Let Us Offer Thanks for the Nation of Ghana: Hɔmɔwɔ as a Civil Ceremony of Thanksgiving Open Access
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Published:May 2025
Chapter 6 discusses two initiatives from the 2010s that recast the Hɔmɔwɔ festival as a cultural event. In 2014, the Ministry of Tourism, Arts, and Culture launched Homofest, which brings together Hɔmɔwɔ festivities across the Ga townships into a carnival-style celebration. In 2015, the Christian Council of Ghana initiated the annual Hɔmɔwɔ Thanksgiving service and lecture with the aim of promoting intercommunal harmony. The two initiatives were advertised in terms of the country’s burgeoning multicultural and multireligious profile. What they have in common is their determination to preserve the meaning of the Hɔmɔwɔ festival by modernizing its form. This is done by presenting the two initiatives as cultural events with the potential to attract tourists and foster interreligious and intercultural coexistence. In the process, the festival is religiously neutralized as its individual components are subjected to selection and classification.