Looking Back, Moving Forward investigates the embodied practices, interpersonal relationships, and moments of self-reflection in the lives of members of the Church of Pentecost in Ghana and amongst the Ghanaian diaspora in London.

Girish Daswani is an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Toronto.

"A great strength of Looking Back, Moving Forward is its rich empirical detail, built on long-term an clearly emphatic fieldwork among Ghanaians in Ghana and overseas…Most impressive is this book’s honest acknowledgment of the complexity of everyday religion, a complexity that escapes conceptual grasp and resists theoretical mastery."

Philip Jenkins:

‘An excellent contribution to the study of migrant faith, this book also has much to say about spirituality and religious practice more broadly defined.’

Anna Strhan:

‘With its vivid ethnography, Looking Back, Moving Forward offers an intimate portrait of the everyday lives of Ghanaian Pentecostals, both in Ghana and in London.’

Joel Robbins, Sigrid Rausing Professor of Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge:

“Daswani has written a groundbreaking account of the way people live out the task of balancing continuity and discontinuity in their daily lives. Focusing on members of the Ghanaian-originated Church of Pentecost, he brings together two rapidly growing areas of scholarship – the study of global Christianity and the anthropological study of ethics – in exciting new ways."

Richard Werbner, Professor Emeritus in African Anthropology, University of Manchester:

“Looking Back, Moving Forward is exceptional because it is so rich, intimate, and soulfully concerned when it comes to the anguished subjectivity of Ghanaian Pentecostals at home and abroad in their diaspora, especially in London. Their portraits, like their artfully told personal stories, are striking.”