Attached to Paper Session
Meeting Preference
The growing importance attached to international migration as an avenue to wealth creation and upward social mobility in Ghana, and the corresponding emergence of purveyors of magico-religious power (Daswani 2010, Parish 2015, Quayesi-Amakye 2015) who administer what I refer to as rites of mobility—(that is, an emerging category of rituals intended to eliminate, through magical ways, the impediments to border crossings and related processes travelers can face), is shaping the religious landscape of Ghana in unprecedented ways. Understanding that the throngs of prospective overseas migrant clientele who approach them for spiritual help in their migration projects are driven by indigenous notions of travel that inform their anxieties and fears of witchcraft, curses, and the evil eye, Pentecostal agents are in turn enlisting paraphernalia and ritual models of indigenous religious provenance in their efforts to demonstrate their efficacy as ritual agents who do not only control a vast array of Christian sources of magico-religious protection but also can tap indigenous spiritual models to eliminate the harm and evil that can thwart travelers’ agendas.
The focus of this presentation is the rites of mobility during the Sign and Tokens Annual Conference at the Power Chapel Worldwide in Kumasi and the special pot-breaking ritual during the Prophetic Clinic of the Christian Resurrection Prayer Ministries International in Aburi-Efiduase, two of the Pentecostal-Prophetic churches in Ghana that have over the years garnered fame for aiding worshippers who wish to migrate to greener pastures in Europe, Asia Pacific, and North America, with forms of supernatural help. The presentation will analyze the pot-breaking ritual praxis for all breakthroughs including travel, the Token of Passports rites of mobility, and the Crossover end-of-year ritual praxis in which material objects including black pots, objects generally associated with local indigenous shrines, feature prominently as a symbolic representation of the impediments especially those connected to overseas travels which prospective migrants must eliminate if their projects must succeed. The ritual involves the breaking of a number of these pots and other related practices including invocations unto passports. Through some form of sympathetic magic, the breaking of pots is intended to break barriers standing in the way of participants, while the invocations unto passports are meant to enable access to overseas travel projects. The analysis of this ritual will demonstrate how some Pentecostals in Ghana, driven by the quest to demonstrate their efficacy in using indigenous models and symbols in dealing with the fears and anxieties that come with indigenous notions of travel, are performing what we can describe as indigenous religious rituals within the Pentecostal spaces. In these performances, the lines between Pentecostal Christian practices and indigenous religious practices are blurred to the point that it is not clear whether the rituals are Pentecostal or Indigenous. I argue that such developments represent an unprecedented level of the indigenization of Christianity in Africa. Moreover, the intense competition in Ghana’s volatile Pentecostal religious fields is contributing to an open enlisting of indigenous religious rituals by the churches in a bid to gain an edge over other competitors.
The rites of mobility is driving African Pentecostals even more African. It is a whole deeper level of indigenizing; it is also syncretizing and internationalizing—even appropriating diaspora Christian forms to appeal to the sensibilities of both local and overseas clientele. The phenomenon raises several related questions. Thus, can what is emerging at the home front be fully African or a combination of other forms of appropriation or syncretism-- looking at the different variants and introduced elements into Christianity in Africa? And are they ‘African’ only when they extend to the diaspora since they are referred to as ‘African’ migrant churches?
In seeking answers to these questions, I hope to fill an important gap in the emerging literature on indigenizing Christianity in Africa and the agency of Pentecostal ritual experts in the performance of rituals for migration. The growing trend of indigenization of Christianity in Africa and the role of its leaders have attracted a good deal of research. The focus of researchers have however been limited to the ways Africans have created indigenous versions of Christianity (Ogbu 2008, Anderson, African Independent Churches 2011, Anderson 2001, Peel 1968), how they appropriate African symbolism (Asamoah-Gyadu 2015, De Bruijn 2001), how they demonize the indigenous practices, and how Pentecostal Christianity is popular and given rise to charismatic renewals in the mainline European-mission churches (C. Omenyo 2014, C. N. Omenyo 2006, Asamoah-Gyadu Sighs and Signs of the Spirit: Ghanaian Perspectives on the Pentecostalism and Renewal in Africa, 23). Also, Girish Daswani demonstrates pragmatic consideration for rituals from immobile religious agents as reservoirs of superior power that motivate local communities to enlist the help of these agents and symbols in efforts to address challenging vicissitudes including the travel process (Daswani 2010). The literature has not paid much attention to ways the quest to appeal to the sensibilities of the locals, desire to internationalize, and have diaspora membership via overseas migration is shaping the ways Christianity in Africa is indigenizing, especially, the Pentecostal variant. The paper emphasizes how indigenous African models and travel symbols are being retooled and located in Ghanaian Pentecostal Christian spaces.
The paper will draw on the idea of religious capital to conceptualize the phenomenon. Pierre Bourdieu first coined the term cultural capital to refer to symbols, ideas, and preferences that can be strategically used as resources in social action. It is the key form of symbolic capital that reifies and legitimates, thereby reproducing social distinctions, the possession of which defines class, and the distribution of which determines position in the power relations constituting the field of power in society. They are instruments of power (Rey 2007, 52-53). This idea is useful in understanding ways the demand for spiritual enablement in travel is increasingly impacting Ghana’s religious field.
The presentation is part of an ongoing project which involves field research in both churches between July 2014 and 2023. While both churches are classified under the Pentecostal category of Ghanaian Christianity, they emphasize prophecy, material objects, and ritual performance.
Abstract for Online Program Book (maximum 150 words)
Ghanaian Pentecostal agents who emphasize ritual praxis for migrants live in two worlds as far as questions of socio-religious capital are concerned. One world is informed by a quest to internationalize, have diaspora membership, engage in overseas itinerant missions, and have a global-modern presence. The other is the efforts to indigenize their ritual praxis to appeal to the indigenous sensibilities of local clientele who may become tomorrow’s diaspora members and distinguish themselves from the European mission churches in Ghana. The intense competition in Ghana’s volatile Pentecostal religious field is engendering an open enlisting of indigenous religious models by churches in a bid to gain an edge over other competitors.
The paper involves fieldwork research among two Ghanaian Pentecostal churches in exploring ways the Pentecostals deploy a tapestry of indigenous models and symbols to appeal to the indigenous sensibilities to negotiate socio-religious capital in the Ghanaian religious landscape thereby indigenizing Christianity.