AB R A H A M NA N A OP A R E KW A K Y E
Returning African Christians in Mission
to the Gold Coast
A B S T R A C T
The transatlantic slave trade created an African diaspora in the Western
world. Some of these diaspora Africans encountered and embraced the
religion of their Western masters. Life in the Caribbean diaspora provided
an opportunity for the nestling of ideas that were to shape the
establishment of the Christian faith in Africa. Following the failures of
European missionaries to make an impact in Africa in the early
nineteenth century, freshly emancipated Christians from the Caribbean
became agents of social transformation in the Gold Coast, Cameroun and
Nigeria. Using archival records from Basel in Switzerland and Ghana, this
paper explores the missionary initiative of Jamaican Christians who
worked under the aegis of the Basel Evangelical Missionary Society from
1843 to 1918. It provides evidence that these Jamaican Christians became
principal agents for the success of the Basel Mission’s enterprise in the
Gold Coast in the nineteenth century. The paper argues against a
Eurocentric approach to mission historiography that has obviated the
roles of Africans in the nineteenth century and demonstrates the legacy
which these returning Africans have left the church in Africa.
Keywords: Basel Mission, Gold Coast, Akuapem, Caribbean, diaspora,
mission history, West Africa
Studies in World Christianity 24.1 (2018): 25–45
DOI: 10.3366/swc.2018.0203
# Edinburgh University Press
www.euppublishing.com/swc
26 ST U D I E S I N WO R L D CH R I S T I A N I T Y
INTRODUCTION
West African Christianity is the result mainly of almost two hundred
years of Christian mission among African people. Beginning with the
nineteenth-century European missionary evangelisation of Africa,
through the period of emergence of the independence movement and
Pentecostal groups, it has become the representative face of Christianity
in the world. It is not only present on the continent, but also very visible
in American, European and Asian cities.
Mission Christianity in Africa in the past was often narrated from
a Eurocentric perspective, predicated on the erroneous assumption
that Africans were of a lower mental capacity compared to Caucasians.
Frans Verstraelen has shown that this blinded many historians
from seeing the full picture of historical reality (Verstraelen 2002: 1).
Andrew F. Walls, commenting on Latourette’s A History of the Expansion
of Christianity, argued that ‘since his time, much fundamental research
has been conducted on the primary sources, oral and written, and new
perspectives have been taken up in which Africans, Asians and Latin
Americans figure as the principal agents of Christian expansion’
(Walls 2002: 8)
One major group of African agents who played a significant but
unacknowledged role in the nineteenth century evangelisation of West
Africa were the Caribbean Christians from Barbados, Jamaica, Antigua
and other Caribbean islands. These individuals, who emphasised their
Afro-Caribbean heritage as distinct from the indigenous Africans, have
not been properly acknowledged in African Christian historiography. In
the last two decades, however, there has been growing research on some
of these Caribbean groups.1 These published and unpublished works
demonstrate that West Indian missionaries played significant roles in the
spread of the Christian faith in Sierra Leone, Cameroun and Nigeria.
Employing the use of archival and oral sources, this paper explores the
missionary initiative of Jamaican Christians who worked under the aegis
of the Basel Evangelical Missionary Society in the Gold Coast (Ghana)
from 1843 to 1918. It highlights the pivotal role they played in setting an
example of a Christian lifestyle.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE BASEL MISSION IN THE GOLD COAST
The Basel Mission (BM) was founded in the Swiss city of Basel in 1815.
Its beginnings are traced to the Deutsche Christentumgesellschaft, which
was founded in the same city in 1780 as a bible study and discussion
group and also to publish good Christian literature (Jenkins 1989: 4).
Returning African Christians 27
At the onset, they trained missionaries to serve with older, established
Protestant missionary societies like the Dutch Missionary society, North
German Missionary Society and Church Missionary Society. By 1821,
however, the founders decided to establish religious outposts abroad in
its own name (Miller 2003: 14). It started with a mission to Russia for
mission among the Jews, Tartars and Armenians. Another mission was
started in Liberia in 1826, but was soon given up as they failed to
maintain a foothold in the country. This was followed by a mission to the
Gold Coast in 1828. Three of the first batch of four missionaries died in
less than a year, whilst the fourth, Henke, died in 1831. Another batch of
three missionaries arrived in the same year, but two of them died within
three months of their arrival, leaving Andreas Riis as the surviving
missionary.
When the BM took up the task of evangelising the Gold Coast, it did
not anticipate the high mortality rate which earned the Gold Coast the
name, ‘the Whiteman’s grave’. Several Europeans died from tropical
diseases within a short time after arriving in the Gold Coast (Hansen
2002: 204–5). When the surviving missionary, Andreas Riis, relocated the
mission from Osu to Akropong in 1835 in search of a healthier climate,
the deaths did not cease. Coupled with the unwillingness of the indigenes
to convert and be baptised, it was a frustrating period for the mission. By
the mid-nineteenth century, European missionary societies were at the
point of abandoning Africa as a viable mission field (Wade and Newman
2002: 24). This is typified in the abandonment of Sierra Leone by the
Baptist Missionary Society in London and the disaster of the Niger
Expedition of 1841. Similarly, the Mission Committee recalled Riis in
1840, evidently with a view to end its mission in Gold Coast just as it had
done earlier in Liberia.
The Mission Committee, however, launched a fresh enterprise in 1843
and asked Riis to visit the Danish and the British West Indies to recruit
emancipated slaves. This was in response to a challenge thrown out by
the Okuapehene Nana Ado Dankwa.2 According to oral tradition, before
Riis’ departure to Europe in 1840, the Okuapehene said to him:
When God created the world, He made a book (Bible) for the
Whiteman and abosom (traditional gods) for the Blackman. But if
you could show me some Blackman who could read the Whiteman’s
book then we would surely follow you. (Kwakye 2011: 91)
In making this statement, the Okuapehene was reiterating a widely
held myth of the indigenous people of the time. In Liberia, the
28 ST U D I E S I N WO R L D CH R I S T I A N I T Y
Basel Missionary J. F. Sessing reported a similar conversation with the
Bassa King, Jove (Huppenbauer 2015: 12). H. C. Monrad, chaplain in the
Danish fort of Christiansborg (1805–9), affirmed that this was also a
widespread belief among the Ga, coastal neighbours of the Akuapem.
Monrad wrote:
In the beginning, so they believe, God or Jongmaa, created many
black and white people, the former first and the latter last. He then
brought forth two covered gifts of different sizes and allowed the
blacks to choose first. Greedily, they chose the largest gift, which
contained only things needed to worship the fetishes and the
necessities of life. The gift on the other hand which fell to the Whites
contained books and the sources of everything by which the
Europeans distinguished themselves from the Negroes. (Monrad
2009: 33)
Taking up the challenge, Andreas Riis returned to the Gold Coast in
1843 with another Basel missionary, Johann Georg Widmann; a Liberian
born, Beuggen-trained teacher, George Peter Thompson; and twenty-five
Caribbean Christians.3 The Millers, Rochesters, Catherine Mulgrave
and Alexander Worthy Clerk came from the Fairfield Congregation.
The Greens came from the Nazareth Congregation, whilst the Hall
family came from Irwin Hill. The Mullings and the Walkers came
from Bethlehem, and David Robinson from Fulneck. The seventeen-
year-old Antiguan, Jonas Hosford, from Grace Hill, was the only
non-Jamaican.
The group settled in Akropong, where they immediately started
their first school. Later in the same year, another school was started
at Christiansborg on the coast. The fruits of the mission were borne,
and soon the mission began to spread to other parts of southern Ghana.
Although several factors account for this success, the Caribbean
involvement was significant.4 This is further highlighted in Der
Evangelische Heidenbote (The Evangelical Message to the Heathens),
a major publication of the Basel Mission, in 1854:
The arrival of these colonists in West Africa and their settlement
among their fellows marks a watershed in the history of this mission.
For although they still had to first go through the difficult
beginnings, from now on, it advanced. The cases of death among
our brothers became extremely rare [or: were very seldom seen] and
the Negroes began to listen to the word of the cross.5
Returning African Christians 29
The Basel Mission aimed at establishing a Christian village culture
among the people of Southern Ghana and a church life and education in
the vernacular languages of Twi and Ga. It was involved in a
transformation of the societies in which it worked and made significant
achievements in many areas. The Basel Mission stayed in the country
until 1918, when the Swiss/German missionaries were expelled from
the Gold Coast, because it was a British colony. When they returned after
the War, the leadership had passed into the hands of the indigenous
people. The impact of the Basel Mission’s work is summarised by
Noel Smith:
In education and in agriculture, in artisan training and in the
development of commerce, in medical services and in concern
for the social welfare of the people, the name ‘Basel’ by the
time of the expulsion of the Mission from the country had
become a treasured word in the minds of the people. (Smith
1966: 154)
DIASPORA CHRISTIANITY AND RETURN MOVEMENTS
The idea of a diaspora is usually associated with the Jews. In both
Jewish and Christian history, it is used interchangeably with the
dispersion and carries a religious as well as demographic meaning.
Gerrie ter Haar has identified three main elements in the diaspora
(ter Haar 1998: 80–1). First, there is the element of dispersion.
Historically, the dispersion of Africans on a more or less large scale has
taken place since mediaeval times, when large numbers of Africans were
captured and taken to the Middle East, Asia, Europe and later the
Americas for forced labour by intruders. There have been voluntary
movements from the continent in recent times as well as before and
during the nineteenth century.
Secondly, there is the element of identity. Whenever people live in a
diaspora, identity becomes a crucial issue. The European and American
slave masters attempted to distort the African personality in the diaspora
by forcing a new identity on them. However, Africans in the diaspora
managed to maintain strands of identity that link them to each other and
ultimately to the continent.
Finally, there is the element of return, which is soteriological in nature.
With respect to Africans in the diaspora, there is a desire to return to the
homeland. The idea of return is not only physical, but also ideological.
Elom Dovlo has identified two broad categories of Africans from the
30 ST U D I E S I N WO R L D CH R I S T I A N I T Y
diaspora who return to the ‘Promised Land’ to reconnect with authentic
African spiritual identity:
First there are many pilgrims, tourists, scholars and students who
come to seek spiritual and cultural roots in African Traditional
Religions . . . the second type of Diaspora spiritual reconnection with
Africa is persons and movements who have already rediscovered
their authentic African spirituality in the Diaspora. They then return
to Africa to live and propagate it. (Dovlo, 2002: 2)
While Dovlo maintains two categories of Africans from the diaspora in
return, there is a third category of Africans in the diaspora who have
reconnected to the continent that are not identified in the typology. They
are Black Atlantic mission groups and individuals from North America,
the Caribbean and Europe who came to Africa as employees of European
mission agencies and whose lives had been transformed in the West. They
were ‘returning Josephs’, because like the biblical character, their
ancestors were forced into slavery in foreign lands and at this time in
the nineteenth century sought a return to the homeland.6 These include
the Basel Mission to Ghana in 1843, the Baptist Mission to Cameroun in
1844, the Wesleyan Mission to Ghana in 1845, the Presbyterian Mission
to Calabar in 1846, the Anglican Mission to Rio Pongas in 1855 and the
CMS Mission to Southern Nigeria.
It is this element of return that inspired the Caribbean Christians to
join the Basel Mission enterprise to the Gold Coast in 1843. When
Andreas Riis and his team arrived in Jamaica to recruit Christians, they
discovered that many of the Jamaican Christians were already willing to
go with them to West Africa. One of them, John Edward Walker, a thirty-
four-year-old farmworker who came from the Moravian Congregation in
Bethlehem, said that he had felt the call to go to Africa sixteen months
before their departure, at a time when there was no arrangement to
embark on this particular journey. As returning Josephs, they desired to
make an impact in Africa with the gospel. One can glean their motives
from valedictory speeches that were made in Lititz and Fairfield. At Lititz,
Walker said:
My dear friends, it is now about sixteen months since I felt the call to
go to Africa. I like to go, when I remember what the Saviour has
done for me. There were moments when I thought: Don’t go, they
will enslave you or kill you. But then, I had no peace in my heart. But
when I thought I will go where my good Lord wants me to go, I felt
Returning African Christians 31
contented. I therefore cannot be persuaded not to go, and do not
want to be persuaded thus. My relatives have said much to prevent
me from going, but even if people would give me much money to
buy me from my purpose, off, I still could not give it up go to Africa.
I would like to do something good for my Lord with my hands. If the
Lord helps me to be an example for the poor people over there. If I
leave you, I do not go to a foreign country. Africa is our country. Our
fathers and grandfathers have been brought here by force and we are
strangers in this land. But Africa is our proper country. I therefore
ask my brethren and sisters to pray for Africa and for us, when we go
there: to pray that the Lord may help us and bless us. We do not
trust in ourselves, therefore we are not afraid to go to Africa since He
will guard us and help us.7
Edward Walker’s speech gives us an indication of the prevailing
thoughts of the time among the Caribbean Christians. It indicates that
some emancipated Africans were still suspicious of the European, and
this may have created apprehension. Secondly, it shows that the motive
for responding was love, mercy and pity for the people of Africa. Finally,
it demonstrates Walker’s perception of Africa as the homeland – his
home – and therefore he expressed his return as the response to a divine
call. Later in Akuapem, as preacher, interpreter and provider of potable
water, he became the ‘example for the indigenous Africans’. His speech
therefore provides insight into the reigning ideas about Africa and the
abolition of slavery as well as African Diaspora Christianity of his time.
John Rochester, the thirty-one-year-old cooper from Fairfield,
similarly said:
My dear brethren and sisters, I am going to leave you to go to Africa.
I go with my life in my hand. If I live I live unto the Lord, if I die, I
die unto the Lord. I call to mind that our Saviour came down from
Heaven and left all his glory out of love for us, to do us good and to
save our souls. The love of Christ constraineth me to go to Africa to
tell the poor ignorant people about Him. I called to mind that if our
dear minsters had hardened their hearts against us, we would never
have had the light of the gospel shining about us. I called to mind
how the children in Africa are growing up like beasts running about
wild but your children have schools, and the gospel sounding in
their ears. We are going to set the people in Africa a good example,
by the help of God and to teach them how a Christian is to live and I
hope by our Saviour’s blessing, we may do some good to them. I beg
32 ST U D I E S I N WO R L D CH R I S T I A N I T Y
my dear brethren and sisters to pray for me and my wife and my
little boy.8
Rochester saw his journey to Africa as ‘a journey of no return’. While
his forebears had hoped for the possibility of a return to Africa, it seemed
to these twenty-five West Indians that a return to the homeland was
imminent and final. Whether this finality would be a result of immediate
death in ‘the Whiteman’s grave’ or a settlement in the homeland was not
the issue. Whatever the outcome of the trip, these Caribbean Christians
were more concerned about the motive for the return to the homeland.
The journey to Africa was motivated by self-giving love. Rochester
compared the love in his heart to the love of the Lord Jesus. Indeed Zorn
indicates that they gave up houses and lands for this mission and were
therefore not seeking an escape from the crisis of the post-emancipation
economy of Jamaica.9 This pure motive of love must be compared to
some impure motives that have driven world missions, for example, the
cultural motive, imperialist motive and the motive of ecclesiastical
colonisation (Verkuyl 1987: 163–75).
The ‘returning Josephs’ interpreted their mission to Africa this way – to
show by example the way of life of a Christian. This view of the mission
may have been communicated by the selecting officers including Riis. It
reminds us again of the challenge by Okuapehene Nana Addo Dankwa.
Assuming this comment by the Okuapehene was being discussed in
Jamaica, it will have greatly assisted the Caribbean Christians in clarifying
their understanding of their mission to Africa.
Before setting off, the Conference of the Jamaican Moravian Mission
drew up a contract of service with the Basel Mission. It was the view of
Jacob Zorn, the Moravian Superintendent of Jamaica, that a proper
contract would in fact constitute something new in the history of the
nineteenth-century missionary enterprise in Africa. The contract had the
following five stipulations:
a. The form of public worship and the rules of the Moravian
Church in regard to church discipline were to be adhered to.
b. The West Indians were to undertake to serve the Mission in all
its needs in return for which the mission would support them
entirely for the first two years.
c. The Mission would undertake the responsibility of providing
houses for the settlers as well as land for gardens on which
they could work at least one day of the week.
Returning African Christians 33
d. At the end of the first two years, the West Indians could
choose either to follow their own employment or to work for
the Mission at a reasonable wage.
e. Those who wished to be repatriated at the end of five years
would have their passages paid provided they had not been
guilty of a moral offence during this period.10
This was very significant as it also enabled the Caribbean Christians to
measure their expectations in the Gold Coast. It also helped clearly define
their roles and place in the mission.
BASEL MISSION WEST INDIANS IN THE GOLD COAST
When the West Indians arrived in the Gold Coast they stayed in
Christiansborg for a few weeks. The group made its way towards
Akropong, which was to be the nerve centre of the Mission’s work, on
10 May 1843. They stayed on for a month at the Danish royal plantation,
Frederiksgave (present-day Sesemi), which is about twenty kilometres
north of Christiansborg, departing again for Akropong on 17 June. Whilst
at Frederiksgave, Mary Hall gave birth to a son, Henry, who was baptised
by the Revd Johann Georg Widmann. A number of the immigrants fell
sick, and one of them, David Robinson, died.
They went on to settle in Akropong and built stone houses on what is
known today as Hanover Street, where they lived. They quickly swung
into action and together with their European colleagues set an example to
the indigenous Africans that it was possible to be African and Christian.
The leadership of the first mission station was organised with Andreas
Riis as the local President of the Mission. Hermann Halleur was in charge
of the economic side of the mission station, and J. G. Widmann was the
Pastor of the Akropong Congregation as well as School Inspector (Clerk
1943: 4). John Hall, the West Indian, was appointed elder of the
Akropong Congregation, and Alexander Clerk was appointed deacon
(responsible for the distribution of food and provisions to the settlers)
and teacher of the colonist children, whilst John Rochester was in charge
of agriculture (Smith 1966: 40).
As part of the contractual agreement, the Basel Mission provided
houses for the West Indians as well as land for gardens on which
they could work at least one day of the week (Koramoa and Reynolds
1978: 79)
These Caribbean Christians faced a number of challenges. Two of
these were the problems of illness and death, and abuse by their
34 ST U D I E S I N WO R L D CH R I S T I A N I T Y
European leaders, which made them seek to renege on their own pledge
to make Africa their home.
As to the former, as noted earlier, the missionary enterprise was often
threatened by illnesses and death. The arrival of the West Indians,
together with the discovery of quinine, helped to mitigate the rapid death
of the European missionaries. The West Indians themselves had some
challenges to their health. First, one can cite the early death of David
Robinson at Frederiksgave, which has already been mentioned. This was
only three months after their arrival and left the Basel Mission wondering
if it had made the right decision with the recruitment of these West
Indians.
Second, Catherine Green, one of the West Indian women, wrote to
Basel that she suffered from what may have been a cancer of the breast
and requested to be sent to another country where she might have better
treatment. She complained that:
Since my coming to this country [Gold Coast], I am troubled with a
very bad sore breast, and we tried all the means we know, but
instead of it getting better, it rather getting worse and worse. And
besides this the plasters which Mr. Riis gave me, it does not agree
with me at all. Therefore I send to ask you whether it would not be
better for me to change the country in order to see whether I could
get rid of this sore breast. For I do not feel healthy on account of it.11
A record of the Inspector’s response was not found; however, there seems
to have been no change in her condition. This state of affairs led
Catherine Green to mistrust the Basel missionaries. Johann Friedrich
Meischel, a Basel missionary, believed that Catherine Green influenced
her husband also to mistrust the missionaries and to believe ‘that we do
not intend to keep the promise to bring them back to the West Indies’.12
Eventually they requested repatriation to Jamaica and returned in 1849,
only for Mrs Green to die at sea.
These early deaths and sickness threatened the work of the West
Indians. As many more of them survived, it gave the Basel Mission hope
that it had not made a wrong decision in going to the West Indies for
African missionaries. Their ability to survive the tough tropical climate as
well as becoming examples to the indigenous Africans enabled the
Mission to expand its frontiers beyond Akuapem.
With regard to the second of the challenges noted above, the
complaints of the West Indians concerning abuse were sometimes
solved locally, while at other times they were compelled to turn to the
Returning African Christians 35
Mission Committee in Basel for help. In a report to the Basel Mission
Committee in 1844, the missionary J. G. Widmann indicated that ‘the
relations with the West Indian brethren had improved greatly’. This did
not last long because a year later, the West Indians came together to
endorse a fresh petition to the Basel Mission Inspector concerning the ill
treatment they received at the hands of Riis, the President of the local
mission. According to them, the local people had not offended them in
any way; however, they were willing to go back to Jamaica because of the
manner in which they were treated by Riis. A portion of the petition was
as follows:
We feel pleasure of confirming you these few line, about our present
condition in which where we live. Suppose these two years end, how
we can live in Africa, that we want to know and about Mr. Riis, how
we live with him in Africa, it is too bad because how he goes on with
his own we do not know how he will do to us and so we wish to
return to Jamaica, and in the meantime all the brethren agreed
together about how Mr. Riis goes in with us in Africa, sometime
anything he cannot call us as Christians and speak, he always quarrel
with us but we want to return back and also if Mr. Riis wrote
anything against us, they need not believe too much . . .13
Jon Miller has shown that Riis’ troublesome relations with Africans and
the chorus of disapproval from both blacks and fellow missionaries
caused the Committee quietly to withdraw him from the Gold Coast
on grounds of impaired health and a disturbed frame of mind
(Miller 2003: 132).
After some time, there was general disaffection amongst the West
Indians over clothes given them and the distribution of corn by the
deacon, Alexander Worthy Clerk. Although all of them grumbled that the
clothing was inadequate, it seemed that Hosford grumbled the loudest.
Andreas Riis in his anger had him flogged by Ashong, foreman of the
labourers. When the rod used by Ashong broke, Riis completed the
punishment with his feet and fists. The missionary Ernst Sebald noted
that ‘the West Indians had their faults but were wrongly treated by Riis
who had nevertheless good intentions. He thinks that the West Indians
should live like the natives.’14 This situation was similar to what
happened among the West Indians in southern Nigeria who maintained
that they were in a different class from the indigenous agents. Any
attempt to classify them as native was rejected as demeaning and
oppressive (Waibinte 2007: 105–6).
36 ST U D I E S I N WO R L D CH R I S T I A N I T Y
The flogging of Hosford had a disastrous effect as he moved to Osu,
where he stayed with another Basel missionary, Frederick Schiedt. He
later returned to Akropong and had more problems with the Basel
missionaries. Being a returnee African, his desire to observe African
cultural events had not waned with the passage of time and life in the
Diaspora. However, they had been warned in Jamaica to ‘keep entirely
clear from African superstition and not countenance it even by an
approving smile’.15 This seemed difficult for the young Hosford, who
could not keep away from watching funerals and what the missionaries
called pagan performances. He was offended when another missionary,
Johannes Christian Dieterle, opposed his behaviour, and he left for British
Accra. After some troubles in Accra he ran away to Cape Coast. He later
requested repatriation to the West Indies and died at sea on his way back
to Antigua. The abuse by the European missionaries therefore
endangered the mission.
AREAS OF INFLUENCE
The Caribbean missionary enterprise in the Gold Coast produced an
enduring influence in the areas of marital life, social action and
ecclesiastical leadership. Their example promoted the work of the
mission and led to the successful planting and growth of the Christian
faith in the Gold Coast.
Marital Life
In the course of their work, the Caribbean Christians had to deal with a
number of social issues including polygamy. Their lifestyle was meant to
represent to the indigenous people what the ideal Western Christian life
was. This is noted by Max Assimeng, who writes, ‘A most critical area of
debate, still being grappled with in the territories of West Africa where
missionaries have worked has been the institution of marriage. Christian
missionaries preached against plural marriage (that is to say, the marriage
of one man to more than one woman), child betrothal and imposed
marriages as a whole’ (Assimeng 2010: 95). From its earliest stage, the
Basel Mission was not spared the challenge posed by the African practice
of polygamy. Noel Smith wrote that:
The problem of polygamy came early to the forefront. Among the
Akan, although polygamy is the exception rather than the rule, it is
the sign of the well to do man and the chief. Many men therefore
preferred to retain the option, so to speak, of taking additional wives
Returning African Christians 37
and for this reason did not wish to commit themselves to a Christian
monogamous marriage. Others, who were attracted by the Gospel,
possessed more than one wife . . . Polygamy within the Christian
congregation was expressly forbidden; plural marriages which had
been entered into were to be resolved before a man could be received
into the Church. (Smith 1966: 93–4)
The Basel Mission practice – maintained by the successor Presbyterian
Church of Ghana – that condemned polygamy seems to be problematic
when applied in a typical West African society. For the first twelve years
of the missionary enterprise in the Gold Coast, there was no tangible
result in terms of conversions, and these problematic issues may have
been especially responsible. In Nana Addo Dankwa’s request for Africans
who could read the book, he was proverbially pointing out the cultural
differences between Africans and Europeans, a difference which Riis had
failed to observe. The arrival of the West Indians was therefore a
demonstration that, amongst other things, African people could live a
monogamous life like the Europeans.
The West Indian colonists who arrived in 1843 included some married
couples. They were John and Mary Hall; Joseph and Mary Miller; John
and Mary Rochester; James Gabriel and Margarethe Mullings; John
Edward and Sarah Walker; and James and Catherine Green. Catherine
Gewe Mulgrave was also married to George Thompson, the
schoolteacher. At Akropong all of the West Indians stayed at Hanover
Street. They showed the people of Akropong how Africans could live as
Christians. Peter Hall describes early family life of the West Indians in his
Autobiography:
When I was young, I remember that a bond of unity bound all the
West Indians together. Instead of ‘Mr’ they used ‘brother’ when
referring to one another. It was Bro. Clerk or Bro. Miller and so on,
and we the children always addressed them as ‘Uncle so and so’ or
‘Aunt so and so’. Among ourselves we referred to one another as
‘sister’ or ‘brother’. (Hall 1965: 9)
Sill has shown that this understanding of the faith community can be
traced to the ‘community of the brethren (which included the sisters), as
the Moravians were also named’ (Sill 2010: 122). The new, successful
monogamous family lives of these West Indians in Akropong affirmed the
Basel Mission teaching that Africans could live in monogamous
relationships. The example was followed by the new converts and
38 ST U D I E S I N WO R L D CH R I S T I A N I T Y
revolutionised the social sphere of Akuapem so that among Akuapem and
most of modern-day Ghana, monogamy has become the rule among
Christians. Polygamists are conceived of as not ‘full Christians’ and in
many cases are excluded from attending the Communion (Middleton
1983: 13)
Education
Jon Miller has shown that education (especially bible education) was one
of the strategies employed by the Basel Mission in its aim of moral and
social reconstruction of African societies (Miller 2003: 15). In
introducing Western education, the Mission sought to ‘liberate’ her
converts from the vestiges of darkness and superstition and also targeted
the meeting of the manpower needs of the growing Mission. It accounts
for the emphasis on seminary education which produced teacher-
catechists who were to play a subaltern role to the missionary in the
spread of the gospel. As Paul Jenkins has pointed out, ‘the educational
system the Basel Mission had pioneered on the Gold Coast was widely
admired as an unusually effective instrument of social and economic
development in West Africa’ (Jenkins 2003: 198).
This objective of the Mission in education was achieved mainly
because of the role of the first-generation West Indians. The two most
outstanding were Catherine Mulgrave and Alexander Worthy Clerk, who
were both trained in Jamaica before their arrival in the Gold Coast in
1843. A third first-generation West Indian who became an experienced
educationist was Rose Anne Miller, who was only seven years old at the
time of the arrival.
As cited earlier, Alexander Worthy Clerk’s task as teacher started with
the school for the children of the colonists at Akropong. He was a very
hard-working teacher, whose service was in great demand. His hard work
earned him the name Suku Mansere, an Akan corruption of schoolmaster.
He later expanded his school to take care of the indigenous youths who
enrolled. When the new Teachers College was started in Akropong in
1848, he was one of the small group of lecturers. This Teachers College
was deemed by the missionaries to be very significant to the success of
their enterprise. It aimed at producing teacher-catechists who were to
play a significant role in the evangelisation process. The products of the
school were to be teachers in the sense of general education, but also
catechists with seminary education for evangelism.
In 1845, there already seem to have been plans for the training of
teachers from Barbados. The proposal was, however, rejected by the local
Returning African Christians 39
missionaries in Akropong, who described it as ‘being of little use, for a
person instructed only in English finds great difficulty in the acquirement
of the pronunciation of the Aquapim (Akuapem) negroes and the
Ashantees’ and preferred the ‘establishment of such an institution in
Africa and the scholars of our schools to those of the West Indies’.16 The
effect of this was the establishment of a Theological Seminary in Osu in
1847 and later a teachers college and seminary at Akropong on 3 July
1848. The West African nationalist James Africanus Beale Horton,
impressed by the Seminary, wrote that ‘it is indeed an academic
achievement which can very well hold its own in comparison with
European Training Colleges of the period’ (Reynolds 1985: 42)
In the Seminary, Alexander Clerk was in charge of Bible Lessons, a very
essential aspect of the studies.17 Considering the fact that the training
offered at the College was meant to prepare the students for the work of
mission, the teaching of bible lessons was important. Clerk was therefore
entrusted with a very great responsibility, and some of his students were
John Powell Rochester, David Asante, Paul Staudt Keteku, William
Yirenkyi and Jonathan Bekoe Palmer, who became pioneer agents of the
Basel Mission. Clerk, together with other Basel missionaries, equipped
the indigenous Africans, who were to be crucial to the growth and
development of the church, with knowledge.
The second was Catherine Mulgrave, a trained teacher and wife of the
missionary teacher George Thompson. She was the pioneer of the Basel
Mission education programme for girls. A Eurocentric approach to
history has rather emphasised the role of Rosina Widmann, who arrived
long after Catherine had started her school in Christiansborg. Many of
her students became wives of leading indigenous agents of the mission.
These included Pauline Hesse, who married Alexander Clerk, and her
sister, Regina Hesse, who was married to Hermann Ludwig Rottmann, the
first Basel missionary trader in Christiansborg. Catherine was held in high
honour and established girls schools in all of the three stations Osu,
Abokobi and Odumase, where she lived between 1843 and 1891. The
schools taught reading, writing, needlework, gardening and household
chores.
The third teacher was Rose Ann Miller, eldest child of Joseph and Mary
Miller. As early as 1848, when she was only twelve years old, she began to
assist Rosina Widmann in the Girls School at Akropong.18 In her teaching
work, she had to deal with young female converts who grappled with the
encounter between tradition and their new faith. In 1857, she was
appointed head of the infant school in Akropong (Sill 2010: 135). She
40 ST U D I E S I N WO R L D CH R I S T I A N I T Y
was later posted to Aburi, where she started the Girls Boarding School in
1859 and served until 1874. However, because the Basel Mission policy
did not allow Europeans to serve under Africans, she was officially
subordinate to Julie Mohr, wife of the missionary Joseph Mohr, with
whom she had formed a collegial relationship. Even in this time, it was
Miller who was in charge of the pupils because Mohr’s work as midwife
often took her out of the station (Sill 2010: 143). In 1874 Rose Ann left
Basel Mission service to work for the Colonial Government in the
Government Girls School at Accra. She died in Accra at the age of 94.
Many second-generation Caribbean Christians were also involved in
the strengthening of the educational foundation-laying process for the
future nation. Notable among these were Timothy Mullings, Peter Hall,
Henry Hall, James Hall, Patrick Clerk, Nicholas Timothy Clerk, Charles
Clerk and Emil Miller. Wherever these trained teacher-catechists or
pastors went, they worked hard to give the people of the community
formal education.
One could say much more to show how the West Indians were deeply
involved in the provision of education under the aegis of the Basel
Mission. They played their roles together with other indigenous Africans
and Europeans in laying the foundation for formal education in the
country.
Ecclesiastical Leadership
This section will examine the role of the Caribbean Christians in
ecclesiastical leadership, that is, the leadership exercised within the limits
of the church. At the time of their arrival, some of these West Indians
already had some experience as local church leaders. John Hall was a
Presbyter/Elder in the Irwin Hill Moravian Church, Montego Bay, in
Jamaica (Hall 1965: 5) and was appointed the first Presbyter/Elder of the
congregation in Akropong. He helped the Basel Mission to run the small
Christian community there, performing a pioneering role in Ghana, but
one which he was familiar with from his time in Jamaica.
Alexander Clerk came to Ghana as a trained teacher and, as we have
seen, was also appointed the first deacon of the church in Akropong.
He served in many important positions, finally as an ordained minister
to the end of his life. Together with two indigenous African agents,
Theophil Opoku and Carl Christian Reindorf, he was ordained in 1872,
initiating a process of local ordination of pastors for the Basel Mission.
Clerk’s main stations as a Minister were Aburi and Tutu. Although he
finally settled in Aburi, it can be argued that it was in Tutu that he left the
Returning African Christians 41
greater legacy, where he built the first Basel Mission chapel with funds
raised locally.
Perhaps even more impressive was the pivotal role which Catherine
Mulgrave played in an organisation which believed in and practised a
strong patriarchy. In addition to her role as a pioneer of effective
schooling for girls, she pioneered a women’s movement within the Basel
Mission which has grown into a formidable Christian education organ,
the Presbyterian Women’s Fellowship. It was her Moravian background
that moved her in 1848 to organise the first women’s class, as the
Moravians practised an organisation of choirs or units in which Christian
education was offered. Having become the matriarch of the Osu Mission,
she assumed the role of mentoring the unmarried women under her care.
In this enterprise, Mulgrave’s success is seen in the moulding and
provision of Christian wives for the new African Christians. She is also
recognised for her welfare and evangelistic roles in the church. Reindorf
describes her as ‘our spiritual mother who paid house visits going after
the heathen’.19
Several second-generation Caribbean Christians, such as Henry Hall,
Peter Hall, Timothy Mullings, Charles Clerk and John Powell Rochester,
served the Mission as teacher-catechists and pastors. The position of
teacher-catechists in the Basel Mission Church was created as a subaltern
role to facilitate the spread of the gospel. As Andrew Walls has shown, the
position of catechist was created by the CMS – following the proposal
made by Henry Venn – as a sort of lower, unordained missionary (Walls
2004: 165). Venn had argued that there were catechists in the primitive
church and the office of the catechist was to be regarded as probationary
for higher orders, just as it was in the primitive church. The situation in
the Basel Mission was not different from that in the CMS, and these
teacher-catechists became the fulcrum around which the Mission
expanded its work. They served in the small stations under a
missionary or pastor and became the representative face of the Mission.
Later on, some of the catechists were ordained as pastors. These
include Peter Hall, Timothy Mullings and Nicholas Clerk. While Clerk
was in Anum, the missionary J. L. Mueller reported to Basel in 1890 ‘that
the people of Anum mostly go to Nicholas Timothy Clerk with their
problems. They look on the missionaries as strangers.’20 One could infer
that the people of Anum related better to Clerk, the second-generation
West Indian, whom they regarded as one of their own. This goes to show
that the Clerk family had really integrated into the local community, in
spite of their foreign origins.
42 ST U D I E S I N WO R L D CH R I S T I A N I T Y
CONCLUSION
Contrary to the perception that Christianity came to West Africa as a
European religion, this paper has provided an example of a strong ‘non-
European’ agency that helped plant Christianity in the subregion. These
Caribbean Christians were products of the abolitionist movement and the
emancipation era. They were also products of a century of Moravian
Christianity in Jamaica. They proved to be the key to meaningful mission
for the Basel Mission’s work in the Gold Coast and were involved in
various sectors of the life of the church.
Some of them eventually abandoned the mission and returned to the
Caribbean. Those who stayed served with distinction as God’s servants at
the forefront of the evangelisation of southern Ghana. They were Africans
who returned to Africa as missionaries, looking for opportunity to set an
example of a Christian lifestyle for the people of the Gold Coast. Whether
as missionary-teachers, missionary-craftsmen, missionary-agriculturists
or missionary-preachers and eventually national church leaders, they
demonstrated a clear sense of mission right from the beginning. They
played a significant role in the development of the Gold Coast. However,
unlike the indigenous Africans, they were really outsiders without family
links to the social setup in the communities where they lived. They did
not belong to any clan or family or ethnic group. They cannot, therefore,
be seen as part of the West African agents, but must rather be recognised
as a separate category of Africans – as Caribbean missionaries. Together
with their fellows who laboured in Cameroun and Nigeria, they laid the
foundations for modern-day West African Christianity, a historical fact
that was ignored for several decades by some African church historians.
Abraham Nana Opare Kwakye, Ph.D., is a lecturer of Church History and
Missions at the Department for the Study of Religions, University of
Ghana, Legon. His research interests are African Christianity and Mission
History. nkwakye@hotmail.com
NOTES
1 These include David Killingray, ‘The Black Atlantic Missionary Movement and
Africa, 1780s–1920s’ (2003); Jon Sensbach, Rebecca’s Revival: Creating Black Christianity
in the Atlantic World (2005); Horace O. Russell, The Missionary Outreach of the West Indian
Church: Jamaican Baptists to West Africa in the Nineteenth Century (2005); and
Wariboko E. Waibinte, Ruined by ‘Race’: Afro-Caribbean Missionaries and the
Evangelization of Southern Nigeria, 1895–1925 (2007).
2 Okuapehene is the Paramount King and Overlord of the Akuapem people in
Southern Ghana.
Returning African Christians 43
3 There were six families: the Halls, Rochesters, Millers, Mullings, Walkers and
Greens. The single persons were David Robinson, Alexander Worthy Clerk, Jonas Hosford
and Catherine Gewe Mulgrave, who married George Thompson.
4 After 1843, a much more homogenous group with a village background, who might
have been healthier and stronger than the earlier missionaries, arrived. Later missionaries
also took over Riis’s positive attitude to local medicine in the treatment of tropical
ailments. See Sill 2010: 125.
5 Basel Mission Archives (BMA), Der Evangelische Heidenbote, No. 10 (October 1854),
80–1.
6 The biblical patriarch Joseph did not return alive to the land of his fathers, although
his remains were brought back by the Israelites, led by Moses: see Genesis 37, 50, and
Exodus 13: 19.
7 Public Records and Archives Administration Department–Accra (PRAAD–A),
EC. 6/3, Hans W. Debrunner, Digest of Articles on Ghana in Basel Mission Periodicals
1828–1851, 61–2.
8 BMA – D-1,2, Africa Vol. III, 1842, No. 9b, Rev. Jacob Zorn to Rev. P. LaTrobe,
5 January 1843. Although Zorn does not name the speaker, one can infer from the list that
Rochester was the only one from Fairfield with a little boy.
9 Ibid.
10 BMA – D-1,2, Africa Vol. III, 1842, No.10, Contract between Moravians and Basel
Mission, 4 January 1843.
11 BMA – D-1,2, Africa Vol. II, Osu and Akropong, 1844, No. 17(a), Catherine Green
to Inspector, 12 December 1844.
12 PRAAD—A, Debrunner, Digest, 114,
13 BMA – D-1,2, Africa Vol. III, 1845, Ussu and Akropong, No. 2, Complaint of
West Indians, 13 January 1845.
14 BMA – D-1,2, Africa Vol. III, Akropong 1845, No. 13, Sebald letters, 16 May 1845
(Debrunner, Abstracts).
15 BMA – D-1,2, Africa Vol. III, 1842, No. 9a, Rev. Jacob Zorn to Rev. P. LaTrobe,
26 December 1842.
16 BMA – D-1,2, No. 10, Osu and Akropong, Akropong 1845, Memorandum about
Plan to Train Teachers for Africa in Barbados.
17 BMA – D-1,3, Akropong College Time Table.
18 ‘Abschrift des Tagebuchs meiner Urgrossmutter Rosine Widmann, geb. Binder aus
den Jahren 1846–48’ (‘Copy of the diary of my great-grandmother, Rosine Widmann,
née Binder from the years 1846–48’ (unpublished MS), 69–70.
19 BMA – D-1,48, No. 62, Annual Report Christiansborg, Carl Reindorf, 16 January
1889.
20 BMA – No. II. 99 – Mueller’s Report for the year 1890, 29 Jan 1890
(Jenkins, Abstracts).
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