The New African Diaspora
Hanciles observes “that every Christian migrant is a potential missionary.” Indeed, many African Christians drawn to the United States for a variety of reasons come with a missionary mindset, reflective of the congregations that have nurtured their faith. While immigrants from Africa to the United States constitute a modest share of the country’s foreignborn residents (3.9 percent in 2009), the growth of this community has been striking. In 1960, when John F. Kennedy, who coined the phrase “a nation of immigrants,” was inaugurated as president, 35,355 African-born residents were living in the United States. Fifty years later, that number had increased 40-fold, to 1.5 million. The African countries with the greatest number of emigrants to the United States have been Nigeria, Ethiopia, Egypt, Ghana and Kenya. Of these, 210,000 Christians have emigrated from Nigeria, 90,000 Christians both from Ethiopia and Egypt, 110,000 Christians from Ghana and 70,000 from Kenya. Many bring non-Western expressions of Christianity nurtured in the soil of Africa.
A decade ago I struck up a conversation with Rufus Ositelu, primate of the Church of the Lord (Aladura), during a meeting of the WCC Central Committee. I knew almost nothing about his church. He had shared with me that he had been working as a computer expert in Germany but had been called to the position of primate of his church, headquartered in Nigeria.
As we talked together on a pleasant day in Geneva at the beginning of September, Rufus told me he had just recently come from a special time of retreat, with prayer and fasting, held each year. The primate explained that the leadership of the church gathers together, and no major decisions are made without this special period of prayer. Further, he said that at the end of this period, the members of the church are invited to come and join this experience of retreat and prayer.
I was intrigued. In my role as general secretary of the Reformed Church in America, I had become convinced that we needed to find new methods of discernment and decision making that moved beneath and beyond the typical format of tightly structured assemblies ruled by parliamentary procedures. Anxious to learn more, I asked Primate Ositelu how many people from the church at large joined for the conclusion of this retreat.
He replied, “About 1 million.”
Suddenly I realized I was talking with the leader of a church whose scope and ministry were beyond anything I had imagined. And despite my ecumenical experience and the unique participation of this church in the WCC, I was unaware, to my regret, of the richness represented by this remarkable expression of the body of Christ.
Following a pattern similar to other member bodies of the African Instituted Churches, the Church of the Lord (Aladura) was founded in 1930 by the Prophet Joshua Ositelu in Ogere-Remo, Nigeria. (“Aladura,” in Yoruba, means “Prayer Fellowship,” or “the Praying People.”) He was 28 years old at the time. Originally studying to be an Anglican minister, his spiritual experiences resulted in severing his ties with the colonial church. He went to a place in Ogere to fast and pray and received revelations. He named the place Mount Tabborrar, and it became a site for an annual pilgrimage of believers for days of prayer, fasting, healing and renewal, held each August. This was the experience Primate Rufus Ositelu had just completed about 70 years later and was sharing with me in Geneva.
The four tenets of the church are described as “Pentecostal in Power, Biblical in Pattern, Evangelical in Ministry, Ecumenical in Outlook.” The last is particularly significant and unique for African Instituted Churches, making this church a member of the WCC and other ecumenical bodies in countries where their congregations are found. The church has grown to 3.6 million members, not only throughout Nigeria, but also in neighboring African countries such as Liberia, as well as in Great Britain, Germany and the United States.
The Church of the Lord (Aladura) is one of thousands of such churches belonging to the Organization of African Instituted Churches (AIC). The organization represents 60 million Christians in denominations and congregations throughout the continent and in the African diaspora. Totally independent from the church structures of Western mission, churches in the AIC forged indigenous expressions of Christian faith, often in opposition to the harsh and controlling forces of colonial rule. With colonialism’s demise, these churches flourished.
While exhibiting wide diversity rooted in their various approaches to the contextualization of their faith in African culture, churches in the AIC share some common characteristics. Some helpful observations come from David Shank, a Mennonite missionary who began encounters with these churches in 1971, and then served as a teacher of Scripture for 10 years at the invitation of the African Instituted Churches in Cote d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast), from 1979 to 1989. Writing on what those in the West can learn from African Instituted Churches, he lists these insights:
1. The faith of the powerful is irrelevant.
2. The gospel is the source of liberating power.
3. Faith is spiritual combat.
4. The Western interpretation of Scripture is not the final word.
5. God is experienced as an awe-inspiring mystery.
6. The power of the faith community is in the laity.
