Can you explain the entrepreneurial zeal of the Redeemed Christian Church? They want to grow, and they are growing.
They are growing. Growth equals life equals health equals prosperity at its most basic. Religion is about living an abundant life either here or the hereafter. Growth is necessary for that. The other thing is, to put this in the context of immigrant religion, in Boston, a supposedly highly secular city, a new church has been founded every 20 days. Most people don’t realize this. They think New England is secular. These are immigrant churches, storefront churches. This is the American way of building civic society, coming together for voluntary groups, helping each other, and then growth becomes a way to be prosperous in this American context of capitalism, competition, and so on.
In order to grow they have to have American followers as well as their own?
Yeah, though I don’t have the numbers, but there are hundreds of thousands of Nigerians in the United States, so you can start with Nigerians and work outwards. It can also be a unitive experience among Nigerians of different ethnicities. You have to remember Nigeria is a multiethnic country. So first if you can start with your own ethnic group of Nigerians and then expand outward, you can first build out to other Nigerians and then to Ghanains or people of other West African countries and keep moving out to North Americans.
Another brilliant piece of journalism. Forgive me pointing this out, but I was a journalist before ordination and I recognise good practice of the craft when I see it. In an interview like this you have to be alert, and the alertness is shown at the end when Dana Roberts refers to the tension between African and African American expressions of Christianity. This immediately elicits a sharply focussed question about whether the tension is from competition for business, or theological, or both. The answer she gives is equally fascinating and challenging.