Africanising the Catholic Mass Celebration in Ghana: Recognising Cultural Identity or Agenda to Retain the Faithful?

Abstract

The Catholic Church started in Ghana in the 1500s. The missionaries of this Eurocentric Church prohibited its converts from practising their culture, for example the singing of folksongs, drumming, dancing and wearing of talismans in and outside the church, because they were deemed satanic, savage, fetish, heathen and ungodly. The missionaries’ perception was that Ghanaians did not know God and they—the missionaries—had come to Africa to “teach the Ghanaians” about God. Church premises were decorated with the cross and Christ images to facilitate full conversion of converts; whereas Ghanaian traditional, cultural and religious shrines for the veneration of “their” gods were destroyed. Church hymns were in Latin and English with few translations. However, in a noteworthy change of heart, over the past two decades Ghanaian drums, songs and dance were once again accepted into the Mass. This ethnographic study, which was undertaken to understand the sudden “U-turn” on Ghanaian culture, found that the change of attitude was to recognise African culture with the agenda of retaining the faithful in the wake of competition from emerging charismatic churches.