The Nexus Between German Pietism and the Mission, Theology, and Spirituality of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, Ghana

Abstract

While the Pentecostal Christianity on the continent of Africa in general and Ghana, in particular, continues to attract growth in terms of membership, the same cannot be said of the historic mission churches in the same breath. This development is partly because the Christianity introduced by the nineteenth-century European missionaries was enveloped in European culture making it almost impossible to resonate with its religio-cultural milieu. As a result, converts have great difficulty in identifying with their newly found faith as it also struggled to address their existential challenges. This development had translated into a situation where the Christian faith as introduced at the time failed to attract new converts while some of the existing ones made their way back into their former religion (syncretism). Other developments besides syncretism experienced by the historic mission churches were schism(s) as well as the emergence of Pentecostal Christianity in Ghana.