The Living Whole – an account from the meeting with Dr Anna Niedźwiedź during the launching of her book “Religia przeżywana – katolicyzm i jego konteksty we współczesnej Ghanie" [Lived Religion. Catholicism and its contexts in contemporary Ghana]
A meeting about the book written by Dr Anna Niedźwiedź (Jagiellonian University Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology), entitled “Lived Religion. Catholicism and its contexts in contemporary Ghana” took place on 18th May 2016 in Seweryn Udziela’s Museum of Ethnography in Cracow. Father Adam Boniecki (Tygodnik Powszechny), Dr Kamila Baraniecka-Olszewska and the moderator Marcin Żyła (Tygodnik Powszechny) participated in the discussion surrounding topics linked to the promoted book.
As the author herself writes in the prologue, “the book provides an anthropological analysis of how Catholicism is experienced in Ghana. It is based on material collected during ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the small town of Jema, located in the central part of the country. The participants of the meeting were invited to watch a few short films, recorded by the author in Jema, showing such things as religious processions, funerals and associated rituals.”
The main topic tackled during the discussion of the book involved the issue of the Church in African countries as an element of the self-construction of the identity of the communities. The singular distinctness of the African Church was indicated as it merges elements of Catholic and local traditions, including dancing, loud music and local rituals that originate from various cultural formations. One such example would be the author’s observations of the Corpus Christi holiday merged with the Christ the Lord celebrations in Jema, during which Jesus Christ is presented as a local Chief, i.e. as someone who can be physically encountered and experienced, while another would be funerals and funerary rituals, with their complexity constituting an inherent part of the everyday life of contemporary Ghanian society.
The meeting ended with some questions from the audience, including one about the tradition in Ghana of a deceased person having an official “successor” nominated (who is to assume the functions the deceased performed within the family, local community or religious congregation), and others about the cult of saints in Ghana or the relations between Christians and Muslims.
Monika Różalska
Published by: Magdalena Obłoza