Girish Daswani

In this paper I provide an analysis of how the then-imminent event of the Ghanaian 2016 elections operated within and interrupted a born-again Christian understanding of social and political change. I argue that much can be gained from understanding Pentecostal Christianity in Ghana by paying close attention to how born-again Christians anticipate and participate in shaping the near future. My analysis of this period, just before (and after) the 2016 elections—from the perspective of born-again Christians in Ghana—contributes to an engagement with the immanent and imminent qualities of ethical life. In accounting for the ways in which the Christian “God” and the “nation” overlap or collide in born-again Pentecostal discourse and practice in Ghana, I propose that the precise configuration of how these forces come together and come apart has a force that complicates how we imagine ethics as something explicit in discourse or about the ability to step back in reflection.

By considering how Ghanaian activists and artists engage with different forms of cynicism in their attempts to fight corruption, this article reflects on two kinds of activist orientations: one located in future-oriented projects of political change, and another embracing contradiction by poking fun at the duplicity of politics. I argue that while the cynicism of other middle-class Ghanaians served as an important catalyst for activist action, it is important to look at cynicism and its politics from the perspective of Ghanaians who become disappointed and skeptical about change and artists who are concerned with embracing contradictions and making fun of the present through satire. By attending to the social actions and experiences that characterize these two groups, I ask what it means to take cynicism, and activism against and despite cynicism, as one’s ethnographic object.

In 2013, T.B. Joshua, the controversial Nigerian prophet and founder of the Synagogue Church of All Nations, visited the Ghanaian branch of his church in Accra. Soon after his visit, specially anointed water was distributed to all those attending. Upon hearing that the blessed water, which some claimed usually cost US$80, was going to be distributed for free, thousands of people filled the church. This unexpectedly large turn-out led to a stampede that killed four and seriously injured thirteen people. Nationwide condemnation of the Nigerian prophet quickly followed. The tragedy drew a moral commentary on the motives of prophets, like Joshua, who accumulated significant wealth and fame by selling “blessings” in the form of commodity items (American magazine Forbes estimated that pastor Joshua was worth up to $15 million). These criticisms were in part theological (“Jesus never sold any of these things”), but included a commentary about the greed of prophets as well as the gullibility of their victims (“People want instant solutions to their problems just like they want instant coffee”). In Ghana and elsewhere in Africa prophets who rise to fame represent a new kind of celebrity. They are not only icons of spiritual power and success, but also an often-evoked public image of potential corruption and deceit. Because of the contradictory roles that they play, prophets provide a fascinating lens through which one can reflect on the ethical landscape of a specific time and place and as well as on people’s aspirations and desires for change.

As an undergraduate, I had the opportunity to take a course in social psychology. The experience was similar to walking into a hidden room of closely guarded treasures, where each social experiment and its consequent explanation shed new light and provided added insight on matters that were close to my heart—issues of conformity, abuse of power, prejudice and discrimination, and even interpersonal matters surrounding love and hate. I realized that, as people, we commonly and observably behaved in predictable ways, through patterns that could be objectively dissected and publicly discerned. It helped me better understand the racism I had experienced and the conformist system I had grown up in, as well as the ways that we, as humans, rationalize and justify the contradictions that we live with everyday. Yet there was something less than satisfying in relying on the conclusions of psychology experiments to describe people's experiences, as they celebrated but also struggled with life, contemplated its obligations and confronted its overbearing norms, followed some rules and disobeyed others, and repositioned themselves in societies that left little to no room for certain kinds of difference. Getting to know people over a period of time complicated any generality that social experiments provided, reminding me that there were limits to the controlled set of determinants that provided such wonderfully intriguing results. Webb Keane's book Ethical Life: Its Natural and Social Histories led me back into that room of hidden treasures while also paying heed to the cau-tionary tale that not all that glitters is gold. Keane's book brings together the " natural " (innate, human nature) and the " social " (differences, diversity of human worlds) into one elegant frame.

The anthropological study of value has gained much currency in recent years. This article speaks to the importance of Pentecostal practices in understanding the qualitative aspects of value in Ghana. It demonstrates how practices relating to wealth accumulation and redistribution are in interaction with ethical evaluations about the character of charismatic Christian prophets. The moral evaluation of wealth of certain prophets, and the links perceived between their use of wealth and their character, tell us something about the moral climate in contemporary Ghanaian society, where wealth cannot simply be measured quantitatively (through acquiring riches), but also ought to be assessed qualitatively (discerned through the quality of one’s acts).

How do Ghanaian Pentecostals resolve the contradictions of their own faith while remaining faithful to their religious identity? Bringing together the anthropology of Christianity and the anthropology of ethics, Girish Daswani’s Looking Back, Moving Forward investigates the compromises with the past that members of Ghana’s Church of Pentecost make in order to remain committed Christians.

Even as church members embrace the break with the past that comes from being  “born-again,” many are less concerned with the boundaries of Christian practice than with interpersonal questions – the continuity of suffering after conversion, the causes of unhealthy relationships, the changes brought about by migration – and how to deal with them. By paying ethnographic attention to the embodied practices, interpersonal relationships, and moments of self-reflection in the lives of members of the Church of Pentecost in Ghana and amongst the Ghanaian diaspora in London, Looking Back, Moving Forward explores ethical practice as it emerges out of the questions that church members and other Ghanaian Pentecostals ask themselves.

This chapter examines how Ghanaian Pentecostal prophets participate in framing and facilitating international travel to the West. These religious intermediaries, who sometimes never leave Ghana themselves, are seen to be efficacious in helping others obtain visas and achieve their ambition to travel overseas. Rather than privileging transnational mobility, I look at how “immobility”, or the lack of mobility, is an important way to understand the role of the prophet in mediating “the transnational”, which includes but is not limited to travel between nations. While Pentecostal prophets help promote a transposable message of Salvation they are subject to the scrutiny of other church members and leaders in determining how their Christian agency is put into practice. While Pentecostal transnational networks foreground the increased flows and mobility of people, ideas, and practices between nations, it is equally important to understand the cultural logic that frames transnational (im-) mobility as a moral and relational practice; in other words, to understand the social and institutional positioning of Ghanaian prophets within the Pentecostal church they belong to, their mutual dependence, and their ideas of how to demonstrate their privileged position.

How 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 ques- tion 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 individual- ity may be important in born-again conversion, I argue that we also need to consider how Pen- tecostal 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.

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 trans- formation also raises concerns regarding continuity, communality, and negativity.