Reception of the Lord’s Prayer in Pentecostal-Charismatic Christianity in Ghana

Abstract

The liturgical reception of the Lord’s Prayer (Matt 6:9–13 par. Luke 11:2b–4) is well attested and still evident in Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox circles. For instance, in a reformed worship it is usual to hear varied versions of the statement: “And now as our saviour Christ has taught us, we humbly pray: ‘Our Father who art in heaven (…)’.” It is striking, however, that such a liturgical use of the text is scarce in Pentecostal-Charismatic Christianity worship. Such is the case in Ghanaian Christianity, where Pentecostal-Charismatic Christianity forms the largest and most appealing stream of Christianity in Ghana. It only takes a visit to a Ghanaian Pentecostal-Charismatic Church during a worship session, to ascertain this fact. This article investigates this liturgical phenomenon in Pentecostal-Charismatic worship by analyzing a selection of popular literature written by Pentecostal-Charismatic Church leaders on the text of the Lord’s Prayer and through personal interviews with some of the leaders of Pentecostal-Charismatic churches. Before engaging in reception analysis, a brief exegetical analysis of the text is undertaken. The article concludes that the Lord’s Prayer does not appear in Pentecostal-Charismatic liturgy because it does not meet the Pentecostal-Charismatic understanding of prayer and it is conceived there as a pattern or format of prayer and hence it is chiefly employed as a means of instruction on effective prayers, rather than for recitation each Sunday, as found in Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox circles.

Semantic adjustment in Matthew 6:12 in the Smith-Van Dyck Arabic Bible

“…The research shows that in the translation process, Capitein used a local language-based hermeneutical approach for ease of understanding of the local Christians (Ekem 2007). Research on translation into Ghanaian also involves an approach to the Ghanaian cultural as was done by Wandusim with a historical-reception study (Wandusim 2022). In the Asian context, the translation of the prayer into Malay in the early 17th century was addressed by Thianto (2011), while the translation into Indonesian was raised by Galingging (2014).…”