Returning African Christians in Mission to the Gold Coast

Abstract

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.