Ghanaian Pentecostal Research Articles

How faith settings contribute to children's learning

When families migrate to a new country, faith communities offer a source of support and a way of maintaining social, cultural and linguistic connections. The church, temple or mosque may be one of the few places where children speak their community language with a sizeable group of people. Faith classes also provide a rare opportunity to learn to read and write in the community language or liturgical language. Yet these important sites of language and literacy learning have been little studied. It is for this reason that a major research project was set up by the Centre for Language, Culture and Learning at Goldsmiths to investigate children’s learning in four recently arrived communities in London: Tamil Hindu, Bangladeshi Muslim, Ghanaian Pentecostal and Polish Catholic. The study took place over three and a half years, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, and was conducted by a team of 11 people, including researchers from each linguistic background who also had personal experience or knowledge of the faith group with whom they worked.

On Christianity and ethics: Rupture as ethical practice in Ghanaian Pentecostalism

ABSTRACTRupture, a common principle of the Pentecostal Christian faith, can also give rise to ethical disputes among believers. The study of such disputes provides insight into the ways ethical practice shapes the institutional continuities and the personal inconsistencies of a Christian life. All believers learn what Pentecostal rupture is, but they have different opinions about how it is achieved, and, once born again, they differ on what constitutes good or right religious observance. I suggest that approaching rupture as ethical practice allows for a better understanding of the religious subject's response to an incommensurability of values and practices internal to Pentecostalism.

Practice, performance and perfection: learning sacred texts in four faith communities in London

In this article we examine the role played by one key sacred text in chil- dren’s learning in four faith communities in London (Bangladeshi British Mus- lim, Tamil Hindu, Ghanaian Pentecostal and Polish Catholic). After situating the study within a sociocultural framework, we show how collaborative ethnography offers insights into how children begin to make collective memories their own in a new country. We focus particularly on the importance of practice and perfor- mance leading to the perfection required by the faith. Through multimodal ap- proaches including song, dance, gesture and chant, as well as repetition, recita- tion, echoing and memorization, the children imbibe the texts and learn them “by heart”. Finally, we show how living in a new country results in a syncretism of language, literacy and learning practices which contributes to the dynamic na- ture of each faith in London.

God in Ghanaian Pentecostal Songs

This essay is about implicit ideas of God in Ghanaian Pentecostal songs. It examines and discusses some selected songs or choruses sung by Ghanaian Pentecostal churches. Today these songs have ceased to be the prerogative of the Pentecostals; they are sung by all: Christian and non-Christian. The songs I examine in this paper reveal Ghanaian Pentecostal understanding and interpretation of the being and nature of God. The paper aims at demonstrating the naturalness of Ghanaian Pentecostal songs. It also reveals the synthesis of the Akan primal worldview and biblical understanding in the Ghanaian Pentecostal concept of God. Yet this paper demonstrates that Ghanaian Pentecostals show a clear discontinuity with the primal worldview when they subvert the mediatorial and salvific roles of the traditional deities and spirits with those of Christ and the Christian God.

Syncretism as a creative act of mind: The narratives of children from four faith communities in London

In this paper, we illustrate how young children from four faith communities (Tamil Hindu/Saiva, Bangladeshi Muslim, Polish Catholic and Ghanaian Pentecostal) new to London bring together and juxtapose an array of different languages, literacies, learning and discourse styles, communicative resources and experience to create unique personal narratives. We draw on the concepts of syncretism and syncretic literacy to examine and interpret the creative and transformative processes in which children engage, and to show how children combine and ultimately make sense of faith and everyday experiences.

(In-)Dividual Pentecostals in Ghana

AbstractHow are Ghanaian Pentecostals related to others, not just as individuals but relationally and as partible and divisible selves that have an influential force over each other? In answering this question I use the example of two Ghanaian Pentecostal women who face personal problems in their lives and who seek different alternatives in alleviating their suffering. While claims to individuality may be important in born-again conversion, I argue that we also need to consider how Pentecostal Christians are dividual and related to others. In doing so, I examine these Ghanaian Pentecostal women as ethical subjects who are involved in balancing individual achievements against moral obligations to others.

Prosperity and Prophecy in African Pentecostalism

AbstractThis essay discusses how prosperity is understood and articulated in Ghanaian Pentecostal prophetic circles. It seeks to show that in the peripheral prophetism of Pentecostalism, prosperity is perceived as the good life Christ offers those who believe in him. The good life is a religious and social quest of Ghanaians. The bad life is a privation of goodness in this life. Coping with the bad life has necessitated the patronage of Ghanaian prophetic services where rituals of transformation are employed to negotiate evil and suffering in the life of the faithful. Critical in the discussion is the role of the 'Other' who creates conditions of impoverishment for people and who justifies the necessity of prophetic negotiation. The paper also analyses the content of the bad life and finally attempts to show that Christ's parables in Luke 16 propose a guiding paradigm for conceiving prosperity as a tool for harmonious interhuman relations.

Negotiating Marriage: Questions of Morality and Legitimacy in the Ghanaian Pentecostal Diaspora

AbstractAmong the many immigrant groups that have settled in the Netherlands, the recently arrived migrants from Ghana have been perceived by the Dutch state as especially problematic. Explicit measures have been taken to investigate marriages of Ghanaians, as these appeared to be an avenue by which many acquired access to the Dutch welfare state. While the Dutch government tightened its immigration policies, many Ghanaian Pentecostal churches were emerging in the Ghanaian immigrant communities. An important function of these churches is to officiate over marriages; marriages that are perceived as lawful and righteous in the eyes of the migrant community but nonetheless do not have any legal basis as far as the Dutch state is concerned. This contribution explores why the Ghanaian community attributes great moral significance to these marriages that are taking place within their Pentecostal churches. It investigates the changing meaning of the functions of Pentecostal churches in Ghana and in the Netherlands by distinguishing civil morality from civic responsibility. It seeks to explore how, in both contexts, legitimacy is created as well as contested in the face of prevailing state-civil society relations. Through this exploration, it will become clear why, in both situations, Pentecostalism is unlikely to develop into a civic religion in the full sense of the term.

Of 'Sour Grapes' and 'Children's Teeth': Inherited Guilt, Human Rights and Processes of Restoration in Ghanaian Pentecostalism

AbstractThe rise of the Pentecostal/Charismatic movement in African countries like Ghana has inspired new ways of dealing with the challenges of life. A critical area of operation for the movement is the 'healing and deliverance' ministry. One of its main aims is to help people deal with inherited guilt through rituals for healing the past. The worldview of mystical causality that underlies a system of shrine slavery among the Ewe of Ghana called Trokosi, offer one example from traditional religions, of how such traditional institutions may stigmatise victims and generations after them, sometimes perpetually. Vestiges of such stigmatisation still remain even in places where shrine slavery has been abolished by law. In keeping with the prophetic declaration by Ezekiel that the sins of the fathers shall no more be visited on their children (Ezekiel 18), the Pentecostal/Charismatic ministry of 'healing and deliverance' provides a Christian ritual context in which the enslaving effects of generational curses resulting from the sins of one's ancestry may be broken. Pentecostals believe that it is through the 'deliverance' that the born again Christian may experience fullness of life in Christ.

Spreading the Word: Religious Beliefs and the Evolution of Immigrant Congregations

Current models of change in immigrant churches posit that ethnic congregations become more acculturated in response to inter-generational conflicts. As second- and third-generation church members attempt to meet their own unique social needs, ethnic churches are forced to revise their goals and structures in order to ensure the survival of their organization. Recent studies, however, cast doubt on whether generational changes are the only catalyst of evolution in ethnic churches. This paper develops an alternative explanation by arguing that religious culture can also exert pressure for change. It does so by showing how a strong emphasis on inter-ethnic evangelism lead to the adoption of English-language services in a Ghanaian Pentecostal church in Chicago

Localisation, Ghanaian Pentecostalism and the Stranger's Beauty in Botswana

AbstractThis contribution considers the current position of the Ghanaian migrant community in Botswana's capital, Gaborone, at a time of rising xenophobic sentiments and increasing ethnic tensions among the general public. The article examines anthropological understandings of such sentiments by placing them in the context of the study of nationalisms in processes of state formation in Africa and the way in which these ideologies reflect the position and recognition of minorities. In Botswana, identity politics indulge in a liberalist democratic rhetoric in which an undifferentiated citizenship is promoted by the state, concealing on the one hand inequalities between the various groups in the country, but on the other hand defending the exclusive interests of all ‘Batswana’ against foreign influence through the enactment of what has become known as a ‘localisation policy'. Like many other nationalities, Ghanaian expatriate labour has increasingly become the object of localisation policies. However in their case xenophobic sentiments have taken on unexpected dimensions. By focusing on the general public's fascination with Ghanaian fashion and styles of beautification, the numerous hair salons and clothing boutiques Ghanaians operate, in addition to the newly emerging Ghanaian-led Pentecostal churches in the city, the ambiguous but ubiquitous play of repulsion and attraction can be demonstrated in the way in which localisation is perceived and experienced by the migrant as well as by the dominant groups in society. The article concludes by placing entrepreneurialism at the nexus of where this play of attraction and repulsion creates a common ground of understanding between Ghanaians and their host society, despite the government's hardening localisation policies.

Localisation, Ghanaian Pentecostalism and the Stranger's Beauty in Botswana

Localisation, Ghanaian Pentecostalism and the Stranger's Beauty in Botswana

The soul is the stranger: Ghanaian Pentecostalism and the diasporic contestation of ‘flow’ and ‘individuality’

Pentecostal groups have become a prominent part of the process of migration of Ghanaians to the West. In popular conceptions, migration is above all a spiritual problem. Operating from Accra and Kumasi, charismatic Pentecostal churches have been established in the Ghanaian migrant communities of the larger cities in the Netherlands. This article analyses the position these churches take in diasporic communities by asking why it is that Pentecostalism par excellence appears to offer the kind of symbolic discourse and praxis that fosters the constitution of a transcultural and transnational domain. Moving away from bipolar approaches to migration and diasporic communities, this contribution argues that Pentecostal transnationality and transculturality negotiate taxonomic state developments that tend to circumscribe and petrify individual identities. All‐too‐easy notions about ‘global flows’ of people, ideas and practices, and of ‘global individuality’, are critically examined.

Pentecostalism in Africa and the Changing Face of Christian Mission

AbstractThird World Christianity has been experiencing exponential growth since the turn of the twentieth century. Nowhere is this renewal in Christianity more visible than Africa, where religious innovations led by indigenous Christians have mostly been Pentecostal in character. The Pentecostal movements leading the current renewal of Christianity in African countries like Ghana are autonomous, independent of both the established historic mission denominations and the older classical Pentecostal churches like the Assemblies of God. Ghanaian Pentecostalism in its various streams has adapted the global Pentecostal culture to suit the needs of the local context in ways that have changed the nature and direction of Christian mission. The traditional themes of healing, deliverance, prosperity and empowerment associated with the global Pentecostal movement have been synthesized with traditional worldviews, giving Pentecostal Christianity an added relevance in African context. This has yielded massive responses. In Pentecostal movements under discussion, therefore, one finds the ingenious ability of indigenous Christians to appropriate a phenomenon of global significance for local consumption.

The Anthropology of Religion and the Quarrel between Poetry and Philosophy

Proposant une mise en perspective des fondements epistemologiques de l'anthropologie religieuse, l'A. examine les questions suivantes : 1. l'apport de certains aspects de la pensee d'Aristote pour une approche de la religion ; 2. la signification de la moralite pour l'anthropologie religieuse et la theorie sociale ; 3. la dimension pratique des approches de la moralite et l'apport complementaire d'Aristote et de Roy Rappaport ; 4. l'integration de la dimension morale dans l'interpretation de la pratique. Il suggere qu'une theorie de la pratique se doit de prendre en compte le jugement raisonne, tel que cela a ete developpe dans des interpretations recentes de l'Ethique d'Aristote. Finalement, il soutient qu'il est necessaire d'aller au-dela de la caracterisation et de l'evaluation unique de la raison abstraite par Platon, et qu'il faut, dans les approches contemporaines, conjoindre les dimensions du politique et du pouvoir, mais egalement de la vertu et de la morale.

The Anthropology of Religion and the Quarrel between Poetry and Philosophy

The Anthropology of Religion and the Quarrel between Poetry and Philosophy

From Camp to Encompassment: Discourses of Transsubjectivity in the Ghanaian Pentecostal Diaspora

From Camp to Encompassment: Discourses of Transsubjectivity in the Ghanaian Pentecostal Diaspora

From Camp To Encompassment: Discourses of Transsubjectivity in the Ghanaian Pentecostal Diaspora1

This article explores the role of religion in identity formation in situations where individuals are engaged in intercontinental diasporic movement, starting from R.P. Werbner's notion that religion and strangerhood transform together. In particular, the author examines the diaspora of Ghanaians in the Netherlands and the role Ghanaian Pentecostalism appears to play in the forming of their identity as strangers in Dutch society. The author uses the term 'transsubjectivity' to indicate those processes by which religion deals with strangerhood as shaped by the power of the modern African and Western nation-State. He distinguishes two discourses in present-day Ghanaian Pentecostalism. The first, which he calls 'sending' discourse, involves so-called prayer camps in Ghana, to which (prospective) migrants may turn for spiritual help and protection in their transnational travel. The second, or 'receiving', discourse relates to the figure of the Pentecostal leader in the diaspora who represents the abusua panyin, the family head. These two discourses 'inject' the migrant differently into transnational interconnectedness, and they deal differently with the body personal and the ways in which techniques of the self are employed in constructing the subjectivity of the Ghanaian as migrant and stranger. Bibliogr., notes

Pioneers of Ghanaian Pentecostalism: Peter Anim and James McKeown

Pioneers of Ghanaian Pentecostalism: Peter Anim and James McKeown

Pioneers of Ghanaian Pentecostalism: Peter Anim and James Mckeown

Pioneers of Ghanaian Pentecostalism: Peter Anim and James Mckeown