THE GHANA CHRONICLES: Inviting the Gods—6/25/23

 It’s Sunday in Ghana. Time for church. Or a traditional trance dance ceremony. We did both.

 

My attitude about organized religion— especially the “My God is right and yours is wrong monotheistic ones"— is well expressed on a T-shirt I once saw:

 

Religion. Together we can find a cure.

 

 I’m all for spirituality, am totally down with the idea that there is a world or worlds beyond the physical, that there are all sorts of forces at work that you’re welcome to name angels or gods or saints or orishas or Nature or Ancestors or the Muse, whatever you fancy. But when it comes down to Christianity and Islam, I see nothing but havoc and hatred and harm done in the name of the holy. 

 

For example, Kofi described his personal experience of the Christian missionaries in Ghana. Back at the turn of the 20^th century, it was the Germans who first colonized Ghana, bringing all their assumptions and arrogance and religious convictions with them. When it came to Christianity, the local people had two choices— convert or be killed. In the name of Jesus, of course. Kofi's grandfather was a spiritual leader in his community following the old ways and once he saw what was going down, he decided on conversion over death. Who can blame him? His home was taken over by the local priest, he had to hide his second wife (polygamy was accepted in the old Ewe culture) and he started to worship a white-faced son of God and accept stories that had nothing to do with his experience or culture.  

And so the Europeans, first the Germans and later the French and the British, went on to colonize land that didn’t belong to them and force the actual inhabitants to speak their language, sing their hymns and worship their God. Today in Southern Ghana, the Christian Church has sunk its claws into the lives of the people, with the Pentacostal Church and the Catholic Church being the most popular. In the north, it’s the Muslims that have taken over.

Because both Christians and Muslims are convinced that they are the true word, their missionary zeal has no boundaries. They have money behind them, loud microphones, posters advertising their services. In contrast, the traditional religious practices, still alive and well, are local, based on voluntary initiation and see no need to convince others to join them. However, noticing that the microphones of the Christians are overpowering them, they’ve begun to get some in their village that the singers use. 

 

As explained by Kofi, local indigenous spiritual practice often based on trance-dance believe in a supreme Being but are much more concerned with all the deputies and ministers of the spiritual hierarchy that helps them know who to petition for help; Much like the Greek gods, the Hindu deities and even the Catholic saints. You don’t give general prayers to the Supreme Being any more than you would write to the President of your country requesting a traffic light on your street. You name your need— fertility, healing from sickness, wealth, good crops— and find the corresponding deity to ask for help. This kind of polytheism allows for more religious tolerance as one recognizes that there is not one, but many gods. For many, the acceptance of Jesus while continuing indigenous worship is not the least contradictory. Why not add a few more to the mix? Maybe Jesus — or Allah—might help where others can’t. 

 

The problem comes when the Ghanaian Christians or Muslims drink too much of the “My God—or else!” Kool-aid and refuse to accept the old ways, insisting that their congregation give them up. It is almost impossible for Ghanaians to wholly give up drumming and dancing and so both are present in the Catholic and Pentacostal church services alongside the Anglicized hymns. But many draw the line at the traditional dances that go back deeper into the spiritual heart of Ewe culture. 

 

This tension is a real and present dynamic in modern-day Ghana. After telling the story of how the Germans burned down his grandfather’s house and build a new house where the present-day priest lives, we met the priest while walking out of the compound. Kofi greeted him and in the course of conversation mentioned that the Church benefitted Ghana by building schools and hospitals, bringing modern-day education and medicine to the country. The priest was smiling until Kofi went on. “But that’s partly because they shut down our own form of educating the young through music, dance, proverbs, stories and our own plant-based healing medicines.” Suddenly the priest was not smiling so broadly.

That afternoon, we went to the traditional trance-dance ceremony. The first trance dance I ever witnessed was an Indonesian one in a shopping mall in Singapore in 1979. Later that year, I saw other varieties in India and Bali and each of the four times I’ve been in Ghana, I witnessed them here as well. It’s not an everyday occurrence in our Western upbringing and confusing to many. But after seeing so many, it doesn’t feel like a big deal. Just one of many ways for the gods to enter the community and become part of the needed conversation about what needs attention. I’m a big fan of the old Irish saying:

 

“What’s wrong in this world can only be healed by the Other World. What’s wrong in the Other World can only be healed by the people in this world.”

 

In other words, it’s important to be politically active and vote and caretake the rules and regulations that aim for justice and opportunity and good community relations, but there’s a dimension to it all that needs some guidance and blessing from beyond this day-to-day physical world. Likewise, because those in the other world don’t have hands to do the work and voices to sing the songs, they depend on us to do it for them and in so doing, invite them back. Trance dance is just one of many strategies in which the gods literally enter the bodies of the living and speak through them. If that’s too strange for you, think of those moments of inspiration when a fully formed poem or piece of music or scientific insight comes to you in a night dream or a day dream and you feel the presence of another force coming through you. It’s the same deal.

 

So passed our Sunday in Dzodze, Ghana.