Combating COVID-19 and ‘Possessing the Nations’: Insights from Ghana’s Megachurches

Abstract

This article employs social listening techniques to capture the themes and public response to popular coronavirus-related social media posts made by leaders via their public Facebook pages at two of Ghana’s largest and fastest-growing churches: The Church of Pentecost (CoP) and the United Denominations Originating from the Lighthouse Group of Churches (UD-OLGC). We examine how religious leaders employed social media in response to the pandemic, and how these religious groups reinforced their relevance and reinvented themselves in the face of COVID-19. Additionally, we explore the major beliefs, perceptions, and values that the church’s social media users portrayed in response to the church’s pandemic postings, using social listening techniques and sentiment analysis. These results show how, while adapting to the realities demanded by the pandemic, the social media presence of two of Ghana’s largest churches served as a site for the contestation and negotiation of the religious authority of the leadership.