Changing lanes: Second-generation African Pentecostals in the United Kingdom

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe unprecedented flow of migration of Africans to the West especially in the late 1980s and early 1990s suggests that most of these first-generation Africans also transported their form of Christianity. Settling in Europe and the West, these migrants have established and planted churches which are dominated by Africans in the diaspora. Among these African Christians are Pentecostals for whom the Holy Spirit is central to their worship, liturgy, and practices. However, the churches started by the first-generation are different from the churches engaged by their children and grandchildren because the first generation came from a socio-cultural background different from the society in which they and their children live currently, and the second generation appears to be questioning the relevance of some of their parents beliefs and practices. These migrant children are jostling between the African influences on their parents’ form of Christianity and the influences of the contemporary forces at work in their own changing world.