A Postcolonial Re-Reading of Missionary Christianity in Nigeria: Towards a Decolonised African Ecclesiology

Western missionary Christianity brought the gospel to Nigeria within a colonial framework that entangled Christian theology with European cultural assumptions, racial hierarchies, and colonial power structures. Decolonising the ecclesiology of Nigerian Christianity, disentangling genuine biblical community from colonial church forms, is a constructive theological task with significant implications for Nigerian church life. This study conducts a postcolonial re-reading of missionary Christianity in Nigeria and develops towards a decolonised African ecclesiology. A postcolonial theological methodology is employed, drawing on the postcolonial biblical hermeneutics of Sugirtharajah, the African theology tradition of Mbiti, Oduyoye, and Ukpong, and the historical ecclesiology of colonial mission enterprise in Nigeria. Stage one is a historical analysis of denominational mission history in Nigeria from 1840 to 1960 through archival mission records, examining how colonial power shaped church governance, liturgy, theology, and social ethics. Stage two is a postcolonial theological critique of remaining colonial ecclesiological inheritances in contemporary Nigerian church life, including dependence models of leadership, imported liturgical forms, and Western academic theological gatekeeping. Stage three is a constructive proposal for a decolonised African ecclesiology drawing on indigenous African communal values, precolonial Nigerian religious wisdom, and the biblical narrative of Pentecost as a multilingual, multicultural community. Original contributions include a Decolonised African Ecclesiology Framework with seven constitutive principles and a methodology for contextual ecclesial reform validated by twenty Nigerian theologians and church leaders.

Keywords: postcolonial theology, decolonised ecclesiology, missionary Christianity, Nigeria, African theology