The classical Pentecostals do not have a fixed liturgical schedule in worship services, and worship is usually exuberant and loud. The worship style of the independent churches is the same as that of the charismatics or neo-Pentecostal movement. The neo-Pentecostal or Charismatic movement worship style is more lively, vibrant, ecstatic and spontaneous. Prayer is expressive, with both individual and collective prayers being encouraged.
According to Studebaker (2003), Pentecostal theologians adopted the soteriological para- digms of Protestant scholasticism to express their pneumatological concerns. He declares that the distinctive doctrine of Pentecostalism, the Baptism in the Spirit, accentuates the bifurcation of the work of Christ and the Spirit, by implicitly making the primary work of the Spirit subsequent to and unnecessary for salvation.
There are four basic doctrines that the classical and other Pentecostals are based on, namely:
Personal salvation and “the belief that forgiveness follows an act of repentance in the light of God’s grace”
Sanctification and conversion, followed by baptism in the Holy Ghost.
Speaking in tongues (glossolalia) as the evidence of the Holy Ghost.
Divine healing and the return of Jesus Christ.
Other prominent features of the doctrine are the personal experience of being born again, evangelism and holy living, although, on the other hand, the neo-Pentecostals do not demand a structural or even doctrinal change in order to engage in the charismatic experience.
Classical Pentecostals mostly distrusted higher education, whilst neo-Pentecostals are more open to higher education. Neo-Pentecostals are not as legalistic as the classical Pentecostals. The neo-Pentecostals are more appealing to the middle-class and affluent white-collar workers than the classical Pentecostals that attract most the socially and economically disadvantaged people. However, the people of Ghana and some prominent theologians like the renowned Methodist minister, the Rt. Rev. Prof. Emeritus Kwesi Dickson, have expressed grave concern about the manner some neo-Pentecostal
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movements in the country are overly exploiting a cross-section of Ghanaian purported to be members of their congregations.
Financial freedom is the essence of the Prosperity Gospel, which is one of the characteristics of neo-Pentecostal ideology. Prosperity preachers claims that richness is a sign if God’s blessing and one receives richness by giving abundantly. Prosperity theology emphasises that God’s promised generosity, as demonstrated with Abraham, is available for every believing Christian on earth today. The Prosperity Gospel therefore runs in different grooves, as Kula argues, ranging from crass the “sky-is-the-limit” doctrines to God-fuelled self-help varieties. Therefore, neo-Pentecostal ideas of prosperity appeal to pastors, as well as to church members, which makes these movements very dynamic. Max Weber, according to Lambek (2002:51), explored “the way certain religious formulations and class or status positions within particular socio-political orders have an affinity with one another such that their conjunction forms that basis for transformative social action” and “what a given religious formulation establishes as ethical and practical outlooks for its adherents”. These ideas were first developed in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, where Weber argued that the rise of capitalism in Europe was related to a specific Protestant ethos, which is also seen in Ghana, where the neo-Pentecostals lived an ascetic way of life, leading to the accumulation of wealth. A strong symbolic value of money can be ascribed to neo- Pentecostalism, which also represents a longer historical trend of capitalism and monetisation of Ghanaian society. Within the neo-Pentecostal strand there is a focus on active involvement in society, a focus that was condemned in the classical Pentecostal churches. According to Ukah (2005:762), a common way of explaining the appeal of neo- Pentecostal churches is that people come to a church to seek success in life, such as in business, marriage, education, and to “switch from low status to high status religious groups, establish social and economic connections as well as meet people of similar moral or religious conviction that brings along certain degree of religious distinctiveness”.
The Sunsum Sorè are called spiritual churches or African Independent Churches (AICs) and are mostly appealing to people who have turned away from traditional resources of supernatural succour in order to worship the God proclaimed in the Christian Gospel (Asamoah-Gyadu 2004:23). They place the Holy Spirit in the centre of their Christian message. Baëta (1962:57) sees these churches as drawing both from Methodism and
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Catholicism, as well as from the Akan chieftaincy system. Although in their context there is a significant measure of credibility in the perceived resonance between Pentecostal and African traditional/primal religiosity; the Sunsum Sorè relies on direct experience of the divine rather than on codified beliefs, creeds or philosophies. The other movements classify the African Indigenous movements as ‘messianic’, ‘nativistic’, separatist’, ‘spiritist’, ‘millennial’, ‘syncretistic’ and ‘protectionist’, which may be described according to Asamoah- Gyadu (2005:21) as etic. The Sunsum Sorè perceived themselves as re-living the Biblical Pentecostal experience in an African setting (Asamoah-Gyadu 2005:21). Furthermore, the Sunsum Sorè saw themselves as different from the other Pentecostal churches, not in terms of being more African, but rather as being churches in which the Spirit existed as experience and not merely as doctrine. These churches are distinguished from African nationalist churched initiated by indigenous people, but generally possessing a different ecclesiology.
2.6. Conclusion
This chapter not only provides a historical overview of the rise of Pentecostalism in Ghana, but how Pentecostalism has changed Christianity in Ghana over the twenty-first century. Allman and Parker (2005:8) argue that African religion is historical, but it is all too often portrayed as timeless, whilst at the same time seen as inherently traditional. Especially with social changes or the possibilities of social ascension amongst Pentecostals in Ghana, the majority of Ghanaians still seek to achieve power and accumulate wealth, which they refer to as “big man” ƆbirƐmpƆn. In Asante, “power” has a religious and a political significance and the possessing power is linked with having access to the spiritual world.
This chapter also indicated how political changes in Ghana influence Pentecostalism. The theological and liturgical differences and similarities are discussed amongst the different strands of Pentecostalism in Ghana. This chapter not only provided an extensive historical framework of Pentecostalism in Ghana, but a descriptive analysis of significant figures that played a pivotal role in the development of Christianity in Ghana was also given. Gifford (2004) and Meyer (1998) have attempted to integrate history in their analysis of Ghanaian Pentecostalism.
The chapter that follows will discuss the concept of deliverance in the Christian tradition, its origin and how the deliverance phenomenon is practice in the wider Christian traditions.
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