Download or read book Ghana s New Christianity New Edition written by Paul Gifford and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2004-07-15 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A sober, firsthand look at evangelical Christian churches in Accra, Ghana.
Download or read book Ghana s New Christianity written by Paul Gifford and published by C. Hurst & Co. Publishers. This book was released on 2004 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In sub-Saharan Africa over the last two decades there has been an explosion of Christianity. This book sets out to identify its particular character, focusing on a particular place: Greater Accra, the capital of Ghana. Paul Gifford examines a wide range of Accra's new churches, giving priority to mega-churches. Every dimension -- discourse, theological vision, worship, rituals, music, media involvement, use of the Bible, conventions, finances, clientele -- is analysed. Gifford argues that this Christianity is not otherworldly: its emphasis is on success, achievement, wealth here and now. Yet within this general orientation there is diversity. At one end of the spectrum are churches that, building on the traditional religious imagination, see demonic forces everywhere blocking personal success. In the churches the key factor is the special 'man of God' who is understood to have the 'anointing' to conquer these forces, to 'reverse the curse' that is holding the believer back. At the other end is a strain of this new Christianity that discounts spiritual forces and sees victory resulting from the believer's own education and skills, and from transforming culture.The book also joins the debate over the role of this Christianity in modernizing economic and political structures. It sets the scene by describing Ghana's political and economic situation in the decades when these churches were proliferating, and outlines the current debate on the reasons for Africa's economic plight. It is argued that although focusing on success and wealth can provide motivation in circumstances where it is so easy to despair, the pervasive emphasis on miracles militates against any natural fostering of a new work ethic. As for their political role, some churches are easily co-opted; others challenge the government, but for 'spiritual' reasons that provide little incentive to grapple with issues of governance; by contrast, Gifford finds one important church encouraging change of the entire political culture. No other book has set forth the complex nature of Africa's new Christianity with such clarity, or offered such a searching analysis of its power to tackle Africa's predicament.
Download or read book Gender Social Change and Spiritual Power written by Jane E. Soothill and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2007 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Against a backdrop of debate concerning the role of Pentecostalism as a mediator of 'modernity', this book examines the interaction between charismatic Christianity, spiritual power and gendered social change in contemporary Ghana.
Download or read book African Christianity written by Paul Gifford and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 1998-07-22 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These detailed analyses of the state of the churches in each country suggest more general patterns operating widely across sub-Saharan Africa.
Download or read book Sensational Movies written by Birgit Meyer and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2015-10-16 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tracing the rise and development of the Ghanaian video film industry between 1985 and 2010, Sensational Movies examines video movies as seismographic devices recording a culture and society in turmoil. This book captures the dynamic process of popular filmmaking in Ghana as a new medium for the imagination and tracks the interlacing of the mediumÕs technological, economic, social, cultural, and religious aspects. Stepping into the void left by the defunct state film industry, video movies negotiate the imaginaries deployed by state cinema on the one hand and Christianity on the other. Birgit Meyer analyzes Ghanaian video as a powerful, sensational form. Colliding with the state film industryÕs representations of culture, these movies are indebted to religious notions of divination and revelation. Exploring the format of Òfilm as revelation,Ó Meyer unpacks the affinity between cinematic and popular Christian modes of looking and showcases the transgressive potential haunting figurations of the occult. In this brilliant study, Meyer offers a deep, conceptually innovative analysis of the role of visual culture within the politics and aesthetics of religious world making.
Download or read book Pentecostalism written by Emmanuel Kingsley Larbi and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 572 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Word Made Global written by Mark R. Gornik and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2011-07-22 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A groundbreaking work of ethnography, urban studies, and theology, Mark Gornik's Word Made Global explores the recent development of African Christianity in New York City. Drawing especially on ten years of intensive research into three very different African immigrant churches, Gornik sheds light on the pastoral, spiritual, and missional dynamics of this exciting global, transnational Christian movement.
Download or read book The Church and Ghana s Search for a New Democratic System written by and published by . This book was released on 1990 with total page 35 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Looking Back Moving Forward written by Girish Daswani and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2015-02-26 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Christianity Wealth and Spiritual Power in Ghana written by Karen Lauterbach and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-11-25 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book centers around mid-level charismatic pastors in Ghana. Karen Lauterbach analyzes pastorship as a pathway to becoming small “big men” and achieving status, wealth, and power in the country. The volume investigates both the social processes of becoming a pastor and the spiritual dimensions of how power and wealth are conceptualized, achieved, and legitimized in the particular context of Asante in Ghana. Lauterbach integrates her analysis of charismatic Christianity with a historically informed examination of social mobility—how people in subordinate positions seek to join up with power. She explores how the ideas and experiences surrounding the achievement of wealth and performance of power are shaped and re-shaped. In this way, the book historicizes current expressions of charismatic Christianity in Ghana while also bringing the role of religion and belief to bear on our understanding of wealth and power as they function more broadly in African societies.
Download or read book The New Cambridge History of the Bible Volume 4 From 1750 to the Present written by James Carleton Paget and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 871 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume examines the Bible's role in the modern world, with a focus on its dissemination throughout the Americas, Africa, and Asia.
Download or read book Gender Social Change and Spiritual Power written by Jane E. Soothill and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2007-03-31 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Charismatic Christianity is the most recent and fastest growing expression of Pentecostal religion in Sub-Saharan Africa. In Ghana's capital, Accra, the charismatic churches dominate the religious scene. This book focuses on the gender discourses of Ghana's new churches, and considers charismatic perspectives on womanhood, manhood, marriage and family life. Offering a fresh perspective on the organisational structures of the charismatic churches, this study looks at the leadership roles of female pastors and pastors' wives, and draws attention to the links between female leaders and spiritual power. By highlighting the importance of spiritual power in interpreting gendered social change, the book sheds new light on the socio-cultural role of Ghana's new churches.
Download or read book Ghana s search for a new democratic system written by Christian Council of Ghana and published by . This book was released on 1990 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The New Faces of Christianity written by Philip Jenkins and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2006-09 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Named one of the top religion books of 2002 by USA Today, Philip Jenkins's phenomenally successful The Next Christendom permanently changed the way people think about the future of Christianity. In that volume, Jenkins called the world's attention to the little noticed fact that Christianity's center of gravity was moving inexorably southward, to the point that Africa may soon be home to the world's largest Christian populations. Now, in this brilliant sequel, Jenkins takes a much closer look at Christianity in the global South, revealing what it is like, and what it means for the future.The faith of the South, Jenkins finds, is first and foremost a biblical faith. Indeed, in the global South, many Christians identify powerfully with the world portrayed in the New Testament--an agricultural world very much like their own, marked by famine and plague, poverty and exile, until very recently a society of peasants, farmers, and small craftsmen. In the global South, as in the biblical world, belief in spirits and witchcraft are commonplace, and in many places--such as Nigeria, Indonesia, and Sudan--Christians are persecuted just as early Christians were. Thus the Bible speaks to the global South with a vividness and authenticity simply unavailable to most believers in the industrialized North.More important, Jenkins shows that throughout the global South, believers are reading the Bible with fresh eyes, and coming away with new and sometimes startling interpretations. Some of their conclusions are distinctly fundamentalist, but Jenkins finds an intriguing paradox, for they are also finding ideas in the Bible that are socially liberating, especially with respect to women's rights. Across Africa, Asia, and Latin America, such Christians are social activists in the forefront of a wide range of liberation movements.It's hard to overstate how interesting, how eye-opening, how frequently surprising (and sometimes disturbing) Jenkins' findings are. Anyone interested in the implications of these trends for the major denominations, for Muslim-Christian conflict, and for global politics will find The New Faces of Christianity provocative and incisive--and indispensable.
Download or read book Healing and Power in Ghana written by Lecturer Paul Glen Grant and published by . This book was released on 2020-10-15 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In nineteenth-century Ghana, regional warfare rooted in profound social and economic transformations led thousands of displaced people to seek refuge in the small mountain kingdom of Akuapem. There they encountered missionaries from Germany whose message of sin and forgiveness struck many of these newcomers as irrelevant to their needs. However, together with Akuapem's natives, these newcomers began reformulating Christianity as a ritual tool for social and physical healing, as well as power, in a dangerous spiritual and human world. The result was Ghana's oldest African-initiated variant of Christianity: a homegrown expression of unbroken moral, political, and religious priorities. Focusing on the southeastern Gold Coast in the middle of the nineteenth century, Healing and Power in Ghana identifies patterns of indigenous reception, rejection, and reformulation of what had initially arrived, centuries earlier, as a European trade religion. Paul Grant draws on a mixture of European and indigenous sources in several languages, building on recent scholarship in world Christianity to address the question of conversion through the lens of the indigenous moral imagination. This approach considers, among other things, the conditions in which Akuapem locals and newly arrived displaced persons might find Christianity useful or applicable to their needs. This is no traditional history of the European-African religious encounter. Ghanian Christians identified the missionaries according to preexisting political and religious categories--as a new class of shrine priests. They resolved their own social crises in ways the missionaries were unable to understand. In effect, Christianity became an indigenous religion years before indigenous people converted in any appreciable numbers. By foregrounding the sacrificial idiom shared by locals, missionaries, and native thinkers, Healing and Power in Ghana presents a new model of scholarship for both West African history and world Christianity. --Brian Stanley, Professor of World Christianity, University of Edinburgh
Download or read book Sighs and Signs of the Spirit written by Johnson Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu and published by Wipf and Stock. This book was released on 2015-08-13 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: J. Kwabena Asamoah Gyadu ""offers his reader a comprehensive and highly perceptive account of the appeal and theological influence of this kind of Christianity, combining scholarly excellence with a deep insider understanding of resonances with African religious sensibilities."" Martin Lindhardt (From the Foreword) This is a scholarly piece of work, presented in a simple, readable style that should make it easily accessible and beneficial to all, scholars and non-scholars alike. In this book, Asamoah-Gyadu returns to many familiar themes; he dialogues with other scholars in the field and also engages with the leaders of Charismatic/Pentecostal Christianity themselves. He consistently allows them to speak for themselves. Though an ordained minister of the Methodist Church, Ghana, Asamoah-Gyadu often points out how the mission-founded churches in Ghana have fallen behind their Charismatic/Pentecostal counterparts and the need for the former to learn from the latter. It is clear that this learning process has already started. Asamoah-Gyadu constantly demonstrates the primal and, therefore, African underpinnings of much that is in African Pentecostalism today. He clearly has soft spot for this brand of Christianity, but that does not deter him from pointing out elements that lack adequate biblical grounding. We thus end up with is a very comprehensive and balanced examination of the African Pentecostalism that has a great deal to teach African Christians but even more so Christians elsewhere. After all, as A. F. Walls has often indicated, African Christianity will be, if it is not already, a major component of the representative Christianity of the twenty-first century. This makes this book required reading for all those interested in the current state of African Christianity and the future of Global Christianity. Rev. B. Y. Quarshie, PhD, Rector, Akrofi-Christaller Institute of Theology, Mission and Culture, Akropong-Akuapem, Ghana Rev. Prof. J. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu holds PhD (Theology) from the University of Birmingham, UK and DD (Honoris Causa) from the Asbury Theological Seminary, Kentucky, USA. He is Baëta-Grau Professor of Contemporary African Christianity and Pentecostal/Charismatic Theology at the Trinity Theological Seminary, Legon, Accra, Ghana. He is married to Theodora and they have three children: Theophil, Griselda, and Emmanuel.
Download or read book African Charismatics written by Johnson Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides significant insights into current historical and theological developments affecting independent indigenous Pentecostalism in Ghana. The information used originates from a specific African context, but serves as a window for understanding modern African Christianity.
