The African mainstream

Well-behaved churches seldom make history. Over the past 50 years, fascination with the Christian upsurge in Africa has led many scholars to study new prophetic churches, with a heavy focus on those that draw on traditional African practices. Extraordinarily valuable accounts have been written about African independent churches, such as South Africa’s Shembe movement or the Zion Christian church or the Nigerian-founded Aladura congregations.

While not diminishing the role of such groups, it would be wildly misleading to suggest that African church life is focused on the AIC churches, whose distinctive practices can seem odd or troubling to outsiders. The vast majority of Africa’s half a billion Christians belong to Anglican, Catholic, Methodist, Presbyterian or Assemblies of God churches. Yet it’s not easy to find published accounts on the life of the familiar mainstream denominations. Academics in search of juicy research topics have little interest in examining churches that resemble the ones back home in the U.S. or Europe and that rarely stray into theological extravagance.

I find it amazing that it is so hard to find resources on a thriving and respectable denomination like the Evangelical Church of West Africa. ECWA claims some 5,000 congregations across Nigeria and neighboring lands, with 3 million active members and another 3 million regular attenders. Although founded by Euro-American missionaries, ECWA has for many years been strictly an African church in its leaders and members, and it bows to no external or colonial authority. It is so entirely African and independent as to raise serious questions about the usefulness of the AIC label.