Paper short abstract:

Traditional chieftaincy has assumed an increasingly negative character in Ghanaian Christian discourses due to its links with ancestral religion. My paper explores how Christian chiefs evaluate the acceptability of traditional culture from a Christian perspective in order to find reconciliation.

Paper long abstract:

Ethnographic studies focusing on traditional chieftaincy in Ghana, West Africa, have revolved around issues such as succession rules, installation rituals, or competition for positions of power. However, becoming and being a chief in a predominantly Christian society, like present-day Ghana, raises new kinds of moral concerns. Many churches, particularly those that belong to the Pentecostal-Charismatic movement, reject traditional ritual life aimed at ancestors and other kinds of spirits as immoral. Since chiefs are fundamentally ritual leaders, who perform sacrifices on behalf of their communities, chieftaincy has assumed an increasingly negative character in Pentecostal discourses. Moreover, since chiefs are identified as reincarnations of their royal ancestors, they personify the spirit world that the Pentecostals demonize. Although some members of royal lineages who have become ‘born-again’ Christians waive their succession rights, many chiefs are practicing Christians and as such they have to evaluate the acceptability of different forms of traditional culture from the perspective of the normative ethics of Christianity. In such circumstances, succession to a traditional office cannot be studied solely from the point of view of social reproduction or political contention as the ethnographers of the previous generations have mostly done. It must be looked also from the perspective of the reasoning and decision making of those people who assume and occupy chiefly offices. My paper will explore the moral, theological, and historical deliberations of my field interlocutors that have led to the conviction that they can be chiefs and good Christians at the same time.