Since the early 19th century, a number of Africans have come to select Christianity instead of, or in addition to, their existent religions. European missions intended for proselytizing Christianity in Africa also meant the introduction of educational, technological and medical advances to the continent, thus contributing to the high number of African converts. But it is insufficient to interpret the reasons behind those conversions merely from these materialistic aspects. We need to consider another aspect of conversion-one of spontaneity.
Historian Richard Gray has researched an African appropriation of the European Christian doctrine. He states that accompanying Europe's accelerated scramble to colonize sub-Saharan Africa, disillusioned black Africans grew skeptical of a “white” sermon, and thus developed their own interpretation of Christianity. This “appropriation” of Christianity for Africans in turn succeeded to encourage more conversions.
In contrast, Gray regards those black Christians who converted before full-scale colonization as men of curiosity, or as slaves protected by the missionaries. Thus, he considers their conversions irregular from the view of appropriation. This paper, however, which focuses on the activities of the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society in mid-19th century Ghana and concentrates especially on the conversions of dependents called “pawns, ” aims to delineate their conversions also in terms of an appropriation of Christianity.
In 19th century Ghana, a black dependent classified as a “pawn”-which meant a pledge of a debt-had a means to emancipate himself from his violent master. He could be redeemed by an influential person, and thereby removed from his bad situation. Therefore these dependents (occasionally with success) tried to influence the “rich” missionaries, who had been instructed by their headquarters not to have anything to do with slavery, to engage in redeeming “pawns”. In short, the pawn people were able to change their original, i. e. religious, relations with the missionaries.
Thus this paper looks to widen the interpretation of “appropriated Christianity”, from a religious meaning to a practical one as well, and the attempt to grasp African conversion from one historical view will be successful.
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