Page 202 - Aesthetic Formations Media, religion, and the Sense

Modes of Binding, Moments of Bonding 187

crowd to praise God in worship. Commercials entice customers to buy
sermon tapes and CDs, books and other church products and to attend
charismatic conventions and gospel concerts. On radio, an even greater
variety of pastors preach their messages, advertise their products, play
gospel music, host talk shows and heal listeners through live-on-air
prayer.
The proliferation of charismatic-Pentecostal churches in the public
sphere was boosted when Ghana returned to democracy in 1992 and the
state gradually loosened control over the media. The mushrooming of pri-
vate TV stations, cable television providers, and especially FM stations in
the nineties profoundly changed the Ghanaian media landscape and the
place of religion in it. Significantly, it is charismatic churches that have
most successfully made use of the new media opportunities to claim public
presence and spread the gospel across the nation and abroad. These
churches are highly market-oriented and are able to mobilize the financial
and human resources needed to produce their own programs and buy air-
time on radio and television. Not only do they see the media as an effective
channel to evangelize the masses, but also to enhance an image of success,
prosperity, and modernity, to boost the charisma of the leader and manage
his public personality, and to show God’s miracles to an audience outside
the churches. Most of them have a “media ministry,” a church department
devoted to the production, sales and broadcast of radio and TV programs,
audio and video tapes and PR material. As a result, mass mediated forms
of charismatic-Pentecostal expression and experience have become promi-
nent in the new public sphere and available to a large audience beyond the
churches’ membership.
The public dominance of charismatic-Pentecostal churches has also
reinforced a much older negative Christian attitude towards African tra-
ditional religion and caused a shift in the public representation of African
traditional religion. In the era of state-controlled media, traditional reli-
gion was favored and represented in the media as part of the “national
cultural heritage” that was to serve as a basis of national identity. At present
the media often sustain and reinforce popular fears of traditional religion
generated by Pentecostal representations of traditional religious practices,

practitioners, and places as demonic. Sensational images and stories of
“juju” priests, shrines, and powers as the dark and evil Other of a morally
upright and successful Christian self fill video movies (Meyer 2005a), tab-
loids, posters, and calendars for sale on the streets. The Afrikania Mission,
troubled by this kind of imagery and by people’s fear of and hostility
towards traditional religion and its adherents, tries to counter such stereo-
types with a positive image. Before examining Afrikania’s media strategies,
let us turn to Mensa Otabil’s media ministry.