African Christians in Europe: Introduction

Abstract

Th e academic study of African Christian communities in Europe has proliferated since the groundbreaking work of people like Roswith Gerloff (1992), Gerrie ter Haar (1998, 1999) and Afe Adogame (1998). African churches, more than groups from Latin America or Asia, seem to draw the academic attention, especially within the disciplines of religious studies and cultural anthropology. Th e burgeoning of these churches as well as their liturgical exuberance might be the rationale for this focus on African churches. Initial research was mainly ethnographical, focusing on thick descriptions of these new phenomena. In recent years the paradigms of transnationalism, of reverse mission, of recognition, and of geography, locality and place have served as analytical foci in the study of these groups. Th is issue consists of six contributions that focus on theoretical issues in the study of African Christian communities in Europe. Ramon Sarro and Joana Santos in their article on the Kimbanguist Church in Portugal show how the notion of ‘return’ characterizes the life of the Kimbanguists in Lisbon and demonstrate that there is a link between this notion of return and the growing respect for the contributions of the wife of Simon Kimbangu in the Kimbanguist Church. Nienke Pruiksma discusses the limited usefulness of territorial notions of context in situations of migration. Taking her starting point in a case-study of the Celestial Church of Christ in Amsterdam she argues that in circumstances of migration,