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This article seeks to contribute to a more adequate understanding of the adoption of modern audiovisual mass media by contemporary religious groups. It does so by examining Pentecostal-charismatic churches as well as the Christian mass culture instigated by its popularity and so-called traditional religion in Ghana, which develop markedly different attitudes towards audiovisual mass media and assume different positions in the public sphere. Taking into account the complicated entanglement of traditional religion and Pentecostalism, approaching both religions from a perspective of mediation which regards media as intrinsic to religion, and seeking to avoid the pitfall of overestimating the power of modern mass media to determine the world, this article seeks to move beyond an unproductive recurrence to oppositions such as tradition and modernity, or religion and technology. It is argued that instead of taking as a point of departure more or less set ideas about the nexus of vision and modernity, the adoption of new mass media by religious groups needs to be analyzed by a detailed ethnographic investigation of how these new media transform existing practices of religious mediation. Special emphasis is placed on the tension between the possibilities of gaining public presence through new media, and the difficulty in authorizing these media, and the experiences they induce, as authentic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a result of the liberalisation and commercialisation of the media in the wake of Ghana's return to a democratic constitution in 1992, there has emerged a new public sphere which has been successfully and effectively colonised by Pentecostal‐charismatic churches and led to the rise of a Pentecostalite public culture geared towards Christian entertainment. This paper focuses on the popular video‐film industry, which stays close to audience expectations and deliberately appropriates Pentecostal styles of representation. Examining the entanglement of cinema and church, video‐filmmakers and pastors, I argue that the marked presence of Pentecostal styles of representation in the public sphere contributes to the spread of a social imaginary geared towards the recuperation of the project of modernity under the new condition of an open public sphere, characterised by the retreat of the state and the overwhelming presence of market forces. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]