Surveys show that Americans are becoming less religious and church membership across the country is declining. In Maine, this forced some churches to close their doors. But a very different trend is emerging in some African immigrant community states, where recent arrivals are fueling a proliferation of new congregations.
In a downtown Portland parking lot in late May, a group of Congolese and Angolan immigrants, dressed in green and white uniforms, surveyed her marching formation as she prepared to march down Congress St. Manuel, from Westbrook was in the lead. the maneuvers.
“We are here today in Maine to celebrate the Nativity, that is, the birth of Christ,” Manuel said in French.
Ari Snider
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Maine Public
Vemakondolo is part of Maine’s small but growing Kimbanguist congregation. Kimbanguism is a Christian movement born in Congo under Belgian colonial rule in the early 1900s. Its leader, Simon Kimbangu, preached black liberation and anti-colonialism, and was imprisoned by the colonial regime until his death.
Kimbangu’s followers celebrate Christmas in May, on the birthday of his son, whom they consider to be the reincarnation of Jesus. Today’s parade attracted Kimbanguists from as far away as Atlanta.
“It feels good,” said George Mbungu, of Portland. “Because we have different people in our church that are from different states. We’re going to play together. So it’s fantastic.”
Ari Snider
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Maine Public
Mbungu was part of the marching band and played the euphonium. Mbungu said that when his family moved to the United States from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, they first went to upstate New York and then moved to Maine to join the Kimbanguist church here.
“I was happy because I saw people who were like me, people who believed in the same religion as me,” Mbungu said.
The church meets in a rented hall in Westbrook and is one of a growing number of new congregations in the greater Portland area, led by and serving African immigrant communities.
It’s a growth that defies national trends in organized religion: Recent Gallup Poll finds that church membership and the importance of religion in people’s lives are falling to record lows.
Ari Snider
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Maine Public
Nicolette Manglos-Weber, a professor at Boston University’s Divinity School, said immigration is a major reason those levels haven’t fallen even further, and that many Christian denominations traditional practices in the United States take note.
“The United Methodist Church or the Episcopal Church or the Presbyterian Church are now looking to immigrant populations to really build up and recoup some of the losses,” she said.
Manglos-Weber added that it is increasingly common to see independent African immigrant churches in the United States, mirroring the growth of the Pentecostal movement in countries like the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Angola.
Ari Snider
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Maine Public
In Maine, some African immigrants also join longtime Catholic, Orthodox, and Jehovah’s Witness congregations.
But Magalie Lumière, a Congolese translator who lives in Portland, said sharing a cultural connection with other worshipers is important to her. That led her to a Pentecostal church in Westbrook whose congregants also hail from central Africa.
“Just like that connection to your home country, you’re like, ‘Okay, we can pray in the same language,'” she said.
For Lumière, that language is often Swahili – especially, she says, if it’s about something really important.
“I think Swahili goes straight to God,” she says, laughing.
Ari Snider
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Maine Public
Also in Westbrook, Sunday morning services at City of the Lord Church are almost concert-like, with a full band and live singers leading multilingual worship.
Pastor Placide Mowa, originally from the Democratic Republic of Congo, said he started the church about a decade ago, when he arrived in Maine. At the time, he said the congregation consisted of four people meeting at his home to pray. Today, he preaches to about a hundred people, gathered in a rented American Legion hall.
Ari Snider
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Maine Public
Mowa said his goal was to combat the decline of religiosity in the United States.
“There is a lot of work to be done,” he said in French, “in this country and in this state, so that we can bring people to Christ.”
But today, this work risks being interrupted. Mowa told the congregation that they had to finish things on time, because another Congolese church had booked the space after them.
Ari Snider
/
Maine Public
