An investigation into the phenomena and practices of spiritual ...

friends started to meet in the home of the Mclachlan family and established themselves asa church when they rented a hall in Brixton. In 1952 Bishop Charles Mason, the founderof COGIC in USA, attended the world Pentecostal convention in London. It was thismeeting with the Maclachlan family that brought about the affiliation of the BrixtonChurch with COGIC.Hiro (1991) summed up the early years thus: „Out of the meetings in the early 50s whereWest Indians in Wolverhampton started to meet in each other‟s houses for Pentecostalservices on Sundays evolved the Black Pentecostal movement in Britain. Some of thechurches that evolved are Church of God of Prophecy, New Testament Church of God andChurch of God in Christ. The first two acquired their own buildings in the late 1960s.‟(Hiro 1991:33). This method of congregating described by Hiro (1991) provided a meansof worship, social activities, a sense of belonging and acceptance where this was not foundin the white majority churches. They were forced to become financially and socially selfsufficientas a result of the rejection and the refusal to help them to integrate intomainstream society by the indigenous population. To illustrate the experience of socialisolation, the author recalls her experience and the experience of others attending a whitemajority church at a very low point in her life in the 1970s. She was looking for a place ofsolace, but when she sat down she was told by a middle-aged white lady „This is my seat‟.As there was not another seat in sight and she was not offered another seat she left vowingnever to return to a white majority church. Hundreds of members of black majoritychurches have told similar stories.The style of cultural survival by meeting in each other‟s houses that was brought to the UKhad been established in the Caribbean during the period of struggle for freedom from114