Online Journal of African Affairs

ISSN 2346-7479; Volume 5, Pages 16-23; 2016.

©2016 Online Research Journals

Available Online at https://onlineresearchjournals.org/OJAA

Research Article

 

From the Rest to the West: The Contribution African Christian Immigrants Give To Christianity in the Western World   David Kirwa Tarus   Ph.D. Candidate, McMaster Divinity College, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. E-mail: davidtarus3(at)gmail.com.   Received 26 April, 2016 Accepted 10 May, 2016

Modern scholars of Christianity such as Andrew Walls, Philip Jenkins, Patrick Johnstone, Lamin Sanneh, Joel Carpenter, Kwame Bediako and others, have convincingly argued that the Christian center of gravity has shifted from the global West and North (Europe and North America) to the global South and East (Africa, Latin America, and Asia). This shift has resulted from the explosion of Christianity in the global south and the recession of Christianity in the West. Thus, Christianity is currently post-Western and the West is post-Christian. However, millions of people from the vibrant churches of the global South and East (the Majority World) who migrate to the West every year provide fresh opportunities for the rejuvenation of the Christian faith in the West. However, since immigrants to the West do not abandon their particular religious, cultural, and ethnic identities when they move to the West, it is paramount for Western theologians to reorient their theology to incorporate questions from immigrants. If indeed the Western society has been transformed from being culturally homogenous to multi-ethnic, multilingual, and multi-religious, Western theology must take this current reality seriously. Thus using African immigrants as a case in point, this paper addresses the relevance of African Christianity to the West. It proceeds forward in four sections. The first section gives a brief overview of the recent growth of Christianity in the Majority World. The second section deals with the immigration factor stressing the current demographic transformation of the North American religious landscape. The third section examines the religious presuppositions (worldview) that African immigrants bring with them to the West. The fourth section suggests four proposals on how Western Christianity can draw from the African worldview.   Key Words: Christianity, immigration, Africa, Western, theology, Majority World, Global South, Global North.

Recommended Citation

Tarus DK. From the Rest to the West: The Contribution African Christian Immigrants Give To Christianity in the Western World. Online J Afr Aff, 2015; 5: 16-23.