Amsterdam ‘ ‘ Praise the Lord ’ ’ : Popular cinema and pentecostalite style in Ghana ’ s new public sphere

In this article I examine the elective affinity between Pentecostalism and the vibrant video-film industry that has flourished in the wake of Ghana’s adoption of a democratic constitution. I argue that, as a result of the liberalization and commercialization of the media, a new public sphere has emerged that can no longer be fully controlled by the state but that is increasingly indebted to Pentecostalism. Pentecostalism and video-films come together and articulate alternative, Christian imaginations of modernity. Seeking to grasp the blurring of boundaries between religion and entertainment, I examine the pentecostalite cultural style on which these alternative visions thrive. My main concern is to investigate the specific mode through which Pentecostal expressive forms go public, thereby transforming the public sphere. [Ghana, Pentecostalism, media, public sphere, video-films, popular culture, style] I n the course of the last ten years, the place and the role of both popular culture and Christian religion have expanded in Ghanaian society. Once confined to a secluded, partially hidden, and elusive domain, Christianity—especially its Pentecostal variant—has become increasingly prominent in the media. This expansion has accompanied Ghana’s move toward democracy following adoption of the 1992 constitution, which entailed the liberalization of the media and the opening up of public space to the concerns and views of ordinary people. The Ghanaian video-film industry, which emerged in the course of the late 1980s and really took off in the early 1990s (undertaking more than 50 productions a year), was both facilitated by and an expression of the move toward democracy. Eagerly echoing the views and concerns of Pentecostalcharismatic churches, which became increasingly popular in the course of the 1980s, the video-film industry has contributed significantly to the emergence of a pentecostally infused—or better: pentecostalite—public culture. With the term pentecostalite I seek to capture the media’s deliberate adoption of those expressive forms that signify Pentecostalism and the proliferation of those forms through various channels in the sphere of entertainment. My point here is that pentecostalite expressive forms are characterized by a distinct cultural style that crosscuts different artistic forms (such as music, popular theater, call-in radio programs, and videofilms) and that testifies to the convergence of Pentecostalism and popular culture in the newly constituted public realm. This convergence is the key theme of this article, in which I investigate the emerging nexus of videofilms, religion, and the public sphere and explore new links between these hitherto more or less disconnected fields. Debates about religion, media, and politics in postcolonial societies have mainly focused on political Islam, especially in the Middle East (cf. Eickelman and Anderson’s pathbreaking 1999 volume on new Muslim public spheres and Hirschkind 2001a, 2001b on Egypt; see also Larkin 1997, 2000 on Nigeria), and on the rise of Hindu nationalism in India (e.g., Babb and Wadley 1995; Dasgupta 2001; Mankekar 1999; Rajagopal 2001). Considerably less attention has been paid to the public role of Christianity BIRGIT MEYER University of Amsterdam ‘‘Praise the Lord’’: Popular cinema and pentecostalite style in Ghana’s new