Changing Faces of African Christianity: The Role of Dr. Mojola Agbebi

The call to change the face of African Christianity began with Dr. Mojola Agbebi (formerly referred to as David Vincent) in 1889, when he made this classic statement in his book titled Africa and the Gospel: "To render Christianity indigenous to Africa, it must be watered by native hands, pruned by native hatchets, and tended with native earth". He continues to say that "It is a curse if we intend for ever to hold at the apron strings of foreign teachers, doing the baby for aye (Ayandele, E.A., 2005). Agbebi fought European-American racial and cultural imperialism, mental enslavement, and spiritual thraldom and created for Africans a Christianity that catered for their cultural identities and sensibilities, concerns, needs, and aspirations to properly align the African worldview with global Christianity and contextualize its practices. His Africanization of Christianity to reject Eurocentricism and Americocentrism of Christianity is an eloquent testimony of his move to change the faces of African Christianity to give African Christians a voice in the religious market. This study is therefore set to examine the impact of African Christianity on contemporary world Christianity, especially in the Global North, and the role of Dr. Mojola Agbebi in reshaping the face of Christianity in Africa and the Diaspora. The study concludes that Christianity should not be seen as a Western religion. The methodology adopted in this work to collect relevant data is historical, qualitative, and explanatory.