From the Back Cover
This book offers an ethnography of the emergence of local Christianity and its relation to changing social, political and economic formations among the Peki Ewe in Ghana. Focusing on the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, which arose from encounters between the Ewe and German Pietist missionaries, the author examines recent conflicts leading to the secession of many pentecostally oriented members, which it places in a historical perspective. The main argument is that, for the Ewe, involvement with modernity goes hand in hand with new enchantment, rather than disenchantment, of the world. At the grassroots level, the study focuses on the image of the Devil, which the missionaries communicated to the Ewe through translation and which currently receives much attention in the Pentecostal churches. It is shown that this image played and still plays a crucial role in the local appropriation of Christianity, since diabolization confirmed the existence of local gods and witchcraft and incorporated them into Christian belief as demons. Comparing the discourses and practices of mission and Pentecostal churches, the study reveals that the latter pay much more attention to Satan - especially through 'deliverance' rituals. Pentecostalism's increasing popularity thus stems from the fact that it ties into historically generated, local misunderstandings of Christianity, which, despite a declared dislike of non-Christian religious practices, stand much closer to Ewe religion than missionary Christianity. With its emphasis on the hybrid image of the Devil and people's obsession with occult forces as a way to mediate the attractions and discontents of modernity, this book sheds light on a hitherto neglected dimension in studies of African Christianity.

About the Author
Birgit Meyer is a lecturer at the Research Center of Religion and Society, Amsterdam University

Excerpted from Translating the Devil : Religion and Modernity Among the Ewe in Ghana by Birgit Meyer. Copyright © 1999. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved
INTRODUCTION: In 1989 I started fieldwork among the Peki Ewe in Ghana to gain an understanding of Christianity at the grassroots level. Soon after I began, I visited a prayer service by virtually all the Christian churches represented in the area. It was held in the chapel of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church (EPC), a mission church which was established as a result of the activities of nineteenth century missionaries from the missionsgesellschaft (NMG), in Peki Blengo. This All Churches Prayer brought together various denominations such as Catholics, Methodists and Presbyterians, as well as a great number of African independent and Pentecostal churches. I was struck by the fact that these various and competing churches appeared to be united by a common enemy: the Devil. A huge part of the service was focused on his evil manifestations. One pastor preached on how to do away with 'pagan' gods which he described as Satan's demons. In the middle of the service there were attempts to exorcise a schoolboy who appeared to be possessed by a local god worshipped in his family, and there were numerous songs and prayers to ward off the Devil. In the All Churches Prayer I began to realize the immense importance of the image of the Devil in local appropriations of Christianity among the Ewe. The devil was called upon to draw a boundary between Christianity and 'heathendom' - in other words Ewe religion from a Christian perspective - thus admonishing Ewe gods and spirits. Yet, as I came to understand in the course of my stay, demonstration by no means implies that the former gods and spirits will disappear out of people's lives. As servants of Satan they are still regarded as real powers that have to be dealt with in a concrete way - rather than outmoded 'superstitions,' as modern Protestant theology would have it. Thus, through the image of the Devil, 'old' Ewe spiritual powers continue to be exist. Put differently, the image of Satan offers a discourse with which to approach these powers as 'Christian' demons. As a matter of fact, people allude to evil spirits and the devil so frequently that I was drawn to deal with this apparently pivotal topic in the lives of many Christians as a main focus of my research. Interestingly, talk about demons and the Devil occurred most frequently and openly in the Pentecostal churches. These churches, which have become increasingly popular in Ghana since the mid-1980s, also shape the religious arena in Peki to a large extent. Indeed those people who left the EPC for another church mostly attributed their move - or better still, their conversion, which transformed them from 'nominal' church members into 'born again' Christians - to the fact that the EPC failed to deal with demons satisfactorily because its leaders would take neither the Holy Spirit nor the Devil and his demons seriously. Therefore the church would be unable to ward off or cast out evil spirits in the name of God and achieve protection and healing. This critique also played a major role in the secession of two prayer groups from the EPC in 1961 and 1991 respectively, which gave rise to two new churches under the name of Abelengor - the Lord's Pentecostal Church, and the EPC 'of Ghana.' These churches have developed an elaborate discourse on demons as well as a number of rituals to deal with them. Along with the EPC, these two churches came to form my main field of investigation, and this study is about these three organizations and the relationships among them. I propose that by examining the images of the Devil held in these churches, it is possible to gain insight into the intricate process of the appropriation of Christianity at the grassroots level, as well as the widespread desertion of the mission-derived churches for Pentecostalism. Yet all this is not enough account for the evolution of Ewe appropriations of Christianity. Despite the fact that by referring to the image of the Devil a boundary is drawn between Christianity and Ewe religion, both share essential features. The point is that in order to be communicated, the Christian message had to be translated into the local language. Christian Ewe discourse thus contains many 'heathen' terms which also account for the peculiarity of local Christian interpretations. Both the image of Satan and Christian Ewe vocabulary in general have a special relationship with Ewe religion. Whereas through diabolization spiritual beings are represented as demons, translation necessarily involves a positive integration of non-Christian terms. Therefore, it is important to investigate how these paradoxical strategies of both vernacularization and diabolization have contributed to local appropriations of Christianity on the borderline of the old and new religions. In this study I attempt to go beyond the still current, artificial compartmentalization of research on religion in Africa, which not only entails a research praxis in which the study of African Christianity and 'traditional religion' appear as two distinct fields, but also an exclusive focus within the former on either African independent churches or, to a much lesser extent, mission churches. Although I agree fully with the call of Beidelman (1974, 1982) and others (e.g. Bowie 1993; Fabian 1971) to devote more attention to the study of missions, a plea which has resulted in a range of studies concentrating on the relationship between missionaries and anthropologists, and on the interactions of missionaries and non-Western peoples, I feel that the scope of the research has to be extended. The intricate and often conflicting relationships between mission churches and independent churches at the local level, as well as Christians' attitudes towards practitioners of what came to be reified as 'traditional religion' and vice versa also have to be taken into account. Indeed the 'real story,' which should form the main focus of anthropological investigation, is the 'concealed and mysterious' manner in which local Christianity evolves (Ranger 1987:182) Gray has also noted the lack of knowledge about the 'myriad small, local Christian communities' and placed the examination of African local Christianity firmly on research agenda (1990:66). The focus on local communities does not of course imply any denial of the fact that these communities form part of a wider system. Peki is not approached as an isolated community, but rather as an arena where it becomes visible how people appropriate an initially foreign religion, such as Christianity, and how this appropriation speaks to concerns arising from their incorporation into wider political and socioeconomic processes.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"This book offers an ethnography of the emergence of a local Christianity and its relation to changing social, political and economic formations among the Peki Ewe in Ghana. Focusing on the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, which arose from encounters between the Ewe and German Piestist missionaries, the author examines recent conflicts leading to the secession of many pentecostally oriented members, which it places in a historical perspective."--BOOK JACKET.

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