The increasing interest within development studies in religion is largely based on notions of 'faith communities' and 'belief systems': that peopleespecially 'religious' people -operate within discrete and coherent systems of belief. An emphasis on belief, however, is not universal, either across religions or across cultures. This paper draws on ethnographic data from a study of churches in rural Ghana to explore whether such frameworks are appropriate for understanding religious practices. Using insights from medical anthropology, it suggests that in this context the basis of 'religious' engagement is not belief as a conscious decision to adhere to a recognisably disputable notion. Rather, theoretical knowledge is preceded by practice, and continuity between the physical and the spiritual means that powers such as spirits are not 'believed in' (or disbelieved) but accepted as indisputable facts. Although people may identify with a particular religion such as Christianity, they live in a landscape of different 'religious' and 'non-religious' powers, with which they engage largely on a pragmatic level, entailing eclecticism, multiplicity and fluidity rather than full adherence to one discrete belief system. Thus, not only are assumed boundaries between religious groups and cosmologies challenged; but categories and oppositions used by development theoreticians and practitioners such as 'religious/secular' are also called into question.

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Relationships, and specifically the relationship between the fieldworker and the research subjects, are at the core of the process of all anthropological and ethnographic research and to a very large extent determine the outcomes of the research. In addressing the question of how far a participant observer should attempt to "become" a member of the group she is studying, we must also recognise the complexity of individual and social identities assumed or attributed to her. When the distinction between aspects of "self" and "other" is blurred, the fieldworker can be simultaneously (but not fully) "insider" and "outsider" in different facets of her identity and in different relationships. Drawing on experiences of recent ethnographic fieldwork among members of churches in a village in southern Ghana, this paper explores aspects of identity that contribute to this ambivalent status of the fieldworker. It considers the extent to which the researcher has control over her research roles and the implications of this in terms of access, acceptance, data collection, and obligations and responsibilities of the researcher to her informants.