Análisis Bivariado Supermaxi

4.6.2.1 Religion of the Ga people

The Ga people are an ethnic group in Ghana who lives primarily in the Greater Accra, Eastern region and the Volta Region of Ghana. They are organised into six independent towns and in each town there is a stool that serves as the central object of Ga ritual and war magic. Their religion is the same as African Indigenous religion, which is a way of life for the Ga people of Ghana and permeates their daily lives and activities. They have a religious system, whose level of linguistic usage has been influenced by a mixture of Akan, Adangbe and Guan words, which appear in the liturgies of both the Eastern and Western Ga people. An ancient religion, namely Kpele, is considered to be the religion of the ancestors of the Ga people. The Kpele religious belief system of the ancient Ga people is the systematic understanding of the ordering of the universe. According to Mustapha (2011), the fundamental concept of the Kpele doctrine has the taxonomy of the hierarchy of beings made up of a Supreme Being, divine beings, human beings, animals and plants as its principle teaching.

a) The Supreme Being

For the Ga people, the Supreme Being is a personified creative life that they term Ataa Na Nyongmo. Ataa means ‘father’, with attributes such as being the provider and protector.

85

Ataa Na Nyongmo to the Ga people is an eternal, nocturnal being, creator of the universe, who cares and seeks for all creations. The Ga people not only depend on Ataa Na Nyongmo for their existence, but also for their means of sustenance and the perpetuation of life on earth6.

b) Divine Beings

The Ga people of Ghana believe in divine beings or spirits of nature “dzemanwodzi”, which are spirits in the air that are associated with certain topographical features such as oceans, lagoons, rivers, mountains, and so forth. These topographical features are thought to be the natural habitation or places of descent for these spirits. Not only do these spirits manifest themselves in these topographical features, but also in human form or may speak directly to the people through mediums such as “Wontśemei”, traditional priests and priestesses. These spirits acts as intercessors or mediators between humanity and the Supreme Being for the protection and blessing of the living, and the future generation of the Ga people. The priest of the ocean, inlets, and the lagoons is called the wulomei. The Ga people’s prayers and sacrifices to these spirits are essential for successful fishing and to serve as advisers to the chiefs. The tendana in the North, priest of the earth shrines, have been the key figures of indigenous religion. They are responsible for making sacrifices for offenses against the earth, including murder, for rituals to maintain land productivity, and for allocating unowned land.

c) Ancestral beliefs

The Ga people, according to Kilson (cited in Mustapha 2011), believe that all persons “adesai” have two aspects of humanity, namely the corporeal and the spiritual, and in everybody’s mortal life, the soul “susuma” inhabits the body “gbomo tso”, except during sleep. Sleep is the time when the soul leaves the body and travels about without being limited by time and space.

At death, the susuma stays in the body for three days and thereafter leaves the body and wanders around until burial and the performance of the final funeral rites “faafo”. At this stage, the soul of the human being receives their ultimate status as an ancestral shade “sisai/nsamantanni” in the underworld or the world of dead persons.

6 _{See: https://kpakpatseweroyalfamily,wordpress.com/2011/09/07/religion-of-ga-people-of -ghana/}  

86

A ritual that revolved around the cycle of ancestral and royal observances is the adae ceremony, in which prayers are made to the ancestors through the medium of carved stools that they owned in their lifetimes. The adae sequence culminates in the annual odwira festival, when the first fruits of the harvest are given to the absomon and the royal ancestors in large public ceremonies, lasting several days.

d) Rituals and Ceremonies of the Ga people

The tendana in the North, priest of the earth shrines, have been the key figures of indigenous religion. They are responsible for making sacrifices for offenses against the earth, including murder, for rituals to maintain land productivity, and for allocating unowned land. A ritual that revolved around the cycle of ancestral and royal observances is the adae ceremony mentioned above, in which prayers are made to the ancestors through the medium of carved stools that they owned in their lifetimes. The adae sequence culminates in the annual odwira festival, when the first fruits of the harvest are given to the absomon and the royal ancestors in large public ceremonies, which lasts for several days. The Ga people are also known for their funeral celebrations and processions. They believe that when one of them dies, they move to another life. Special coffins are made in various forms, from a pencil to an elephant, which normally reflect an essence of the deceased. Life after death to them is more powerful than being alive, because the ancestors are more powerful than the living. The ancestors can influence the lives of the living.

e) Libation practices amongst the Ga people

Libation plays a pivotal role in the lives of the Ga people. It is a ritual through which both the dzemanwodzi and the ancestors are summoned during prayers and worship, to serve as mediums for the supplications offered to the Supreme Being. According to Mustapha (2011), libation involves two actions; one verbal and the other non-verbal. The verbal form of the libation prayer comprises of the invocation of the Supreme Being through the appellations of His various attributes, as creator of the universe, provider for the needs of His creations, sustainer of life and the only one who gives divine guidance to humanity through his dzemanwodzi (messengers). In the non-verbal form of the libation prayer, water, corn wine or alcoholic beverages plays a pivotal role in summoning the dzemanwodzi

87

and sisai/nsamantanni as a means of establishing contractual relationship between mortal men and immortal spirits (Mustapha 2011). The priest prays before he performs the act of libation. The prayer consists of three successive elements, which are the invocation of divine beings and ancestral shades; an explanation for the summons; and supplications to the divine beings. Thus, libation summons and invokes the three categories of immortal beings by the supplicant to come to the aid of the community or individual.

The Akan and Ga people of Ghana have their distinct forms of spirituality or how they believe in the spirit world. Demons and witchcraft remains a serious issue in Ghana. The deliverance ministry became central in Ghanaian Christianity because the preoccupation with evil forces gives paramount importance to Satan. According to Gifford (2004:85), the basic idea of deliverance is that a Christian’s progress and advance can be blocked by demons who maintain some power over the individual, despite their accepting Christ. A need for intervention was imminent; people needed to be freed from these evil forces. Therefore, in the 1980s and 1990s the deliverance phenomenon became very prominent, prayer camps cropped up everywhere; economically, people could not afford health care and others needed intervention to assist them to be successful in businesses, although deliverance from evil are by no means recent developments in Ghanaian indigenous Pentecostalism (Asamoah-Gyadu 2004:170).

4.7. Conclusion

Brigit Meyer thinks of the religion of Pentecostals as evolving around sensational forms that address people by appealing to the senses and the body in distinct ways and by forming specific subjects. Her assumption was drawn from her research on Pentecostal services, where strong emphasis is placed on inducing experiences of an encounter with the Holy Spirit and a spiritual war against the satanic (manifesting as old smaller deities, witchcraft, and other spirits). Gifford (2004) alludes to the idea that Ghanaians believe that Satan was a Western missionary import. The Satan phenomenon became central in Ghanaian Christianity because the preoccupation with evil forces gave paramount importance to Satan. According to Gifford (2004:85), the basic idea of deliverance is that a Christian’s progress and advance can be blocked by demons who maintain some power over the individual, despite their accepting Christ. The supernatural forces (spirits), ancestral curses

88

and demons in Ghanaian spirituality made the need for intervention more imminent; Pentecostalism provided the answer by means of their deliverance ministry to free people from these demonic possessions and demonic oppressions. Witchcraft activities became a common concern amongst the people of Ghana. According to Onyinah (2000), such protection was formerly sought from the priests of the smaller deities or from sorcerers and medicine men. From the early part of the twentieth century, however, a variety of exorcist (deliverance) activities (anti-witchcraft shrine) have dominated African states, including Ghana.

A further study will be made to investigate the differences and similarities amongst global Pentecostals regarding the concept of deliverance. The following questions will be asked: “Does the Western or civilized world believe in demons or evil spirit such as poltergeists, ghosts, the unquiet-dead, occultism, witchcraft, Satanism, sects and cults?” Or “Does Africans or African Pentecostals primarily focus on the spirit underworld?”

These questions will be examined in chapters five and six by comparing the understanding of Western and African scholars on the concept of deliverance.

89 Chapter Five

Western Scholars on the Concept of Deliverance

5.1 Introduction

With the brief outline of African Pentecostalism and the African Indigenous religions in chapter four and the influence of the African spirit underworld of the Ghanaian people, we can draw a strong emphasis on the need of deliverance. Pentecostalism in West-Africa became prominent in the 1980s and 1990s as a result of the exponential need for the deliverance from evil forces.

The two Western scholars selected have extensive knowledge of the concept of deliverance, which will be analysed and described in this chapter. This chapter will focus on the contributions of Allan Anderson and Paul Gifford on the soteriological motif of ‘deliverance’ with specific reference to the Ghanaian context. Furthermore, this chapter will examine, analyse and describe the writings of these Western exponents to compare and contrast their understanding of the concept of deliverance and its practices.

This chapter will be sub-divided in two sections. Each section will offer brief biographic background on each of these prominent theologians and critically analyse their understanding of the concept of deliverance.