The women driving African Christianity’s global reach

African Christianity has exploded to reach all countries in the world. From villages to megacities, Harvey Kwiyani outlines the significant role women are playing.

Harvey Kwiyani

Harvey Kwiyani is the CEO of Global Connections and a lecturer in African Christianity at Church Mission Society. He also leads Missio Africanus.

A group of women stand and dance at a celebration in the street, wearing matching skirts..

Igbo women at a celebration in Nigeria.

John Mic on Unsplash.

In the past fifty years, African Christianity has exploded to reach all countries in the world. A Nigerian Pentecostal denomination, the Redeemed Christian Church of God, boasts of having congregations in every country in the world. Another African Pentecostal denomination, the Church of Pentecost (from Ghana), is present in 160 countries around the world. Here in the UK, these two are the largest African denominations with almost 1000 and 200 congregations, respectively. Most of their members are African, and the African woman is at the centre of it all (even though, of course, their leadership structures say otherwise). So, this article sets out to show the particular contribution of women to African Christianity.

“To develop a community, you must educate its women.” This is what we were told several decades ago when African countries like Malawi (where I grew up) wanted to encourage communities to send young girls to school. Of course, this is not untrue. Living standards in communities where women had access to schools were noticeably better than in societies where women had not attained basic education. Educationally empowered women tended to help uplift their communities towards better living. While politicians and activists preached about educating young girls, Christian communities took a similar approach to evangelism, mission, and church growth. “If you want to save a community,” they said, “you must convert the women.” They believed that when women became Christians, the men and children in their communities would also convert. A great deal of the evangelistic campaigns was shaped to appeal to women.

African women themselves took advantage of this and became missionaries and evangelists in their own communities. Looking back at that era, there is no doubt that African women played a very significant role in the remarkable spread of Christianity through the continent over the past century. In part, this is why women and girls make up a majority of Africa’s Christian population. While 52 per cent of Africans are female, women and girls make up well over 55 per cent of Christians in many African countries.

Female African evangelists, many of whom would not even identify as such, took the good news to their communities and spoke about the transforming power of Christian faith with fellow women wherever they gathered—whether fetching water, walking to the maize mill or, indeed, for their regular village women’s meetings. Slowly, one by one, they evangelised their families, friends, and co-workers. These went on to convert their own families, clans, and communities too. Men played a role too, and this is often acknowledged. Women’s work, however, is usually under-appreciated. Christian mothers often taught the basics of the faith to their children, tilting their worldview towards Christianity in their formative years. In most cases, Christian women worked as teachers in early primary education. Their Christian faith and lifestyles were part of their teaching and testimony. In teaching primary school Religious Education, for example, many teachers catered to the curious needs of young inquisitive minds living in a religiously charged atmosphere. Alongside this, because of their profession, most female Christian teachers often ran Sunday school classes in many churches.

Furthermore, women often took on the responsibility of praying for their families and communities. The importance of this work cannot be understated. The people I grew up with in Southern Malawi used to say that behind every successful boy or girl is a praying mother. Indeed, my grandmother, one of the female evangelists in our community, used to say, “Our children’s futures are shaped on the knees of the mothers.” Rightly so, bent and broken on their knees, the women of my community prayed for their children’s educational, social, and spiritual well-being. A female Nigerian pastor told me an adage, “If you have not seen an African woman travailing in prayer, you have not seen prayer yet.” Of course, this is hyperbole, but it was said for a reason.

Today, in the 21st century, African women continue to be the backbone of the Christian faith in the continent as well as in the African diaspora.

While African Christian women can be good teachers and build their communities through prayer, it is their commitment to hospitality that stands out.. Their hospitality provided missionaries and evangelists with a platform that helped their work of preaching Christianity. By opening their homes to house the missionaries, even temporarily, and making sure that those who went out to preach the gospel—and this included numerous female evangelists—were fed, they facilitated a network that helped accelerate the growth of Christianity in Africa.

Today, in the 21st century, African women continue to be the backbone of the Christian faith in the continent as well as in the African diaspora. A Burkinabé female theologian, Ini Dorcas Dah, has discussed the role of African women in both the churches as well as in society in her 2017 book appropriately entitled, Women Do More Work Than Men. She is following in the theological footsteps of the matriarch of African women’s theology, Mercy Amba Oduyoye who, back in the 1980s started questioning the male domination of a majority female church in Africa. Oduyoye would, in 1989, start the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians to enhance the feminist critique of African Christianity. Her book, Daughters of Anowa: African Women and Patriarchy, has grown to become a classic. The Circle continues today as many African female theologians such as Esther Mombo, Telesia Hinga, Isabel Phiri, and Wanjiku Kihuha have picked up the baton and published many books over the past twenty years.

In her master’s research, done in 2018, Modupe Adefala, a Nigerian pastor of Word Fountain Church in Oxford, suggested that African women pioneered a great deal of African origin church ministry work in London. Her biographical sketch of five female Nigerian pioneers in London revealed larger-than-life ministers doing outsized work in the city. Sheila Akomiah-Conteh, a Ghanaian theologian who works for Missio Africanus and teaches at Church Mission Society in Oxford, adds that African women are busy serving God in migrant churches in every city in the country—churches that are usually unseen, making the work of the women serving in them even more hidden from society. They silently do what they need to do, away from the spotlight. Both of them are keen to recognise that a younger generation of female African Christians is emerging that is ready to serve while living right in the spotlight. Modupe’s daughter, Wonuola, carries a good portion of her ministry on Instagram. She is one of many young African women ministering significantly on social media.

To get back to the statement at the beginning of this article, Akomiah-Conteh is concerned that African women have very little access to theological education and ministry training. She is right. Wanjiku Kihuha says that as a female theologian teaching in Nairobi, she is usually the only female in her classes. Another scholar added that for every 15 males in theological education in East Africa, there is only one female. This incongruence, especially in a church context where females significantly outnumber males, is quite troubling. Here in the diaspora, it is not too different. African women theologians are hard to come by, and when one is found, she will most likely be overstretched between family, ministry, and a career. African churches are an increasingly prominent presence in UK cities and towns. For them to have the deep positive impact that they have the potential to bring, we need both to pay attention and to support the women who so often are the backbone of these churches

Missio Africanus, has a commitment to equip and empower African women both through theological education and ministry training. It is convinced that to mature a Christian community, its women must have access to theological education. It welcomes any support we can get for this.

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3 January 2024

5 min read

Letter from Burnley: the shifting sands of the cost of living crisis

With a worsening crisis affecting his community, Alex Frost reflects on the growing struggle and the impact on its people.

Alex Frost

Alex Frost is a vicar in Burnley, Lancashire, and an advocate for the local community.

Two older men lean agains the wall of a football club's entrance, next to thin open doorways.

Burnley football club turnstiles.

Have you ever watched one of those retrospective television programmes, that takes us back to the 1980's or 1990's? They usually include clips of Wham or Oasis or Yuppies with massive mobile phones.

I don't know about you but the label 'The cost-of-living' is one that I suspect might take its own place in one of those shows twenty or so years from now. And I do wonder if things will be better or worse than they are presently.

You might that hope which ever political government of the day is in power in 2044, the cost of living crisis and poverty will have significantly shifted from where they presently are.

In my own town, Burnley in Lancashire, the shifting sands of such matters are starkly evident, and things seem to be getting worse rather than better. The evidence of a cost of living crisis has shifted matters from financial insecurity to many other areas. For example, within the cost of living crisis sits another crisis that appears to be getting more concerning as the months go by and we drop into the harshest months of the year.

He cites places of refuge as dangerous, violent, volatile places that are not in keeping with his desire to live a quiet and normal life that befits a gentleman in his late fifties.

That crisis is one of extremely worrying mental health issues with adults and some very young children in our community. On a personal level, there is nothing more painful than taking a funeral service for a young person who has taken their own life, which happened to me in recent months. Alongside such sadnesses, there are almost daily examples of individuals, many of whom are young mothers pouring their hearts out on social media with woes of poor mental health with seemingly nowhere to turn. In my own borough the mental support provision within the NHS is at breaking point with long delays for mental health counselling and support. Thank goodness then for the voluntary sector who help me to help others on a regular basis. After the pandemic of COVID in Burnley, where a recent Joseph Rowntree Foundation poverty report suggested 38 oer cent of children in Burnley live in poverty, we are in a battle to keep our most vulnerable people mentally well and with an optimistic outlook for a brighter future.

And then there is the matter of homelessness. Who'd have thought we'd be living in a time when people are now being evicted from a tent? And what about those who lived outside for many years - what are we to do for them? There is a chap in Burnley, who by choice is living rough behind our corporation cemetery because the accommodation offered to him would place him in a hostel where addiction and violence is commonplace. The only blessing to be taken from it is that he has found a warm spot and he is relatively safe against the winter elements that are coming our way during the winter. But the saddest thing about this gentleman is that it is a preferable option to what is offered were he to use the provision available. He cites places of refuge as dangerous, violent, volatile places that are not in keeping with his desire to live a quiet and normal life that befits a gentleman in his late fifties.

Watching young mums literally gathering up the crumbs from our food provisions at church is a chastening and humiliating experience for them and those who serve them.

And as the sands shift, what about our young people? In the school where I am a governor, 58 per cent of our children are on free school meals, and many come from broken homes and difficult circumstances. What encouragement can we give them to ensure their young lives are ones of opportunity, fun and learning? What can we do to ensure the struggles of the children's parents don't bring their own development to an uncertain and worrying future? Some parents in the grip of a cost-of-living crisis lose their filter on vocabulary and so every worry, concern, disappointment and crisis is shared. Shared with little boys and girls who shouldn't be constantly subjected to a world that is always churning out negative scenarios on their innocent and immature minds.

And what about the national celebration of a food bank and community kitchens and all they do for the poor people of our parishes? Three cheers for the voluntary sector who take the strain of a failing social security system that gives food with one hand but potentially snatches self-worth with the other. Watching young mums literally gathering up the crumbs from our food provisions at church is a chastening and humiliating experience for them and those who serve them. I hate foodbanks, not because of the good they clearly do, but, because they normalise and hold up a failing social security system in our country today.

As we approach Christmas and a new year, I wonder how the shifting sand of the cost-of-living crisis might influence, our cultural horizon? Is it idealistic, romantic or downright stupid to think we might change the great and mighty to think differently in their approach to poverty? I am keen football fan, and you might be familiar with the term 'He/She talks a good game' and after many years following Burnley Football Club I have witnessed on many occasions when Managers have talked a good game but sadly failed to deliver on the field of play. And I think that is true of the majority of our politicians of all parties. They can talk a good game but often fail to impress us because the substance doesn't match the sentences.

I am convinced through many years of dealing with abject poverty, that people in difficulty respond better to compassion over criticism, understanding over instruction, reality over rhetoric. So many people in my context don't want to be in poverty. They would prefer not to struggle, and they would recognise they need help. The shifting sands of surviving should encourage society to prioritise people before pedestrianisations of town centres, and hope over HS2 railway lines. As the sands of our landscape continue to shift, it surely must be the priority of the church, the government, and for people to stop people from sinking in a swell of poverty and hardship. When it does that, perhaps the church can demonstrate to the society, its role and its mission still has much to offer in 2024 and beyond.