Incubating Fetal Ritual as Central to Deep Conversion:

Ghanaian Pentecostal Deliverance Ministry Read Through Ron Grimes

Research Paper

TC548 - Ritual Studies

Dr. Todd Johnson

March 18, 2011

Matthew H. Lumpkin
mattlumpkin@gmail.com
 Lumpkin 1

1. Introduction

1.1 Some of My Assumptions in the Larger Context of My Argument

Rituals are expressive of and embedded within religious, cultural, narrative frameworks

that people collectively co-create and enact. When people encounter a new, different framework

they may reject either the old or the new or, more commonly, integrate the new framework with

the old. This integration often happens at points of perceived overlapping meaning between the

two frameworks, or "cultural cognates" which provide a point of entry from the old to the new.

Ritual, created out of the everyday materials of life, is a venue for the negotiation of this

integration of frameworks. Ritual finds its meaning within a narrative framework but also serves

to re-narrate that framework, creating it anew. Integrative ritual joins one story to another. Ritu-

al scholar, Ron Grimes', description of ritual's improvisational, integrative, borrowing character

is a helpful interpretive model for understanding how ritual can function in such a dynamic, gen-

erative way.

Christian communities often demonstrate ritual behavior that integrates elements of a pri-

or religio-cultural framework with some flavor of Christian narrative framework. The meaning

of this ritual action can only be understood within the new, integrated framework involving as-

pects of both. One among many examples of this is the phenomena of Deliverance Ministry

Prayer Camps in Ghanaian Pentecostalism which integrate elements of Ghanaian traditional reli-

gion re-narrated within a Christian framework.

 Lumpkin 2

I would like to suggest that this inclination toward integration of new narratives with old

is both deeply human, and central to how deep religious conversion occurs. Further I would like

to suggest that Christians should welcome and value this kind of integrative negotiation in ritual

rather than fear and eschew it as "syncretism." While the encounter between religio-cultural

frameworks presents a real danger for the prior narrative to over-power and distort the Christian

story, it presents an equally real opportunity for fresh perspectives derived from the prior frame-

work to augment and expand the global Christian community's perception. To put it another

way: where there is danger of syncretism there is opportunity for symphony: many voices united

with one another, creating a richer, multilayered narrative melody. I am afraid that the Church

frequently mistakes for syncretism the process by which this symphony, so essential to true con-

version, occurs and impeded the deep integration of the old story with the new.

1.2 What I Hope to Accomplish Here

In service of supporting these broader, admittedly ambitious, claims, some of which I

have argued elsewhere, I will argue this smaller, more defensible thesis: Ron Grimes' description

of ritual's, integrative, borrowing character is a helpful interpretive framework for understanding

and appreciating the emergence of Christian ritual phenomena that integrate elements of prior re-

ligio-cultural narratives within a Christian narrative framework around "cultural cognates" as ex-

emplified by Ghanaian Pentecostal Deliverance Ministry Camps. I will begin by describing the

aspects of Grimes' framework that shed light on this integrative process within ritual before
 Lumpkin 3

moving on to offer an example of this dynamic in the Ghanaian context, before making some

concluding remarks connecting back to this larger argument.

2. Ron Grimes' Ritual

Ron Grimes is not content merely to describe ritual. He wants to play with it. Like the

musician who has delved into classical theory and the great composers only to find truly satisfy-

ing expression in jazz, Grimes follows Mary Douglas and Victor Turner down from theoretical

description into deeper understanding through the practice of ritual.1 His work with students in

ritual studies "labs" and with the Actor's Lab of Toronto seeks to understand ritual from the in-

side out by creating imagined, improvised, fictive ritual spaces, objects and rites that nonetheless

"work" in that they are powerfully formative and transformative for the participants.2 These

imagined rituals are often playful and improvisational while integrative of personal and cultural

history.3

1.
"Ritual studies scholars are in the position of someone who teaches musical theory in a culture where music
is seldom heard. We have little choice but to recognize that cognitive learning be accompanied by affective learning
and values criticism... Studying ritual will be fruitful if we recognize that we can only articulate its meaning after we
have been grasped by its sense." Ronald Grimes, Beginnings In Ritual Studies (Washington, D.C.: University Press
of America 1982), 18.
2.
Ibid., 13-18
3.
Ronald Grimes “Emerging Ritual” In Proceedings of the North American Academy of Liturgy. Annual
Meeting (St. Louis, MO. Jan. 2 – 5, 1990), 21.
 Lumpkin 4

2.1 Emerging Ritual: Improvisational, Nascent Ritualizing

Though Grimes' thought is rich and ranges from serious reflections on the practice of an-

thropological fieldwork to ritual criticism and efficacy, I would like to focus on his description of

"emergent ritual" or "ritualizing." In defining his terms he rests on "ritual" as the general, for-

mally defined concept of which "rites" are particular instances. Ritual does not exist except in

particular rites.4 Grimes' typically poetic and occasionally obfuscatory style hints all around the

concept with examples but what he seems to mean by "ritualizing" and "ritualization" is some-

thing like, early, nascent or pre-ritual.

"And the last term, "ritualization," refers to activity not culturally framed as ritual but
which someone, often an observer, interprets as if it were ritual. One might think of it as infra-,
quasi- or pre-ritualistic. Ritualization is to a rite as a forest is to a house. Nothing makes a forest
5
appear to be lumber except the carpenter's eye."

Grimes is interested in moving below the surface of culturally and institutionally codified

ritual structure to examine the "fetal" stage of ritual as it first emerges.6 This early form of ritual

may resonate, thrive and grow in from the margins towards the center into an established ritual

structure embedded in institution intent on its preservation.7 Or it may wither and die, never ris-

ing to the conscious awareness of the participants. Grimes goes on to describe this early stage of

ritual as "characterized to a remarkable degree by inventiveness, creativity, change and variabili-

4.
Ibid., 16.
5.
Ibid., 17.
6.
Grimes discusses both conscious and unconscious variants of ritualizing, but in most cases seems to refer to
both within the larger category of ritualizing. Grimes, Beginnings in Ritual, 51.
7.
Grimes "Emergent Ritual," 23.
 Lumpkin 5

ty."8 Within this description of ritualizing as a living, moving target I would like to draw atten-

tion to two key features of Grimes' kind of ritualizing: its integrative and borrowing character.

Ritualizing is adept at borrowing parts of religio-cultural frameworks and integrating them into

new ones.

2.2 Ritual's Integrative Character

Grimes' ritualizing is integrative in two ways. First, ritualizing integrates parts to wholes.

This happens when, a young Jewish couple improvises a birth ritual to properly attend to the

weight and significance of the birth of their first child, breaking into song with a traditional Jew-

ish hymn and pronouncing a "shekianu" blessing over the cut cord.9 This is not a Jewish ritual in

the sense of a commonly practiced form, handed down. Yet it serves to draw this part of their

lives --this potent experience-- into the whole of their tradition by borrowing elements from that

whole and re-purposing them in ways arguably faithful or unfaithful to that tradition.

Second, ritualizing integrates wholes with other wholes into different, larger wholes.

Grimes' playfulness is not limited to ritual labs. In the opening paragraphs of his address to the

North American Academy of Liturgy, he playfully goads his audience into a series of examples

of "emergent ritual" full of improvisation necessitated by the need to find ritual expression for

two wholes --two religio-cultural narratives-- that have found a need to come together in ritual

expression:

8.
Ibid.
9.
Ronald L. Grimes, Deeply into the Bone: Re-Inventing Rites of Passage (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 2000) 72.
 Lumpkin 6

"What is 'emerging ritual?' I should ask you. You assigned me the topic. Since you
handed me neither definitions nor illustrations, I assumed I was free to make up my own. So let
me begin by enumerating a few examples so the phrase seems less vague.
Emerging ritual is what transpires when an intertribal group of Native Canadians and Na-
tive Americans has to invent a rite to rebury ancestral bones repatriated from the 18,000 Native
skeletons held by the Smithsonian institution...
Emerging ritual is what occurs when Jews join Christians or Lutherans join Orthodox in
makeshift, one-time, inevitably awkward celebration or prayer...
Emerging ritual is what is bound to happen when Buddhists, Cree, Christians and 'Others'
beat the dharma drum, burn sweet grass, and chant lines from St. Francis in honor of the Dalai
Lama's reception of the Nobel Peace Prize...or Rites of Passage, Inc., (of California, of course)
10
takes teenagers on vision quests."

This kind of consciously invented, nascent, tentative, clumsy yet necessary ritual pro-

vides space for geographically, socially, religio-culturally distinct groups now thrown together in

the pressure cooker of globalization to integrate the distinct wholes of their respective traditions

into a new, larger whole. And Grimes would be the first to admit that these attempts at integra-

tion and may contain a wide range of success and failure.11

2.3 Ritual's Borrowing Character

In order to be integrative, ritualizing must have material to integrate. The symbols for rit-

ualizing, Grimes argues, are those that come from everyday life or from "the refuse of the cul-

ture."12 Rites are not created, but incubated in a "nest" of old parts "from dismembered older

rites." Grimes actually links ritualizing to literature (another cultural venue in search of resonant

symbols) in its propensity for re-imagining older, symbols as the new narrative emerges from the

10.
Grimes, "Emergent Ritual," 15, 16.
11.
"Effective rites depend on inheriting, discovering or inventing value-laden images that are driven deeply,
by repeated practice and performance, into the marrow. The images proffered by ineffective rites remain skin-
deep." Ibid., 5.
12.
Ibid., 24.
 Lumpkin 7

old with a family resemblance.13 For Grimes this dynamic is still operative when we are con-

sciously trying to innovate:

"Even if our desire is to create new rites of passage, we do so with the materials
at hand, with the stuff of our cultures and traditions. Even if we radically dismember this
stuff, we are still dependent upon it. Rites, unlike wheels, survive precisely by being
14
reinvented, and reimagined; there is no other option."

This ad-hoc, Mr. Potato-head style of ritualizing may seem abhorrent to those who come

from traditions that value stability and see the lack of change as fundamental to the definition of

ritual. Grimes himself has turned a critical eye to New Age "pseudo-shamanism" perpetuating

cultural imperialism by appropriating indigenous rites, cafeteria-style, amputated from the au-

thentic contexts that gave them meaning. But make no mistake, Grimes' argument is that all ritu-

al was born from ritualizing, so that even ancient rites began life as nascent, tentative, emergent

ritual, borrowing from what came before and integrating it with the present into a new whole.

His argument is based on ethnographic fieldwork showing that rites do change and are being cre-

ated.15 Even if your liturgy hasn't changed in 2000 years, Grimes argues, it was born in a cycle of

re-invention, integrating, re-narrating, and borrowing from what came before.

2.4 Cultural Cognates

If ritualization integrates a new whole out of what it borrows from each prior "whole"

then how are the parts chosen? Especially at the encounter between two or more traditions that

see themselves as internally consistent and coherent, which symbols tend to connect? Grimes

13.
Ibid., 26.
14.
Ibid.
15.
Grimes, Beginnings in Ritual Studies, 51.
 Lumpkin 8

talks about symbols that enable "efficacious" ritual but doesn't offer much in the way of explana-

tion for why certain symbols are chosen over others. It seems to be a trial and error process.

I would like to suggest that, in the encounter between two religio-cultural narratives, the

symbols around which rituals tend to form are those which seem to correspond in meaning be-

tween the two. Just as a when a language learner encounters a new word that sounds like one

from their native tongue, a cognate, they almost can't help but bring along the meaning that word

holds in their own language to the new word. People tend to understand new things they en-

counter through things they already know.

But in language learning and in ritual integration, cognates can be deceptive. Some ESL

teachers refer to them as "false friends." Though two words may sound alike and even derive

from the same root and share some overlap in their range of meaning, there is just as often a sig-

nificant difference that is overlooked by the bewildered learner, happy to have found something

comprehensible in a sea of newness. Nevertheless if the unconscious nature of the integrative

process at work in ritualizing as described by Grimes is to be taken seriously, those attempting to

integrate their present experience of a new narrative in light of their past will likely be drawn to

these cultural cognates offering a point of entry from the old to the new.16

16.
Though I am channeling a bit of Grimes' waggish tendencies in my linguistic wordplay, the connection
between language and ritual as means of cultural transmission is one widely explored by many anthropologists. "It
will help us to understand religious behaviour if we can treat ritual forms, like speech forms, as transmitters of
culture, which are generated in social relations and which, by their selections and emphases, exercise a constraining
effect on social behaviour." Douglas, Natural Symbols: Explorations in Cosmology, 2nd edition (New York:
Pantheon Books, 1982) 21.
 Lumpkin 9

3. Ghanaian Pentecostal Deliverance Ministry:

Integrative, Borrowing Ritualization Around Cultural Cognates

3.1 Personal Engagement with Ghanaian Pentecostalism

My first engagement with Ghanaian Pentecostalism came from three weeks I spent wor-

shipping at Pentecost International Worship Center (PIWC) in Hawthorne, California near Los

Angeles International Airport. PIWC is a member of the Ghanaian based, transnationally active

Pentecostal denomination known as the Church of Pentecost (COP). Though PIWC is made up

largely of Ghanaian immigrants, they conduct services in English, welcome all comers and were

particularly gracious to me as a visitor. COP's institutional organization is fairly hierarchical

with the Pastor of PIWC serving all the congregations within a large district. As a result, ser-

vices are led and sermons preached by a number of deacons and volunteers.

For two consecutive Sundays the sermon was brought a Ghanaian pastor, an ordained

minister and Pastor but not with the Church of Pentecost. His sermons were a two-part series fo-

cused on the narrative of Balaam who is employed to curse Israel but is unable to resist God's

power, and pronounces blessing over them instead. This text served as an avenue to address

God's desire to over-power all manner of frustrations on the "success" of the lives of the congre-

gation. The preacher discussed God's power over those who, like Balaam, would use witchcraft

to curse us and false prophets offering miraculous help, for a price. He also shared several sto-

ries from his former pastorate in Italy where he as actively involved exorcisms and other forms

of "deliverance ministry." As I listened I heard a narrative that seemed to integrate concepts

from American Pentecostal power-ministry with conceptions of witchcraft and ancestral curses
 Lumpkin 10

from African traditional religion. As it turns out, the two narratives have a lot in common, that

is, they share a number of cultural cognates.

3.2 Ghanian Traditional Religion and Deliverance Ministry

This preacher's emphasis on magic and the unseen, I was told by one parishioner, are nor-

mal for him, though not necessarily for the other preachers at PIWC. Yet the ethnographic litera-

ture and indeed the theological discourse emanating from the Ghanaian Universities, Seminaries

and COP leadership, suggest the set of rituals and concerns that has come to be known as "Deliv-

erance Ministry" have been and continue to be a significant strand woven into the fabric of

Ghanaian pentecostalism.

In his study of "Ghana's New Christianity," the Brit, Paul Gifford, prefers the term

"charismatic" over pentecostal as a means of drawing a distinction between the "new" Churches

he is attempting to describe and the older, traditional pentecostal denominations some of which

have been active in Ghana for up to 70 years.17 These newer churches have quickly outgrown

older, more established Pentecostal expressions in Ghana. Though Gifford's project is much

broader, he provides some relevant observation and description of the the phenomena of deliver-

ance ministry in Ghana at the time of his study.18 Students of African Pentecostalism should be

aware that Gifford's study has met with critique, particularly from leaders within West African

17.
Paul Gifford, Ghana's New Christianity: Pentecostalism in a Globalizing African Economy (Bloomington,
Ind: Indiana University Press, 2004) vii.
18.
Gifford is quick to note, however that the charismatic scene is changing so rapidly, even this work built
from observations made between 2000 and 2002 and published in 2004, are but a snapshot of a period characterized
by dynamic, inventive, creative and variable change. Ibid., xi.
 Lumpkin 11

Pentecostalism. His choice of congregations and figures to sample seems to prefer the sensatio-

nal over the representative. I hope to balance my reliance on Gifford for some of the background

and basic ethnographic information regarding deliverance ministry by giving space to some

Ghanaian scholars to speak to and interpret the phenomena Gifford describes.

Before describing the Deliverance ministry phenomena of the 1980's and 1990's, Gifford

is concerned to describe what he terms the "pre-Christian religious orientation and ritual process

characteristic of Southern Ghana."19 In describing this pre-Christian, Ghanaian religio-cultural

narrative, he writes:
"...beings and objects [are] charged with varying degrees and qualities of supernatural power...
The physical realm and the realm of the spirit are not separate from each other but are bound up in
one totality... causality is to be discerned primarily in the spiritual realm, although natural causali-
20
ty is not entirely disregarded."

The many layers of gods, ancestors, witches and magical objects that populate this frame-

work have direct bearing on the success or failure plans of all kinds including business and acad-

emic ventures. The stronger the spiritual power associated with the figure or object, the greater

influence they wield over those weaker than they. Humans rank at the bottom meaning that indi-

viduals, institutions, families, clans or even states can be under spiritual influence.21

19.
Ibid., 83.
20.
Ibid. It is important to note that the features Giffords describes here have been argued elsewhere by Harold
Turner and Andrew Walls to be aspects of a broader phenomena Turner calls "primal religion" that can be observed
not just in Ghana or Africa, but in primal, tribal contexts world-wide. Andrew Walls, “Africa and Christian
Identity” in Mission Focus: Current Issues, ed. Wilbert R. Shenk (Scottdate, PA: Herald Press, 1980), 212-13;
Harold W. Turner, “The Primal Religions of the World and their Study,” in Victor Hayes, ed. Australian Esays in
World Religions, (Bedford Park: Australian Association for World Religions, 1977), 27-37 cited in Kwame Bediako,
Jesus and the Gospel in Africa: History and Experience (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2004), 87-88.
21.
Gifford, Ghana's New Christianity, 84.
 Lumpkin 12

Deliverance Ministry offers a solution for those Christians who, having come to

Christ, nevertheless find themselves "blocked" from success and progress. The diagnosis

offered is that some spiritual demonic power, perhaps through no fault of their own, has

taken hold of the life of the believer. This may stem from a curse on one's ancestors or

ethnic group. To bind and exorcise such a demon "requires skill, and a special institution

--the prayer camp or payer centre-- evolved to cater for this activity."22

3.3 Ancestor Shrines & Deliverance Camps:

Ritualizing Around Cultural Cognates

People came to these free camps for health problems, but more commonly for a

wide range of concerns surrounding success: "marriage, children, visas, employment,

lawsuits, education, accommodation, bad dreams, demons and witchcraft." It is not in-

significant that diagnosis often involved a questionnaire focused on what degree of en-

gagement the persons had had with traditional religious rites, incisions and names re-

ceived, talismans worn, vows made by them, on their behalf or by their ancestors as well

as family engagement with shrines.23

Perhaps most importantly, the camps themselves resembled in form and function,

the traditional shrines whose power they served to undo. Gifford comments that the

mainline churches in Ghana had alway resisted what they saw as an inordinate concern

22.
Ibid., 86.
23.
Ibid.
 Lumpkin 13

with demons and witchcraft, "only now, with the acceptability conferred on this world-

view by the charismatic explosion, could Christians flock to camps openly rather than go-

ing stealthily to shrines by night."24

If viewed through the lens of Grimes' description of emerging ritual or ritualizing

that integrates by means of borrowing, Deliverance Ministry and the associated camps

seem to exemplify this process. The cultural cognates and symbols borrowed from the

prior Ghanaian religio-cultural narrative and that of American Pentecostalism are many

but certainly include: 1.) concepts of the unseen spirit world populated by good and evil

spirits which can influence human lives powerfully; 2.) The figure of the religious spe-

cialist with skills to diagnose and treat spiritual "blockages" to success; 3.) The emergent

institution of the Deliverance Camp taking the form and function formerly occupied by

traditional shrines.

Yet none of these entry points from the traditional narrative is brought whole into

the new, larger narrative of Pentecostal Deliverance Ministry. They are each re-narrated

by integration with the religio-cultural narrative of American Pentecostalism to form a

new whole: Ghanaian Pentecostalism. Satan becomes a prominent figure in the spirit

world, with no analogue in Ghanaian narrative.25 The deliverance minister's power to di-

agnose and exorcise the demonic comes not from his own spiritual power or that of his

24.
Ibid., 87.
25.
Ibid., 85.
 Lumpkin 14

affiliated spirits, but from the power of the highest God, after the pattern of Jesus in the

Gospel narratives. The shrine form remains but re-narrated, de-stigmatized, legitimated,

precisely by its integration within a new religio-cultural narrative, literally taking names

like "Bethel," and "Canaan," directly from the Biblical narrative. This phenomena res-

onated where the long-standing mainline churches had not. I would like to suggest that

this resonation is a direct result of successful ritual integration of the two narratives into a

new, larger whole. I am not merely describing a recasting of the Christian story that

meets felt or existential needs, though it does that. I am suggesting that this kind of ritu-

alization is the external manifestation of the deep and robust integration of the old narra-

tive within the larger narrative of Christian story or Kingdom of God.

3.4 Ghanaian Pentecostal Interpreters: Insiders' Assessment

I suggested earlier Ghanaian academics and Church leaders from mainline and charismat-

ic perspectives have been deeply engaged in theological conversation surrounding the relative

merits of Deliverance Ministry. Their insights as cultural insiders with personal and social ac-

cess to all the religio-cultural narratives involved are particularly relevant to questions narrative

integration. My space will only allow the most minimal sampling from this vibrant, ongoing

discussion.

Writing as the Chairman of the Church of Pentecost, Opoky Onyinah is cautious in his

appreciation of Deliverance Ministry and prayer camps as a means of confronting witchcraft in

 Lumpkin 15

Ghana.26 He balances his appreciation with a call for a biblical, theological analysis of the spirit

world as a corrective to the danger he sees in how the camps affirm the traditional conceptualiza-

tion brought in from the cultural cognate belonging to the Ghanaian traditional religious narra-

tive. "This theological analysis," he writes, "needs to be the concern of African Pentecostal The-

ologians."27 This illustrates the way in which the negotiation between narratives is an ongoing

conversation, as well as the need for the work to be led by cultural insiders, who by virtue of

having had access to both narratives, are uniquely situated to appreciate and critique. Set in the

context of a Church that conceives of itself as a global body the tension and balance between in-

sider and outsider perspectives is key.

Writing as assistant professor at Ghana's mainline Trinity Theological Seminary, J.

Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu, though not a Pentecostal himself, is surprisingly less guarded. His

essay assessing Deliverance Ministry emphasizes how the Ghanaian Pentecostal perspective

emphasizes a holistic conception of salvation involving liberation from all forces that seek that

enslave humanity.28 He goes on to recognize the need to preserve positive aspects of African tra-

ditional religion and culture but casts a critical eye towards institutions involving shrine enslave-

ment which he argues should be removed because of their debasement of human dignity. In this

26.
Ibid., 86
27.
Opoky Onyinah, "Deliverance as a way of Confronting Witchcraft in Modern Africa: Ghana as a Case
History," Cyberjournal for Pentecostal-Charismatic Research, http://www.pctii.org/cyberj/cyberj10/onyinah.html
(accessed April, 17, 2011).
28.
J. Kwabena. Asamoah-Gyadu, "Of 'Sour Grapes' and 'Children's Teeth': Inherited Guilt, Human Rights and
Processes of Restoration in Ghanaian Pentecostalism," Exchange 33, no. 4 (2004): 352.
 Lumpkin 16

context, Deliverance Ministry becomes all the more "poignant" for Ghanaian Christians (read

"resonant" or "efficacious") as the very cultural structures (read "cultural cognates") that had

served to enslave and curse are re-narrated and re-purposed to liberate and bless. To turn one of

Grimes' phrases, out of the dismembered body of an older ritual structure a new rite is born.

Asamoah-Gyadu writes appreciatively about the emphasis and perspective brought by

what I would describe as the new, deeply integrated religio-cultural narrative of Ghanaian Pente-

costalism which has created a viable, Christian religio-cultural narrative in context.

"The recovery of the 'healing and deliverance' ministry as part of the essential mission of
the Church is, therefore, an important dimension of the renewal that Pentecostalism has brought
into Ghanaian Christianity... Its popularity provides further evidence of the practical differences
that exist between Ghanaian indigenous Pentecostal thought and the inability of traditional west-
ern mission Christianity to respond adequately to the theological questions raised by African
Christians."29

4. Conclusions

It is easy enough to observe that human rituals are often a space for asserting and enact-

ing a particular way of seeing the world. Further, when two (or more) of these narratives come

into contact, we can observe that ritual often serves as space for negotiating between narratives.

Grimes' description of ritualizing clarifies the mechanisms by which this aspect of human reli-

giosity actually accomplishes this negotiation: borrowing parts of the two narratives, re-arrang-

ing them within their narrative contexts until a sufficiently resonant or efficacious ritual and nar-

rative framework are born. What implications does this understanding hold for those concerned

about the purity of rituals and traditions?

29.
Gyadu, "Of 'Sour Grapes' and 'Children's Teeth,'" 351.
 Lumpkin 17

First, it calls for established faith traditions concerned with keeping rituals pure from out-

side cultural influence to re-evaluate their stance. The Christian Church in particular has tended

to label these to these early, fetal ritualizing movements toward deep integration with the pejora-

tive "syncretism." From there it is an easy move to dismiss them as corruptions of pure Christian

expression or to actively persecute them. Yet this integrative, borrowing ritualization is crucial

for "incubating" not just new rites but the deeply integrated, efficacious and satisfying Christian

narrative the rites assert, enact and reinforce.

Just Onyinah and Gyadu's essays suggests, this does not entail uncritical embrace of ei-

ther the old narrative or the new one. Instead it entails allowing space (ritual and temporal) for

the process of negotiation and integration to take place. How can this happen if the process is

aborted at the first sign of any elements that seem "other" to those with the power to label or per-

secute? Sadly the principle of cultural cognates cuts both ways. Historically the Church has

tended to accept aspects of the old narrative that it perceived as comprehensible and rejected

those that it couldn't make sense of from within its own integrated, culturally particular appropri-

ation of the Christian narrative. This is a particularly egregious sin for a tradition founded on the

concept of incarnation --that God chose reveal Godself, embedded in a body, in a religion, and in

a culture.

Second, if the western Church could a deeper awareness of the character of the ritualiza-

tion that gave rise to our own cherished rites of baptism and communion, we might be more open

to their continued remix with other religio-cultural narratives as we have begun to see happening

spontaneously by so-called "insider movements" among Muslims, and Hindus. If we can begin
 Lumpkin 18

to see ritualizing as the external phenomena of the intimately complex individual and social

process of integrating competing narratives, into a wholeness of new identity that seamlessly

connects a people's past to their present then we might begin to pay attention to, incubate and

nurture this kind of ritualization as a necessary step to true individual and corporate conversion.

Yet the illusion of control dies hard. The French Ministry of Culture, in trying keep their

language pure by setting up artificial structures against word-borrowing has discovered it is im-

possible to both use a language and keep it "pure." As time moves forward it will change out

from under you. To get at the same meaning accomplished by King James' English one has to

choose different words today. Likewise ritual, as another means of human expression and reli-

gio-cultural transmission, must continue to change and be re-imagined in order to transmit the

same message, most especially when we hope for it to move across cultures. Rituals and the nar-

ratives they enact survive by being successively re-arranged, re-narrated and re-imagined by

each set hands through which they pass. So too, does the Christian Gospel of the Kingdom of

God.
 Lumpkin 19

Works Cited:

Douglas, Mary. Natural Symbols: Explorations in Cosmology; 2nd edition. New York: Pantheon
Books, 1982.

Gifford, Paul. Ghana's New Christianity: Pentecostalism in a Globalizing African Economy.

Bloomington, Ind: Indiana University Press, 2004.

Grimes, Ronald L. Beginnings in Ritual Studies. Washington, D.C.: University Press of Ameri-
ca, 1982

______________. “Emerging Ritual.” In Proceedings of the North American Academy of Litur-

gy. Annual Meeting, St. Louis, MO. Jan. 2 – 5, 1990: 15 – 34.

______________. Deeply into the Bone: Re-Inventing Rites of Passage. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2000.

Asamoah-Gyadu, J. Kwabena. 2004. "Of 'Sour Grapes' and 'Children's Teeth': Inherited Guilt,
Human Rights and Processes of Restoration in Ghanaian Pentecostalism". Exchange. 33,
no. 4: 334-353.

Onyinah, Opoky. "Deliverance as a way of Confronting Witchcraft in Modern Africa: Ghana as

a Case History," Cyberjournal for Pentecostal-Charismatic Research, http://www.pc-
tii.org/cyberj/cyberj10/onyinah.html (accessed April 17, 2011).