Transformation and Migration Among Members of a Pentecostal Church in Ghana and London

Abstract

While an ideology of rupture is central to understanding Pentecostal Christianity in Ghana, not enough attention has been given to the moral relationships and ritual practices that help sustain a Pentecostal transformation and its situational application in different contexts. By comparing the experiences of members of the Church of Pentecost (CoP) in Ghana and London, I show how Pentecostal transformation provides church members with an ethical framework, that helps them cope with unhealthy relationships, witchcraft attacks, and migration, albeit differently. I argue that while promoting discontinuity, individuality, and positive change, Pentecostal transformation also raises concerns regarding continuity, communality, and negativity.

The power of submission: Self and community in Fijian Pentecostal discourse

“…While Christianity promotes individualism in some ways, it “cannot be viewed as a singular project of individuality” (Coleman , 248). Christianity conceives of people at least in some contexts as dividuals immersed in communities, whose agency is defined contextually and through exchanges with humans as well as God (Mosko , ; see also Daswani , 444–46; ; Werbner , 298). People may, for instance, experience themselves as autonomous agents while participating in Pentecostal church gatherings but continue to enact a more permeable or relational sense of self in everyday life (Chua ).…”

“…The model supplied by the pastors, in short, did not fully determine individual experiences of self. As in other areas of the world, narratives of rupture accompanied a reality in which people continued to be embedded in kin networks inside and outside the church (e.g., Chua ; Daswani , 444–46; Pype ; Robbins ). Furthermore, many people became impatient with the autocratic nature of the church community.…”

(In-)Dividual Pentecostals in Ghana

“…It was also there that I learned more about the limitations of Pentecostal power and how the actions of others can affect one's ability to spiritually protect oneself. Although her born-again identity helped Mama create new structures of relatedness (Englund 2004;Daswani 2010), she continued to face limits to her new Pentecostal agency.…”

“…In this paper I address the contingencies involved in balancing individual aspirations for personal change against one's moral obligations to others, human and nonhuman; processes of self-fashioning that can only be partially acknowledged in born-again language and ritual (see Engelke 2010;Lindhardt 2010;Daswani 2010). In the process of resolving personal problems Ghanaian Pentecostals have to evaluate their identities as Pentecostal individuals free from the traditional past, and as dividuals who are still connected to the spirits of their past.…”

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

“…Drawing on Alain Badiou's ideas regarding the “event” and the “divided subject,” Robbins has suggested that, just as Paul's relation to Jewish law and his Jewish past was not a simple one, the transformed Pentecostal subject may “have to struggle against the particularities defined by the situations in which it lives and against its own investment in them” (2010:647; also see Bialecki ). In other words, by neglecting the diverse ways in which rupture is experienced when establishing continuities with a Christian future, we potentially obscure the interpersonal contingencies that accompany religious faith but that can only be partially acknowledged in born‐again language and ritual (Daswani ; Engelke ; Lindhardt ).…”