Page 210 - Aesthetic Formations Media, religion, and the Sense

Modes of Binding, Moments of Bonding 195

The Afrikania Mission’s Public
Representation of ATR

To counter Ghana’s Christian hegemony the Afrikania Mission aims at
reconstructing Afrikan Traditional Religion (ATR) as an equally modern
religion to serve as a source of African pride and strength and as a religious
base for political nationalism and pan-Africanism. Founded in 1982 by an
ex-Catholic priest, Kwabena Damuah, as the religious arm of Rawlings’
revolution, Afrikania emphasizes cultural renaissance and black emancipa-
tion. It believes that Christianity can never sustain the development of the
Ghanaian nation and the African continent, because Christianity is “inher-
ently foreign to Afrikans” and “used to oppress and exploit Afrikans.”
Fighting for the public recognition of ATR as a world religion in its own
right, the movement seeks to mobilize and unite all different cults and
shrines in the country, and ultimately, the continent.
To unify a variety of spirit cults as one “religion,” Afrikania has created
new and manipulated old symbols, traditions, and rituals. Paradoxically,
for the public representation of ATR, Christianity has, in its changing
dominant forms, provided the format for Afrikania in several ways (see De
Witte 2004). Afrikania’s “creation of a systematic and coherent doctrine
for Ghanaians and Afrikans in the diaspora” and its framing of traditional
religion in terms of beliefs, symbols, and commandments imply a Christian
concept of religion. Its Sunday worship service and its organizational struc-
ture are clearly modeled on the Catholic Church. Also, Afrikania has
adopted Christian symbols of being established as a religion: a highly visi-
ble, huge, and brightly colored building with a copious office for the leader,
a signboard, banners announcing events, a church logo (with a globe), a
calendar with pictures of the building and the leader, and a printed cloth
and head ties for members to buy. At present, charismatic Christianity,
being the dominant and most publicly present religion, has become the
model for religion as such and also for Afrikania. It now also organizes
public conventions, evangelization, camp meetings, all night prayers, and
displays a general preoccupation with public visibility and audibility. In
competition with spiritual healing offered by these churches, Afrikania
also provides “spiritual consultation,” a new service that attracts mainly
Christians.
From its birth in 1982, the Afrikania Mission has made use of mass
media—first radio and print and later audiovisual media—to establish a
public presence, to disseminate its message, and to attract followers. During
the 1980s Afrikania’s friendly rapport with Rawlings’s government sus-
tained its constant media presence and made the movement and its leader