Ordinary ethics and its temporalities: The Christian God and the 2016 Ghanaian elections

Abstract

In this paper I provide an analysis of how the then-imminent event of the Ghanaian 2016 elections operated within and interrupted a born-again Christian understanding of social and political change. I argue that much can be gained from understanding Pentecostal Christianity in Ghana by paying close attention to how born-again Christians anticipate and participate in shaping the near future. My analysis of this period, just before (and after) the 2016 elections—from the perspective of born-again Christians in Ghana—contributes to an engagement with the immanent and imminent qualities of ethical life. In accounting for the ways in which the Christian “God” and the “nation” overlap or collide in born-again Pentecostal discourse and practice in Ghana, I propose that the precise configuration of how these forces come together and come apart has a force that complicates how we imagine ethics as something explicit in discourse or about the ability to step back in reflection.