Social change and religious transformation in a Pentecostal church in Ghana and London

• Main Author: Daswani, Girish
• Published: London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London) 2007
• Subjects: 306.68994
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.443798

This dissertationi s an ethnographici nvestigation into Pentecostarl eligious transformation and social change, and the role these factors play in shaping the collective aspirations and individual lives of church members from the Church of Pentecost in southern Ghana and London. I look at `transformation' as a central theme in Pentecostal Christianity. Transformation raises questions of continuity and discontinuity with the past, as expressed in concernso ver `culture' and identity, and the ways in which Pentecostasl ubjectsb ecome active agentsi n the world. The theme of transformation also provides Pentecostalsw ith a moral and cultural framework for talking about change. The thesis looks at how individuals and groups within the church relate to religious transformation differently when making sense of social change. In my work I look at religious transformation from within three overlapping fields of social interaction - the church leaders and church community in Ghana, individual church members and prophets in Ghana, and ordinary members and lay leaders of the church in Ghana and London. I show how religious transformation is a morally contested terrain, about the right knowledge and directive actions that make you a true Pentecostal and the limitations placed upon it. The increasing migration of church members outside Africa and into the West, as well as the increasing bureaucratisation and growth of the church as a global institution, has led to questions regarding their Pentecostal identity. These are contextual and moral debates within the church, including the ways in which religious transformation is historically represented by church members, and the role of `culture' in Christianity. This work therefore not only addresses issues fundamental to the study of comparative Christianity, but also to the more general anthropological problem of the cross-cultural meanings of anthropological categories of `identity', `community' and `religion'.