A tiny act of kindness is remembered by a young man in need. Missionaries were no doubt also aware that Africans came to associate European technological achievement with Western education (Bassey 1991:45) and therefore offered Western education as a means to attract Africans of this belief and then convert them. The Christian missionaries have been credited with the discontinuation of some obnoxious traditional practices among Ghanaians. When he arrived in Nkwatia-Kwahu to teach English at St. Peters Secondary School, the town had yet to benefit from electricity and running water. With the support of the Propagation of the Faith within the Vatican, whose Cardinal Secretary became Pope Gregory XVI, various Roman Catholic missionary societies were founded. Here you can choose which regional hub you wish to view, providing you with the most relevant information we have for your specific region. In 2011 at age 77, he retired from teaching and returned to the United States. The agricultural schools the missions ran would have been even more advantageous to the colonial governments considering the discouragement of local industries that might have competed with the motherland. The Roman Catholic Sisters provided medical care in the Upper and Northern Regions of the country before the government started to provide hospitals and clinics in the regional and district headquarters. grammatical name As much as the governments liked to assign blame to the missions, they were also accountable for the poor education through their educational policies. Christianity in West Africa: The Nigerian Story. Almost all the missions in West Africa faced financial problems in the early stages of their missionary work. Among the early Protestant evangelical societies founded in Great Britain were the Baptist Missionary Society, the Church Missionary Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, the Wesleyan Missionary Society and what became known as the Presbyterian Missionary Society of the Church of Scotland. Specifically, it addresses the unique role of Christian missions in. This was because all the ships that came to the coast at that time were owned by trading firms and companies whose interest were basically on trade. essay writing 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. Preventive medicine was hardly known; the result was that epidemics of different kinds were frequent. Longman Publishing Group, 1980. Johannes Zimmermann wrote a grammar of the Ga language, and in 1874 the Rev. Later that year, in recognition of his service to the Ghanaian people, President John Dramani Mahama bestowed the honor of Officer of the Order of Volta upon him. The first Europeans arrived at the West-African Coasts at the end of the fifteenth century. A history of Christianity in Ghana. First, I looked at how educational outcomes depended on the distance to historical missions. In fact in 1966, Father Burke led students to a victory in a national educational contest called the Ghana TV Cup. Two other training colleges opened by the missionaries, in the early days, were the Wesley College in Kumasi (1922) and the Roman Catholic Training College at Amisano, near Elmina (1931) which in 1936 moved to the campus of the newly founded secondary school, St Augustines College at Cape Coast. Through academic lessons and lessons on Western etiquette and hygiene, mission students were isolated from their traditional cultures, a traumatic experience that would continue to trouble many students for the rest of their lives. Therefore, considering that the impact of mission education continues to have serious repercussions today, one must question whether the First World should continue to interfere in African education. Here you can choose which regional hub you wish to view, providing you with the most relevant information we have for your specific region. For terms and use, please refer to our Terms and Conditions 0 All the three secondary schools in Cape Coast were mission institutions. In due course leprosariums and orphanages were built to supplement their medical services. Johann Christaller produced a similar work in Twi. By focusing on the African demand for education, I showed that Africans were not just passive recipients of mission schooling. faceless characters English grammar Today almost all of the population is Presbyterian, although the ancestral royal cult and many spirit cults still flourish. A permanent station was established in Lagos in 1868, soon followed by others at Lokoja, Abeokuta and Ibadan. Included on the website is information about the charitys programs, such as their Leadership Development Program in which participants earn a degree in their chosen field of study, and participate in Christian leadership training, enabling them to become a fully developed agent of change in their nation (Compassion Canada 2011). It is important to emphasize that the modern history of the Christian Mission in Africa started from the late Eighteenth Century, the Catholics had been there earlier in the first centuries of the Christian era especially during the first Portuguese adventures. For example, the missionaries preached against certain aspects of African culture they considered barbaric or satanic or both. the role of administrators, chiefs and the missions; first attempts at agricultural and industrial training; girls' education and teacher training before 1850; some chief factors in educational expansion 1850-1900; government official policy in educational expansion 1850-1900; agricultural, industrial and vernacular training 1850-1900 Similar developments were carried out by the missionaries in other Nigerian languages, Efik, Kanuri, Igbo, etc. From 1835 to the middle of the nineteenth century the Church was in opposition to traditional religion. Even if secondary education was provided, it was often reserved for the sons of local chiefs (Oliver 1952:212; Beck 1966: 120), an elite the colonial government could then call upon to help rule the colony, a common practice in colonial Africa. Christian missionaries were the first to introduce European-style education in sub-Saharan Africa. We've received widespread press coverage since 2003, Your UKEssays purchase is secure and we're rated 4.4/5 on reviews.co.uk. The early missionaries set up craft centres as part of their educational programmes. They even considered traditional drumming and African clothing as practices that were not worthy in the sight of the Lord. In conclusion, the educational enterprise of the Christian missionaries in the British and Italian colonies of Africa during the mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries was primarily negative for the African pupils. Next, branches of the C.M.S. Mission Statement The academic education purposely did not train Africans for the higher level positions of colonial administrations, which were mostly reserved for Europeans (Ayandele 1966:295; Sheffield 1973:42), a practise which created dependency on the colonizers, as without them the colony did not have qualified administrators. Of the ten largest congregations for men, the Society of the Divine Word is the fastest growing over the past 50 years. cited in Miran 2002:128). In 1954, he became the first Deaf African American to earn a bachelor's degree from Gallaudet University, the American university for the Deaf, and the first to earn a master's degree from Eastern Michigan University.He earned a second master's degree from Seattle Pacific Christian . 1 (1971): 103-115. The missionaries also greatly improved the health services. It was also terribly hard for a woman to be driven away, and to lose her status in the society where she is respected as a wife and a mother. education was an important means for mission evangelization. Ekechi, Felix K. Colonialism and Christianity in West Africa: The Igbo Case, 19001915. The Journal of African History 12, no. In the 19thh century, too, Afro-Brazilians returned to Benin and Nigeria with Catholicism. others adopted a system of education varied from one and the other hence, lacking consistency in the educational sector [3]. S.J. This hymn sums up the reasons why the Christian missionaries came to Africa and other parts of the world. After completing that assignment, Father Burkes superiors asked him to teach English as a second language (ESL) to Divine Word missionaries who did not know the language. Their records from World War One show their distance from the war and yet that it did affect . Barely ten years later, after the first missionaries arrived, the Methodists, for example, had started a station as far inland as MacCarthy Island. In an ironic twist, the more Africans became versed in the Bible, the more they began to challenge missionaries. Initially, a majority of the missionary journeys was done with English-Speaking Protestants and later, in the 1820s and 1830s, they were joined by continental Protestantism from Germany, Switzerland and France. For the West Africans, the acceptance of Christianity meant the total rejection of most of the cherished institutions upon which their society rested. These attempts were traumatic for the students and threatened the survival of unique cultures. Teaching in the vernacular had an additional use as it further strengthened colonial rule, of which missionaries were often agents, for as the Kikuyu people of Kenya were aware, [the] inability to communicate in English would be a crucial factor in the perpetuation of their subordinate status in the colony (Berman 1974:531). The effort of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah. In Ghana the Presbyterians were pioneers in reducing Ga and Twi into . In addition, while missionaries did run many academic primary schools, they provided little secondary education, a practice which prevented natives from becoming too educated (Ayandele 1966:286) and potentially subversive. Crampton, Edmund Patrick Thurman. No plagiarism, guaranteed! churches were firmly established in several important towns, such as Abeokuta (1846), Lagos (1851), Ibadan (1853), and Oyo (1856). About the same time, the Church of Scotland (Presbyterian) headed by the Rev. 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. These commercial activities, therefore, made an important contribution to the economic development of Ghana. Request Permissions. The Church had its strongest hold in the Senegambia area. The missionary activities in Nigeria, especially their educational programs helped to whip-up the consciousness of a shared identity and helped to train a new set of elite that championed the course of nationalism and constituted a virile leadership for the young nation at independence.Click to see full answer What is missionary education?A mission school or [] In addition, the contributions of celebrity missionaries, such as Christian Schwartz, William Carey, Alexander Duff, and James . Textbooks were heavily biased towards western ideas and values. Some of these new crops were grapes coffee, mango, ginger, and olives. English for life Their greatest legacy in the field of education was the foundation which the Methodist laid for what is today the Gambia High school. Thus as early as 1823, the Roman Catholic Sisters started a clinic for the sick and for children in Banjul. Another important Catholic missionary in this area was the Irishman, Bishop Shanahan. Finally, education affects many other aspects of peoples lives, including economic opportunities and political attitudes. Vol. Hope Waddell started pioneering work, in 1846, in Calabar. Missionary, educator contributed to building independent Ghana. Initially,. It included the opening up of Africa to forces of change namely commerce (legitimate commerce, i.e. 503 0 obj <> endobj Etherington, Norman. The Basel and Methodist Missions, for example, introduced scientific agriculture in Ghana. Just look at the lyrics of this evangelizing song written in 1819 by Reginald Heber, a prolific English hymnist in the Anglican church. For instance, in southern Nigeria, the CMS policy was to teach in the vernacular at the primary level, while the Roman Catholic Missions policy was to teach in English (Bassey 1991:42). But with colonial conquest and antimalarial drugs, they moved further into the continent. This single problem made the missionary work very difficult. In conclusion, the converts tended to look down upon many things in their ancestral culture. Copyright 2023 ABWE. Establishment of Christian Churches In Ghana. personal development adult education These new movements considered such ventures to be their contribution to Europes reparation for centuries of exploitation of Africans, reparation for the centuries of exploitation which the Trans Atlantic slave trade had caused to African society. In many instances, they made their converts rebel against traditional rulers and other spiritual leaders. 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. The Journal of Negro Education (JNE), a refereed scholarly periodical, was founded at Howard University in 1932 to fill the need for a scholarly journal that would identify and define the problems that characterized the education of Black people in the United States and elsewhere, provide a forum for analysis and solutions, and serve as a vehicle for sharing statistics and research on a national basis. Hilliard, F.H., 1957. mock tests Even when governments discouraged domestic industries, graduates of vocational schools contributed to the economy of the colonies -and therefore indirectly the mother countrys as well. Founded in 1875 by St. Arnold Janssen, we number more than 6,000 missionaries. ]v#5%{,%Y{iKsZ|Cm7NismGmg_zxKYh?>bQ?ni8G.wx:qAm$ eb!^Kr$,.9Qq^|1. 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.. Soon after, in 1835 they moved up to Akropon on the hills in Akuapem, where the pioneer missionary the Rev. ABWE is also at work in countries that restrict evangelism. Technical and vocational education had been emphasized in the education system in Ghana since the colonial era. This decreased the zeal with which people began to accept the Gospel leading to nominal Christianity. 522 0 obj <>stream Missionaries and the intellectual history of Africa: a historical survey. Itinerario 7, no. Father Burke was preceded in death by his parents and his brother John. Given their priorities, it should thus come as little surprise that missions often provided poor education to the African pupils. In 1827 it grew into Fourah Bay College. Introduction, spread and effects, 6: Christian Missionary Activities in West Africa, 7: Scramble for and Partition of West Africa, 9: Problems of Independent West African States, 10: West Africa and International Organizations, 11: Women and Authority in West African History, 12: The Environment in West African History. Already have a license? In 1876 the college became associated with Durham University in England, which awarded degrees to students of the college. In 1910, a prominent report of the World Missionary Conference concluded: [T]here can be no question of polygamy. The Basel Mission, as a result of this phenomenal expansion trained many local personnel to man the new stations. Hope Waddell of the Church of Scotland had opened a school at Duke Town, Calabar. The first batch, who came out between 1804 and 1806, included pioneer missionaries like Renner and Nylander. 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). Then share it on your favourite social media platform for the benefit of others you care about. It is much easier to interact on an equal basis or even challenge the authority of another group when one is able to communicate in that groups language, instead of having to rely on an interpreter or non-verbal gestures, which undermine ones ability to show authority or express ones beliefs. Many missionaries died because of the climate and tropical disease. Perhaps the greatest service of the missionaries was the promotion of western education and the development of vernacular literature. J. C. Taylor, in these parts of southern Nigeria can still be seen today. Buchi Emecheta They discovered that the holy book did not clearly prescribe monogamy, and contained several examples of renowned Christian polygamists. The copies of letters received, 1890-1927, mention the plan from 1914 to gain control of future Ashanti Chiefs using education. Father Vincent Burke SVD, 83, recipient of Ghanas Officer of the Order of Volta Award, passed away at Techny, Ill., on Sept. 21. Amma Darko Get full access to all 9,566 pages that make up the Ghana in Records from Colonial Missionaries, 1886-1951 collection. 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). Joseph Dunwell. Properly meant by Anglo-Saxon standards. The latter, non-academic form of education provided by the missions has stimulated much interest among scholars, who are particularly interested in the failure of many of these schools and the hypocritical government support for the schools, seeing as the import of cheap goods from the mother countries caused many vocational school graduates, such as seamstresses, to be unemployed (Ayandele 1966:296; Foster 1965:134). In 1845 the C.M.S. I found that while educational outcomes are generally better in places that were exposed to Christian missions in the colonial era, traditionally polygamous societies benefited less. West Africa owes to the Christian missionaries not only a new religious faith which has changed the beliefs and life of millions of people, but also the foundation of western education. Another difficulty that the early missionaries faced in the spread of Christianity was insufficient Christian literature at that time. Among these were the Congregation of the Holy Ghost (commonly known as the Holy Ghost Father), the Society of African Missions (SMA), the Society of Missionaries of Africa, popularly known as the White Fathers because of the white Muslim-like clothing which the Fathers wore, and the society of the Divine Word (SVD, abbreviated from its Latin name). Babalola, E. O. Christianity in West Africa. The training college later became part of Achimota College. This research was funded by the European Research Council. Waterville Pub. Thank you! In 1858 ten years after the founding of the first college, the Presbyterians opened a sister college at Aburi for the training of women teachers. While the protestant evangelical movements were gaining ground in West Africa, similar movements were being promoted by the Roman Catholic Church in Europe. *You can also browse our support articles here >. The others included the Christian responsibility for the regeneration of African peoples. It happens that some people convert at the end of their life in order to be buried in the prestigious Presbyterian cemetery. Moreover, they introduced new crops into the Ghanaian economy. The restrictions intensified until in the second week of 1917, when all German missionaries were rounded up, brought to Accra and deportations began on December 16. In fact, most of the norms opposed by missionaries concerned gender relationships. The result is that today, many Africans are alienated from their authentic ways of life. In Sierra Leone, the Church Missionary Society (CMS), offshoot of the Anglican Church, was the first to become firmly established chiefly among the freed captive and freed slave settlers from Britain, Nova Scotia and other parts of the New World. For that matter, they rebelled against their chiefs and elders. In 1981, Father Burke was promoted to headmaster and rector of Pope John XXIII Secondary School and Minor Seminary in Koforidua. As churches of the Volta Region begin reproducing, ABWE wants to reach out to Ghanas unreached people groups in its eight other regions. A short history of education in British West Africa. In 1892, the Church Missionary Society opened the Iyi Enu Hospital in Onitsha which is today a leading hospital in Anambra state. The colonial Eritrean government ensured that native Eritreans received poor education by permitting them to only attend school up to the fourth grade (Miran 2002:127). However the superficial motivations and ideologies have changed, at the most basic level both contemporary Northern charities and nineteenth century missionaries share the belief that the North must come and save the suffering natives, which in the case of the missionaries, has been proven to have inflicted more harm than provided relief. Establishment of Christian Churches In Sierra Leone. They impressed it upon their converts not to have anything to do with these traditional practices. Samuel Adu-Gyamfi And Benjamin Kye Ampadu, Ajayi, J..F.A and Michael Crowder History of West Africa. It was not until the nineteenth century, that the new religion was really established in West Africa. Amidst much honest missionary activity in the country for two centuries, prosperity gospel teachers have also gained influence, and numerous indigenous cults have arisen with distinct appeal and just enough truth to create confusion and syncretism. One reason why the Christian missionaries came to Ghana and the rest of Africa was to convert the people to the Christian faith. 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. 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. Meanwhile, the Scottish missionary, Mary Slessor, had established a reputation in the Cross River area as a nurse. The Scottish Missionary Society had been working in Calabar, Nigeria, also a British colony adjacent to the Gold Coast and it was from the Calabar Presbyterian Church in Nigeria that a missionary was sent to take charge of the Presbyterian work in the Gold Coast after the deportations. The kingdom of God in Africa: A short history of African Christianity. The home page of Compassion Canada is that of a stereotypical Northern charity: showing pictures of suffering children alternating with those of post-intervention, happy children. These missionaries saw death in the course of their evangelizing work as a means to ascend to heavenly glory. The resulting atmosphere of disunity enabled the European colonialists to easily achieve their goal of economic exploitation. The activities of the early Christian missionaries negatively affected the development of African traditional political institutions.