African initiated church

An African initiated church is a Christian church independently started in Africa by Africans and not by missionaries from another continent. The oldest of these is the Tewahedo (Ethiopian Orthodox Church) which dates from the 4th century, and was one of the first Christian churches in the world.

Nomenclature

A variety of overlapping terms exist for these forms of Christianity: African initiated churches, African independent churches, African indigenous churches and African instituted churches. The abbreviation AIC covers them all. The differences in names correspond to the aspect that a researcher wishes to emphasize. Those who wish to point out that AICs exhibit African cultural forms, describe them as "indigenous," and so on. These terms have largely been imposed upon such groups, and may not be the way they would describe themselves.

Some scholars argue that independent churches or religious movements demonstrate syncretism or partial integration between aspects of Christian belief and African traditional religion, but the degree to which this happens varies, and has often been exaggerated. Often these churches have resulted from a process of acculturation between traditional African beliefs and Protestant Christianity, and have split from their parent churches.