"Later chapters in this book will refine questions of definition and explore the question of boundary marking as experienced throughout the world. The most difficulty in such efforts probably comes from assessing the increasing number of non-Western independent churches. In Africa, these groups are sometimes known as aladura churches, from Yoruba word meaning “praying people,” or they are called African Initiated Churches (AIC). Examples, from literally thousands of possibilities, include the Zion Christian Church of Southern Africa and the Cherubim and Seraphim society of West Africa. But similar churches and movements have also proliferated in other parts of the world, such as the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God in Brazil, the house church movements in China, and many other rapidly developing church networks in India, the Philippines, Pacific Islands, Africa, and Latin America. As their names suggest, these Christian movements usually exercise a high degree of independence, they are usually well adapted to the religious and social practices of their different regions, and most imitate the supernaturalism of the New Testament. More traditional evangelicals sometimes critique these indigenous groups for exalting the prophetic powers of their leaders or subordinating the work of Christ to the work of the same leaders. And some critics see too much ancestral religion surviving in these groups, as well as a penchant for promoting Christianity as a means to secure health and wealth in this life. Nonetheless, a twenty-first-century conception of evangelicalism must pay considerable attention to such groups, for many of them originated from contact with historic evangelic missionaries, and most of them promote beliefs and practices that overlap with traditional evangelical emphases. Case-by-case analysis is the only way is the only way to discern whether such independent movements are best studied as variants of evangelical Christianity or another species altogether."