Pentecostalisation, the American Christian Right, and Civil Religion in Ghana

Christianity’s political prominence in Ghana has attracted the attention of scholars interested in the wider issues of religion and politics in sub-Saharan Africa. Analyses of the political influence of Christianity in Ghana generally focus on domestic factors, without considering external actors’ involvement. This article examines the political impact of the leading form of Christianity in Ghana, Pentecostalism, in relation to both domestic and external factors. The aims of the article are, first, to explain and account for Pentecostals’ political impact in Ghana. The second aim is to explain and account for the links between elements of the American Christian Right and prominent Pentecostals in Ghana. Both support normatively conservative, even regressive, policies which, the article argues, encourages the breakdown of Ghana’s civil religion. Ghana is the first west African nation to be subject to sustained attention from elements of the US Christian Right, following similar efforts in east Africa, particularly in relation to Kenya and Uganda. This novelty makes the American Christian Right’s focus on Ghana both noteworthy and an important topic of research in the context of the internationalisation of the former. The article is divided into four sections. The introductory section presents the main sections of the article, and provides a thorough account of the background of the study. The second section surveys what has been called the ‘pentecostalisation’ of Christianity in Ghana, which aligns with similar processes in other sub-Saharan African countries, including Nigeria. The third section examines the links between Ghana’s Pentecostals and elements of the American Christian Right and explains how this helps to fuel a breakdown Ghana’s longstanding allegiance to civil religion. The final section describes the main political result: the scapegoating and criminalisation of Ghana’s numerically small, beleaguered gay community.