Paper short abstract:

This paper focusses on religious objects and practices used by Ghanaian Catholics to form and confirm their identities as both "good Christians" and "real Africans". Various material and sensational forms mediate disrupted continuities between "traditional" and "Christian" world views.

Paper long abstract:

Contemporary Catholic discourses and debates concerning "African tradition", "African heritages", "African traditional religion" and "African spirituality" are full of ambiguities that can be summarized in the form of two dominant and opposing trajectories. On one hand, the "African past" is rejected as "uncivilized" and demonized as "pagan"; something to be left behind after a disruptive moment of conversion. On the other hand, it is cherished and celebrated as "valuable continental heritage", an "authentic African way" turning the continent into an "immense spiritual lung for humanity" (a metaphor used by the Pope Benedict XVI during the Synod for Africa in 2009).

I propose to analyze how these two trajectories are reflected in the use of material objects and in bodily practices by today's African Catholics. I will refer to ethnographic material collected among Catholic parishioners in central Ghana. Various material objects, such as adinkra symbols, chief's umbrellas and other royal insignia, as well as sensational forms related to dances, clothes and the performance of prayers, are seen as mediating disrupted continuities between "traditional" and "Christian" world views. Labelled as "our tradition" or "heritage", they are eagerly included in Catholic feasts and everyday religious practices as expressing "African Christian" identities. However, other or even the same objects and practices are problematic and contested by Ghanaian Catholics when they are labelled "African traditional religion". This case study suggests that the construction of certain objects and practices as "heritages" and "traditions" opens mediations and conversations between imagined religious past and contemporary African Christian identity.