THE ways in which the faith of Nigerians in the UK helps them to navigate education, work, and racial discrimination are the subject of new research.
Dr Bisi Adenekan-Koevoets, the British Academy Postdoctoral Researcher in the School of Humanities at the University of Roehampton, has interviewed second-generation British Nigerians aged 19-39, and intends to publish a paper by the end of 2026.
Speaking about her findings this week, she said: “In the case of Nigerians, they learn in church the behavioural code, the norms and values. You almost always can’t separate culture from church, or family from church. So, what they are learning at home almost always is reinforced by what the pastor teaches. How did this thing, this factor, influence the choices that they make? To help them become socio-economically mobile? That’s what I’m looking at now.
“The point for me, and I think for academia as well, is: how can you extrapolate this into other people of faith and people of no faith?”
Referring to her 2021 paper, “Nigerian Pentecostal Diasporic Missions and Intergenerational Conflicts: Case studies from Amsterdam and London”, which explores the tensions between first- and second-generation Nigerian Pentecostalists in Europe, Dr Adenekan-Koevoets said that it was easier to find participants for this study because she “belonged to one of those churches”.
“But in this current one, I’m not really a member of any of those churches, and that has made it a bit difficult. My focus is on individuals, but, of course, churches are a recruiting ground, where I could find them.”
Her 2021 study explored how the intergenerational conflicts hindered the broader aspiration of “reverse mission” to evangelise white Europeans.
“The aim of the study was to gain an in depth insight into the strategies that migrant Pentecostal churches used to attract non-Africans. I was also interested in the theological and social factors that shape some of their evangelistic practices.”
For the study, Dr Adenekan-Koevoets interviewed 40 people, mostly university undergraduates, in London and Amsterdam, between 2017 and 2020.
“The first generation will be the migrating population. The second generation will be those who are born either in Britain, or across Europe, or other Western countries where their parents have migrated.”
She found that the first generation based most of their choices on divine instruction and norms from their Nigerian background. The second generation tended to accuse them of over-spiritualisation. “Young people see opportunities for influence to Western society with the gospel, but only if the structure can contextualise their approaches.”
Dr Adenekan-Koevoets hopes that, in the future, her study can be done on a larger scale, “to find out what it’s like in other church traditions and other communities”.
Last month, the Leader of the Opposition, Kemi Badenoch — who spent her childhood in Nigeria — spoke of drawing strength from her Christian beliefs during a difficult time, but said that she had lost her faith when she found out about Josef Fritzl’s child abuse (News, 15 August). “The world that we have in the UK is very much built on many Christian values,” she said, in a BBC interview.