Page 310 - Religion, Media, and the Public Sphere

believers, it certainly indicates the crucial role of Pentecostalism in shaping
Ghana’s new image economy. Likewise many video-¤lm producers adopt Pen-
tecostal views and attitudes, although they may not consider themselves to be
Born Again believers (some are even Muslim) as they know that af¤rming Pen-
tecostal notions will assure a lucrative ¤lm. Thus movies usually thrive on an
opposition of God and the Devil, in which the latter is shown to be powerful
and yet is eventually overcome by the Holy Spirit; the ideal is a Christian version
of modernity, centered on the nuclear family and on fresh notions of the subject
separated from the extended family. Much use is also made of spectacular spe-
cial effects, granting a voyeuristic look into the realm of darkness as well as the
divine.
This return to Pentecostal notions, in my view, does not necessarily indicate
an increase of religiosity in terms of deeply rooted inner belief but rather an
expansion in space, on the surface of social life. Pentecostalism appears to con-
quer the public sphere through a centrifugal dispersion of audiovisual signs, and
thereby purports a certain mood which binds people and to which they feel
attracted because it connotes Christian norms and values (Meyer 2004). Of
course, the commodi¤cation of Christian religion in the sphere of entertain-
ment, and the proneness of Pentecostalism to thrive on this process, is not en-
tirely new, nor con¤ned to Ghana (cf. Moore 1994; Forbes and Mahan 2000).
There are good reasons to agree with Lawrence Moore’s suggestion that the suc-
cessful presence of religion in modern societies depends on the ability to locate
itself in the marketplace of culture. Indeed, Pentecostalism assumes a key role
in feeding Ghana’s new image economy, both by putting into circulation dis-
tinctly Pentecostal audiovisual signs and by contributing to the emergence of
new infrastructures—religious programs on TV and radio, Gospel concerts, sale
of music cassettes and sermons—along which these signs are diffused. In be-
coming ingrained in this new image economy, Pentecostal sounds and images
spread like wild¤re (a preferred simile for the Holy Spirit) but, above all, in
terms of a presence to be seen and heard rather than a deeply felt state of being
Born Again.
Pentecostals themselves are apprehensive about the possible devastating im-
pact on Pentecostal religiosity by the adoption of new audiovisual media tech-
nologies and their association with an entertainment format. A question of
much concern is whether people are truly Born Again Christians by displaying
Christian bumper stickers or religious posters at their shops, or watching and
listening to all the Christian subjects in the media. Some of the pastors I inter-
viewed were critical of popular video ¤lms, because they fear that people watch
them only to be entertained and fail to devote themselves to prayer and to
changing their lives. Similarly pastors are at pains to admonish their congrega-
tion that attending church on Sundays entails more than showing off in lavish
clothes, that what really matters is changing the inner person. This fear that
super¤ciality may replace a depth of feeling signals that the public articulation
of Pentecostalism, shaped by the exigencies of new media such as video and the
urge to publicly profess one’s faith to the world, risks a devaluation of meaning.

Impossible Representations 299