The Role of the Church in the Cultural Development of Ghana-Emeritus Bishops Peter Kwasi Sarpong. 

The Church has played a very ambivalent role in the cultural development of Ghana. In the first place, the Church was brought to Ghana by Missionaries who saw nothing good in the culture of Africans.

Before coming to evangelise, they had read books on Africa, which were written by explorers, navigators, traders, adventurers and warriors from Europe who were not trained anthropologists or sociologists and who only described what they considered to be weird, strange, abhorrent and detestable in African life.

For many of them, the African was only a near sub-human person, without any sense of decency; his customs and practices were superstitious and lacked any sense of true religion. Africans were bereft of morality, as clearly demonstrated, for texample, in the nudity of their women.

Early Missionary Activity

The Missionaries, having been armed by this sort of distorted information, came to rid the African of the grip of the devil. Whatever practices and institutions the African had were condemned outright.

Hence totally innocuous customs like funeral rites, puberty ceremonies, rites of passage, which were, in fact, the mainstay of good life, commendable behaviour and praise-worthy conduct were forbidden. Innocent Ghanaian dances were prohibited.

Even political, legal and economic systems were frowned upon simply because the principles underlying them were different from principles of those governing the same institutions in Europe.

For example, in traditional law, the swearing of the oath to underscore one’s innocence was interpreted as superstition. Swearing the oath onlymeans referring to a historical tragedy of national importance, like the killing of a king in battle.

The mention of such an episode may be banned. One who breaks the ban is summoned before the court to explain why he should remind the nation of a painful incident that is better forgotten. How and why such a tradition is superstitious is difficult to justify.

saw nothing good or worthwhile in African traditional religion.

It was The Missionaries, in their innocence and well-meaning intentions, and animism.

It is amazing what Christians have come to consider a all idolatry, paganism, heathenism, primitive, fetishism, polytheism harmless practice like libation to be. For them it is repulsive and intolerable, idolatrous.

Instead of Christians thinking about the reason why Jesus Christ came into this world at all, and why Jesus Christ instituted the Church, they fight about and condemn libation, an institution that keeps us constantly in touch with the world of the unseen, with God himself and with the spirits that even the Bible admits exist.

Christians have brushed aside the need to love their neighbour, the need to seek peace wherever we go, the necessity of faith in God, the need to be compassionate, kind, forgiving, loving, sensitive to the plight of others and so on and so forth, and occupy themselves with condemnation of what they think is not in the Bible or against the Bible.

UnChristlike Attitude

In the name of Christ, Christians fight among themselves for power, for prestige, for wealth and for false solidarity.

Following the line of approach to evangelisation that was brought by the early Missionaries, they forget that never once did Jesus condemn the faith, the beliefs, the virtues of other people, such as the Good Samaritan, the Samaritan religious persuasions of other people. Instead, Jesus highlighted the woman and the Syrophoenicians.

children of the one Creator God- a ridiculous contradiction. Take the Good Samaritan. There was this man who had become the victim of brigands.

A priest passed by without looking at him; a Levite also passed by without looking at him.

We know what the Samaritan did. Take the Samaritan woman who met Jesus at the well and notice the conversation between Jesus and her. Jesus’ words were not condemnatory but salvific.

The woman was converted. This is the sort of religious tolerance and understanding that characterises our cultures.

Failure to Understand Culture

Unfortunately, Christianity’s initial antagonism to African culture was born out of the fact that Christians failed to understand what culture is all about. Culture is the sum total of the activities, the ideas, the traditions, the ways of life, the beliefs, the linguistic heritage, the rites, customs, the norms, the history of a people that have been learnt and passed on from one generation to another in a given society. Culture is not learned; it is acquired through formal or informal or non-formal education. It is a human trait.

It is only human beings on our planet that have cultures and all societies have their cultures. Culture comprises everything that the society, as a society of human beings, possesses.

It deals with proverbs, how the traditional leader is chosen; how criminals should be punished, how to farm, the food that we eat, how it is prepared, the welcome that is to be given to the stranger, the values that the people cherish, the ideas about death, hunting; it deals with inheritance, succession; it deals with anything connected with the people that has some permanency about it.

Fear of the Lord

In Ghana, as in other parts of Africa, the culture is a religious culture.

It has God as its centre and as its point of reference. Whatever we do must be pleasing to God and, by implication, to the ancestors and the other spirits.stealing from a blind person, his relatives or friends or even passers will say: Don’t you fear God? And yet Christians have the nerve to c those who are not Christians Anhunyamefoo (People who do not know Traditionally, if somebody does something abominable m God).

If Christians knew their culture, they would know that majorny of non-Christians are better human beings than many, many Christian Here are people who describe those who are naturally good, peaceful and so on as human beings, in Akan, Oye nipa dodo.

Here are people for whom those who are a liability to the socich e not human beings, Onye nipa. Here are people who would condem ill-treatment of scornful attitudes towards any person with a physica disability.

Isn’t this what God’s religion prescribes? You shall not curse the deaf, or put a stumbling block in front of the blind, but you shall fear your God.

I am the Lord (Lev. 19:14). Ours is a culture the denounces in unequivocal terms travesty of justice, as clearly stated in God’s Holy Book: You shall not act dishonestly in rendering judgement Show neither partiality to the weak nor deference to the mighty, but judge your fellow men justly (Lev. 19:15).

This should show us how our way of life is directly from God, just as Christianity is from God. Therefore, the two cannot be against each other and if they appear to be, then there is something wrong with our understanding of Christianity or culture or both.

Identification with Culture

Culture is what makes me what I am, a Mende and not a Kikuyu and its culture that makes that man what he is, a Yoruba and not a Hausa European Christian evangelisers’ initial aversion to ways of life of then such crimes as bribery, corruption, nepotism, hedonism Africa did not help in the cultural development of the nation.

If it had prostitution, abortion, arrogance, deceit, selfishness, power have taken on the frightening dimension that we find ourselves in nom drunkenness, ethnocentrism, avarice, hard-heartedness, should never Instead, Ghanaian life would have been characterised by the fear of s Lord, kindness, generosity, love, peace-making, sexual decenes.

The Role of the Church in the Cultural Development of Ghana hospitality, hard work, truthfulness, tolerance, acceptance, love of life and happiness.

These are some key values of our cultures. If the form of Christianity that reached us had helped to develop our culture, instead of condemning it, the present-day indiscipline at all steps of the societal ladder would have been unthinkable.

Gratitude for Positive Signs

We can thank God that as time went on, some Christians came to realise that culture is not the monstrous being terrorising the nation but that, on the contrary, it is the greatest ally of Christianity, in its laudable efforts after the fashion of the Lord Jesus himself to produce the human person: Many have come to realise that if we are able to go back to our roots (Sankofa), we will be perfect Christians and perfect Ghanaians.

They have taken this so seriously that they no longer condemn the cultural practices that were prohibited in the past but have adopted them.

They have come to realise that culture is not drumming and dancing, although these are integral aspects of culture, but that culture has to deal with the essence of human beings’ relationship to one another, the relationship between a woman and her husband, children and their parents, chiefs and their subjects, workers and their employers, politicians and the populace, the seller and the buyer, the teacher and the pupil, the guest and the host, etc.

Culture deals with mutual acceptance and assistance and so on and so forth.

Culture can tell a story of God’s peace, holiness, love and, above all, fatherliness.

Thank God, many Christians have come to realise that you do not have to read the Book of Proverbs to know something about God, his providence, his eternity and his power over us.

Hundreds of the thousands of proverbs that each Ghanaian society has tell the whole biblical story of God, his personality and his operations.charches the radi Save ko person thinking

Use of Cultural Elements

We have now begun, and in many cases succeeded to use African ideas, images, thinking, idioms, to express the Christian truth about God.

We have now come to realise that the kete drum is not the devil that the early missionaries associated with it but that it is an instrument of expression of joy that has been given us by God, as indeed the mpintin drum, the fontomfrom drum, the atumpan drum also are.

By using elements proper to the Ghanaian culture in Church to instruct people in the faith, to encourage them to be disciplined, to urge them to respect authority, to persuade them to be good citizens, to push them to love one another and seek after peace, to encourage them to keep the environment clean, the Church has given a boost to cultural development in Ghana.

Chris teena imp cul ne ad

In an imperceptible but effective way, the role of the Church in cultural development has been enormous.

Through preaching and persuasion, the Church has tried to do something about practices that are obviously outmoded, thus refining our cultures.

Such customs as killing of people when a chief died, female circumcision, the creation of witch villages, the Trokosi, heavy bride-wealth, have been dissuaded by the Church. What is more, by preaching the Gospel of life, of hard work and of truthfulness, all of which are cultural values, the Church has played the role of a patriotic agent in the society.

The Church, again, has helped in destroying such negative cultural tendency as ethnocentrism (giving attention to only people from one’s clan or one’s tribe).

By bringing people from different ethnic backgrounds together in Church to worship as one body, this cultural bane of national unity has been purified.

In these subtle ways, the Church has promoted cultural development in a practical way.

Gone are the days when some Churches forbad the use of Ghanaian drums at the funeral of their members.

Gone are the days when a preacher was reprimanded for wearing a Ghanaian cloth to preach; gone are the days when Christians were separated from non Christians in a village; gone are the days when a Christian could not celebrate marriage or a funeral in a cultural way.

Nevertheless, we have to lament that there are still some Cinta churches which condemn anything cultural I once heard a minister on the radio describing followers of traditional religion as followers of satan.

If such a person had the slightest idea of Christianity, he wadd have known that Jesus Christ has told us never to condemn another person (ef. Jn. 8:1ff) and yet, alas, there are many who follow that line of thinking.

Consequences of Lack of Circumspection

Christians must be ashamed that by forbidding puberty ritss, for example, they have opened the floodgates to juvenile immorality, teenage pregnancy, abortion, prostitution and so on.

Christians must be ashamed to realise that the HIV/AIDS menace would have been an impossibility in the good old days when children and adults had a cultural way of controlling themselves sexually, and therefore did not need to have recourse to the condom to indulge in fornication and adultery, Christians must, therefore, continue to study their culture and pick out the wholesome elements in it for the enhancement of their own human dignity and patriotism.

Conclusion

In conclusion, we can say that the role that Christian Churches have played in the cultural development of our nation has, on the one hand, been disastrously negative and, on the other, gloriously positive. May the next 50 years of our life see Christians of Ghana knowing their cultures, respecting their cultures and using their cultures in their lives.

If they do, there is no doubt that they will have self-satisfaction, become indispensable to the progress of their nation and be a credit to the God who made them.

Rightful owner:Emeritus Archbishop Peter Kwasi Sarpong.