Learning from Faith Transmission Amongst African Migrant families. # 205. 01/07/2025
Out of Many, One People
Welcome, to still warm comments on yesterday’s excellent Acts 11 Project webinar on African inter-generational faith transmission In Britain.
Learning from Faith Transmission Amongst African Migrant families.
What do the following people have in common: the actor Sope Dirisu (‘Gangs of London’), the jazz musicians Femi & T J Koleoso (of the Ezra Collective, winners of Group of the Year at the 2025 Brit Awards), and the footballer Marc Guehi (of Crystal Palace – or Liverpool? – and England)?
Answer: they are all children of British African Pentecostal pastors. Nor are their stories misery narratives of growing up lost in the wasteland that lies in the gap between distinctively African and British cultures. Rather they celebrate living in the overlap of the two. Femi Koleoso praises the support of his school-teacher in Enfield, who nurtured his talents; Guehi has spoken of the benefit of drawing from both worlds.
The late Joel Edwards warned that the growth of African Christianity in Britain would lose momentum, as had the growth of African Caribbean Christianity in Britain, unless their churches learned better how to sustain the faith of the children who grew up over here. Joel’s prophetic warning was the background to yesterday’s excellent webinar organised by the Acts 11Project (CMS’s project on Migration) and the Edgy Learning Project based at Roehampton University, who had been commissioned to look at the issue of ‘Faith and Faithfulness between the Generations’ in African churches in Britain.
Their research presentation was excellent and informative. It feeds into what I have argued is the key issue for the future of the worldwide church in this century – will the remarkable spread of the Christian faith in the global South lead on to the revitalisation of faith within the confines of the now deeply secularised old ‘Christendom’ of the West; or will western secularity also eventually suffocate and wipe out the burgeoning faith of the South? (See blog # 53 ‘One River, Two Streams’). The big cities of the West are sites where the two streams are found side by side. Thus, the research presented yesterday on the extent to which young African Christians, educated in Britain, can continue in the faith of their parents is a small but significant microdot in helping us glimpse the outcome of that big issue. (See also Wesley Granberg-Michaelson’s New York based ‘From Times Square to Timbuktu: the Post-Christian West meets the Non-Western Church’, Eerdmans, 2013).
Accordingly, it was disappointing that yesterday’s webinar was so poorly attended, as indeed it is still an issue ignored by leaders in the old mainstream of British churches. (Though you may be able to catch up with the presentations on the Acts 11 Project web-site).
What, then, emerged from the Edgy Learning Project’s study:
1. They spoke of the eventual ‘surprise’ of discovering the continued expression of Christian faith amongst the second generation. At the end of the webinar Joseph Ola summarised the sessions main theme as ‘Hope’! There was a sense of optimism about.
2. Inter-generational discussions raised as a major theme the contrast between the forms and structures of ‘soft’ and ‘strict’ spirituality. Younger people wanted greater flexibility in matters of dress or secular spaces, and on grace, as opposed to the elder’s emphasis on obeying practices such as fasting or early morning prayer. This was also reflected in the different weighting given by young and old respectively to personal and communal expressions of faith.
3. The young were developing their own patterns of faith, often forming groups informally.
4. The great importance of the household – of the family table ‘figuratively and literally’. Relationships with parents endured, and were sustained partly through shared fluency in scripture as a ‘normative’ voice. In giving this commonality ‘strict’ spirituality had made an important foundational contribution.
5. A subset of the above was the role of mothers, on the one hand showing empathy and giving a softer edge to the faith of parents, on the other hand carrying on a simple trust in God working in our lives. (Stormzy’s ‘Blinded by your Grace’ gratefully gives a voice to his mother Abigail).
6. Nonetheless alongside direct parent/youth communication, the research also highlighted a crucial role for intermediaries (the word ‘mentors’ was used) – adults, perhaps young, who could help bridge the two generations, even by providing a space for conversation about the issue.
7. Behind the presentations was an expectation of the work of the Spirit - that despite a radically new context young people were finding ways to trust and follow Jesus.
Personal reflections.
1. How important are the differences between ethnicities? In my 1979 Grove booklet on ‘Encountering Westindian(sic) Pentecostalism: its Ministry and Worship’ I made a brief reference to differences with West African churches (at that point of time represented by the more syncretistic African independent churches, before the full emergence of African Pentecostalism), namely that they were more middle class and more world-affirming than West Indian churches (p 8), whose restrictive behavioural taboos were far more rigorous than the more recent African churches – understandable as a reflection of both their pressured and racist early social context in Britain as well as the legacy of American fundamentalism. But the outcome was alienating to young people. By contrast, this Report is more optimistic than Joel Edwards’ surmise.
In discussion at the Webinar I referred to my own observation that of the 30-40 late teenagers from a wide variety of ethnicities that I knew at my retirement from a parish fourteen years ago - insofar as I have been able to follow their subsequent development into their early 30s – it is the Sri Lankan young adults who have been very much more likely to continue in their parental faith than others; though I suspect something similar may be happening amongst children of Indian Christian families. Amongst a wide range of possible speculative explanations, how important is a family sense of being a minority in a minority a significant influence in helping sustain Christian identity?
To speculate even further, how far is this dynamic a factor in the sudden and very welcome increase in minority ethnic ordinands in the Church of England?
2. Contrary to my expectations, the ‘hot button’ issues raised by secularity (identified by David Edwards in ‘The Futures of Christianity’ as science, socialism and sex – considered in my blog # 53 above) did not feature in the discussions; though questions of salvation and damnation did. Are these issues awaiting the third generation? Or are they primarily local western concerns?
3. James Butler of the Edgy Learning Project raised the question of ‘What is Faithfulness’? I assume because for African Christian parents adjusting to their children’s expressions of Christian faith and practice has meant having to renegotiate their understanding of what it means to be a faithful Christian. It would be interesting to have had this explored more. In a secular society, the parameters of 'Christian faithfulness can be fairly clear. In the African context where belief in God is normative then saying what it means to be a Christian is more elusive. Performers such as Stormzy use the language of faith quite freely - can it sit well alongside drug use or sexual libertinism? How far do ‘soft’ understandings of faithfulness deviate from ‘strict’ ones?
Despite variations in context the challenge of understanding ‘faithfulness appears in many different forms in the world church. Not least, for example, as the Church of England, seeks to formulate a response to homosexual attraction and practice.
4.Perhaps in tension with the above was the enduring, though perhaps qualified value of ‘strict’ spiritual formation. It seems to have provided a substratum of biblical literacy and commitment that was able to sustain discussions about different expressions of faith and practice.
5. How far does the ‘surprise’ and ‘hope’ in this research connect with evidence of a ‘quiet revival’ in Britain, especially among the young and men? In a recent edition of the Acts 11 newsletter, Joseph Ola argued against downplaying the significance of migrants and ethnic minorities as an important contributory factor to the revival. As far as I know we have no analysis of the ethnicities of the people it has touched to give hard evidence to Joseph’s claim that ‘we must include migration in the centre of the conversation’. It may be that in presenting their research the Bible Society downplayed the role of ethnic minorities to avoid the revival be dismissed by white opinion formers as ‘not for us’ and therefore not important. They therefore had a proper missional concern to make the revival (if such it be) an important matter for national conversation, and not be sidelined.
Perhaps also for reasons of reception, the significant denominational disparities in the statistics of the revival have not been highlighted. The revival seems to have been not that marked in the Church of England or other traditional Protestant denominations. But it has been amongst Pentecostals, which would support Joseph’s evidence from his own experiences of congregational growth, that migrants have here played a vital role. However, the most marked growth has been amongst Roman Catholics, which may well cover a range of ethnicities including Africans, but also not least white English, but also Polish migrants.
What this denominational breakdown does suggest clearly is the strength of ‘strict’ spirituality, including sexual ethics, amongst Roman Catholics and Pentecostals, along with a more explicit calling on the supernatural in theology and worship; evidenced, I think, in the way the election of the new pope was presented.
We live in interesting times, so heartfelt thanks to Acts 11 and the Edgy Learning Project for shedding light on one very important sign of our times.