Religious Coercion in Mission Schools: Another Unwanted Colonial Legacy and Relic

One of the most disturbing aspect of attainment of Independence by any fomer colony, is the continuous existence of colonial relics and unfortunate legacies in that former colony bequeathed to them by the colonial aadministrators.

These relics and legacies usual remain a serious national canker, a social cancer without panacea, and a massive albatross around the neck of that nation.

As imposed legacies and seemingly insurmountable relics, they continue to be means by which neocolonialism is carried out by the former colonial masters.

From style of governance, economic management, form of education, to the worst of them all, religions that were dumped on us, are all issues that continue to torment former colonies today, like this issue of religious coercion in Ghana, which keeps undermining our sovereignty and Independence as a people.

The reality is that European colonizers, particularly in Africa, had a terrible perception about the people of Africa such as seeing us as less humans who were barbarians, savages, heathens, and pagans. And they had deliberately decided to develop retooling and reformational methods and ideas in order to humanize and civilize the Africans.

According to Etim E. Okon, in his “Christian Missions and Colonial Rule in Africa: Objective and Contemporary Analysis”, the disgust of Europeans for people of Africa led to the creation of theories such as the “Conversionism”, “Permanent Trusteeship”, and the “Racial Subordination” Theories purposely to brainwash, deculturize, Christianize, civilize, and to Europeanize Africans. And in that order.

And those theories dictated how they should go about civilizing and westenizing Africans.

For example, the Conversionism theory scholars theorized that Africans, as they could study them, were less than human beings with severe cognitive impairment and needed many years of kindergarten-like tutelage in order to civilize them.

The Permanent Trusteeship theory scholars had also argued that Africans were permanently toddlers in mindset and hopelessly inadaptable to civilizational standard neither will they ever improve cognitively. Hence, the need to PERPETUALLY colonize us without ever giving us Independence.

The Racial Subordination theory scholars were rather brutal and harsh in their perception about Africans. For them, Africans were the natural human-donkey very good at only in laborious labor and perpetual servitude or slavery in the service of the European superior race.

Consequently, these scholars decided to formulate methods by which Africans could be transformed and civilized. Deculturization tools were therefore created giving birth to the four Gs or the four Cs: Government, God, Gold, and Generation, or, Colonization, Christianization, Commercialization, and Civilization of Africa and Africans. And the scramble for Africa is a telling example of how the Europeans saw Africans.

Partly, the combination of these Gs or Cs had occasioned what is often referred to as the “unholy union” as far as European imperialism in Africa, is concerned.

European form of government, religion, education, were then formulated and imposed upon us to achieve the goal of deculturizing Africans and Europeanizing them.

However, the religion of Africa, particularly, was what they believed to be the main reason and cause for the Africans' condition. But to Christianize us, other methods were needed: education.

In Ghana, the Wesleyan Missionaries who established the Methodist Church and the Wesley Girls' High School, had invented the idea of using education to Christianize the indigenes. Then other Missionaries like the Basel Missionaries who established Presbyterian Church and Presc Legon High School, followed suite.

The Salims and Boarding schools were immediately created for that purpose. Their primary target was therefore children of the Gold Coasters.

Nevertheless, when Governor Gordon Guggisberg became the Governor of the Gold Coast, he came out with the famous sixteen (16) educational plan known as the Guggisberg 16 points for educational reform.

Among these points, Guggisberg explicitly directed the Missionaries who were the sole education providers to strictly educate Africans according to our culture and religion.

And that was the beginning of reforming mission schools from Christian indoctrinating facilities to secularized educational facilities.

Then, in 1951, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah together with the colonial administrators introduced the Accelerated Educational Plan for the Gold Coast. Some of the educators mainly missionaries were unhappy about the new arrangements which was collapsing their idea of Christianizing through education.

Meanwhile, the government saw the need to now demand the real education of the children of the Gold Coast, and not some disguised agenda for Christianization.

The government therefore made a proposal to the missionaries and mission schools who were the sole educators at the time, to either defrock (secularize) and work with the government on the en masse education of Ghanaian (Gold Coast) children, or peacefully bow out of the new educational policy.

The Missionaries led by Archbishop T. Potter, agreed to work with the government with their vast educational facilities. But that promise has never been kept, which explains why those institutions continue to coerce students to worship against their will in the Christian way.

That is because, the purpose for the establishment of those instructions was for proselyzation and Christianization to be precise. They were not genuinely interested in the education of children. It’s therefore very difficult for them to let go their institutions just like that.

The Wesleyan Missionaries who established Wesley Girls, lost up to eight of their most intellectual scholars to Malaria in the Gold Coast in their efforts to spread Christianity. Similarly, the Basel Missionaries also lost up to about 6 Missionaries. They had had a record number of evangelical martyrs who lost their lives in the establishment of these schools for Christianization purposes.

If you empathize with these mission schools, you would realize how offensive it would be to them, if the very people they had been established to convert, are now even practicing in their amidst.

Despite the deaths? No way!
And that explains why the mission schools find it difficult to be law abiding citizens, and even obey their scriptural golden principle which says "do unto others as you want them do unto you" in respect of this issue.

Many of their best brains had perished in the establishment of this enterprise which Muslims want to takeover in their eyes.

And for my fellow Muslims to appreciate how painful and frustrating it is to these mission schools seeing Muslims practice in their own backyard, imagine building a Mosque to convert LGBTQ community. Then the gays and lesbians turn the Mosque into their practicing grounds with men sleeping with their fellow men and women to women! In the name of human rights?

What fucking law or human rights will be that? How disgusting would that be to any Muslim?

That’s exactly what we do to the mission schools when we as Muslims or other faiths, go there to flaunt our religion in their face.

It’s a huge insult nobody will accept. It's like inviting homosexuals to the Mosque in order to convert them into Islam then they decide to use the Mosque to practice gaysm.

My plea then is that, while we expect the mission schools to be lenient and accommodating of other faiths, religious minorities ought to be sensitive to their sensibilities.

If you must go to a mission school as a Muslim, try to be moderate, considerate, and reasonable in practicing your faith.

Don’t play holie-than-thou of your religion and make it look as if your religion is superior than theirs.

Regarding attending their Church services, you can as a Muslim attend them without being a Christian. Employ phenomenology by suspending your biases and pejorative judgements in your relation to them.

Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him) taught us that actions are judged by the intention behind them. Your presence in a Church will be judged by your intention for being there. Even in the Mosque. Your prayers, as a Muslim, are judged and rewarded by Allah according to your intention. If you are praying or fasting for people to see how devoted you are, you are not a Muslim in the sight of Allah. Instead, you’re a hypocrite, a disbeliever.

Similarly, if you attend a Church but your intention is not to be a Christian but for school authorities to know you were in the Church, you did not become a Christian in the sight of Allah. You are still a Muslim.

But if your level devotion as a Muslim can’t allow you into a Church to be mere observer, then you must conduct yourself in a manner tthat won’t be insulting and offensive to the Church or the school.

Finally, to the leadership and administrators of mission schools, I implore them to be civil with minority religious groups in their midst.

Sometimes, you only get what you want by unleashing or letting go, not controlling, possessing and imposing.

And the fact that the theories such as the “Conversionism”, the “Permanent Trusteeship”, and the “Racial Subordination” were tools of colonization for deculturizing and brainwashing Africans, which gave birth to the idea of religious coercion, must be enough for mission schools to consign this colonially primitive mentality of religious coercion to the dumpster of colonialism where it belongs.

Again, Mission schools as intellectual incubators cannot afford to be the number one breacher of constitutional rights irrespective of their emotions.

It is possible for the Mission schools to still achieve their goal of spreading the “Word” through tolerance, kindness to religious Joseph M. Y. Edusa-Eyison, “The History of the methodist Church Ghana”. (2011), minorities. For peace, God, and country.

The Writer, Abdul Hakeem Iddrisu, is a Master of Philosophy student with his Research area being religious freedom in mission schools. For further discussion: Call 0557762967 or What’s up 0261669954.

SOURCES:

1. David Owusu-Ansah, “Secular Education for Muslim Students at Government-Assisted Christian Schools: Joining the Debate on Students’ Rights at Religious Schools in Ghana”, Journal of Islamic Studies and Culture Vol. 4, No. 2. (2016).
2. Joseph M. Y. Edusa-Eyison, “The History of the methodist Church Ghana”. (2011).
3. Samuel Adu-Gyamfi, Wilhemina Joselyn Donkoh & Anim Adinkrah Addo, “Educational Reforms in Ghana: Past and Present”, American Research Institute for Policy Development; Journal of Education and Human Development, Vol. 5, No. 3. (2016), 166.
4. Wiafe, Ernestina “Formal Education in Gold Coast-Ghana: An Overview of Colonial Policies and Curriculum from 1919 to 1927,” Educational Considerations: Vol. 47:No. 2. (2021).
5. Abdulai Iddrisu, “Between Islamic and Western Secular Education in Ghana: A Progressive Integration Approach”, Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, 22:2, 335-350, DOI:10.1080/1360200022000027302. (2002).