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28-Mar-2024
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The church is not supposed to be a graveyard, It is supposed to be a temple of celebration and worship

 

         Reflecting the different waves of migration to Britain in the 20th century, many of them from Nigeria and Ghana, sought to build communities and maintain cultural connections with their home countries by founding their own churches.

 

According to researchers at the University of Roehampton, around 250 black majority churches are believed to operate in the borough of Southwark. They represents the biggest concentration of African Christians in the world outside the continent with an estimated 20,000 congregants attending churches each Sunday.

 

African churches opened their doors in London from the 1960s, followed by a second wave in the 1980s. Workers and their families were  arrived from Jamaica and other former British colonies.

 

As the communities grew, the churches moved into bigger spaces in bingo halls, cinemas and warehouses, gathering congregations of up to 500 people,  where services are streamed online by volunteers with video cameras, songs of prayer in the West African language of Yoruba ring out from a former warehouse that is now a church. Speakers reminds the group on  banned activities — no smoking, no drinking of alcohol, no practicing of black magic.

The congregation, almost entirely dressed in white robes, steadily grows to around 100 people as musicians playing drums, a keyboard and a guitar pick up the pace of the hymns. Women prostrate themselves on the floor in prayer. In streets, a pastor flicks holy water to others who wants blessing.

 

“We pray for this country,” says Abosede Ajibade, a 54-year-old Nigerian who moved to Britain in 2002 and works for an office maintenance company. “People here brought Christianity to Africa but it doesn’t feel like they serve Jesus Christ any more.”

 

Anyone travelling around south London on Sundays morning will see worshippers, often dressed in dazzlingly coloured African clothes, making their way to churches, each with their different styles of worship.

 

Hymns are sung only in African languages in some temples, or only in English at others. Some pastors take worshippers for full immersion baptisms in the cold of the Thames Estuary. But the researchers from the University of Roehampton found things that many churches have in common, including a drive for professional advancement, a commitment to spend three hours or more at Sunday service and typically very loud worship. For some, the noise from amplified services is a

problem, leading to complaints to local authorities from residents.

 

There is a striking contrast with the empty pews at many traditional Churches.  White people  in UK  is shifting away from its Christian roots or moderately keeping faith and thus the churches are empty.

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Andrew Adeleke, a senior pastor at the House of Praise comments, “The church is not supposed to be a graveyard, It is supposed to be a temple of celebration and worship and the beauty is to be able to express our love to God, even when things are not perfect in our lives.” 

 

                                Courtesy William Schomberg, Reuters