Immigrants of the Kingdom of God. Annang Asumang
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countries is occurring. Increased church attendances and reversal of the fortunes of some of the Christian Churches in the Western democracies are being reported in several ecclesiastical censuses. Does immigration have anything to do with this “spiritual renewal”?
The English Church Census, conducted by the independent Christian Research Organization in 2005, for example, showed that the decades of dwindling church membership and growth in the United Kingdom has been stemmed. Today, some of the churches in London are being filled to capacity with vibrant young people who are excited about their faith in the Lord Jesus. This was not the case ten years ago when the same churches were lethargic, half-empty and facing extinction. Similarly, in some of the major cities of the UK, a spiritual renewal appears to be under way. Several churches in the provinces have been enlivened with people worshipping Christ with confidence and pride.
One of the reasons for this apparent transformation is immigration. A recent survey has shown for example, that whereas people of African and Caribbean origins make up two percent of the UK’s population, they account for more than two-thirds of Sunday churchgoers in London. Similarly, the largest independent church in UK today, which sees twelve thousand people attending a church service each Sunday, was planted and is pastored by a Nigerian immigrant. The Hillsong Church, one other fast growing church in London that attracts a total of more than ten thousand attendances at its services, was started by Australian immigrants.
Since the recent immigration of many Polish, Latvian and Croatian citizens to other regions of the continent, the Roman Catholic Church in Europe is also experiencing revitalization. Several congregations of the London dioceses of the Roman Catholic Church now require a number of sessions of Sunday services to cater for the increasing numbers of immigrants from Europe and South America. The Church of England is equally experiencing a fresh awakening in some of its congregations. It is significant that despite its depressing state, two senior clergymen of that denomination who are making some impact and seeking to restore a truly prophetic voice to the Anglican Church are Archbishop John Sentamu of York and Bishop Nazir-Ali of Rochester. Both are immigrants.
Similar trends seem to be occurring in other countries of the West. For example, in Kiev, the capital of erstwhile communist Ukraine, twenty five thousand vibrant worshippers of the Embassy of God Church, led by Pastor Sunday Adelaja, a Nigerian immigrant, fill a Sports Hall each Sunday to hear the gospel of Christ. This church’s influence has extended far into the very corridors of political power in that fledging democracy. In Amsterdam, Rev. Stanley Hofwijks, an immigrant from Suriname, pastors the eighteen hundred member Maranatha Ministries whose services are crammed with energetic worshippers hungry to meet the Spirit of God at work among His people.
In largely Catholic France and Germany, the trends are not as dramatic. The secularization of these dominant European powers remains entrenched. Yet, even here, there are perceptible signs of change. For instance, over the last three decades, there has been a fourfold increase in the number of Evangelical Churches in France. Fifty percent of this increase is due to immigrants. Recent reports of increased church attendances in the Catholic Churches of France have also been attributed in part to immigrants from Europe, Africa and South America. The same is also true of Germany. The simple fact is the future of Christianity in several European countries is increasingly becoming dependent on immigrants.
It must be admitted that the presence of immigrants alone does not explain the transformation of fortunes of western churches. Other factors such as the general sense of spiritual emptiness, popularization of charismatic forms of worship and renewed interest among the population in the message of the Bible has contributed to the trend. Nevertheless, it is noteworthy that a significant proportion of the people who appear to respond most to these awakenings are immigrants.
The situation in the US is also interesting. Over the last thirty years, it has been reported that church attendance in the US has remained static at thirty to forty percent of the population. On the surface, this “stagnation” may appear different from what is happening elsewhere in the world. However, when examined in detail, it emerges that there is a massive decline in attendance in some of the churches in the country that is being offset by an equally substantial increase in other congregations and denominations.
For example, within the traditional mainline denominations who had been suffering decline in membership, such as the Presbyterian and United Methodist Churches, the fastest growing congregations are among Korean immigrants. During the last twenty years, three thousand, five hundred new Korean immigrant Presbyterian and Methodist congregations have been established in the US.
Equally, total attendance at Roman Catholic Church services in America has remained steady and perhaps growing, due to the increased number of immigrants from the Latin American countries. The fastest growing churches in the US are the independent churches, many of which have significant proportion of new immigrants. Immigration is consistently playing a pivotal role in the trend of worldwide regeneration of Christian congregations. This effect of immigration on religion however, is not a new phenomenon.
Immigration in the Bible
Immigration has always had this transforming effect on societies since the dawn of history. Throughout biblical times, God has used immigration and immigrants in significant ways to spread His kingdom and transform societies. Many of these change agents were real immigrants who had been displaced from one region and culture to another. Others were immigrants in the figurative sense. For, it is evident that God’s Kingdom cannot be spread except by people who know in their inner beings what it means to be in the world but not be part of it. God requires all those who want to be light in this dark world and salt in a tasteless and decaying environment to learn how to live as immigrants, aliens and ambassadors for Christ.
The influence of immigration on the recent renewal of western churches is therefore not a new phenomenon. Indeed, the rapid growth of the early Church in the first and second centuries was largely due to the immigration of Jews throughout the Roman Empire. According to John Elliot, distinguished Professor Emeritus of Theology in University of San Francisco, “the attraction of educational opportunities (such as the university at Tarsus) and health spas (at the renowned Asclespian spring shrines) and athletic and dramatic festivals, religious pilgrimages, mass movements of deported groups, the banishment of individuals, and the peregrinations of assorted itinerant philosophers and missionaries” ensured a massive flow of migrant workers and families throughout the empire1. Jewish immigrant settlements in Egypt, Antioch, Italy, Ephesus, and the whole of Asia Minor became the hotbed of Christian activity from which the Word of God spread to the “uttermost parts of the world”.
One typical illustration of the influence of immigrants in early Christianity is found in the commissioning of Paul and Barnabas for the Gentile mission at the Church of Antioch in Acts 13. Luke names several prophets and teachers in this congregation—Barnabas, Simeon (nicknamed Niger), Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen and Saul. It is not accidental that each one of these spiritual leaders was an immigrant from a different country. Barnabas was a Jew who was born in Cyprus where he owned a land (Acts 4:36–37). Simeon’s nickname, Niger, suggests that he was a black man, Lucius came from Cyrene in North Africa, and Manaen was an educated aristocrat from Rome. These immigrants in Antioch, together of course with Paul, a Jew who grew up as an immigrant in Tarsus, formed the core ministry of the thriving church in Antioch. And it was from here that a deliberate effort was made, led by the Spirit of God, to evangelize the world.
This pattern was repeated in other parts of the Roman Empire. Immigrants, especially Jewish immigrants, were at the center of the spread of the Christian religion from its inception. Having experienced the power of God on the day of Pentecost, the Jewish immigrants on pilgrimage to Jerusalem (Acts 2:9–11) dispersed to all the regions of the empire to spread the gospel. These people knew what exactly it meant to be living in the Roman Empire and yet to belong to another domain which is that of the Kingdom of Christ. God was therefore glad to use them for His programme of transforming His world.
According to Prof Elliot again, Jewish immigrants were sometimes “excluded from voting and landholding privileges as well as from the chief civic offices and honors, they enjoyed only limited legal protection while . . . they still shared