African Pentecostals in 21st Century Ireland

Abel Ugba

Issue 378, vol.95, Summer 2006

Where Pentecostalism has broadened-out from its classic base to include the Charismatic Renewal Movement, it is termed “neo-pentecostalism”. But by far the swiftest numerical expansion has been taking place in the Pentecostal-model indigenous churches of Africa, South America and the Caribbean. As a proportion of the total Christian population worldwide, Pentecostalism of one form or another – in the period 1970 to 1997 – has increased from 6% to 27%. The African upsurge was precipitated by the arrival, in the 1970s and 1980s, of African-American missionaries and by their targeting of West African university campuses.

The significant appearance of African Pentecostalism in Ireland can be dated to 1996. Of course by today, Africans in their tens of thousands have migrated here – many of them, as asylum-seekers, finding themselves “dispersed” throughout the length and breadth of the country. By early 2003, the Irish Council Of Churches estimated that there were more than 10,000 members in Black Majority churches in Ireland – and, a little later, a Presbyterian Moderator for Ireland put the figure at 30,000. These Pentecostal adherents are mainly sub-Saharan. The more organised churches or groupings tend do have a full-time paid pastor (who also assists the needy). And it is not unusual for Pentecostal communities, in addition to an extended Sunday-worship, to hold midweek Bible Study and Friday prayer-meeting.

Some members still belong to their original church, and some have formed breakaway movements. It is interesting that over half were not Pentecostal before coming to Ireland. Weighing heavily on all these immigrants are : a sense of isolation in the host country; economic hardship in the household; loss of status and alienation for those who cannot practise their former profession. But the overriding fact is that, for most, Western forms of worship will simply never be able to supply that human holistic experience offered by the home-grown models. Indeed, some African Pentecostals are convinced that, far from resting content on the margins of Irish society, they actually have a “mission” to bring modern-day Ireland back to this country’s traditional sense of Christian belief and spirituality.

Abel Ugba is a lecturer in the School of Social Sciences,  Media and Cultural Studies, University of East London, London.