Growth and Decline in the Anglican Communion

1980 to the Present

David Goodhew, David Goodhew

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317124412
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

The Anglican Communion is one of the largest Christian denominations in the world. Growth and Decline in the Anglican Communion is the first study of its dramatic growth and decline in the years since 1980. An international team of leading researchers based across five continents provides a global overview of Anglicanism alongside twelve detailed case studies. The case studies stretch from Singapore to England, Nigeria to the USA and mostly focus on non-western Anglicanism. This book is a critical resource for students and scholars seeking an understanding of the past, present and future of the Anglican Church. More broadly, the study offers insight into debates surrounding secularisation in the contemporary world.

Africa

3
Ghana

Daniel Eshun

Introduction

When it comes to numerical church growth and decline in Ghana, the Anglican Church is an enigma. On the one hand, the Church has increased the number of dioceses since 1980, which seems to suggest that there is growth. On the other hand, there are no clear national statistics of membership to show that the creation of more dioceses is an indication of overall numerical growth. Whilst some dioceses seem to have declined in activity, others are flourishing so the whole national picture is a mosaic. Furthermore, the Anglican Church is the oldest mainline Protestant Church in Ghana, but she has been outgrown by other mainline Protestant Churches – Methodist and Presbyterians – and the Pentecostal/Charismatic movements that recently appeared in terms of numerical growth, infrastructure and other resources. This chapter attempts to explain this enigma: the ambiguities, ironies and paradoxes that surround the Anglican Church.

We will start by giving a very brief history of the Anglican Church in Ghana to set the scene.¹ Secondly, to get a measure of how the Anglican Church is faring in the Ghanaian religious marketplace in comparison to the Methodists, Presbyterians, and other Churches (particularly the Church of Pentecost and International Central Gospel Church), we shall consider the population explosion and the general growth of Christianity in Ghana since the 1960s. This is really important because the Anglican Church like all other Churches in Ghana is ‘fishing’ or ‘competing’ for men and women in the same religious ‘pond’ or ‘market’ so her performance can only be measured and explicated by observing other Churches alongside her. We shall then discuss Anglican growth and decline in comparison with other Churches. Finally, I shall attempt to offer explanations that account for growth and decline, and make some suggestions for hope in the future.

Before we proceed, we need to flag up some data and methodological issues. It appears that the national malaise of not effectively documenting events and keeping statistics has affected the Anglican Church more than the other mainline Churches and well-run, business-like Charismatic and Pentecostal Churches. Commenting on the documentation of the Anglican Church in Ghana, J. S. Pobee, an illustrious son of Church, points out: ‘One of the banes of the Anglican Church in Ghana is constant failure to document things, leading to loss of resources.’² Pobee suggests, even when one takes into account that there is a large number of non-literates in the Anglican Church, we should still insist that keeping accurate records is a necessity.

It has been depressing to see that record keeping of the Anglican Church in Ghana, whether at the Provincial or the Diocesan or the Parish levels leave much to be desired. It has been a wounding sorrow to see that that Joint Anglican Diocesan Council’s (JADCs) offices have no up-to-date records of statistics of numbers. It has been further wounding to see that parishes have kept no up-to-date-log book of principal service.³

The present writer encountered the same difficulties and frustrations in writing this chapter. We will come back to this lack of data when discussing the numerical growth and decline of the Anglican Church.

Owing to the lack of clear national statistics and other documentation, we have relied on figures that the Anglican Church has provided at the websites of the World Council of Churches, Diocesan websites, where figures of growth have been made available, the Ghana national census, national newspaper reports, and Bishops and other Church leaders’ public comments on growth and evangelism in media. In addition, we have found J. S. Pobee’s The Anglican Story in Ghana very helpful. Furthermore, the writer is a Ghanaian priest, though selected, trained, and ordained within the Church of England in the United Kingdom. He has maintained close links with the Anglican Church in Ghana, visiting every other year. The writer also, between 1996 and 1998, conducted extensive fieldwork in the country examining the mainline Churches’ (Catholics, Anglicans, Methodists and Presbyterians) responses to the Ghana-ian traditional religion, African Independence Churches and the Charismatic Movements. The observations, experiences and the data collected during these periods have informed the analysis of this chapter.

A brief history of Anglican Church in Ghana

The Anglican Church in Ghana is the oldest Protestant Church in the country. It began on May 13, 1751, in the person of the Revd. Fr Thomas Thompson, an Englishman from Yorkshire, Fellow and Senior Dean of Christ’s College, University of Cambridge, who accepted the post of a Chaplain to the European traders at the Gold Coast and to be a missionary for the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. Thompson’s ministry lasted only four years and did not make any impact on the indigenous population for two reasons: Thompson did not have command over the indigenous language and his commitment as the Chaplain to the Europeans took much of his time.⁴ However, Thompson learnt from his little engagement with the indigenous peoples that it would be easier for them to communicate the gospel to their own people than for Europeans to do so.

To follow up this vision he sent three people – Cudjoe, Coboro and Quaque – to England in 1754 to be educated for the priesthood (Quaque was the only one who survived).⁵ The Revd. Philip Quaque was the first black African to be ordained into priesthood in the Anglican Church in 1765. He returned to the Gold Coast in 1765 in the employment of SPG as Chaplain to European traders and missionary to the indigenous population. We shall argue later that the ministry did not bear much fruit for many reasons that still have a bearing on the situation of Anglicanism in Ghana today. Ghana was given an Episcopal See in 1904, the Diocese of Accra, with Nathaniel Temple Hamlyn as the first Bishop. After a succession of colonial Bishops, the diocese came under the first Ghanaian Bishop, Ishmael Samuel Mills Lemaire, in 1968. Since then eight more dioceses have been created. It is interesting to note that the SPG appointed Thomas Thompson, Philip Quaque, and subsequent priests primarily as Chaplains, and that there was no clear mandate for their missionary work.

Ghana’s population explosion and the growth of Christianity from post-independence to the present

The growth or the decline of the Anglican Church ought to be understood against the backdrop of Ghana’s population explosion. In 1960, Ghana’s population three years after independence was 6.7 million. This figure increased to 8.6 million in 1970.⁶ For whatever reason, the 1970 census of Ghana did not include the religious affiliations of the population but the 1960s did as follows:

Table 3.1 Religious affiliation in Ghana in the 1960s

Total population: 6.7 million	Religious affiliation in percentages
Christian	41
Muslims	12
Traditionalists	38
Others	9

The Ghana Statistical Service breakdowns of the total percentage of Christians were as follows:⁷

Table 3.2 Christian denomination percentages in Ghana in the 1960s

Total percentage of Christians: 41	Representation of Christian denominations in percentages
Catholic Church	13
Mainline Protestant Churches	25
Pentecostals	2
African Independent Churches (AICs)	1

A few observational comments need to be made here. First, the percentage of Christians in comparison to traditional religion was not very high (41% and 38% respectively). This was partly due to Nkrumah’s attempt to protect Ghanaian traditional religions within the religious market for the sake of national identity and pride. During the colonial period, Britain did not declare the Gold Coast as a Christian nation although all the institutions established were modelled on the European style and on Christianity. ‘All the state functions in the colonial period began and ended with Christian prayer.’⁸ Christianity was given a privileged position over traditional religions and Islam.⁹ After political independence, Nkrumah was of the view there should be a ‘new political order as well as religious order’,¹⁰ and he declared Ghana a pluralistic society, where no one religion had an advantage over others. Paradoxically, though, traditional religion was given a privileged position. Nkrumah wanted Ghana to forge her national identity on the Ghanaian traditional religion and culture rather than on Western values.¹¹

For example, to demonstrate to the whole world that a new identity was being created, all Nkrumah’s cabinet ministers wore the Ghanaian traditional Kente clothes, libation was poured to ancestors instead of Christian prayers, and the traditional drums were played accompanied by traditional religious dance at the Independence Day ceremony held on 6 March 1958. During the colonial period, European missionaries banned the use of traditional drums in the Church, as they were perceived as ‘satanic’ and ‘pagan’, and the Anglican Church in Ghana embraced the Book Common Prayer, as the only proper way of being an Anglican.¹²

The Christian Council of Ghana initially resisted Nkrumah’s new religious policies but the autocratic government and its oppression made the Church leaders bow to political pressure. For example, in June 1961 Nkrumah had a private meeting with the Reverend Professor Christian Baeta (a Ghanaian Presbyterian), the Head of the Department of Theology at the University of Ghana and the Chairman of Christian Council of Ghana. Hitherto the department had focused on Christian Theology, Biblical Studies and Church History. Nkrumah said:

You know that I do not want to interfere with the teaching of Theology or Christianity or anything, but this is a secular university…. If you are going to teach Christianity, then you are also going to teach African Traditional Religions and Islam seriously.¹³

The political pressure brought to bear on Christians leaders led Baeta to stress in a paper he wrote in the 1960s that the continuous Christian denunciation of traditional beliefs and practices as mere ‘superstition and false’ did not address the national aspiration. He argued that whereas officially the Church condemned traditional religious rite as ‘pagan and false’, even members of the Church resorted to traditional religion in times of crisis.¹⁴ He recommended that ‘instead of Church condemning traditional religious beliefs and practices as superstition, the Church should adopt these practices and Christianise them’.¹⁵ We will deal with the link between Anglican growth and need for a proper response to traditional religion later in this chapter.

Due to political instability, severe drought, famine and economic hardship there was no census in the 1980s. However, the Ghana Statistical Service report estimated that the total population was 10.8 million;¹⁶ the religious affiliations were as follows:

Table 3.3 Religious affiliation in Ghana in the 1980s

Total population: 10.8 million	Religious affiliation in percentages
Christian	62
Muslims	14
Traditionalists	21
Others	1

Christian percentage of the population in denominations in the 1980s was as follows:¹⁷

Table 3.4 Christian denomination percentages in Ghana in the 1980s

Total percentage of Christians: 62	Representation of Christ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of contributors
• Illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Overview
• Africa
• Asia
• The Americas
• England
• Conclusion
• Afterword
• Index