African Pentecostalism is often theorised through the lens of the visual. The focus in this instance is specifically on Pentecostalism and not more generally on Christianity as in the previous section. This work is of relevance to this thesis because it highlights the role of visual culture and the function of media as an essential means of studying religion. Recent literature in the field of religion, media and culture with its interdisciplinary epistemologies provide a fertile incubator for this approach. It is mainly, (although not exclusively) non-African visual scholars who are responsible for much of the work. These theorists adopt a more interrogatory gaze to the role of the supernatural. This methodology demonstrates the system of exchange, the patterns of relationship and the cultural symbolism within a historical context that is attached to artefacts (McDannell 1998). The field does not seek to elicit a straightforward impacts study unlike earlier work on televangelism which analysed the integration of religion and broadcast media raising concerns over the use of what appeared to be an unholy alliance between television and politics (Frankl 1987, Bruce 1990, Horsefield 1984, Hoover 1988). More recent work32 attempts to theorise and understand in a more nuanced fashion how the sophistications of science, technology and the modernizing materialities of the physical world map onto the effervescent, intangible notions of the metaphysical. It further explores how the power of the visual, might conflate, contract or contravene the place of religion.
32This relatively new area of academic inquiry explores the themes of religion, spirituality, media and culture (Lynch 2007, Morgan 2008). This multidisciplinary approach covers a range of interrogation including religion and popular culture, religion and film, religion and media religion and popular music, religion and material culture, and religion culture and media. The work resides in a number of different formations but is broadly divided into 3 key areas: the use of media and technology by religious groups; the appropriation of popular culture as a meaning-making resource for theologians; and the use of the ‘ritual dimensions of popular culture’ (Goethals in Hoover & Lundby 1997) to challenge notions of ‘authentic religion’. The growing interest in this area is significant in establishing the persistence of religion and spirituality in the post secular world.
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The visual display conveys meaning both in and outside of churches. De Witte (2009) shows how media, i.e. films and television in Ghana both represent and is representative of what Meyer (2004) refers to as a ‘pentecostalite’ culture acting as a means of corporate presentation in the public square. According to Asamoah-Gyadu (2007), Hackett (2003), de Witte (2009) this culture has dominated the film, TV and video industries in West Africa. Scholars (de Witte 2005, Meyer 2006) argue that in Ghana due to liberalization of the media this means of representations has become so powerful that it has overtaken mainstream broadcasting. The dominance is such that, non-Pentecostal filmmakers have to conform to this mode of articulation in order to survive commercially, further emphasising the dominance of Pentecostalism in this region.
Films focusing on themes of demon possession, moral degradation, redemption and salvation as well as being a legitimate form of entertainment for born-again believers also become a site of struggle and contestation over the nature of good and evil as seen through the eyes of a Pentecostal worldview. Meyer (2004) uses Ferguson’s (1999) ‘performative competence’ as a concept of style to analyse how things are done as opposed to what is being done. This is combined with Fleck’s (1935) Denstil’s ‘understanding of style’ as a means of binding people together which relates as an elemental mode of combining believers denoting how this is reconfigured in the public square. This performative mode erects boundaries of inclusion and exclusion. The notion of style with an emphasis on the how and its inherent policing mechanisms contain similarities to the way in which I have used the term musical discourse in this thesis. These ideas of inclusion, style and substance assume a crucial role when exploring the cultural practice of African Pentecostals.
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Some scholars identify the media as a site of struggle between different religious groups. Hackett (2003) explores tensions between Christians and Muslims; while de Witte (2009) compares and contrasts the power of visual representation between Pentecostalism and African Traditional Religion (ATR) in Ghana. She argues that the visual is embedded in Pentecostalism, but not in ATR, which is said to present a counter-narrative to Pentecostal ideology and engages in secret rituals where the camera disrupts the working of the spirits. This is not the case for Pentecostals for whom the camera exemplifies and enhances the work of the spirit. The role of the visual is also emphasized in Gordon and Hancock (2005). They point to a ‘Pentecostal iconicity’ similar to Berger’s (1972) ‘ways of seeing’, where viewers are ‘coached’ and ‘disciplined’ to ‘decode’ the images of many hundreds and thousands of African believers in rapt worship under the tutelage of German preacher Reinhard Bonnke generated by camera angles depicting these ‘rapt’ African bodies enthralled by the preaching of charismatic Bonnke.
The media representation and subsequent circulation in different formats serve to project and encode the spiritual power of Pentecostalism. A similar argument is posited by de Witte (2009) who describes how selective scenes are used to present the very best portrayals of Mensa Otabil’s33 televised services. A wide-angle lens is used, showing facial close-ups of the preacher laughing, listening and engaging attentively with the congregation to demonstrate his charisma and spiritual power. These television broadcasts through the depictions of particular images encode and embody spiritual power which can be released to the viewer, thus blurring the divide between onscreen and off-screen.
33Mensa Otabil is a well-known Ghanaian Christian leader, theologian and entrepreneur. He founded the International Central Gospel Church which consists of a network of global ministries
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TV and video also provide a means of ‘binding and bonding’ religious participants to leaders, ‘imagined communities’ (Anderson 1983) and to the divine. De Witte cites the example of a Ghanaian woman filled with the Holy Spirit while watching a pre-recorded broadcast of an Otabil service. This experience creates bonds between the woman, the televised ‘community’, Otabil and the divine (de Witte 2009). Asamoah-Gyadu (2008) in a similar manner, while appearing to adopt a notion of community which is fixed and bounded, explores how virtual communities are created in Ghana via the use of the internet, TV and video. Meyer argues that this has serious implications for the nation- state as it creates another space in which alternative allegiances can be produced (Meyer 2009).
A core theme in this literature is that media is intrinsic to African Pentecostalism. This is demonstrated in the work of Meyer (2006a, 2008) who has developed the concept of ‘religious sensations’. Her research located in Ghanaian Pentecostal churches advances the view that religious feelings are induced by media within the context of religious institutions. These religious feelings make the transcendent ‘sense-able’ and builds links between participants and in turn form religious identities. She does not accept the simplistic dualism identified in the earlier work on tele-evangelism and suggests that religion cannot be understood without the intervention of mediation and therefore the study of said forms are critical to its interrogation. It is these ‘sensational forms’ that ‘render(s) the divine sense-able and trigger particular religious experience’ (2008: 3). She states that:
‘Sensational forms…are relatively fixed, authorized modes of invoking and organizing access to the transcendental, thereby creating and sustaining links between believers in the context of particular religious regimes’ (Meyer 2012: 160).
According to Meyer, it is the sensational forms that produce the divine (Meyer 2012: 160). She claims that modern media is central to the religious practice of many African
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Pentecostal-Charismatic churches in constructing a discursive framework causing the religious experience to be inseparable from the experience of the media. While her chapter is not explicit on the precise nature of media, references elsewhere highlight the power of the visual (Meyer 2006). This work raises substantive theoretical reflection on the connections between the visual and the Pentecostal encounter. Morgan (2007) purports that we need to consider how people use images to construct their religion worlds. However, I suggest that as Mc Dannell argues:
‘the image cannot stand alone; it must be part of a human world of meaning to come alive’ (McDannell 1998: 16).
I contend that in the case of Pentecostalism, which has sound at the core of its ontology, we need to understand how sound and music are used in alliance with the visual to construct and perform religious identities, both corporate and personal.