"Microcosm" of the Global South: The Discursive Functionality of Migrant Christianity in World Christianity Discourses

Abstract

This article investigates the discursive triangulation of migrant Christianity in Europe, European Christianity and Christianity in the ‘global South’ in certain world Christianity discourses, with particular attention for the representation and discursive functionality of migrant Christianity within this triangulation. It argues that this triangulation is brought into play to underscore the binary of the vibrancy and growth of Christianity in the ‘global South’ on the one hand and the decline and decay of European Christianity on the other, and that both the selective representation of migrant Christianity and its discursive functionality within triangulation aim to reinforce this binary. The article also argues that this binary forms the fulcrum of a particular conceptualization of world Christianity as a postcolonial project, theorized by Lamin Sanneh, and shows how this postcolonial agenda fashions the representation of migrant Christianity in Europe. The article concludes with a discussion of some of the problematic presuppositions of this construct.