list of all NORFACE projects on religion
The project investigates Nigerian migrant Pentecostal networks, churches and believers as a case study of the role of migrant churches as a potential and potent social force in 21st Century Europe. The comparative study proposed will be done with the same church in Britain, Germany and the Netherlands, the Redeemed Christian Church of God.
Whereas migrants are often looked at as resisting integration, most of these Pentecostals are convinced that they have a special mission in European society. Their motive to play a significant role is inspired by their religion. From its inception Pentecostalism has been a movement with a global and migratory perspective. Not only do these migrants come for economic or political reasons, but also they intend to bring Christianity back to secularized Europe, with the support of vast transnational networks. The sender has now become the addressee. The migrants' message is of a moral nature also, as a critique on practices such as prostitution, abortion, euthanasia and homosexuality. If Christianity is moving its stronghold from the Northern Hemisphere to the South, becoming more conservative and more Pentecostal in the process, these migrant churches and networks represent a bridgehead from the South to the North. Though representing a minority, their role in society may become more important and visible than that of the established churches, also because the latter have accommodated to the secularized situation and are marked by the Western Grand Enlightenment narrative that the migrant churches did not have to deal with to the same degree.
Principal Investigator:
Prof. Dr. DROOGERS, Andreas, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology