Paper short abstract:

Through ethnographic analysis of events within an International Pentecostal Student Church that includes a significant number of African students, shifting claims on cultural identity are examined as grounds for congregational distinction as well as for the negotiation of religious practice.

Paper long abstract:

It is often noted that ethnic or diasporic churches and forms of religiosity comprise both part of the historical processes that compose migrant or minority distinctions and part of the social and cultural effects of such identity politics. An 'International Church', it might be assumed, would furnish alternative grounds for migrant and minority recognition beyond ethnic or home-focused orientations.

This paper discusses some first observations from an ongoing ethnography of student Christian movements. The focus is the internationalist orientation of one university campus-based Pentecostal church in South-East England that includes African leaders and congregants. In this church the interplay between notions of cultural distinction and religious commonality raises questions for anthropologies of the 'politics of recognition'. Most immediately, 'internationalism' offers a charter for church distinction and expressions of community within a flourishing marketplace of student Christianities. Also, the tenants of congregational leadership can furnish opportunities for the articulation of complex political identities for African as well as for other student minorities. However, particularly when inevitable tensions between liturgy and lifestyle surface, a view of the church as 'ethnic mosaic' is evoked. At such times the hardening of views on cultural distinction between congregants allows some softening of the demands of moral separatism anticipated by this interpretive community.

Paper short abstract:

This paper intends to explore, through an ethnography of the Angolan Tokoist church, the idea that contemporary African Christianity is inevitably a transnational phenomenon, thus exploring the role played by the diaspora in the recognition, construction and definition of 'African' Christianity.

Paper long abstract:

In contemporary, multi-religious Angola, one church stands today as a cornerstone of 'Angolan Christianity': the Igreja de Nosso Senhor Jesus Cristo no Mundo Relembrada por Simão Toco (Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ on Earth, Remembered by Simão Toco), or 'tokoist church', a Baptist-inspired prophetic AIC. This status - backed by the fact that, along with the Catholic Church, it is the only one with a nation-wide implantation - was not a given, but was painstakingly built on its members' persecution, accusation, exile and murder, both by colonial and postcolonial governments. Simão Toko, the prophet and founder, of the movement, was himself deported by the Portuguese colonial administration to the remote islands of the Azores. But interestingly enough, it was in this insular exile that the foundations of the church were set. And today, the Azores play an important role in the church's imagination of a 'sacred place'.

This paper intends to explore, through the Tokoist case, the idea that contemporary African Christianity is inevitably a transnational phenomenon, discussing the ambiguities behind the senses of Africa-ness and European-ness recognised in the diaspora and the importance of 'place' in the construction and definition of those senses.

Paper short abstract:

The paper analyses the simultaneity of anti-hegemonic religious discourse and glocalised practices of networking employed in an African based Charismatic Church in Germany in the context of immigrant incorporation.

Paper long abstract:

The proposed paper tries to deepen the perception of the role of a Charismatic Fellowship in the process of boundary blurring for African immigrants to Germany. It suggests that it is only the specific conjunction of non-worldly rhetoric with this-worldly glocalised networking practices that works towards successful boundary blurring in the context of immigrant incorporation. Anti-hegemonic religious discourse paves the way for distancing from the society of origin as well as from the host society. The struggle for recognition as such is indeed circumvented if recognition is not sought after in the host society but is only granted by divine authority. In this context belonging to Jesus as the true spiritual man - the second Adam - as compared to the first mere physical Adam found in contemporary societies was offered as a role model to the Church audience by the Head Pastor of the Charismatic Fellowship. The project of belonging to the Second Adam's Generation transformed the position of (African) Christians in a divine history of mankind and altered symbolic hierarchies of societal advancement. However only the glocalised organisational and personal networking that is set up at the Church builds the opportunity structure that members need to eventually gain social mobility. But there are risks as well, of: bounded individualism, a monopolised distribution of opportunities as gifts, an ambivalent attitude towards inequality grounded in difference and a limited interest in acting on civil society issues outside the Christian realm.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the reconfiguration of gender relation and sexuality in African pentecostal churches in Brussels. Local discourses about sexuality challenge European sexual liberation. I describe how worshippers fill the gap between ideals of sexual purity and the reality of everyday lives.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores the complex link between Pentecostal membership and believers' sexual experience in some churches in Brussels. The ideal of society conveyed by Pentecostal religious groups is one of return to a life of sanctification rooted into an idealized past, that presumed of the first Christians. In this perspective, most contemporary expressions of sexuality are seen by the adepts as the result of the progressive moral decline of European societies. Local discourses emphasize the necessity to return to sexual practices characterized by their "purity" and rooted in the divine order. In this paper, I shall describe the normative devices that structure gender relationships and sexual practices in Pentecostal Churches. In particular, I will look at these situations of "liminality" within heterosexuality, such as divorce, mixed marriage, "fornication", abortion, homosexuality, infertility, infidelity, etc, and describe concrete experiences through which believers learn to use gender and sexual norms in the flow of their tumultuous lives.

Paper short abstract:

Drawing on research conducted in two African churches in Brussels, this paper explores their unequal success in their quests for public recognition. In particular, the Church's position in the landscape of migrant churches seems to give them dissimilar access to politicians and administrations.

Paper long abstract:

The quests for recognition of "African" Churches in Brussels prove to be quite diverse depending on the Church's position in the landscape of "migrant" churches. In fact, their centrality or marginality in this environment can position those Churches as either interlocutors with politicians or administrations, thus progressively increasing their political capital, or leave them at the extreme margins of the religious field. This paper will draw on research conducted in the Celestial Church of Christ, which has only one small parish in Brussels frequented mostly by Nigerians, and in the Nouvelle Jérusalem, which is the most important "African" Church in Brussels, attended mostly by Congolese (DRC), some of whom have high levels of formal education. By comparing the two profiles, I will show that their unequal success in obtaining public recognition in the Belgian context can be explained, in particular, (a) by their size, (b) by the importance of the ethno-national population that forms the majority of their faithful (persons of Congolese origin being much more numerous in Belgium than persons of Nigerian origin), and (c) by the style of Christianity they profess. Actually, Pentecostalism (as is the case in the Nouvelle Jérusalem) is probably a more classical and 'efficient' theological base to join a religious network and to escape full marginality, than the African prophetic origin of the Celestial Church of Christ.

Paper short abstract:

The Portuguese followers of the Afro-Brazilian cults balance between Umbanda performances, closer to the catholic matrix, and the Candomblé ones, incorporating aspects closer to the African cults. Drawing on field work conducted in Lisbon I will explore some aspects of this new “Portuguese” syncretism.

Paper long abstract:

The Afro-Brazilian religions, that entered Portugal in the last 20 years are becoming more and more popular. The temples are full with Portuguese followers that, after going through the initiation processes, become important in the organisation of the religious community and, with time, may themselves become priests. Most of them previously believers of the Catholic church, their turn to the Afro-Brazilian cults most of the time does not keep them from sustaining their regular church going practices. As such, many prefer Umbanda, closer to the catholic matrix, while others turn to Candomblé and to African performances, rather new to them. Drawing on field work conducted in Lisbon in temples and with followers of these cults, this paper will explore some of the aspects of this new syncretism and the hermeneutical process of influences coming from Brazil to Portugal and returning back to their roots again. Drawing on A. Frijerio´s notions of secondary religious diasporas, the processes of re-africanization of such religions in Portugal and the tension between such tendency and the wish to cling to the Christian side will be analysed.