Reverse Mission or Migrant Sanctuaries? Migration, Symbolic Mapping, and Missionary Challenges of Britain’s Black Majority Churches

Abstract

Abstract The spread of African Christianity to Europe (including Britain) and North America over the last six decades has heralded a distinctive phase in global church history. Religion, which had been hitherto ignored as one of the motivations for migration, is gradually becoming a major mover in the global proliferation of African Christianity to the point that it is now a transatlantic phenomenon. Britain’s Black Majority Churches (BMCs) make use of self-representation and symbolic mapping in their discourses. The image of Britain as a post-Christian nation is projected with such epithets as “dead continent,” “prodigal nation,” and “secularized Britain.” It is apt to note that Britain’s BMCs are but one case of reverse mission that, in reality, more resembles migrant sanctuaries all across the Western world. The lack of understanding of the British culture, flawed church-planting strategies, and the operational methods employed by these churches have severely hampered the BMCs’ missionary endeavors in Britain.