Pentecostalism and the politics of prophetic power: religious modernity in Ghana

Focusing on Ghana, this chapter examines the religious transformation from prophetism to Pentecostalism which has occurred in many parts of Africa. The African prophets who emerged from the early 20th century developed syncretic combinations of traditional and modern culture and generally rejected Western religious leadership in the churches. In contrast, Pentecostal churches, especially of the so-called second Pentecostal wave from the 1970s, are based on direct personal inspiration and are strongly opposed to local cultural traditions. Prophetic and Pentecostal movements represent two different models of religious power in society and two ways of using the Bible as a model. The author examines the political implications of these different principles of scriptural interpretation. While the prophetic biblical model is largely place-oriented, the Pentecostal model is basically a politics of time: the old person and the old society have to 'die' to be replaced by a new one. Notes, ref. [ASC Leiden abstract]