Nigerians have established more churches and fellowships in Ireland in the last few years than all the other immigrant nationalities combined, according to a new report.
The study found that most large towns in the Republic have at least one church organised by Africans, in many cases Nigerians. This geographical spread of "black-majority churches" is due to the policy of dispersing asylum-seekers throughout the State, about one-third of whom are Nigerians, the report notes.
The study, by the Irish Council of Churches, says mainstream churches have only benefited to a limited extent from the influx of Christian immigrants to Ireland during the 1990s. "While some ministers have been very enthusiastic about these 'strangers' and sympathetic towards their integration into the faith community, some of their members have been resistant to the idea," it says. Some immigrants who have joined a black-majority church in Ireland may have initially worshipped in a mainstream church but felt they were not accepted, or were labelled and devalued, the report adds.
Rev Mother Agnes Aderanti is one such immigrant. The 40-year-old Nigerian says she has unsatisfactory experiences when worshipping at a Catholic church in Dublin. While she felt very welcomed by the priest, she says she was shunned by fellow worshippers who often avoided sharing a pew with her.
Following in the footsteps of her mother in Nigeria, she set up her own Rock of Ages branch of the Cherubim and Seraphim Church, which is indigenous to Nigeria.There are currently four well-established branches of this church in the Republic, with a congregation of about 800.
The largest black-majority church in Ireland is the Pentecostal Redeemed Church of God, which has 17 branches and an estimated 4,000-strong membership.
The report's author, Mr Femi Olayisade, says African immigrants in Ireland often seek a sense of ownership in their churches as well as social support.
"Their churches are a place they can call their own, because if they attend the mainstream churches in Ireland they are still strangers."
Rev Mother Aderanti agrees that her congregation seeks more than simply spiritual guidance. "It's a church as well as a helping hand," she says, waving an invoice for €1,000 in college fees which parishioners recently donated to a young scholar in their congregation. African immigrants are often attracted to Pentecostal and evangelical churches, which have a more expressive form of worship, with fervent singing, dancing and music.
In the Artane church yesterday, the service started with a rousing hymn which had the congregants, all dressed in white garments, signifying purity, stomping their feet and swaying their hips to the drum and percussion beat.
The Irish Council of Churches, which brings together large and small Protestant and Orthodox churches, plans to start a "communication" between the new churches identified in the report and the mainstream churches.
Dr David Stevens, the council's general secretary said: "We are aware that this is a new stream of Christian life in this country and it's important that we try to understand their concerns and issues."