Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Preface
- Introduction
- 1 From Primitive to Popular Culture: Why Kant Never Made It to Africa
- Part One Politics of Culture in Habitual Customs and Practices
- 2 Popular Culture of Yoruba Kinship Practices
- 3 Justice from Below: Cultural Capital, Local/Global Identity Processes, and Social Change in Eastern Niger
- 4 Popular Culture and the Resolution of Boundary Disputes in the Bamenda Grasslands of Cameroon
- 5 Reverse Mission or Asylum Christianity? A Nigerian Church in Europe
- 6 Performing Pop Tradition in Nigeria: From Yorùbá Bàtá to Bàtá Fújì
- Part Two Politics of Culture in Popular Representations: Films and Performances
- Part Three Politics of Culture in Popular Texts
- List of Contributors
- Index
- Rochester Studies in African History and the Diaspora
5 - Reverse Mission or Asylum Christianity? A Nigerian Church in Europe
from Part One - Politics of Culture in Habitual Customs and Practices
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Preface
- Introduction
- 1 From Primitive to Popular Culture: Why Kant Never Made It to Africa
- Part One Politics of Culture in Habitual Customs and Practices
- 2 Popular Culture of Yoruba Kinship Practices
- 3 Justice from Below: Cultural Capital, Local/Global Identity Processes, and Social Change in Eastern Niger
- 4 Popular Culture and the Resolution of Boundary Disputes in the Bamenda Grasslands of Cameroon
- 5 Reverse Mission or Asylum Christianity? A Nigerian Church in Europe
- 6 Performing Pop Tradition in Nigeria: From Yorùbá Bàtá to Bàtá Fújì
- Part Two Politics of Culture in Popular Representations: Films and Performances
- Part Three Politics of Culture in Popular Texts
- List of Contributors
- Index
- Rochester Studies in African History and the Diaspora
Summary
Introduction
The presence of African Christian churches in Europe is not a new phenomenon. However, in recent decades there has been an expansion of these churches that has coincided with the era and processes of globalization. These organizations have not only captured public (popular) imagination by their specific roles as ethnic minority congregations developed in response to the critical experiences of marginality, but they have also become the subject of news items due to their activities. This chapter examines the dynamics of expansion of the Redeemed Christian Church of God in the United Kingdom (RCCGUK). This church opened its first parish in Britain in 1981 but has multiplied in the United Kingdom to 181 parishes with a total membership of 45,377 as at the end of October 2004. What is responsible for this proliferation of congregations in a continent that has been characterized as “unresponsive to [a] revivalist message”? This chapter will provide a demographic profile of the RCCGUK, compare some of its salient features with the parent organization in Nigeria, and see how creative adaptation and innovation fuel expansion as well as strategies of mission growth in a foreign milieu.
In the last decades of the twentieth century, the presence of Christian religious organizations with roots in Africa became a common sight in many European cities.
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- Information
- Africans and the Politics of Popular Culture , pp. 104 - 132Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2009