Transnational Dynamics in African Christianity: How Global Is the Lighthouse Chapel International Missionary Mandate?

An increasingly salient character of the new Christian churches springing up in the global South (Africa, Latin America, and "developing" Asia) is their transnational outlook and rapid establishment of international branches, particularly in the global North. Their decision to include suffixes such as "international" or "universal" in their names is but an inkling of their ambition. This essay investigates what the Lighthouse Chapel International, emanating from Ghana, believes to be its universal mandate to evangelize the world. Lighthouse has ventured into culturally and traditionally Catholic Vienna. Does religious transnationalism present Africa the opportunity to influence and transform the world by means of missionary religion, just as past European missionaries sought to do in Africa, as some of these new churches believe? To what extent does globalization propel the spread of these new churches in other parts of the world? This article suggests that despite its efforts, Lighthouse merely affects the African immigrant community rather than producing a truly "global" effect on a putatively dormant "Euro-Christianity."