African Independent Church Pneumatology and the Salvation of All Creation

[Ever since the beginning of this century African Independent Churches have taken root, proliferated and shown phenomenal growth throughout our continent, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa.118 Because many of these churches originated through a variety of schismatic processes within western oriented mission churches (either large scale schisms or individual defections), they were often characterized negatively as “separatist,” “parasitic,” “nativistic” or “sectarian” movements.119 In Christian terms they were considered either non Christian movements whose members should be approached as objects of mission or evangelism to be baptized or rebaptized into mission church folds, or marginally Christian because of their alleged syncretism and therefore not properly belonging to the mainstream of Christianity—the so-called “mainline churches.”]