Religious innovations of chieftaincy in Ghana: Pentecostal Christianity and the complex persistence and transformation of Akan chieftaincy

Abstract

AbstractChieftaincy is an important indigenous political system in West Africa. In Ghana–based on ancestral cult–the institution has gone through and survived the major historical epochs–precolonial, colonial, and post‐independence–albeit with some changes. The institution's flexibility has been a singular source of its survival. This has made it possible for Pentecostals to become indigenous chiefs. In this article, I depend on a year's ethnographic research in Ghana in 2019 and a review of literature on chieftaincy in Africa to explore how Pentecostal chiefs negotiate the complex terrain between indigenous religion and Pentecostal Christianity–as they take up chiefly office. I argue that through creative innovation and investment in social services, Pentecostal chiefs subvert chiefly rituals and also legitimize their authority. In all this, I discuss the flexibility embodied in chieftaincy and Pentecostalism.