Ghana

Ghana is a West African country located on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean. It exhibits the characteristics captured in John Mbiti's (1990) famous statement: “Africans are notoriously religious” (p. 1), a sentiment also shared by Geoffrey Parrinder (1974), who called Africans “this incurably religious people” (p. 9). The religious landscape of Ghana defies the secularization theory, which predicts that religion will gradually be consigned to the private sphere in an increasingly modern-rationalist world. Religious activity in Ghana today depicts an upsurge in individual participation in religious activity (private sphere) as well as the continued [Page 444]influence of religious groups in the public sphere. Churches, particularly Pentecostal/Charismatic churches, are springing up throughout Ghanaian society. This development is largely an urban phenomenon that, to mark their success, has also become transnational in nature through the establishment of branches in the Global North and other parts of the Global South.

The growth of Christianity in Ghana is remarkable given its fairly recent advent from Europe. The historic churches, also known as the mission, mainline, or orthodox churches, have asserted their presence in Ghana since the 19th century. The “Basel Mission,” for example, “arrived in Ghana in 1828, the Methodists in 1835” (Gifford, 1998, p. 57). And although consistent Catholic evangelization did not begin in the Gold Coast until 1880, a Portuguese chaplain celebrated the first Catholic Mass at Elmina in 1471 (Wiltgen, 1956). The presence of these churches is easily noticeable in their influence on the Ghanaian public sphere through their provision of social institutions, predominantly in the areas of education and health care.

Today, Pentecostalism is a salient sector of African Christianity. African Pentecostalism has roots in African Independent Churches, established after the 1950s to mark the independence struggle; Western Pentecostal churches (e.g., the Baptist Church), which gained entry into West Africa in the 1970s, growing considerably in Ghana since the late 1990s (Darkwah, 2001, p. 12); and the new churches (e.g., Aladura [Peel, 1989] and Nakaba) that originated in Africa. Now it is fashionable for Ghanaians to found churches that are beginning to take on new roles of providing social services, thereby emulating the historic churches.

Consequently, the religious face of Ghana is undergoing rapid transformation. Christianity has witnessed the most rapid growth in Ghana (26%) over a 40-year period (since 1960), moving from 43% to 69% of the population, while adherents of African traditional religion have plummeted from 45% to 6%—a 39% decrease (Gifford, 1998, p. 61). Islam has remained relatively stable, moving from 12% to 15.9%, while a new development has occurred with 6.1% of Ghanaians now reporting no religious affiliation (Ghana Statistical Service, 2002).

Pentecostal churches account in no small way for such a rapid growth of Ghanaian Christianity, even though the birth of Pentecostalism in Ghana is fairly recent. Statistics from the Registrar General's Department indicate that in 2005, 443 new religious groups were registered in Ghana. The total number of both secular organizations and religious groups registered over the same period was 1,931. The increasing involvement of churches in socioeconomic life renders meaningless the view that consigns religion strictly to the private life of individuals. In everyday life, the experiences of the private and the public constantly intersect for most Ghanaians, making it difficult to draw a sharp distinction between religion as a private and a public affair.

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