Page 314 - Religion, Media, and the Public Sphere

thing like “To God be the Glory.” Video ¤lms are often presented as revelations,
thereby parasitically feeding on Pentecostal notions of vision. Movies construct
spectators as Christians in need of vision, and seek to please them by offer-
ing them the privileged perspective of the omniscient eye of God, through a
camera-mediated mimesis. Thus, by and large, there is little suspense in Ghanaian
¤lms, for the ¤lms themselves usually reveal to the spectators that which re-
mains hidden from the ¤lm’s main protagonists. Because spectators are ad-
dressed as witnesses, some ¤nd the ¤lms predictable and boring. However, for
viewers with a strong Pentecostal inclination, especially women, the ¤lms offer
audiovisual extensions and supplements to the Sunday sermon, and they are
truly touched by what they see on the screen (Verrips 2002). Many fans of
Ghanaian (and Nigerian) ¤lms told me repeatedly that a good movie de¤nitely
offers more than mere fun and distraction: it is not enough simply to laugh and
clap and amuse oneself, certainly some hidden truths need to be revealed and
certain morals taught or af¤rmed. Indeed, I noticed again and again that such
movies would generate much audience response in the practice of viewing and
trigger moral engagement. People would shout, sometimes even pray, in support
of the good, and curse the bad with much vigor, thus practicing “devotional
viewing” (cf. Gillespie 1995). Such movies are then discussed among friends or
referred to in troublesome situations between friends or spouses (“Don’t behave
like this; haven’t you seen such and such a ¤lm?”), and thereby popularize Pen-
tecostal notions of the subject and of family life.
Some Pentecostal-Charismatic pastors whom I questioned as to their opinion
of video ¤lms were concerned about the power of the image in itself; they feared
that people might not even stay to watch the ¤lm to the very end and would be
seduced by the power of the image alone, failing to notice the biblical quote and
to realize the Christian orientation of the ¤lm. In other words, people would
watch without adopting a Pentecostal way of looking and merely for the sake
of fun, aestheticizing the invisible into witches, ghosts, evil spirits, and an oc-
casional angel. Nevertheless, most of the pastors appreciated the medium of
Christian ¤lm for offering powerful support to their sermons. One female pas-
tor, Akua Adarquah-Yiadam, whose House of Faith Ministries hired the Opera
Cinema for its Sunday and occasional weekday services, told me that although
she somewhat disliked Ghanaian ¤lms because of their emphasis on occult
forces (although in her church, too, pastors preached quite a lot about demons
and the Devil), she certainly liked ¤lm as a medium. Some time ago she had
shown a ¤lm to the congregation depicting how a dead man was raised from his
cof¤n, which his widow had taken to the Crusade of a famous preacher in Ni-
geria. Such ¤lms, in her view, were able to document the power of God and were
thus highly suitable to support one’s faith with visual evidence.
Another Pentecostal pastor, Rev. Edmund Ossei Akoto of the Fifth Commu-
nity Baptist Chapel (Madina, a suburb of Accra), was very much in favor of
Ghanaian ¤lms. He explained to me that the Pentecostal-Charismatic churches
had initiated a new mass movement in which the key term was “mass partici-
pation” in contrast to presenting Christianity to the congregation as a mere

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