الكنائس الإفريقية المستقلة

Abstract EN

An estrangement occurred between the early Christian missionaries and the African people due to the reckless dealings of the missionaries with the locals without understanding the nature of their indigenous societies and cultures, in addition to the association of these missionaries with the agenda of the colonial countries.

That estrangement extended even to those who converted to Christianity and joined the missionary churches, and this led them to choose the side of their local communities and to split from their mother churches with a particular African Christianity, and the movement of African Independent Churches (AICs) was a product of that struggle.

(AICs) found its desired goal in the concepts of the Pentecostal movement, which spread among the Christians of the world at that period.

It formed a unique Christianity that adopted African beliefs, rituals, and traditions.

For several decades, AICs represented annoyance to the leaders of the global Christianization movement.

After decades of the internal defeat of the missionaries’ project, the Christianization movement with its global alliances became aware of the African lesson.

The issue of cultural identity and local rituals no longer constituted an obsession with it.

Rather, it allowed, within the framework of “ecumenical” concepts, the acceptance of all African local rituals, including the sanctification of ancestors’ souls, polygamy, concubines, and even claiming prophecy and spirit mediums, as African spirit mediums were called “prophets” filled with “grace” and “the Holy Spirit.

The emergence of the ecumenical movement - which calls for the unification of the Christian churches under the umbrella of belief in the lordship of Christ and the transcendence of doctrinal differences between those churches - spread in the world, especially among Protestants and Orthodox, and eventually led to the formation of the World Council of Churches (WCC), which assumed leadership of the global Christianization movement.

Ecumenism also found acceptance among African Christians, and on its basis, a large number of African churches gathered, including a large number of AICs, then an ecumenical association called the All-African Conference of Churches (AACC) was formed, and that association joined the global ecumenical movement represented by the World Council of Churches, so (AACC) became (WCC) representative in Africa.

With this description, the journey of the independent African churches has completed its circle, to return to the fold of the global church, but after it contributed, with the global ecumenists, to bringing about a major change in Christian concepts, and contributed to making a loose framework that brings together believers in the divinity of Christ, whatever the degree of collision between their beliefs, and the goal was to unify the global Christianization movement, in the face of the challenges facing it, the first of which was the rapid spread of Islam, not only in Africa, but throughout the world.