Christianity in northern Nigeria. As happened in other colonial territories, the government did not show great interest in the provision of education in Ghana until the missionaries had extended their services throughout the country and had set up primary schools and a few secondary schools and training colleges. While it has brought undoubted benefits, it has also harmed the traditional way of life. They were replaced in Sierra Leone by the Holy Ghost Fathers in 1864, who made converts in large numbers not only among the pagans but also among the members of the then competing Christian churches. 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. Arnold, 1986. 4; img 109. In the case of Ghana, like other nations, the impact . Father Tetteh also took note of Father Burkes humility and devotion to his students. English Get full access to all 9,566 pages that make up the Ghana in Records from Colonial Missionaries, 1886-1951 collection. senior high school crs Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of UKEssays.com. The common response among traditionally polygamous people is well illustrated by a passage in Jomo Kenyattas famous book on the Gikuyu in colonial Kenya: This [the insistence on monogamy] caused a great confusion, for the African could not understand how he could drive away his wives and children, especially in a community where motherhood is looked upon as a religious duty; the children are regarded as part and parcel, not only of the father, but of the whole clan (mbari), and without them the mbari is lost. The Rev. Within ten years of Father Bergheros visit, the Roman Catholic Church in Nigeria had become so well established that it ceased to be under administration from Dahomey. Roman Catholic and Anglican missionaries came to the Gold Coast from the 15th century. The statistical evidence suggests that education would have spread more evenly. Notable among these were cocoa and coffee. African Drama But despite the work of Portuguese missionaries based on the island of Sao Tome and later of Spanish missionaries in Benin, it was not until the nineteenth century that the Christian religion was firmly established in Nigeria. The governor had observed the bad moral life of the Europeans in the fort. On the opposite side, the coming of the Christian missionaries brought in its wake certain negative developments like disregard for African culture and rebellion against traditional authority. Efforts to change these norms were often aimed at women. We use cookies to improve your experience on our website. The South African War is not covered in this grouping of letters. Some observers have argued that the Europeans used the Christian bible to justify the practice of slavery and the slave trade. Thus as early as 1823, the Roman Catholic Sisters started a clinic for the sick and for children in Banjul. The American Episcopal Evangelical (A.M.E.) Zion Church owes its foundation in Ghana to Bishop J. Bryan Small, who started work first at Keta in 1898. Furthermore, each denomination had differing policies on education, so standards in education fluctuated across each colony, depending on what denomination had schools in each area. S.J. Longman Nigeria Plc., 1994, Boahen, A.A. et al Tropics in West Africa History. These trends occasionally brought kings into conflict with the missionaries and their converts. The lead was followed by other missionaries, notably the Roman Catholic, whose first higher institution was St Edwards Secondary School in Freetown. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2004. ), Father Auguste Moreau and Father Eugene Murat, arrived at Elmina and revived the Roman Catholic Church in Ghana. Teacher training colleges in Ghana did not expand as fast as the secondary schools. Who is Mrs. Konrad in Second Class Citizen? essay writing Furthermore, mission schools discouraged traditional ways of life outside of the classroom. famous poems In short, the impact of teaching in the vernacular was more negative than positive, as it reinforced colonial rule and no doubt did very little to preserve native cultural identities, seeing as missionaries promoted European languages as superior and only used the vernacular because conversion and religious instruction were such high priorities. Earlier in 1846, the Rev. While the Evangelical Presbyterian missionaries were the First to develop literature in Ewe, the Roman Catholics were responsible for Nzima literature. He told me that that amount of money could pay for school fees for five students in secondary school in Ghana.. This hymn sums up the reasons why the Christian missionaries came to Africa and other parts of the world. And traditionally polygamous societies would have higher educational outcomes today. Rather, it denationalized and facilitated the indignity and loss of cultural identity of the Ghanaian. Andreas Riis, assisted by a team of West Indian evangelists, laid the foundations of the Basel Missionary Church in the country. In Ghana, for instance, they persuaded their converts to reject polygamy and human sacrifice. By 1914 there were barely thirty schools in that vast area. For terms and use, please refer to our Terms and Conditions The Presbyterians, also, opened hospitals in several parts of the country, including the one at Agogo in Asante-Akyem. 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). Thomas Thompson, arrived in Cape Coast in 1752. Some of the missionaries came with them (549 years ago) but many died from the cruel tropical weather of forested West Africa. As happened in other West African countries, many more mission-sponsored hospitals were founded in the course of the twentieth century. There were several reasons for this poor education, some intentional and some not. In Nigeria, one of the lasting works of the C.M.S missionaries was the development of literature in Yoruba. A.G. Frazer, did much to encourage the promotion of indigenous culture, but by and large the colonial authorities contributed to dwindling a good deal of our cultural heritage. The kingdom of God in Africa: A short history of African Christianity. Their educational activities helped spread literacy and vocational skills training among Ghanaians. 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. He worked zealously as an evangelist and schoolmaster in the Castle School until his death in 1816. Foremost in the contribution of the early Christian missionaries to the development of Ghana is their efforts to bring Western education to Ghanaians. At the end of the eighteenth century, the Evangelical Revival began to bring to Africa an influx of missionaries whose laoburs would produce the first fruits of an enduring Christian presence in Sub-Sahara Africa. In such asituation, provisions and other things had to be sent into the country not in large quantities as would have been desired by the missionaries. It included the opening up of Africa to forces of change namely commerce (legitimate commerce, i.e. Hope Waddell was later joined by the Rev. This allowed me to estimate the impact of mission schooling directly. As much as the governments liked to assign blame to the missions, they were also accountable for the poor education through their educational policies. 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. Vol. While missionaries could sometimes clash with colonial governments, for the most part missions were important tools for colonial governments. university courses Among the Christian missionaries that came to the Gold Coast (Ghana) were the following. "Big things have small beginnings"; so is The Presbyterian Church of Ghana. Upon completing his degree, Father Burke received his first assignment abroad: Ghana, the first Black sub-Saharan country in Africa to gain independence from a colonial power. Purchase a license below to view the full collection. 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 this respect the Christian religion therefore differed from the traditional religions of West Africa, which along with an acceptance of one Supreme Being worshipped a hierarchy of gods. They constitute the benefits that the missionaries brought to Africa as a whole. Unsurprisingly, the level of education increased as one moved closer to the missionaries. Your email address will not be published. It happens that some people convert at the end of their life in order to be buried in the prestigious Presbyterian cemetery. In 1981, Father Burke was promoted to headmaster and rector of Pope John XXIII Secondary School and Minor Seminary in Koforidua. 26. Volunteers and donors to organizations such as Compassion Canada believe that they are being humanitarian when they build schools in Africa, volunteer as teachers or help in other ways to improve the quality of education in African nations, yet missionaries and colonial governments were similarly lauded as performing a great work of humanity (Beck 1966:117) and likewise believed that they were helping their African pupils. By focusing on the African demand for education, I showed that Africans were not just passive recipients of mission schooling. Given their priorities, it should thus come as little surprise that missions often provided poor education to the African pupils. These missionaries saw death in the course of their evangelizing work as a means to ascend to heavenly glory. Clarke, Peter Bernard. Although modern scientific research has confirmed the medicinal properties of these concoctions, traditional medical practice had several shortcomings. Father Burke became director of the Divine Word Language and Cultural Centre in Ghana. Lewis, Donald M., ed. Andrew Jackson Foster (1925-1987) was an American pioneer of deaf education in several countries in Africa. In addition to contributing to fluctuating educational standards across the colony, inter-denominational rivalry caused a disparity in access to education. Hundreds of believers were baptized, branches organized, and a mission established. The last two decades have witnessed the emergence of privately owned higher education institutions in Nigeria, including those owned by religious bodies and even by their individual members. ASSESS THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE CHRISTIAN MISSION TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF GHANA. The missionary impact on education would have far-reaching consequences, as their creation of a weak basis of education would slow down the political and educational development of many former colonies in Africa. The First Missionaries were sent as a result of a request by Major de Richelieu, Governor of Christiansborg. The missionaries believed that in order to stabilize the faith of converts and to assist in character development, it was necessary that they should be able to read the scriptures or other books of religious instruction, translated by the missions. The consequences of norm conflicts are likely to manifest beyond educational pursuit. 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). WhatsApp : +233204700052 For instance, in Nigeria, one of the first groups of missionaries to introduce organised medical services were the Roman Catholics. 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. endstream endobj 504 0 obj <>>>/Lang(en)/MarkInfo<>/Metadata 55 0 R/Outlines 135 0 R/Pages 498 0 R/StructTreeRoot 142 0 R/Type/Catalog/ViewerPreferences<>>> endobj 505 0 obj <>/MediaBox[0 0 612 792]/Parent 499 0 R/Resources<>/Font<>/ProcSet[/PDF/Text/ImageC]/XObject<>>>/Rotate 0/StructParents 0/Tabs/S/Type/Page>> endobj 506 0 obj <>stream Kalu, Ogbu. In the Western Region, the Catholic Sisters running a hospital at Eikwe specialized in maternity cases, and like Slessor in Nigeria succeeded in stamping out the practice of killing twins at birth. A notable example was the Asafo Company, a purely military and social organisation of the peoples of Ghana, which was condemned by the early missionaries because of its presumed connection with fetish practices. Many Ghanaian communities got divided along religious lines. While they frowned upon bridewealth, female genital cutting, or matrilineality, they held a special grudge against polygamy. The evangelical societies founded in the Americas included the Baptist Missionary Board and the Nova Scotian Methodists, whose members went to work among the Maroons, who had settled mainly in Liberia. It also plays an important role in organization of inheritances within matrilineal houses and thus exerts influence from a legal point of view. Barely ten years later, after the first missionaries arrived, the Methodists, for example, had started a station as far inland as MacCarthy Island. The Journal of Negro Education, 2019 I well remember when he came to live with me in Trenton. Do you have a 2:1 degree or higher? 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. However, accustomed to monogamy, few European missionaries were open to such arguments. 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. I will earn a commission if you follow a link to purchase a product. Apart from the extreme south and the Horn, the interior was hardly touched by Europeans before the last quarter of the Nineteenth Century. Learn how your comment data is processed. It was not until 1909 that the government opened a teacher training college and a technical school in Accra. In the days of Portuguese contacts with Nigeria, Catholic priests had established missionary stations in Benin and the neighbourhood. 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. The Society of the Divine Word is the world's largest Roman Catholic order of priests and brothers who focus on missionary work. Frank Ogodo Ogbeche For instance the scholar E.A. Finally, education affects many other aspects of peoples lives, including economic opportunities and political attitudes. Other difficulties they 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. Ekechi, Felix K. Colonialism and Christianity in West Africa: The Igbo Case, 19001915. The Journal of African History 12, no. Despite their significant contributions to education, local language development, agriculture and the economy as a whole, the missionaries have been criticized severally. Contribution of Christian Missionaries in Ghana, Reasons Why Christian Missionaries Came to Africa, Discontinuation of Outmoded Cultural Practices, Negative Effects of Missionary Activities, Negative Impact on Traditional Authorities, Limited Support for The Production of Local Food Crops. Just look at the lyrics of this evangelizing song written in 1819 by Reginald Heber, a prolific English hymnist in the Anglican church. A tiny act of kindness is remembered by a young man in need. Within a short time the missionaries spread their activities inland. In 1910, a prominent report of the World Missionary Conference concluded: [T]here can be no question of polygamy. 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 Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, the Moravian Mission, the Mission of Bremen, the Methodists, and Roman Catholic missionaries all established themselves on the Gold Coast (Ghana) between 1820 and 1881, opening elementary schools for boys and girls . In my study, I explored how colonial era conflicts and disagreements over marriage norms lastingly affected educational development. Predominantly Muslim territory, the North received western education later than the South. Although it can be said that Christian missionaries benefitted Africans by bringing in the more advanced Western education to the European colonies in Africa, it is believed that the mission schools in fact had a negative impact on the native peoples. The most momentous discovery in western Africa came in 1471, when Portuguese captains first reached the coast of modern Ghana between the mouths of the Ankobra and Volta rivers. The study examines the historical foundations of Western education in Meru and factors that influenced its development. Besides, the missionaries had to travel longer distances to inland towns from their southern stations. The Ghana Education Decentralization Project (GEDP), launched in 2010 and ended in 2012, has increased the influence of local authorities over management . The blessings which Christianity has brought to West Africa are many. Another important missionary doctor was J. R. Stephen who for many years headed a missionary hospital at Ilesha. Johannes Zimmermann wrote a grammar of the Ga language and translated the entire Bible and a Bible history into Ga. Then in 1874, the Rev. Indeed, most of our early nationalists were all products of mission schools. First, alignment can help you communicate your . A special memorial Mass was celebrated at the Holy Spirit Cathedral in Accra, Ghana, on Oct. 9. Metadata. This was around the same time that the first Portuguese sailors arrived on the coast of Ghana. He professed vows in 1953 in Conesus, N.Y., and was ordained to the priesthood in 1961 at Techny, Ill. After an unsuccessful beginning by the society of African Missions (SMA), this missionary body moved into other territories in what is now Liberia, Ghana and Nigeria. First, I looked at how educational outcomes depended on the distance to historical missions. Today, local communities and ethnic groups that were more exposed to mission schools, still achieve higher levels of education, when compared to communities where there were no schools. Indeed, once the souls had been saved and since the students must have been considered clever enough, European languages were almost universally the languages of instruction in the later primary years and in secondary schools (Beck 1966: 120; Foster 1965: 159; Miran 2002:127). 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. 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. Its message was that of love and the universal brotherhood of mankind. Prior to the advent of western education, Ghana's traditional social structures had inbuilt opportunities for mobility. This instruction in 1948 developed into the University College in Ibadan. The Basel Mission, as a result of this phenomenal expansion trained many local personnel to man the new stations. Box 6000, Techny, IL 60082-6000. They preferred to hold onto polygamy, even at the cost of illiteracy. Hilliard, F.H., 1957. 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. I wanted to buy a smartphone for him, but when he got to know the price of the cell phone, he humbly declined. We must not lose sight of the fact that the colonial government in Ghana and elsewhere in Africa relied on the activities of the missionaries to help them achieve the objectives of colonial rule. These Christian converts considered themselves to be holier than their traditional rulers and elders. 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). Now, with the burgeoning Cocoa industry, the expansion of commercial activity, the development of gold mines and the building of roads and railways disturbed the traditional lifestyle. document.getElementById("ak_js_1").setAttribute("value",(new Date()).getTime()); This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. For that matter, they rebelled against their chiefs and elders. Among his pioneering achievements, he arranged for three youths to be sent to England for training as evangelists. As churches of the Volta Region begin reproducing, ABWE wants to reach out to Ghanas unreached people groups in its eight other regions. Establishment of Christian Churches In Ghana. In 1858 the Rev. Other Roman Catholic hospitals were built in all the nine regions of the country; including those at Asikuma and Foso (Central Region), Akyem Swedru (Eastern Region), Berekum (BrongAhafo), Maase (Asante Region) and Anfoega (Volta Region). 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. 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 . House, 1967. Thus, because of the motive of proselytization, unqualified teachers, and inter-denominational rivalry, missions frequently provided poor education. The Committee for Women's Work was responsible for the education of native girls. In regions where a denomination felt threatened by another denomination, the denominations were more likely to establish more schools in an attempt to gain more converts than their rival, while in regions such as northern Nigeria, where colonial policy prevented too much rivalry, schools were scarce (Bassey 1991:45). The Christian Connector is a great resource for Christians and aspiring ministry leaders and missionaries to apply for scholarships. 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. For example, they preached against human sacrifice. Success followed the efforts of the pioneer missionaries. Often drumming and the harmless songs and dances of the people were condemned. Instead of adapting the teachings and practices of the new religion to suit indigenous values, as it did when the same Christian religion adopted Greek, Roman, German and Anglo-Saxon native practices, the early Christian missionaries condemned totally as pagan, and to be avoided by their converts, whatever they considered strange. African poetry NUUT Co. Ltd. Kumasi, Ghana, 2011, Baarkinado. Four volumes of incoming correspondence marked "West Africa" on the spine. This decreased the zeal with which people began to accept the Gospel leading to nominal Christianity. wassce literature questions. The school, which was established the year of independence in 1957, was a work in progress. Johann Christaller produced a similar work in Twi. He was followed, three years afterwards, by the Rev. As happened in parts of Yorubaland in the last century, some of the Christian missionaries often engaged in local politics and took an active part in helping the colonial authorities in their wars of territorial expansion. One Liberian student recalls that we were taught to dress properly, to eat properly, to speak properly. The missionary and colonial education aimed at character training and civilization resulted in cultural annihilation and religious, and linguistic hegemony. 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. In such situations, the message sometimes appealed to the local people depending on the efficiency of the interpreter. For example, they made our people view polygamy and puberty rites as pagan practices. That missionaries used the vernacular illustrates the fact that missionaries were principally evangelists, and that they considered their other roles, including their role as educators, as less important. Cookies are small, safe and secure text files that sit on your computer which we use to give you a better experience on our site and help us improve the service that we provide to you.
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