Praying until Jesus returns: commitment and prayerfulness among charismatic Christians in Ghana

Abstract

Charismatic Christians in Ghana display heterogeneous intensities of personal piety, often mapped out by believers to levels of 'spiritual maturation'. In this article, I examine the devotional routines of 'committed' Christians, individuals recognized as 'prayerful' subjects. Through Marcel Mauss' incidental definition of prayer as an 'expenditure of physical and moral energy', I investigate ethnographically the methods whereby prayerfulness comes about. I argue that charismatic prayer is not a discernible object of inquiry, but an ongoing field of ethical problematization driven forward by two modes of physical and moral expenditure: habit and anticipation. From this angle, spiritual maturity indicates not a durable ethical asset, but a continuous effort to produce homeostatic balance between these embodied temporal forces. I conclude by stressing how attention to the internal goods of prayer allow us to integrate vulnerability within religious projects, instead of reducing it to an external causal force, as in most deprivation theories of religion.

Ordinary ethics and its temporalities: The Christian God and the 2016 Ghanaian elections

“…4. To suggest that ethical practice and its temporalities are entangled through action is not to suggest something new (Bear, 2014;Gell, 1992;Mbembe, 2001), especially not in the literature on Protestant Christianity (see Bialecki, 2009;Bielo, 2017;Meyer, 1999;Reinhardt, 2015Reinhardt, , 2016aReinhardt, , 2016bRobbins, 2007). 5.…”

“…This frustration coincided with the not yet of political and social life (the end of dumsor and corruption) and expressed the sentiment of a future that was still not immanent and which required more explicit work. Pentecostal Christianity has been described as a religion that sees the world as already enchanted, where the material and transcendental are mutually implicated in various ways (Brahinsky, 2012;Freeman, 2012;Meyer, 2015aMeyer, , 2015bReinhardt, 2015Reinhardt, , 2016bWebster, 2013). If Ghanaian Christians are told to remain alert for the end times, to have patience and to lead holy lives as they wait for the Second Coming of Jesus, they also believe that they should exact a response from God when they pray for an end to dumsor and corruption.…”

“…that erode the very possibility of the ordinary" (Das, 2012: 134). To suggest that immanence and the transcendent are "intrinsically interconnected, subsisting only in relation to one another" (Sidnell et al, 2010) is not a revelation for most anthropologists working in Ghana, where Pentecostalism attributes importance to the sensuous, bodily, and material aspects of religious life and through which the Holy Spirit is present in the world and in socio-political life (Daswani, 2015;Meyer, 2015aMeyer, , 2015bMeyer, , 2016Reinhardt, 2015Reinhardt, , 2016b). 14 Through sermons and prayers, Prince drew on a transcendental power in order to resolve the immanent problems facing Ghanaians and the imminence of what is to come: the ongoing power crisis, corruption, and even death.…”

A relacionalidade da ruptura pentecostal: conversão, natalidade e parentesco espiritual em Gana

“…Cristãos imaturos, por exemplo, são definidos como aqueles que recorrem à oração como uma "pílula", uma solução para momentos difíceis, quando não simplesmente delegam seu dever de orar para um pastor, que intercede por eles. Cristão maduros, por outro lado, exercitam seus "músculos de oração" de maneira metódica, e desenvolvem "estamina de oração", capacidade de orar por longas horas, e mesmo sem motivo aparente (Reinhardt 2017a). Eles oram para "glorificar a Deus" e "passar tempo no Espírito" e são definidos como sujeitos "orantes" (prayerful), ou seja, que transformaram uma prática em uma qualidade pessoal, um modo de ser.…”

Bøn

“…Som Michael Lambek anfører, så er det så absolut muligt at bede uden at vaere overbevist (2010:45). Hermed ser vi, at bønnen ofte i dedikeret praksis anses som en nøgle til forandring, men at det bønnen forandrer ikke kun må forstås i relation til de store svar på bønnen, men også den konkrete livsførelse, der bliver laest, som varierende udtryk for overbevisning og åndelig modenhed (Reinhardt 2017). Bønnen kan hermed fungere som en måde at åbne op for både centripetale og centrifugale former for kritik, det vaere sig i form af selvransagelse, men også et ønske, ja, måske endda ligefrem krav om forandring af den verden, man bebor, og som man forholder sig konstant moralsk evaluerende i forhold til.…”