Charismatic Christianity's Hard Cultural Forms and the Local Patterning of the Divine Voice in Ghana

Abstract

ABSTRACTIn Ghana, many Charismatic Christians see their spiritual lives as very different from those of “Traditionalists,” practitioners of Ghana's indigenous religion. This article argues that, while there are differences in how each group experiences spirit or divinity, their spiritual experiences share much in common due to, what Strathern calls, “partial connections.” Charismatic Christian spiritual experiences stand out in creating a rupture with the preceding context and highlighting the qualities of inner thought. By contrast, spiritual experiences of Traditionalists give less attention to inner thoughts. Also, they are less characterized by rupture and more by contextual continuity. However, there are patterns of experience these two ritual communities hold in common. Both Charismatic Christian and Traditionalists experience the divine as exerting difficult‐to‐resist pressure. Also, members of both communities tend to blur the line between mental and sensory experience of spiritual entities. I argue that overlapping elements of their shared cultural lifeworld help constitute these common experiential patterns. This article shows that, in some cases, cultural forms with distinct origins interact in a semi‐coherent way to shape the texture of experience. In doing so, it contributes to anthropological thinking on cultural change that occurs at the intersection of local and global cultural forms. [religious experience, indigenous religion, Charismatic Christianity, Ghana]