Ghanaian Pentecostal agents who emphasize ritual praxis for migrants live in two worlds as far as questions of socio-religious capital are concerned. One world is informed by a quest to internationalize, have diaspora membership, engage in overseas itinerant missions, and have a global-modern presence. The other is the efforts to indigenize their ritual praxis to appeal to the indigenous sensibilities of local clientele who may become tomorrow’s diaspora members and distinguish themselves from the European mission churches in Ghana. The intense competition in Ghana’s volatile Pentecostal religious field is engendering an open enlisting of indigenous religious models by churches in a bid to gain an edge over other competitors.
The paper involves fieldwork research among two Ghanaian Pentecostal churches in exploring ways the Pentecostals deploy a tapestry of indigenous models and symbols to appeal to the indigenous sensibilities to negotiate socio-religious capital in the Ghanaian religious landscape thereby indigenizing Christianity.