The Presbyterians, also, opened hospitals in several parts of the country, including the one at Agogo in Asante-Akyem. Their converts increased steadily in numbers until 1821 when a section broke away to form the first independent African, Christian church in West Africa, called the West Africa Methodist Church. (As at December 2020). Ayandele (1966:283), writing in the 1960s, says, By their [the missions] efforts the main languages of Nigeria have been preserved as a lasting legacy to the Ibo, Yoruba, Efik, Nupe and Hausa. However, this practice was in fact probably more due to stereotypes of African ignorance than an interest in being culturally respectful: missionaries may have believed that it would take too long to teach a superior European language to the unintelligent natives when the natives souls were in such desperate need of saving. Several missionaries died at a youthful age due to the unfriendly tropical climate. Furthermore, missionaries, believing in the civilizing mission, attempted to disintegrate traditional society through education by choosing academic subjects, such as the histories of the Western colonial powers, that illustrated the superiority of the Western culture, as well as by teaching about the superiority of the West in non-academic matters such as hygiene. This finding was supported by two types of analysis. That there are parallels between contemporary Christian organizations efforts and the missionary efforts of the mid-nineteenth to mid- twentieth centuries is a reason for concern, considering the similar impact of missionaries of all Christian denominations on the education of Africans in the British and Italian colonies in Africa. Amma Darko Many Ghanaian communities got divided along religious lines. In lieu of flowers, memorial donations in the name of Father Burke can be made for the care of elderly and infirm missionaries and sent to The Rector, Divine Word Residence, 1901 Waukegan Road, P.O. Two important private schools with strong Christian influence must also be mentioned: Accra High School, founded in 1923 and Accra Academy, established in There were several reasons for this poor education, some intentional and some not. Church history, history of Christianity, religious history: some reflections on British missionary enterprise since the late eighteenth century. Church History 71, no. 1991. Being ignorant of the significance of certain institutions and practices of the people of West Africa, and occasionally being misled by their over-zealous followings into wrongly interpreting the peoples heritage, the missionaries compelled pupils in their schools and docile adult converts to shun their own ancestral practices. A notable example, in Ghana, was the Methodist experimental farm near Cape Coast whose crops included cotton, coffee, black pepper, mango, ginger, cinnamon and olive trees. Important among these, all in Lagos, were the Baptist Academy in 1855, the C.M.S. Indeed, in some situations the converts were taught to feel that they were absolved from obeying their own traditional rulers and certain laws of the state. Private Study This company promoted the import and export trade in Ghana. Crampton, Edmund Patrick Thurman. We were expected to accept the European language as the superior one, and this was reinforced throughout my school career (Abu cited in Berman 1974:536). He also blogs at BloggingtotheMax.com. The Christian religion teaches the doctrine of one supreme God and is opposed to the worship of any other forms of deity. Apart from giving to the converts a new religious faith which they consider is superior to the traditional religions, the Christian missionaries did pioneering work in introducing new crafts, industries, Western education and modern health services. The vast majority of the people of The Gambia are Moslems; but a sizeable percentage of the population, especially in and around the capital Banjul, are Christians. From simple essay plans, through to full dissertations, you can guarantee we have a service perfectly matched to your needs. churches were firmly established in several important towns, such as Abeokuta (1846), Lagos (1851), Ibadan (1853), and Oyo (1856). The Akim area had about 3400 converts over 32 villages and there were about 900 children distributed in 27 Schools. It is interesting to note that this project is not a new concept. The Missionary Role on The Gold Coast and In Ashanti: Reverend F.a In short, it was a very successful mission in making us little black Anglo-Saxon Protestants. Thomas Birch Freeman, son of a London-based West Indian father and an English mother. Father Burke spent more than half of his lifealmost 50 yearsin Ghana on the West Coast of Africa, said Father Edward Tetteh SVD, pastor of Blessed Sacrament-Our Lady of Divine Shepherd in Trenton, N.J. During his many years in Ghana, since he worked mostly in educational institutions, he produced excellent professionals: teachers, priests, ministers, doctors, engineers, lawyers, pharmacists, journalists and many others who work in different parts of the world.. There were only bush paths, and no roads in the early times. The others included the Christian responsibility for the regeneration of African peoples. The study examines the historical foundations of Western education in Meru and factors that influenced its development. The Methodists, known as the Wesleyan Missionaries (after their founder), arrived in Freetown in 1811. Mission Statement More women than men attend church, and the more strict churchgoers tend to be wealthier and of higher social status than less churchgoers or non-Presbyterians. In the Gambia, the Methodist missionary and first principal of what later became known as the Gambia High School, the Rev. The Basel missionaries, in particular, established experimental farms and plantations in places like Akropong. The greatest problem faced by the early European Christian missionaries was, the tropical climate and health Hazards. Johann Christaller produced a similar work in Twi. James Fieldhouse, produced a Wolof Grammar in 1876. further studies Above, we have described the role that trading companies, missionaries, and the government played for the spread of Western education in the coastal areas from the late sixteenth century onwards. Because of rivalry, instead of building one common, multi-denominational school in a village that really only needed the one school, missionaries each built a school for their particular denomination and competed for students (Berman 1974:533). For more than a year, Ghanaian Saints continued to practice their faith in their homes. Ghana continued to call. ABWE first began work in Ghana with a goal to reach unchurched Ghanaians in the Volta Region with the gospel and then to expand evangelism efforts to other parts of the country. Teacher training colleges in Ghana did not expand as fast as the secondary schools. WAEC However, the motivation behind teaching Africans basic literacy and mathematics might not have been a cause for concern if not for the fact that the religious motivation curtailed education. Johannes Zimmermann, for example, produced a Ga dictionary, Ga bible and grammar book. Yes! Here you can choose which regional hub you wish to view, providing you with the most relevant information we have for your specific region. After World War I was declared in 1914, the German missionaries were restricted in their movements by the British in the British colonies. To export a reference to this article please select a referencing stye below: If you are the original writer of this essay and no longer wish to have your work published on UKEssays.com then please: Our academic writing and marking services can help you! Some of the missionaries came with them (549 years ago) but many died from the cruel tropical weather of forested West Africa. The early African converts to Christianity, were made to abandon their ancestral culture and way of life as pagan therefore to be shunned. church were founded in south-eastern Nigeria, the chief centres being Bonny and Brass. The others include the French trading posts at Grand Bassam (Ivory Coast), Assinie and Libreville in Gabon. We shall begin with the positive contribution of the Christian missionaries in Ghana. 503 0 obj <> endobj The Contribution of christian missionaries to education in Meru 1908-1963. They discovered that the holy book did not clearly prescribe monogamy, and contained several examples of renowned Christian polygamists. The resulting atmosphere of disunity enabled the European colonialists to easily achieve their goal of economic exploitation. For several years they paid attention to slave trade rather than evangelization and Christianization of the people of West-Africa. One is led to ask, why this sudden development? While colonial administration in colonies such as Kenya attempted to some degree to provide training for Kenyans to fill the high-level positions (Sheffield 1973:86), the attempts in many cases fell short, and when the European administration left, Kenya, for instance, had few sufficiently educated replacements (Sheffield 1973:88). As happened in other territories, the Christian missionaries did not confine their work to the spread of the gospel alone. These contradictions are surprisingly absent from contemporary research. They were to spread the message of the Gospel, render social services to the people and to assist in the suppression of slavery and the slave trade. Missionaries continued to be the main providers of education even after colonial powers established control during the so-called Scramble for Africa which occurred between 1884-1914. Isichei, Elizabeth. They worked to write the bible, dictionaries and textbooks in such Ghanaian Languages as Ewe, Fanti, Ga and Twi. As founder and director at CEGAST, he has successfully coached thousands of students in English, Literature, and related subjects for major international examinations. Furthermore, mission schools discouraged traditional ways of life outside of the classroom. With the exception of the first two volumes, marked "West Africa", these items are drawn from the volumes Series CWW. NUUT Co. Ltd. Kumasi, Ghana, 2011, Baarkinado. Instead of needing to import skilled workers such as carpenters, the mission schools provided colonial governments with workers capable of building and maintaining the colonys infrastructure and basic technology, a contribution that kept the colonies running smoothly. All work is written to order. For instance, in the Salisbury region of Rhodesia, it was reported in 1924 that no male teachers had educational qualifications (Bone 1969:28). Hildebrandt, Jonathan. The blessings which Christianity has brought to West Africa are many. Christian Missionaries. All the three secondary schools in Cape Coast were mission institutions. grammatical name The kingdom of God in Africa: A short history of African Christianity. Father Tetteh also took note of Father Burkes humility and devotion to his students. It started first among the Yoruba recaptives who had embraced the Christian faith while in Sierra Leone (freed from slave trading ships by the British Royal Naval Squadron), and who returned home between 1839 and 1845. After a time the idea becomes ingrained -it is heathen and unchristian to be an African culturally (Awori cited in Berman 1974:536). Soon after, in 1835 they moved up to Akropon on the hills in Akuapem, where the pioneer missionary the Rev. Among several others, the native Bishop Ajayi Crowther produced the first translation of the Bible in Yoruba. But with colonial conquest and antimalarial drugs, they moved further into the continent. The Basel Mission. Wm. As one Eritrean student remarks, Our sisters [the Italian Sisters] would have undoubtedly taught better and more, but the Italian government in the colony did not permit Eritreans to get good instruction (T.T. According to the Head of the Methodist Church in Ghana, Mmofraturo was established in Kumasi, 'when it dawned on the early Wesleyan Missionaries that when the girl child was educated, she could grow up to face the challenges of the fast-changing world. Help those suffering in Turkey and Syria. They relied very much on their home churches for their funds. Another missionary whose memory is revered in Nigeria was Mary Slessor, she arrived in the country in 1876, and for many years worked assiduously as a missionary nurse. Mission schools provided a steady stream of educated Africans capable of filling the lower levels of the colonial administration and operated vocational and agricultural schools (Ayandele 1966: 295; Foster 1965: 90-91; Sheffield 1973: 10-11). Moreover, speaking through interpreters is a defective means of communicating ones thoughts to ones audience. Joseph Dunwell. This was the work of the great missionary, Thomas Birch Freeman, who placed two missionaries, Mr and Mrs. de Graft, in charge of the school. This was a bitter pill for the Basel Mission to swallow after 19 years of devoted service in the mission field in the Gold Coast but they were not dismayed when they considered that in education and agriculture and artisan training and in the development of commerce, and medical services and concern for social welfare of the people, the name Basel by the time of expulsion of the mission from the country, had become a treasured word in the minds of the people. Other difficulties the early Christians faced were the problems of the many languages and dialects and their ignorance of the true meaning of the various cultures, beliefs, values and ways of life of the people whom they set out to convert to Christianity. Learn how your comment data is processed. Missions, Education and Conversion in Colonial Africa The Christian missionaries have been credited with the discontinuation of some obnoxious traditional practices among Ghanaians. Email: henrydonsco@gmail.com Similar organizations were formed in several other European countries. The problems created by the white missionaries themselves arose largely from a misconception of what Africa represented. He professed vows in 1953 in Conesus, N.Y., and was ordained to the priesthood in 1961 at Techny, Ill. The original letters from abroad cover West Africa from 1899 to 1933. wassce literature questions. The Missionary Factor in Ghana's Development, pp.11 &135 categorically asserted that economic and social changes were brought about by the total effect of the various projects initiated by the. For instance the scholar E.A. They were closed down in 1852 in favour of schools opened in Lagos which, in 1851, had one time British control. This involved learning to read in the vernacular (Hadfield cited in Bone 1969:7). Nevertheless, the first higher institution in Ghana, now the Presbyterian Training College at Akuapem Akropon, was established in 1848, first as a centre for training catechists, and later to train teachers as well as ministers of the Presbyterian Church. The others include the British and Foreign Bible Society in 1804, which was tasked with the responsibility of promoting the translation and printing of the Holy Bible. Copyright 2023 ABWE. The achievement of the purpose of these Christian Missions came with some costs. In 1880, two Roman Catholic priests of the Society of African Missions (S.M.A. We use cookies to improve your experience on our website. 2018). Indeed, most of our early nationalists were all products of mission schools. Technical and vocational education had been emphasized in the education system in Ghana since the colonial era. In 2011 at age 77, he retired from teaching and returned to the United States. Missionary, educator contributed to building independent Ghana In due course leprosariums and orphanages were built to supplement their medical services.