Mark Gornik's Word Made Global adds to a growing body of literature dealing with the migrant and transnational dimensions of contemporary Christianity. These socially fluid facets of the world Christian movement are still under-studied, and this book helps fill the gap. Gornik also explores a somewhat different, but related question: does ‘African Christianity’ constitute its own emerging theological tradition and, if so, what are its main characteristics? The fieldwork for this study, conducted mostly during the years 2005–7, focused on three different African immigrant congregations in New York City, associated respectively with the Presbyterian Church of Ghana, the Church of the Lord (Aladura) and the Nigerian Redeemed Christian Church of God. The Ghanaian church and the Nigerian congregations each had about 200 members during these years, while the Church of the Lord had only 10–15 regular attenders.
Gornik identifies his research methodology as ‘ecclesiological ethnography’, a natural posture for him to adopt since he is simultaneously a pastor and a scholar. The text makes clear that his relationship with the churches was both observational and religiously participatory. He took notes, but he also led the groups in prayer. His descriptions focus attention on the work of ministers, modes of worship, styles of prayer, practices of Bible reading, and various forms of witness or outreach to the community. The observations are heavily laced with scholarly references – sometimes clumped so tightly together that they are almost overwhelming – but the intention is to reach theological conclusions, rather than anthropological ones. Gornik's ultimate goal is to plumb the depths of what it means communally and organisationally to embody the Spirit of God in a newly fluid global world. He is also deeply interested in what these new African immigrant churches can teach the rest of American Christianity, and in the final pages he lists eight specific spiritual/intellectual ‘gifts’ that the African churches can give American Christians. Readers sharing Gornik's practical ecclesiological focus will probably find his approach inspiring. Those interested in a more typical scholarly approach to the study of immigrant faith may be frustrated because Gornik says virtually nothing about the work or home life of church members, their socio-economic locations, gender relations, neighbourhood dynamics or other cultural or recreational activities.
In terms of understanding Christianity as a global whole, Gornik's most important insights have to do with the mobile and interconnected character of religious life in the contemporary world. Of the many academic works Gornik cites, Thomas Tweed's Crossing and Dwelling: A Theory of Religion (2006) stands out as crucial. Tweed stresses the role of religion in crossing (as well as establishing) social, psychological and geographic boundaries, and Gornik uses Tweed's dynamic understanding of religion to deconstruct the binaries which have come to dominate some descriptions of world Christianity. Gornik dislikes glib references to the global north and the global south, for example, and he shows how these New York congregations move back and forth across that line of supposed distinction. Gornik is enthralled by the way Christians all over the world now wander across political, cultural, economic and geographic lines seeking to find each other, learn from each other, and move ahead in a kind of spiritual harmony which does not require everyone to sing in unison. In keeping with that theme and illustrative of the tone of the book as a whole, Gornik closes the volume with these words: ‘The world, and the Word, keep moving. The Spirit, the gift of God, is ever in motion.’
