Abstract
Abstract This paper (re)examines European missionary encounters with Ghanaians from the sixteenth – twenty-first centuries from Ghanaian perspectives. The paper makes three main arguments: first, European missionary endeavours were quite peripheral to ongoing indigenous religious activities and daily life, with the movement of Christianity from the periphery to the center of Ghanaian society a more recent phenomenon with political implications and concerns. Secondly, missionary and colonial decisions were often made in response to indigenous activities, not vice versa. And thirdly, this methodological approach of hearing African and European voices in dialogue serves as a much-needed corrective to favouring European perspectives within African mission history. Taken together, this provides fresh insights into questions of how/why Christianity went from the periphery under European missionary leadership to Ghana’s primary religion post-independence, offering differently nuanced understandings to concepts of mission while giving dignity and respect to the local context, people, and institutions.
Highlights
In common idiom, when someone expresses a view with which we disagree, or erroneously offers their perspective as being ours, we might reply, “speak for yourself!” This signals both that we have a different view, and that we prefer to express it ourselves
That this methodological approach of “speaking for ourselves” and hearing African voices in dialogue with European voices serves as a much-needed corrective to favouring European perspectives within African mission history
These engagements were wrapped in ambivalent attitudes of positivity, negativity, ironies, vulnerability, and suspicions on both sides; further evidence of missionary activities being on the periphery of the lives of many indigenous people
Summary
In common idiom, when someone expresses a view with which we disagree, or erroneously offers their perspective as being ours, we might reply, “speak for yourself!” This signals both that we have a different view, and that we prefer to express it ourselves. That missionary and colonial policies and decisions were often made in response to indigenous activities, rather than vice versa Thirdly, that this methodological approach of “speaking for ourselves” and hearing African voices in dialogue with European voices serves as a much-needed corrective to favouring European perspectives within African mission history. That this methodological approach of “speaking for ourselves” and hearing African voices in dialogue with European voices serves as a much-needed corrective to favouring European perspectives within African mission history To draw solely on missionary and colonial records for the arguments presented here would be challenging but counterproductive, since neither party wrote with the intention of highlighting Ghanaian voices, and could not themselves offer a Ghanaian perspective While missionary accounts understandably center missionary activity, it should be remembered that in all these periods, missionary activities were rather on the fringes of the wider society
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