hits you from multiple directions and layers – the Church of England has not done well when it comes to race and, in the case of this book, especially with regard to its ministers, lay and ordained. Black and brown people are not flourishing. Racism is embedded in the systems and culture – in other words it’s institutionalised. In case we were unsure about this, those experiences come through time and again through Williams’s interviews with people with black and brown skin. That is their experience full stop. He also looks at the last 30 years or so of what has happened since the Faith in the City report. That report was brilliant and I didn’t know this but one recommendation was not picked up – all the others were. That was for a commission on black concerns. It’s truly extraordinary to read the tale. Williams catalogues occasion after occasion where decisions were deferred to a standing committee (‘Ronald and Reggie’ as he labels them – the C of E bouncers or gatekeepers) who basically don’t do anything. He laments Justin Welby’s reimagined Britain and shares his own personal experiences in shiny church, as he calls it (read powerful London evangelical charismatic church), where the only option seemed to be to perform as a puppet for Dagon (back to the Samson story), reduced to the role of entertainer for the show. Anything else was not welcome – and just to be clear, that anything else is the incredible gift of Williams himself with his creative theologising, insights, care, love for the church, prophetic gifts, teaching gifts, the ability to see with black eyes, to write, to be a poet, a friend who cares and so on and so on – so much is missed.

This was a weird response in me I noticed: I began to wonder what is whiteness and what is entitlement. I am white, heterosexual, educated and male so I have no idea what it is like to experience being invisible or shunned or mistreated or dominated because of skin tone (or sex or gender or sexuality or class and so on) and I like the challenge of interrogating whiteness. But I have always hated entitlement, which is summed up by one passage where Williams describes the public school network reuniting over a game of diocesan cricket as a light bulb moment where he realises he does not have access. To say it another way, I identify with many of the issues around visibility, injustice and exclusion and access and they make me enraged and I suspect quite a lot of pioneers do too because for very different reasons they see differently and what they are saying is invisible to the system. Perhaps it is simply that they hang around on the periphery – that was a kind of weird question for me that I wasn’t expecting. But this book is about race and there is simply a different order to the injustice and experience, which is brought home as Williams shares movingly the experience of being heartbroken when his own child is struggling with their own sense of worth, having been subjected to racist comments at school. I felt so upset about that. I know that for me as a parent and for my kids, we will never experience that because of white privilege.

Azariah does some future imagining and makes some suggestions. I thought they were great. I’d love to see a truth and reparations process. There is no reason I can see why there couldn’t be some of the church commissioners’ money that was set aside to invest in black and brown futures through grants, scholarships, and all sorts of other creative things – I thought that was a brilliant idea.

For me I found the book really helped my awareness, though I need ongoing sensitising and awareness, so I hope through conversations and friends and reading I can continue to do that. But a particular challenge in my area of work is around what texts we use in theological and mission education and what voices contribute in teaching. So I intend to sharpen up that area. We are pretty unusual at CMS I suspect, in that we teach systematic theology as simply being one local (western) theology among many and try and expose students to multiple voices and authors from round the world. I am not a fan of a systematic approach at all really. But we can do better I am sure, so we’ll be chatting about that in our team over the months ahead.

Writing a book is such a big effort, especially when you make yourself vulnerable and put yourself on the line. So thank you Azariah for your book and your gift and sharing it and so much of yourself. May we have ears to hear.

More from this issue

The post Book review: Ghost Ship appeared first on Church Mission Society (CMS).