Book Review: Healing and Power in Ghana
Karen Lauterbach, Associate Professor and Director of CAS, recently reviewed Paul Glen Grant´s new book, called Healing and Power in Ghana: Early Indigenous Expressions of Christianity. Anchored in Akuapem, the book explores the reformulation of Christianity in the 19th century, between the people of Akuapem and German missionaries.
In this well-written, historically rich, and detailed monograph, Grant sets out to understand the making of Ghanaian Christianity by exploring how indigenous intellectual and cosmological frameworks, as well as pragmatic concerns and experiences, came to shape the reception and domestication of missionary Christianity.
In the introductory chapter, Grant explains this approach as an “extended encounter” in which Ghanaian Christianity was formed and in which the Basel missionaries were transformed (10).
Besides examining this historical encounter and pointing in particular to the determining role of Ghanaians in spreading Christianity, the book is ambitious in its attempt to link these early encounters to the prominence of Pentecostal Christianity in contemporary Ghana.
This long historical perspective is crucial when seeking to understand the role and growth of Christianity in present-day West Africa as more than a cultural import.
For more information and the full review.