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Paper short abstract:

The recent economic crisis in West Africa has received various interpretations generated by religious leaders and institutions. This paper aims to present Ghanaian Catholics’ responses to the current crisis with a special focus on activities performed by women in the Roman Catholic parishes in Ghana

Paper long abstract:

The recently escalating economic crisis in West Africa – related to the global pandemic, military conflicts and destabilization of international food trade – has received various interpretations generated by religious leaders and institutions. The crisis is also reflected in bottom-up religious discourses and practices. In this paper I aim to present Ghanaian Catholics’ responses to the current crisis with a special focus on activities performed by women in the Roman Catholic parishes in Ghana.

Drawing on my ethnographic fieldwork conducted in central Ghana I refer to three aspects of contemporary Ghanaian Christianity that significantly influence responses to the current crisis. These aspects are: (1) the Pentecostalisation of Christianity; (2) the popularity of the so-called Prosperity Gospel; (3) and the prevalence of communality in everyday relations and religious practices. I will show how Ghanaian Catholic women integrate these three aspects in their lives and build on them to form bottom-up empowering strategies in a time of economic crisis and upheaval. Special focus will be put on the concept of prosperity understood not only as earthly wealth, bodily wellbeing and richness in valuable social relations but also as a religious-spiritual gift and God’s grace. Ghanaian Catholic women – whose officially recognized roles are influenced by patriarchal ethnic systems and masculinized Church hierarchy – create religious-spiritual ways to empower their lives during economic crisis.