African Christianity Rising: Lessons from a Documentary Film Project

Guided by consulting scholars including Andrew Walls and Kwame Bediako, I conducted pre-production field research among diverse Christian communities in Ghana and Zimbabwe, and, then, helped by a team of local sound recordists and assistants, filmed intimately in select communities across church types in both countries, including the work of a traditional obosum priestess in Ghana competing for business with a local prophet-founded independent church we filmed. We filmed personal stories chosen to bring to light what I had come to see as fundamental forces at work fueling church growth in both countries. Those forces included setting aside the Post-Enlightenment worldview in which Christianity had largely been delivered to sub-Saharan Africa by missionaries from the West, so believers could address the multi-faceted spiritual worlds recognized by most Africans. In Ghana this was evident, for example, in the embrace of deliverance ministry across all mainline, mission-founded churches at the time, and in Zimbabwe, by such churches’ embrace of traditional all-night worship where spiritual warfare took place. Another force at work was how urbanization, by weakening the collective supports of extended-family life, was fueling church growth since church communities were finding ways to meet those pressing needs. Using character-driven storytelling, our two-part African Christianity Rising film series shows people struggling with ordinary problems anyone can identify with, and then shows them wrestling with those issues in terms of their faith and the ministries of their congregations. This chapter, in ethnographic text with links to such documentary film work, makes vivid and understandable such forces fueling Christianity’s explosive growth in Africa. In addition, this project’s interactions with churches in the United States and public broadcasters in the West reveal ways in which conflicting worldviews contribute to distrust, deceit, and misunderstandings between the church in Africa—and Africans, in general—and the West.