The African Christian Diaspora: New Currents and Emerging Trends in World Christianity

Description

The last three decades have witnessed a rapid proliferation of African Christian communities, particularly in Europe and North American diaspora, thus resulting in the remapping of old religious landscapes. This migratory trend and development bring to the fore the crucial role, functions and import of religious symbolic systems in new geo-cultural contexts. The trans-national linkages between African-led churches in the countries of origin (Africa) and the "host" societies are assuming increasing importance for African immigrants. The links and networks that are established and maintained between these contexts are of immense religious, cultural, economic, political and social importance. This suggests how African Christianities can be understood within processes of religious transnationalism and African modernity. Based on extensive religious ethnography undertaken by the author among African Christian communities in Europe, the USA and Africa in the last 17 years, this book maps and describes the incipience and consolidation of new brands of African Christianities in diaspora. The book demonstrates how African Christianities are negotiating and assimilating notions of the global while maintaining their local identities.

Afe Adogame is Senior Lecturer in World Christianity and Religious Studies at the University of Edinburgh, UK.

This is an important and impressive work. It is the first book to bring together all that we have learned in recent years about African Christian diasporas in Europe and the United States. Afe Adogame brings to this volume not only his powers of synthesis, but also the fruits of his own research on three continents. He shows how Africans' religious dynamism is changing the environment of the very countries where they are settling. -- Gerrie ter Haar, Professor Religion and Development, International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands The presence of African Christians and of African churches is being increasingly recognized as an important feature of the Christianity of Europe and North America. That presence is also a manifestation of a greater World Christianity. We owe much gratitude to Dr Adogame for this valuable book, with its comprehensive survey of the development and its useful demostration of the demographic, economic, political and legislative settings. -- Andrew F Walls, Professor of the History of Missions at Liverpool Hope University, UK and Research Professor at Akrofi-Christaller Institute, Ghana Based on extensive ethnographic research over the last 17 years, this is the first true synthesis of what's been happening in Europe and America as African Christians have migrated, settled in, established networks, and fostered dynamic patterns of church growth. Eye-opening in its implications. * The Religious Book Club * Unforgettable and uplifting. * Wisconsin Book Watch *