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Religion General

Looking Back, Moving Forward

Transformation and Ethical Practice in the Ghanaian Church of Pentecost

by (author) Girish Daswani

Publisher
University of Toronto Press, Scholarly Publishing Division
Initial publish date
Apr 2015
Category
General, Cultural, Pentecostal & Charismatic, Emigration & Immigration, General, General
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9781442619593
    Publish Date
    Feb 2015
    List Price
    $30.95
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9781442626584
    Publish Date
    Apr 2015
    List Price
    $32.95
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9781442649163
    Publish Date
    Feb 2015
    List Price
    $81.00

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Description

How do Ghanaian Pentecostals resolve the contradictions of their own faith while remaining faithful to their religious identity? Bringing together the anthropology of Christianity and the anthropology of ethics, Girish Daswani’s Looking Back, Moving Forward investigates the compromises with the past that members of Ghana’s Church of Pentecost make in order to remain committed Christians.

Even as church members embrace the break with the past that comes from being  “born-again,” many are less concerned with the boundaries of Christian practice than with interpersonal questions – the continuity of suffering after conversion, the causes of unhealthy relationships, the changes brought about by migration – and how to deal with them. By paying ethnographic attention to the embodied practices, interpersonal relationships, and moments of self-reflection in the lives of members of the Church of Pentecost in Ghana and amongst the Ghanaian diaspora in London, Looking Back, Moving Forward explores ethical practice as it emerges out of the questions that church members and other Ghanaian Pentecostals ask themselves.

About the author

Girish Daswani is an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Toronto.

Girish Daswani's profile page

Editorial Reviews

‘With its vivid ethnography, Looking Back, Moving Forward offers an intimate portrait of the everyday lives of Ghanaian Pentecostals, both in Ghana and in London.’

Marginalia Review of Books - January 2016

‘An excellent contribution to the study of migrant faith, this book also has much to say about spirituality and religious practice more broadly defined.’

Christian Century 2 October 2016

"A great strength of Looking Back, Moving Forward is its rich empirical detail, built on long-term an clearly emphatic fieldwork among Ghanaians in Ghana and overseas…Most impressive is this book’s honest acknowledgment of the complexity of everyday religion, a complexity that escapes conceptual grasp and resists theoretical mastery."

Journal of Religion in Africa, no 48, 2018