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In Africa, religion and life are inseparable entities and this has remained so both in traditional systems of governance and within modern political life. Throughout Africa, threats or violence and actual internecine conflicts have attended political change during electioneering campaigns and voting. This chapter undertakes a historical overview of the relationship between Christianity and politics in democratic Ghana as a case study of continent-wide developments. In response to the fears of violence and outbreaks of fighting, the mainline churches or the historic mission denominations have relied on their human intellectual resources to respond to developments through communiques and statements in the media addressed to the parties involved. The Pentecostal/charismatic churches, on the other hand, have usually organized periods of prayer and fasting to deal with threats of violence occurring before and after elections. Taking off from the writings of John S. Pobee, the essay examines the ways in which the two main church traditions - historic mission denominations and Pentecostal/charismatic churches - have responded to the changing nature of the political landscape since the introduction of multi-party democracy in modem Ghana.
Introduction
Ghana is a religiously pluralistic country that has for generations been associated with three main religions: the indigenous religions with their emphasis on the Supreme Being, local gods and spirits, Christianity in its varied denominational and revivalist forms, and Islam in both its Sunni and Shi'ite categories. In addition the religious terrain since the middle of the last century has widened to accommodate innumerable new religious movements making Ghana a 'religious zoo' with different kinds of religious 'wildlife'. Traditionally the country also shares with the rest of Africa a worldview that keeps religion and life inseparably linked. All over Africa, for example, religion and politics encroach upon each other. As evidence, consider that although Ghana's first president, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, took a hostile socialist approach to religion, he accepted a national anthem for post-independent Ghana that had a Christian religious orientation. The first line of the anthem constitutes the title of this chapter. Kwame Nkrumah also used religion in instrumental ways as means of political survival. His chosen honorific desig- nation osagyefo, meaning great 'deliverer' or 'redeemer' for example, has religious connotations in both its traditional and Christian senses as a...