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 The country is central to a wave that puts West Africa at the
heart of global Christianity, said professor Kwabena
Asamoah-Gyadu of Trinity Theological Seminary in Accra.
More than 70 percent of Ghana's 26 million people are Christian.
The statistics understate the fervency of everyday faith. Many
attend church on weeknights. All night prayer vigils are common
and billboards advertising Christian meetings line the streets.
It's common to see people studying the Bible on the bus and many
office workers keep open Bibles on their desks. Mega-church
pastors such as Mensa Otabil are revered, according to opinion
surveys.
"By the middle of the 20th century scholars ... started
predicting that Africa (and Latin America) was going to be the
hotbed of Christianity," said Asamoah-Gyadu, an authority on
African Christianity.
"What happens in the minds of African Christians was going to
shape church history for many years to come," he said.
Some 41 percent of the world's 560 million Protestants live in
Africa and it could rise to 53 percent by 2050, said an article
this year in the International Bulletin of Mission Research.
Muslims are a minority in Ghana.
Isaac Ollennu's story is typical. The 36-year-old Accra resident
works with a Chinese import company, putting him in the middle
class. He says he prays throughout the day and often wakes at 3
a.m. to pray.
"My faith is everything to me," he said.
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Christianity was brought to the Gold Coast by Roman Catholics and
mainstream Protestants but Pentecostal faith featuring ecstatic
worship and in a God of miracles has underpinned the recent rise of
faith, said Asamoah-Gyadu.
"Pentecostal religion promises breakthroughs ... You tithe, you pray
and you will get (what you want)," he said. Churches spread because
authority flows through spiritual experience, rather than church
hierarchy or formal education.
Charismatic faith came from North America and people were receptive
because it chimed with traditional beliefs in which people appeal to
spirits to solve problems, he said.
It also appealed to social aspirations. Wealthy pastors are seen as
blessed and their entertaining, informal services cater to popular
taste. Nana Kofi Acquah, a preacher, said Christian leaders also
make faith compatible with Ghanaian culture.
"There's a new generation that doesn't want to apologize for being
African and also wants to embrace Christianity," he said.
For a Wider Image photo essay, click http://reut.rs/2lBV3iX
(Editing by Tom Heneghan)
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