Abstract
The Asante Traditional Religion was in existence and the home of many Asantes long before Western missionaries introduced Christianity and Islam into Asanteman. The Asantes believe in the Supreme Being, spirits, ancestral veneration and life after death. However, with the introduction of Christianity and Western education, Western missionaries condemned Asante culture and religion and taught Asantes to abandon their culture and religion, and convert into Christianity. Some Asantes who converted into Christianity were asked to imbibe Western European culture and religion and to become like Western Europeans in thought and action. They were to assume the names of European saints and abandon some of their traditional names and practices which were considered pagan. Christian rites of passage were introduced to replace the time-tested Asante rites of passage. With the introduction of Christianity and Western education, many young Asante converts abandoned their culture and traditional religion and adopted the Western European culture and religion as a way of life. Even though official Church teachings and documents urged European missionaries to be Asantes with Asantes, some missionaries still abandoned caution and judged the Asante converts from the perspective of a European worldview.The author conducted a doctoral research in 2017 at Ejisu Juaben Municipality among three selected Churches, namely, the Roman Catholic Church, the Methodist Church Ghana and the Church of Pentecost using 377 respondents and nine purposive in-depth interviews. The study also reviewed existing literature available on the subject. The Statistical Package for Social Sciences software for Windows, version 23 was used to analyse the data. Majority of respondents agreed that early Western missionaries provided formal education, health care and charitable services to the needy in the municipality. However, they also admitted that the early Western missionaries interfered with Asante culture and considered Asante Traditional Religion as pagan. The early Western missionaries were unable to study the language and culture of the Asantes and so could not penetrate the deep-rooted traditional Asante culture and religion. This paper proposes that Christian missionaries should synthesise the Christian message with Asante culture in order to win the heart of the Asante convert into Christianity. Keywords: Encounter, Christianity, Asante culture, Asante Traditional Religion DOI : 10.7176/JPCR/42-04 Publication date :March 31 st 2019
Highlights
The battle for dominance that erupted following the introduction of Christianity to Asanteman by Western Christian missionaries over three hundred years ago still rages on and no truce appears to be in sight
Consistent with the case of other African ethnic groups, the Christian missionaries brought the Gospel to the Asante people wrapped in a foreign culture - a European culture – and insisted that before conversion to Christianity, the indigenous Asante should become a European of some sort
In conclusion, we have discussed the encounter of Christianity and Asante culture
Summary
The battle for dominance that erupted following the introduction of Christianity to Asanteman by Western Christian missionaries over three hundred years ago still rages on and no truce appears to be in sight. According to Opoku (1978), many traditional ways of transferring knowledge which facilitated the transfer of indigenous knowledge suffered low patronage, because the products of the western mission schools refused to perform traditional practices Such an attitude made the educated people more secular than religious in their perspectives about life. The missionaries emphasised human equality and education of women for the benefit of society In this perspective, mission Christianity pioneered formal education and made outstanding contributions to primary and senior high school education in Asanteman. The attention paid to the children was motivated by the fact that the missionaries clearly saw that the adult Asantes were men and women already deeply rooted in traditional culture and religion They were traditionally religious to the core and to Christianize them in the light of the new and foreign social environment would be very difficult. From data of a doctoral research project collected in 2017 (Table 1), majority of respondents (83.2%) based on 371 valid responses out of 377 people interviewed in the Ejisu Juaben Municipality within the Asanteman agreed that Western missionaries built schools that have provided education for a lot of people in the area
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