There are strong indications of the sense of urgency that led to the organisation of the Immigration and Nationality forum in the churches I visited. Though the word immigration features prominently in how these churches identify their initiatives on providing information to members on immigration, each of them have called them different names for example ‘Eat the good of the land’, ‘Tread upon it possess it’. In some cases subsequent programmes with the same focus have had their names changed or altered to disguise them to the outside world.
The idea of changing the names of the fora is also to make the members comfortable to attend these initiatives without making them feel that sense of giving away their immigration status at such meetings. There is also no indication of a deliberate, simultaneous and concurrent organisation of these programmes in the four churches I conducted the interviews. Each of the churches have organised these programs independently of each other. It has strongly featured on the agenda of the churches as part of their responsibility to help stabilise their members
and assist them in their integration into British society. Pastor Benneh tells me that he and other pastors who initiate the immigration programmes in their churches believe that the future of their churches depends on stable members who can freely move around without fear and can access the opportunities that society presents to them. In so doing they can financially contribute to building the church and fulfilling the churches’ visions.231
The statistics are quite staggering at this point, that out of the total of sixty respondents, forty of whom were interviewed directly and twenty in a focus group, 58 (95%) said they had attended the immigration forum organised by the church. Only two people from the Dominion Centre claimed they didn’t attend because they did not have a need relating to immigration.
These respondents were 55 and 57 years old. The high turnout experienced in these churches may be a result of the strategy adopted in the organisation of these fora. In Royalhouse Chapel International and the International Central Gospel Church, these programmes were undertaken as a replacement for the sermon. The sermon as part of the liturgy of Pentecostal churches is considered an important part of the entire church service, and therefore the forum should be considered equally important to be given the place of the sermon. In a Sunday worship service at the International Central Gospel Church, the service begins with an opening prayer, where an individual appointed by the pastor leads the congregation through a series of intercessory prayers; then there is praise and worship, which normally involves singing slow tempo songs and high tempo songs to which members dance; it continues with the sermon; and after the sermon, offering and tithes are collected; at the end the benediction is said. It is in the place of the sermon that, on two different occasions when the forum had been organised, the invited immigration expert was given the podium to speak for 30 minutes and another hour for question and answer time.
231 Rev Charles Benneh is Senior Pastor of Royalhouse Chapel (International Missions Centre), South London.
A follow up interview conducted on 12 January 2013.
The invited speaker was a Ghanaian Immigration lawyer and was also a pastor of a predominantly Ghanaian church in Morden, South London. Pastor Donkor told me that in 2006 three members of the church were arrested by immigration officials at different locations in London in a space of about two months; as a result this became a crucial issue and he felt the need to educate members about their rights and privileges. The placement of the forum underlines the priority accorded to these issues in the churches.232
It is worth noting that the consciousness of the immigration status of congregations is not only the concern of Ghanaian-led churches; due to the increase in the number of migrants that come to Britain each year, several churches which are predominantly white but have become home to some of these migrants have also adapted some of these measures to integrate their members into British society. A survey conducted by Gladys Glaniel from the Irish School of Ecumenics, Trinity College Dublin, reveals that;
55% of clergy and faith leaders say that they have preached or taught on immigration, diversity or welcoming strangers in the last 12 months. 44%
of clergy, pastors, ministers, and faith leaders have never done anything to accommodate minority-ethnic people. 19% said that the languages of minority-ethnic people had been used in services during the last 12 months. (This was more common under the heading ‘Other Christians’
which may well include migrant-led churches).233
This is more an acknowledgement of how pluralistic and diverse congregations in Ireland have become and of the need to hold on to these ethnic minorities in the churches as a means of maintaining high levels of membership than a real effort to integrate them. The Irish situation bears some resemblance to the British situation and the findings of that research
232 In a follow up telephone interview with Pastor Donkor Senior Pastor Of International Central Gospel Church, East London conducted on 10 January 2013.
233 Gladys Glaniel, “21st Century Faith: Results of the Survey of Clergy, Pastors, Ministers and Faith Leaders,”
Irish School of Ecumenics, Trinity College Dublin. http://www.ecumenics.ie/wp-content/uploads/Clergy-Survey-Report.pdf. accessed on 16 January 2013.
resonate with views often expressed in the British-migrant religious discourse. Predominantly white churches that do not do anything special to accommodate ethnic minorities are not necessarily rejecting their membership but – either the church leaders, or the organisations themselves – have not as yet recognised themselves as agents of integration. On the part of the white majority churches one may argue that this adaptation is quite significant to their growth and sustenance over time due to the fact that some of these white majority historical churches are closing down. It will take the ethnic minority and migrants to revitalise these churches. There are people that I met in the course of the fieldwork who were once members of the Catholic Church, the Wesleyan Methodist Church, the Presbyterian Church and the Anglican Church in Ghana who, through friends, have now become members of the Pentecostal churches. These people claim that upon their arrival they visited these churches in their areas of residence but did not like the service. One such respondent, Nana Serwaa, and the ICGC focus group almost unanimously agreed that the historic churches were ‘very cold’.
According to them, none of the ‘white’ people that came to the church bothered to speak to them apart from the pastor. She did not feel welcome and therefore decided to attend the International Central Gospel Church where a friend invited her. She claimed she felt at home because the founder of the church, Mensa Otabil’s sermons sits well with her but she would have preferred to go back to the Catholic Church if they were welcoming.234 On the other hand Kwaw on his part felt embarrassed when after attending a Church of England service in a town in the East Midlands a week after his arrival, all the congregants came to welcome him and asked questions like ‘where do you originally come from? ‘is it very cold here, I guess you have not seen anything like this’? For Kwaw he felt unwelcomed and for many migrants they feel as though the white churches and their leaders do not really fully understand their
234 Nana Serwaa Boakye is a member of the International Central Gospel church, East London.
story, hence they join the ethnic minority churches because there is a sense of shared identity through the similarities in experiences. The experiences of the participants seem to follow a trend that suffering discrimination deepens their religious convictions as migrants. The religious migrants will always congregate where their needs are recognised.235