Reverse Mission: African Spirit Churches, Transnational Dynamics, and the Reconfiguration of Global Religious Space

Abstract

As the center of world Christianity continues to shift southward, African Spirit Churches have gained growing transnational reach and international visibility. In recent years, this trend has become especially evident as some African-led churches have established branches across Western societies. In some cases, migrant Christian communities have also founded new churches with the aim of “re-evangelizing” former colonial centers and other Western settings. This phenomenon is commonly described as “reverse mission.” It should be noted, however, that reverse mission is not unique to African churches, but forms part of the wider expansion of the global Pentecostal-Charismatic movement. Even so, West African Spirit Churches are especially representative in terms of historical continuity and organizational vitality. Among them, the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG) in Nigeria offers a particularly important case. Emerging from the Aladura tradition in the 1950s and taking on Pentecostal-Charismatic features in the 1980s, RCCG has developed rapidly in Britain and North America. Its expansion highlights the importance of diaspora networks, church planting, and pneumatology in transnational religious growth. This article examines how the theological-ritual resources and organizational structures of African Spirit Churches sustain such expansion, and analyzes RCCG’s religious practices in British and American contexts as well as its limited impact on local religious space. It argues that the reverse mission of African Spirit Churches reflects North-South interaction and the reconfiguration of spiritual resources within global religious flows, even as its conceptual boundaries and practical forms remain contested. As global religious interactions deepen, this phenomenon is likely to assume more complex cultural forms.