ABSTRACT
In Ghana’s capital city, Accra, Ghanaians are actively engaged in economic pursuits; physical efforts at bettering their lives through informal trade activities and through the provision of everyday services such as food, transport, and communications. Amidst these daily economic activities Pentecostal songs of worship and voices of prayer can be heard through church amplifi ers and car stereos, spilling out onto the streets and enveloping the cityscape, fi lling the work day with the inescapable sounds of Christian gospel music and its themes of salvation and liberation from suffering. Signboards, posters, and banners line busy roads, advertising Pentecostal prayer events that promise solutions to problems and a transformative change from a “nobody” into a “somebody”. Pentecostalism in Ghana is not simply about an individual message of Salvation separate from the secular work economy and people’s worldly ambitions. Pentecostalism-its message, images, sounds and practices-comes into presence in people’s day to day activities, actively mediating between their marginal economic positions and their aspirations for a better life.
