“Countries have locked down, but heaven's gate is still open”

This chapter analyses the importance of religious rhetoric in reorienting Ghanaians to make sense of the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in the country since March 2020. It is logical to argue that religion is ubiquitous in the country–disrupting modernity’s binaries between public and private spheres. The recent COVID-19 pandemic, once again, revitalized religion and spirituality in the country’s public sphere. This has been exemplified in the ways Ghanaians are deploying and appropriating local and global religious rhetoric to bridge the gaps between science/technology and faith to respond to the pandemic. Whether through the rhetoric of divine sovereignty embodied in songs, inversions, or terse sayings, religion is germane in responding to the pandemic. With data from online news articles and social media, I argue that religious rhetoric, modelled along with divine sovereignty in human history, is invoked to reorient Ghanaians to cope with the coronavirus pandemic

Heaven · Theology · African cultural and philosophical studies · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Media, Religion, Digital Communication · Philosophy