In Europe (and Britain) religion is often thought to
be in terminal decline. Yet, the fact is that African Christians and Muslims
increasingly occupy a prominent place within the multicultural religious and
social landscape of contemporary society.
Any
assessment of religious decline neglects the pivotal role of religion for the
African diaspora in these regions; a role that was examined in a conference that
took place in London.
The conference “Religion and Diaspora: African
Migrants’ Religious Networks in Britain and Europe” –was held at the School
of Oriental and African Studies in London on the 24th November 2012 – addressed
the role that religion plays in the
African diaspora.
The event was aimed at
gaining a deeper understanding of the polyvalent elements that constitute
British and European civic society in the early twenty-first century.
This endeavour is of urgent importance in our
contemporary era when the contribution of religion to public life is under
increasing scrutiny. Through their religious practice, doctrine and ethics,
African Christians and Muslims articulate social visions that address key
contemporary issues of sexuality, health, prosperity, political virtue,
secularization, and globalization.
The African diaspora in Britain and Europe,
in other words, show us how religious practitioners draw upon religious idioms
and practices in order to construct new notions of citizenship – notions of
belonging, rights and obligations that often do not fit neatly into the West’s
liberal democratic tradition.
Religion, the African Diaspora and the
Secularization Debate: One of the most pressing debates in contemporary Britain
and Europe focuses on the relationship between the religious and the secular in
the public sphere. Recently, the debate has been characterized by a number of
high-profile individuals and organizations defending the significance of faith
in British society.
What is the contribution of religious communities in
the African diaspora to this on-going discussion? What new and traditional
forms of media do they draw upon to critique notions of the secular? Do African
Christians and Muslims envision the relationship between religious commitment
and civic obligation as complementary, conflicting, or falling between these
two extremes?
The African diaspora in Europe hails from countries as diverse as
Nigeria,Uganda, Zimbabwe, South Africa and Somalia: how do these national identities
intersect with Christian and Muslim piety in order to shape Africans’ practice
of citizenship within a diasporic context?
Civic Vision and Discourses of Evil and Healing:
Many Christian and Muslim communities practice diverse forms of faith healing,
claiming that the causes of sickness and misfortune are spiritual rather than
biological-physiological. Equally, many of these believers identify health and
healing as evidence of God’s intervention in the secular realm. In what ways
does the role that religion plays in diasporic activity in this country, and in
Europe more broadly, offer a distinctive vision of public ‘health’, drawing
upon idioms of evil, witchcraft and miraculous healings? What are the legal consequences
of these practices? In particular, what are the implications of recent
high-profile cases of African ‘witchcraft murders’ in Britain?
Sexuality, Gender and Human Rights: African
Christians – particularly those who attend Pentecostal churches – and African
Muslims are often typed as resistant to modernizing sexual mores.
We urgently
need to move beyond this stereotype to carefully examine the contribution of
the African diaspora – both in Britain and in Africa – to current debates
around sexuality and gender.
Religious communities within the diaspora both
draw upon and reject idioms of human rights, justice and development; African
concepts of patriarchy and normative sexuality are transformed in the context
of the diasporic experience and assume new meaning.
A further factor to
consider is the role that international aid organizations – and the financial
leverage they exert – play in shaping African notions of sexuality.
African Pentecostals and the Established Church:
Many African Christians in Britain attend some type of Pentecostal church – a
form of Christianity that stresses the ecstatic, charismatic mode of the Holy
Spirit’s work in believers’ lives.
But at the same time, many of these
believers have roots and ongoing links to mainstream Anglican, Catholic and
Methodist denominations.
Further, African Christians do occupy prominent
positions within the traditional church establishment; for example, the current
Church of England Archbishop of York, John Sentamu, is my fellow Ugandan. So,
how does the newer phenomenon of African Pentecostalism in Britain position
itself in relation to the older established church?
Do they perceive themselves as reformers, as
schismatics, or as loyal descendants? What does the increasing popularity of
African Pentecostalism and indeed other forms of faith and religiosity imply
for a rapidly changing British religious landscape? This is a question to which we ought to find
answers to.
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