The Political Economy of Heaven and Earth in Ghana 9956553174, 9789956553174

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“This book is a testament of Dr Charles Prempeh’s academic excellence, witting proficiency, his open and critical mind and ability to blend Philosophy, Religion, Politics, History, Economics and others in one book in a captivating analysis that must be read with both open and critical mind whether as a student, teacher, academic, pastor or whatever your background.” KOFI ATA, Cambridge, UK “The Political Economy of Heaven and Earth provides an insightful theoretical foundation of religion and politics in public governance.” THERESA BEBAAKU DERY, PhD, Medical Physicist/Research Scientist, Accra “The level of scholarship Dr Charles Prempeh has expressed in his book is breath-taking.” DR EMMANUEL FREDERICK ASHONG, New Jersey, USA “Dr Prempeh has provided us with an academic feast healthy for politicians, pastors, students, lecturers and all who want to fearlessly contribute to Ghana’s political economy.” REV. CHRISTIAN TSEKPOE (PhD), Pentecost University, Accra “… a must read for everyone seeking to have a multidimensional understanding of contemporary issues in Ghana.” PATRICIA SERWAA AFRIFA, PhD Carnegie Corporation of New York Fellow (2021)

DR CHARLES PREMPEH is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Cultural and African Studies, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi-Ghana. He holds a PhD in Theology and Religious Studies from the University of Cambridge, UK, since 2021. Before Cambridge, he obtained B.A. African Studies (First Class Division) from the University of Cape Coast, Ghana in 2008; MPhil African Studies from the Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana in 2011, where he was also awarded the prestigious Agyeman-Duah Award in 2010 for academic excellence. Prempeh has researched and published extensively on various aspects of society in Ghana. Langaa Research & Publishing Common Initiative Group P.O. Box 902 Mankon Bamenda North West Region Cameroon

CHARLES PREMPEH

In March 2017, the president of Ghana, Nana Addo Dankwa-Akufu announced his intention to build a national cathedral to the people of Ghana. The announcement elicited watertight counterarguments that morphed into two a priori re-litigated assumptions: First, Ghana is a secular country and second, religion and state formation are incompatible. Informed by a frustrating paradox of an overwhelming religious presence and concurrent pervasive corruption in the country, public conversation reached a cul-de-sac of “conviction without compromising.” In The Political Economy of Heaven and Earth in Ghana, Charles Prempeh deploys the national cathedral as an entry point to provide both interdisciplinary and autoethnographic understanding of religion and politics. The book shows the capacity of religion, when properly cultivated and curated as a worldview to answer the why questions of life, will foster personal, moral, collective and ontological responsibility. All this is needed to stem the tide against corruption, commodity fetishism, environmental degradation (illegal mining—galamsey), heritage destruction and religious exploitation. Prempeh recuperates a historical fact about the mutual inclusivity between religion and politics—politics helping to manage differences, while religion provides a transcendental reason for unity to be forged for human flourishing. Separating the two is, therefore, ahistorical and an obvious threat to the intangible virtues that answers, “why and how” questions for public governance.

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF

“Dr Prempeh brings to the fore sharp contrasts between the worlds that can appear to be attractively heavenly and the ones that look earthly and unattractive.” SHINE OFORI (Dr Mrs), Biblical Counsellor and Educator, Accra

HEAVEN AND EARATH IN GHANA

“Many contemporary development issues and their defective public policies bother the sovereignty of Ghana that requires a philosopher’s guide and an eye witness’s calibration. And here is where Prempeh’s book is most helpful.” IVOR AGYEMAN-DUAH, Historian and author of Between Faith and History: A Biography of JA Kufuor

The Political Economy of

Heaven and Earth in ghana CHARLES PREMPEH

The Political Economy of Heaven and Earth in Ghana

Charles Prempeh

Langaa Research & Publishing CIG Mankon, Bamenda

Publisher:

Langaa RPCIG Langaa Research & Publishing Common Initiative Group P.O. Box 902 Mankon Bamenda North West Region Cameroon [email protected] www.langaa-rpcig.net

Distributed in and outside N. America by African Books Collective [email protected] www.africanbookscollective.com

ISBN: 978-9956-553-17-4 © Charles Prempeh 2023

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical or electronic, including photocopying and recording, or be stored in any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher

About the Author Dr Charles Prempeh is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Cultural and African Studies, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi-Ghana. He holds a PhD degree in Theology and Religious Studies from the University of Cambridge (Wolfson College), United Kingdom, since 2021. Prempeh’s doctoral thesis – written in the Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge – makes a substantial contribution to scholarship on religion and politics in West Africa. Specifically, it brings into focus three divergent strands of recent Ghanaian history – the institution of the southern ethnic Akan chieftainship, the associated rites and beliefs of Akan indigenous religions, and Pentecostalism (focusing on the Church of Pentecost, or CoP). In particular, his study examined how Akan chiefs have responded to the phenomenon of Pentecostal Christianity, focusing on those chiefly figures who are installed as traditional chiefs in certain Akan areas of contemporary Ghana as well as active members of the Church of Pentecost. He also holds a certificate in Public Engagement with Research (AHRC-TORCH outline course): organised by the University of Oxford, in 2021. Before joining Cambridge for his doctoral studies in October 2017, Prempeh undertook two years of doctoral coursework in interdisciplinary Social Studies at the Makerere Institute of Social Research (MISR), Makerere University (Uganda) and taught undergraduate students for a semester. He also holds a Master of Philosophy Degree in African Studies from the Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana, Legon. In 2010, after completing his coursework, he was awarded the prestigious Agyeman Award for academic excellence. Prempeh holds a First-Class degree in African Studies from the University of Cape Coast in 2008. At the UCC, his undergraduate long essay was adjudged one of the best for the Department of African Studies and selected for display during the university’s opening day in 2009. When Prempeh completed his MPhil degree, he worked at the IAS as a graduate and teaching assistant from 2010 to 2013. Later in 2013, he was appointed a lecturer to teach Africana Studies at the African University College of Communications, Accra. While in Cambridge, he taught in four annual summer schools, reflecting on African philosophies of belief, uncertainty, the future, and African Christology. As an African Studies scholar, Prempeh’s research has an interdisciplinary dimension, incorporating areas such as gender, popular culture, religion, history, politics, education, philosophy, and

cultural studies. He has published in these areas in prestigious journals including, African Studies Quarterly, Journal of Religion in Africa and Religion Compass. His recent books are Charles Prempeh, Gender, Sexuality and Decolonisation in Postcolonial Ghana: A Socio-Philosophical Engagement (Bamenda/Cameroon: Langaa RPCIG, 2023) and Nima-Maamobi in Ghana’s Postcolonial Development: Migration, Islam and Social Transformation (Bamenda/Cameroon: Langaa, 2022). He is a fellow of the IFE Institute of Advance Studies and a former fellow of the Social Science Research Council (SSRC – 2016). He has held several leadership positions as president of the Student Union at the MISR, the Cambridge University Ghana Society (CUGS), currently a founding member and communications director of the Vacation Initiative for Science Africa (VISA), a registered Ghanaian- based NGO, and Director of Research for another registered Ghanaian-based NGO – Centre for Sustainable Livelihood & Development (CENSLID). He has been a resident of Maamobi since 1984 when he was 2 years old and had all his education in Accra (community-related) from Kotobabi Presbyterian Primary School (1988-1995) to Kotobabi ‘15’ JSS (1996-1998) to West Africa Secondary School (Accra – 1999-2001). Prempeh has held leadership positions such a as secretary of Aid Afrique and Gender Action Unit (both registered non-governmental organisations) and an elected member of the Unit Committee in 2002. He taught for a few years at the Kanda Estate ‘2’ Primary School, as a volunteer on the National Youth and Employment Programme (20102013) – established by the New Patriotic Party, under the government of John Agyekum Kufuor.

Dedication For my mother Agartha Adjei My wife Josephine Tweneboaa Afrifa My friends Dr Theresa Babeeku Dery Naidatu Hameed Alberta Ofori My fathers and mothers in Christ Mama (Deaconess) Elizabeth Dzakpasu (Deceased) Elizabeth Tamaklo Rev Dr Rockeybell Adatura Rev Dr John B. Ghartey Aps Prof Opoku Onyinah Gabriel Ansah Bishop Bernard Salleh Mr Moses Foh-Amoaning To The faithful Christians who tirelessly and fearlessly persevere in supporting the things of the Triune God My mentors Dr Jabal M. Buaben Prof Francis B. Nyamnjoh Prof Wilson Yayoh Prof Kwabena Akurang-Parry Prof Afe Adogame Prof De-Valera N Y M Botchway Prof Albert A. Awedoba Prof (Asso) George M. Bob-Milliar Prof (Asso) Joel Cabrita Rev Canon Dr Jeremy Morris Dr Timothy Quashigah Dr Mary Akosua Seiwaa Owusu Prof (Asso) Stephen Owoahene-Acheampong Mr Nii Addokwei Moffat

Acknowledgements I would also like to thank my wife, Josephine Tweneboaa Afrifa, who continues to sacrifice her time and comfort as I often travel to and from Ghana collecting data and also spending substantive time of our family life in my study – reading and writing. There are very many people behind my writing of this book. First of all, my largest thanks are to my family for their support, patience and appreciation of my work as an academic and federal head of our family – according to our shared Christian faith. I am particularly grateful to my wife, Josephine Tweneboaa Afrifa, who continues to sacrifice her time and comfort as I often travel to and from Ghana collecting data and also spending substantive time of our family life in my study – reading and writing. It is enough sacrifice that seamlessly implies that she, at least, takes more than half of the proceeds of this book. I wrote this book, but the energy and peace of mind to write it came from the critical and continuing role of Joe as both a mother, sister, and economist of our home. I also thank Kwame Nhyira Amponsah Prempeh and Adwoa Adom Mmoraa Prempeh – who have endured my incessant absence from home. Usually, they wake up to find that I am either in Ghana giving seminar presentations or giving lectures on Zoom. All this is because, even when I am in Ghana, I spend countless hours in my office from as early as 3 AM to 9 PM (with a few breaks)! These children, who deserve the attention of a father, have together with Joe, paid the price for a father who is ambitious in contributing to the frontiers of knowledge as well as consolidating the gains of the family. A father who suffers epistemic madness! In all this Josephine, Kwame and Adwoa have been a blessing to me and I pray for nothing but God's continuous blessings for them. I share the fruit of this book and anything I do with my scholarship with them. May Kwame and Adwoa benefit from the foundation Joe and I are laying for them, especially as I indulge the "no pain, no gain" to lighten their pain in future (cf. I Timothy 5:8). I have incurred many debts in the course of writing this book. To that end, I would like to begin by extending my heartfelt thanks to Prof. Jabal M. Buaben, who has been a true father to my family and me. He has always provided for the needs for my family and encouraged me throughout my stay in Birmingham (England). He is one of the most altruistic persons I have so far met in my life (Papa, God bless you). I want to also thank Mr Kofi Ata, Rev dr Smith Francis Tettey and Dr. Mrs Shine Ofori who, though on a short notice, has agreed to write the foreword of this book. My gratitude also goes to Dr Theresa B. Dery, Mr Ivor Agyeman-Duah and

Aps Rev Christian Tsekpoe who read, reviewed and wrote blurbs for the book. In the same spirit, I thank all those who read and wrote praise words for this book. I am also indebted to Professor Francis B. Nyamnjoh. He has been very supportive in shaping my thoughts as he generously shares his works with me. Furthermore, I am highly grateful to Mr Nii Addokwei Moffat, retired senior journalist, Mrs Florence Simpson, Catherine Agbo and Dr Timothy Quashigah (a senior lecturer) at the Ghana Institute of Journalism, who spent hours helping with pro bono editorial work. I similarly thank Messrs Emmanuel Amissah and Samuel Ahedor, who designed the cover page for the book; Mr Gideon Okyere Afram, my undergraduate student at the KNUST who assisted with running errands on my behalf in Kumasi and Mr Abubakar Shaibu. My book benefited from the input of Messrs Kofi Ata, Ivor Aygeman-Duah, Mahir Balunywa, Dr. Emmanuel Frederick Ashong, Drs Shine Ofori (Mrs), Christian Tsekpoe (Rev); and Smith Francis Tettey (Rev). They all meticulously read the manuscript and offered constructive comments. I am equally grateful to my natal family – my mother, Agartha Adjei and siblings: Patrick Adjei, Eric Amponsah, Frederick Prempeh, Sarah Adjei, Rebecca Ama Duah, and my twin sisters Deborah Adwoa Boadua Prempeh and Dorcas Adwoa Boadua Prempeh – for their support since I decided to write about these highly controversial subjects. Thank you also to my clan head, Nana Komfo Amoh II and Kyidomhene of Assin Bosomadwe (the rear chief of our village, according to the Akan military organisation) and my paternal uncle Philip Ampong Arkhurst. Their prayers and encouragement have always energised me to push on. I thank my parents for instilling in me a sense of diligence, perseverance, and hard work. Most specifically, they introduced me to God at a tender age. I am grateful they did. I particularly appreciate my late father, Mr Anthony Prempeh, who always reminded me to internalise the wise saying, “A wise son brings joy to his father” (Proverbs 10:1a). I also thank my wife’s family, especially her parents: Mr Sampson Afrifa and Madam Comfort Peprah, who have always urged me on. I register my appreciation to my wife’s sister Shirley Afranewaa Afrifa and her husband, Mr Frimpong Boateng, and brother, Kofi Afrifa and his family. Further, I register my gratitude to Solomon Tony Adam, a teacher at the JA Kufuor SHS and Sabastine Eugene Arthur, my fellow Casfordian (from the University of Cape Coast) and colleague at the University of Cambridge, for being a true friend. I also want to thank Patience Afrakoma Hmensa and her family for the various help they have offered my family in England. I remain grateful to my professors

at the Makerere Institute of Social Research (MISR), Makerere University, Uganda, whose competence in teaching the various subjects in interdisciplinary studies in social studies, focusing on nearly all the subjects about Africa and its development enriched my understanding of the continent; and whose references have helped in this project. I specially mention, Professors Mahmood Mamdani, George M. BobMilliar, Adam Branch, Samson A. Bezabeh, Florence Ebila, Giuliano Martiniello, Ernest Okello Ogwang, Adam Culver, Anneeth Kaur Hundle, and Lawyer Kafureeka. I am deeply indebted to the administrators of the Birmingham Christian College – the Bible College of the Church of Pentecost in the United Kingdom – who have been supportive of my family and me. I specifically thank Mrs Briony Seymour, Martin Ankers, Mr Godfried Asante, Dr Caleb Nyanni, and Pastor William Doe Kugbeadjor, I say God bless you. Alongside these persons, I thank my church members at the St Stephen’s and St Wulstan’s Church, especially Chris Hobbs, Andy Martins, Alex and Anna, Richard and Jane, Chris Porter, Christopher and Elizabeth, Maurice W. Sinclair, former Anglican Bishop of Northern Argentina. I also thank the new friends I made in Birmingham while writing this book. I particularly mention Kerrian Banton, Daniel Osoba, Keren Plange, Cristina Helbling, David Chapman, Adam Spence, Hamid Golzadehand, Chris Smith, Ayan Farah, Amanda Naan, Ruth Mercy, Daniel Locke-Wheaton – I am grateful to them for generously accommodating and offering me peerless conviviality. Similarly, I say thank you to all the pupils I met. I admire your intelligence, enthusiasm and zest to contribute to human flourishing. I must say that much as I benefited from the insights of several colleagues and friends, I am solely responsible for the ideas in this book. Finally, and most importantly, I thank the Triune God, by whose grace and mercy alone my family and I have come this far. Indeed, the Lord has been good and kind to us. To Him alone belong the glory and honour. We humble ourselves before him in saying with the Psalmist: “Not to us, O LORD, not to us but to your name be glory, because of your love and faithfulness” (Psalm 115:1).

Praise for This Book “Many contemporary development issues and their defective public policies bother the sovereignty of Ghana. They have been talked about mostly in the media periphery but this book on primordial corruption whether under the pretext of inter-faith abuse, of cathedral glories or vanities, environment and heritage destruction for money are ancient evils in new fashion. To understand these draw-backs and attempts at redress, one needs a philosopher's guide and an eye witness calibration. And here is where the creative intellect of Charles Prempeh, a Cambridge philosopher and academic who knows the nemesis of poor community livelihoods and lives among the brotherhood, is most helpful.” Ivor Agyeman-Duah, Historian and author of Between Faith and History : A Biography of JA Kufuor “Written by Dr Charles Prempeh, an African studies scholar, The Political Economy of Heaven and Earth in Ghana provides an insightful theoretical foundation of religion and politics in public governance – gesturing the need for religion to be incorporated into the retinue of development. Prempeh shares priceless knowledge on the upholding ends of civilization together, with an epistemic disposition that is unapologetically partisan. The book comes across as a critical assessment of the nexus between religion and politics in Ghana, which as Prempeh argues, some authors have simplistically profiled as the imposition of Christian nationalism on the country. Providing a tapestry of a non-binary perspective of religion and politics in local and trans-local contexts, Prempeh intelligently affirms the centrality of Ghana’s Triple religious heritage. Resultantly, he repudiates the problematic suggestion that religion and politics should be held as mutually exclusive contemporary Ghanaian politics. Prempeh’s creative incorporation of analytical skills, personal moral positionality, expansive accumulated inter-disciplinary knowledge, and personal lived experiences to crown the book with a stint insightful intellectualism – in line with his field of expertise (the Humanities). All in all, to firm the need for the religious constituencies to uphold the ethical and ontological boundaries of their faith, and for contemporary political elites to advance human flourishing against the cascading impact of the coronavirus pandemic, I highly recommend The political economy of heaven and earth in Ghana to academics, social and political analysts,

heads of civil society organisations and anyone interested in how religion remains the fulcrum of public governance.” Theresa Bebaaku Dery, PhD, Medical Physicist/Research Scientist Radiological and Medical Sciences Research Institute, Ghana Atomic Energy Commission “The level of scholarship Dr Charles Prempeh has expressed in this book is breathtaking!” Dr Emmanuel Frederick Ashong, MD (Pediatrics), Former Director of Medical Education and Medical Director, New Jersey Primary Care Association, USA “In this well-researched and multidisciplinary book, The Political Economy of Heaven and Earth in Ghana, Dr Charles Prempeh has courageously treated us with controversial but crucial concerns that have plagued many African countries for years. By specifically engaging seething debates in Ghana, including the state’s attempt to build a national cathedral, the crisis of illegal mining (galamsey) and the perceived boundaries of prophetism and politics, this book qualifies as a major contribution to the attempt to confront the paradox of the coexistence of religious exuberance and endemic corruption in Ghana. Dr Prempeh has managed to deconstruct the simplistic assumption that the state and religion are mutually incompatible and argued that religion and state are foundations of society and development. Through the demonstration of his academic prowess, meticulous research and coherent analysis, Dr Prempeh has provided us with an academic feast, healthy for politicians, pastors, students, lecturers, and all who want to fearlessly contribute to Ghana’s pollical economy.” Rev. Christian Tsekpoe (PhD), Director, Postgraduate Studies and Research, Pentecost University, Accra-Ghana, Theologian and author of Intergenerational missiology: An African Pentecostal-Charismatic Perspective Pentecost University “The Political Economy of Heaven and Earth in Ghana is a must read for everyone seeking to have a multidimensional understanding of contemporary issues in Ghana. Dr. Prempeh dissects very critical issues about Africa’s development in a nuanced way. Dr. Prempeh succinctly discusses the impact of Covid-19 on governance, education and the economy as a whole. The scary nature of the pandemic resulted in

government declaring lock-downs to respond to public health crises. For education, the mandated school closures led to loss of human capital and diminishing economic returns. Furthermore, children missed their childhood education opportunities and the social interactions as well as the nutrition being provided. Despite the challenges associated with the migration to online learning, the lockdowns created a situation of adaptability to online learning and an improvement in its delivery. Dr Prempeh hints that religion, politics and the state are not mutually exclusive of each other but coexist in diverse ways to ensure smooth functioning of the economy. He queries whether liberal democracy is necessary for Ghana’s development or otherwise. He supports his argument by drawing insights from Rwanda and China who have done otherwise and their economies are thriving. He shares his personal views on the dictatorship in Rwanda and adds despite their successes, that form of governance is fraught with several challenges as well. Issues of building of a national cathedral, the crises of galamsey and other social issues confronting the Ghanaian economy carefully discussed. This book is well researched, carefully written and Dr. Prempeh gives a great blend of his experiences as an international scholar and his multidisciplinary background in the humanities.” Patricia Serwaa Afrifa, PhD Carnegie Corporation of New York Fellow (2021)

Table of Contents Forewords .....................................................................................xvii Preface...........................................................................................xxxi Chapter 1: Introduction .................................................................1 Chapter 2: State formation and the politics of Ghana’s national cathedral.....................................................................57 Chapter 3: Prophecies, prophets and politicians in Ghana .......... 215 Chapter 4: Corruption: money and Galamsey .............................. 243 Chapter 5: God, human beings, money: interrogating issues of corruption ............................................299 Chapter 6: Concluding thoughts...................................................357 References .....................................................................................365 List of Maps Figure 1: Showing the major Akan-speaking Regions in Ghana ............ xxviii Figure 2: Map showing some Galamsey communities in Ghana ........... xxix. Figure 3: Map of Ghana, indicating all the 16 regions ............................. xxx Figure 4: Cartoon on jealousy ...................................................................... 51 Figure 5: Pen adi Ghana awu ....................................................................... 97 Figure 6: Albert Einstein statement ............................................................ 203 Figure 7: Cartoon on money as gendered Source: 9ja-joke¶bles’s posts.............................................................................. 300 List of abbreviations .....................................................................xv ACSCUS: African Centre for the Study of the United States CDD: Centre for Democratic Development (Ghana) CHRAJ: Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice CIRG: Research Institute of Ghana CoP: Church of Pentecost COVID-19: Coronavirus CPP: Convention People’s Party CRS: Christian Religious Studies CSF: Common Sense Family CUGS: Cambridge University Ghanaian Society GAEC: Ghana Atomic Energy Commission

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IAS: Institute of African Studies IEA: International Atomic Energy Agency IVF: In vitro fertilization JWs: Jehovah’s Witnesses KPPS: Kotobabi Presbyterian Primary School KSM: Kwaku Sintim-Minsa LGBTQ+: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and Ace MISR: Makerere Institute of Social Research (Makerere University, Uganda) NDC: National Democratic Congress NGOs: Non-governmental organisations NPP: New Patriotic Party PAMSCAD: Programme of Actions to Mitigate the Social Cost of Adjustment PNDC: Provisional National Defence Council SAPs: Structural Adjustment Programmes SDA: Seventh-day Adventist Church SNASS: School of Nuclear and Allied Sciences UCC: University of Cape Coast UG: University of Ghana WACRI: Cocoa Research Institute WASS: West Africa Secondary School

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Foreword 1 I first met Dr Charles Prempeh on Saturday, 18 March 2018 when I was invited by Cambridge University Ghanaian Society (CUGS) to Ghana’s 61st Independence Anniversary Celebration seminar. He was then a PhD student at University of Cambridge and the Public Relations Officer of CUGS. The theme for the seminar was, “Ghana and her development partners in a neo-liberal region: Engaging and disengaging”. I was gobsmacked when then Mr Prempeh had the opportunity to contribute to the subject matter. He succinctly analysed and dissected the theme through what I summarised as the prism of Neo-liberalism, new Keynesian versus Adam Smith, Ideology, Political Economic, New World Order and Globalisation. To say the least, I was mesmerised, not because I agreed with whatever he said but the confidence and conviction with which he addressed the audience. As a result, when the formal session ended, Mr Prempeh was the first person I introduced myself to and had a brief discourse with him on the issues he raised in his contribution prior to my scheduled meeting with the CUGS Executive members. After meeting the leadership at the end of reception, I asked for his mobile number before departing as I planned to keep in touch with him for further discussions. On my return, the first thing I did was to look at Mr Prempeh’s profile on Cambridge University website and I was not disappointed. My first impression was that the guy is well-read with impeccable academic accolades. In my first telephone discussion with him shortly after the seminar, we spoke on developmental problems in Ghana, Africa and the developing world. He then informed me that CUGS holds fortnightly seminars and since I am interested in intellectual debate he could invite me the seminars, which I agreed to. At my first seminar, two weeks later, though Prempeh was not the main speaker, his contributions were elucidating. With ease, Prempeh quoted Adam Smith, Darwin, Hobbes, Keynes, Locke, Marx, Ricardo, Rousseau and others to buttress his arguments. When it was his turn as the main speaker, I enjoyed listening to him. He was not only eloquent but also the aura of confidence and intellectual prowess to engage with his listeners, even if one disagreed with him, was admirable. What was noticeable about Prempeh was his humility and he came across as simple and easy to relate to. As our telephone discussions developed and I realised that he was prolific writer, I made him aware that, I also write and post articles on Ghanaian media websites with Kofi Ata as xvii

my pen name. Since then, we have exchanged articles with each other and strengthened our relationship. The Political Economy of Heaven and Earth in Ghana is a testament of Dr Charles Prempeh’s academic excellence, witting proficiency, his open and critical mind and ability to blend Philosophy, Religion, Politics, History, Economics and others in one book in a captivating analysis that must be read with both open and critical mind whether as a student, teacher, academic, pastor or whatever your background. It’s uniquely the Prempeh style of confidence, excellence, eloquence and succinct. The topics and contemporary issues discussed in the book, whether colonialism, slavery, corruption or missionaries in Africa and the National Cathedral in Ghana, they are all controversial. However, the ability of the author to put them into perspective, subject them to objective and critical review and draw his conclusions are exemplary and worth reading. The above does not mean that his analysis, views, conclusion and recommended solutions are sacrosanct. However, the audacity of his well-researched and reference sources is more than persuasive enough to have done justice to the subject matter. I read the manuscript with a prying eye and an inquisitive mind, often asking questions or even proposing my own answers only for me to realise that those questions and answers have been covered in later chapters and pages. I was hoping to establish the ideology of Dr Prempeh through this book but instead, he convinced me that his faith and pragmatism are more important than labels. His style of writing is not only captivating but urges the reader to bargain for what next, particularly the way he reflects Philosophy, History, Colonisation, Slavery, Politics, Religion, Economics and others into pre-colonial, colonial, independence and post-independence periods to tackle contemporary problems in Ghana and Africa is breath of fresh air. Sometimes, he is teacher, an academic, a preacher, a friend, etc. He combines them with his personal experiences in life and those of friends and others, which make the book not just abstract theories but real life examples. He also provided comparative analysis of what is in the developed western world, including UK on problems such as corruption. I will leave readers, whether students, academics, politicians or the electorate to make up their own minds on the contestable problems he analysed in the book. What I can say with certainty from reviewing the manuscript is that, I agree with the author that corruption is a question of morality or immorality, self-centeredness; a crime that if not effectively addressed could consume us all. Kofi Ata , Cambridge, UK xviii

Foreword 2 The crusader has done it again! In his book, The Political Economy Of Heaven And Earth In Ghana, Dr Prempeh aptly sets the tone for discourse with the lyrics of William Shervin’s hymn, Sound the Battle Cry. See the Foe is Nigh. On the crusade against the different worlds, he calls Heaven and Earth, Dr Prempeh brings to the fore sharp contrasts between the worlds that can appear to be attractively heavenly and the ones that look earthly and unattractive. He sounds a caution that the democratic countries like Ghana that have problems of indiscipline and deeply seated economic and social concerns as a result of their liberal democracies could be far better than the attractive heavens on the other side of the bend. He acts as the conscience of the nations as he discusses the legitimacy or otherwise of governments use of stretched power by countries around the world in the name of “emergency” as they evoke emergency powers in the bid to solve a health problem caused by the pandemic, COVID 19. But could that be a means by other powers to forcefully penetrate into African countries, he wondered. Dr. Prempeh comments on Ghana’s plan for a National Cathedral, a national integration into welfare and religion at a time that the nation is being forced to appeal to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to come to its economic rescue. He draws attention to academic and public outcries that pivot on the absence of religious activities in the countries that are doing well in Africa like Rwanda and the Asian countries and China, countries that have become leading models in world economic and social issues. Dr. Prempeh draws attention to the fact that these countries could be taken as models but behind the scenes, or rather a critical look at their leadership models reveal a dangerously restrictive and controlled system that disregards privacy and that can trail even visitors to their countries of other sojourn and/or their home countries. Dr. Prempeh raised concerns about the closing down of schools during the pandemic and its adverse effects on school children in the short and long term, directly or indirectly as schools met many developmental needs, including nutritional needs, especially nutritional needs. The pandemic brought good sides too as locked down, the nations embraced e-learning, people learnt to use remote learning facilities. As to whether the nations were equipped to deploy remote teaching and learning on such large scales, is another issue. This will need to be addressed to make learning experiences effective. xix

Dr Prempeh goes back and forth discussing the good and bad sides of COVID 19. It gives a good balance to the topic and gives an effective duality to the subject under discussion. The style of writing accentuates the duality in the topic “heaven and earth.” As such the book could be appropriately renamed “The joys and pains reaped from the COVID!9 pandemic”, “The gains and losses from the COVID 19 Pandemic”, and The religio-socio-economic and educational outcomes of the COVID 19 Pandemic. Dr. Prempeh takes a resolute stand in the subject under discussion. He hits hard at China’s state-controlled system that leaves no room for private discourse. He brings to the fore how China uses low-level volunteer networks to spy on people. This aptly draws attention to Kwame Nkrumah’s “Young Pioneers,” young people who served as spies and gave their families away to political authority and also, Big Brother, who is always ‘watching you” in George Orwell’s book, Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984). The crusader comes back to critically reflect on Ghana’s politician leader, Mr Addo Danquah Akufo-Addo, who delves into the integration of politics and religion as he, the political leader, makes frantic efforts to create a religious welfare facility by way of a National Cathedral at a time that the nation’s economy is collapsing and the leadership is seeking help from the international Monetary Fund (IMF). Dr Prempeh discusses the rationale behind this “intrusive” advancement into the provision of a multimillion religious facility at a time that there are academic and public discussions that pivot on the absence of religion from nations that have become models in Africa and Asia. Specifically, the author cites China and Rwanda where the political leadership uses excessive restrictive remote controls and dictatorial mechanisms to produce the kind of results that are being hailed by others. He is of the view that though Ghana’s liberal democracy yields some undesirable social outcomes like indiscipline and corruption, it is still better that the type of unacceptable controls in China and Rwanda. He delves extensively into the closed and absolute reigns in the nations mentioned above. The situation in China has created an irony that is ridiculous. While the crusade for a child per person yielded a controlled population, the pandemic killed a large population and the result is an undesirably reduced population. China now wants women to have more babies. The women are not ready for that as they have grown to cherish freedom to pursue career. He deplores the unsustainable glories of Kagame’s reign because dictatorship is unsustainable. As for the Western world, the author lashes at them for infiltrating purposefully into the east because of their own economic gains. xx

Dr Prempeh further accuses Kagame and Xi of tacitly subverting the fundamental roles of religion and politics. In praise of democracy, the author points out the fact that what Xi and Kagame had easy controlling governance through dictatorial and restrictive rule. For Ghana however, the President cannot take such chances because democracy would have to determine their fate through the ballot box. This brings to the fore a positive side of democratic governance. He praises democracy and brings forth by extension the role of democracy in Africa’s population drive. He eulogises the African’s view of childbirth and training as a divine mandate which also needs divine guidance. As such, populating the state is seen as a divine assignment. The state and religion will thus continue to co-exist either in separation on one side or integrally on the other as even the rules of governance in Africa have a root in Judeo-Christian practice. He sounds a warning that though there is this beautiful interrelationship, the state should be careful not to usurp the powers and roles of religion. The author’s background runs through the book. Having been raised as a Christian in a dominant Muslim community for four decades, and being exposed to Buddhism by a very close relative quite early in life, gave him the urge very early to do a comparison of religions. His comparative analysis of regions is deep with practical illustrations. In his developmental years, Dr. Prempeh went intensively and extensively into a vast number of religions and learnt to present each religion on a fair plate. He thus brings to the fore morals he has gathered from both Christian and Muslim practices and these serve as yardsticks in the evaluation of people’s behaviour and events. Being religiously inclined and informed, his assessment of political responses to religio-socioeconomic events across the nations runs through the eyes of religious morals. Dr Prempeh, having been exposed to religions and their volatility quite early in life, learnt to adopt a strategy of managing situations so as not to cause a religious war, yet frankly and fairly, he challenges various religious adherents to fairly illustrate the heaven and earth they project to positively to affect and transform society. Dr Prempeh’s mission in this book is to look at the response to the pandemic through the eyes of Christianity. He expresses his expectation of Christianity to be altruistic emulating the generosity of Christ. He uses several rhetorical questions to assess the essence of heaven and earth in religious beliefs. The writer’s style of handling this book is high and complex. He indicates that the book was meant to question people’s attitude towards the consciousness of practicing heaven and earth. His style is complex, and I dare say, in a manner that is over and above the audience that it should benefit most. But Dr. Prempeh is quick to state that he wanted xxi

the book to be a textbook. Well then, as a textbook on comparative analysis of religions and political governance, it is well-written with the appropriate terminologies and philosophies. His write-up reveals the hard work of a wide and well-read socio-religious transformer. Bravo! Dr. Prempeh’s style in this book is quite advanced. It has several themes and subjects. The varieties fall in tune with the diversified subjects treated in the book. He invites Christians and Muslims to harness their theologies for the common good. He charges the two communities to harness their moral strengths to support the flourishing humanity. He concludes with his personal experiences as well as those of his well-known acquaintances of the toxicity of discrimination, corruption and unfair treatments in society, not only interracial but more strongly within the social sector among Black people at the workplace. He challenges Christians to live beyond these unfortunate experiences and soar above as heaven seekers from earth on a crusade of standing alone for what one knows is truth as a mark of true Christianity. He makes no apologies for sharing non-historic stories in his narrative to illustrate his convictions about society because he wants to prove a case. He campaigns for practical Christianity to take its place in social discourse. The crusade has just begun. The Apostle Paul says in 2 Timothy 1: 8 and 9 that, “So do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord or of me his prisoner. Rather, join with me in suffering for the gospel by the power of God. He has saved us and called us to a holy life – not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace. This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time.” The song artist, Isaac Watts writes: “I’m not ashamed to own my Lord, or to defend His cause, maintain the glory of His cross and honour all His Laws.” We have been called to dare to stand alone as heaven seekers on earth. A journey worth the while.

Shine Ofori (Dr Mrs)

Biblical Counsellor and Educator Headmistress, West Africa Secondary School, Accra-Ghana

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Foreword 3 The question as to whether politics and Christian ideals can be put together in modern democracy of Ghana, is one that seems to arise out of our ignorance of the origins of either democracy, politics or religion. The Greek culture was inherently a religious system where the gods inform every aspect of human existence. With this attitude, my gut reaction to this subject is to quote at length the work of Frances Young: Hellenism was a culture, a way of conceiving the world embodied in a society, articulated in a literature. Jewishness was similar. Christians were not without reason called the tertium genus (the third race), for they belonged to neither culture – they adopted the literature of the Jews, and claimed access to the primitive and true wisdom which both Judaism and Hellenism had fragmented and distorted. Eusebius would argue this in his Praeparatio evangelica and defend the scriptures in his Demonstratio evangelica…. With this kind of cultural embedding, religion was indistinguishable from culture, and it is not for nothing that, in Byzantine Greek, Hellenismos became the word for paganism. 1 To aim for a society devoid of its vital beliefs, aspirations and the heartbeat of its people is a utopian concept. Ghana and for that matter Africa cannot rule itself without involving its religious aspects in that rule. African Chieftaincy is evidently a religious order. It is therefore unthinkable for a so-called secular state to be the premise for any argument in public policy. I commend Dr Charles Prempeh for such a well-researched and logical work. This is a starting point to the uncharted path of debating the questions raised by political arguments which go unquestioned because of the ignorance of the audience to those arguments. This book is a must read for the discerning mind and public policy makers.

Rev dr Smith Francis Tettey

(Research Associate in Practical Theology, The University of Pretoria, South Africa, The Kumasi Presbytery Chairman, Global Evangelical Church and A Postgraduate Mentor on the Master of Global Leadership programme of Gordon Cornwell Theological Seminary offered in Partnership with the Global Theological Seminary in Ghana)

1 Francis M. Young, Biblical Exegesis and the Formation of Christian Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 80.

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Foreword 4 Building and supporting one another is critical in contemporary scholarship. And building ideological alliances in the production of knowledge is what binds Charles Prempeh and Mahiri Balunywa together. On January 2014, I found myself on the same interdisciplinary PhD program with Charles Prempeh at the Makerere Institute of Social Research (MISR), Makerere University, Uganda. While studying courses in political economy and political philosophy, Prempeh was more glued to religious and cultural studies. He and I always disagreed on what the world existentially is and ought to be. Prempeh and religion were inseparable, for he was a sine qua non to his belief system. In our second year in 2016, together with other colleagues from Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, and Eritrea, I suggested to Prempeh to take up leadership of MISR’s Student Union. Consequently, the student body voted him as our Guild President. His leadership was characterised by difficulty—indexed by several agitations among students against the Director of MISR. As the student leader, Prempeh had to undertake the task of leadership, spending sleepless night with his “High Command”—loyal friends—in planning to promote the interest of students and the MISR community. I imagine that the stormy year of 2016 at MISR may have impacted him dearly to reflect on what it means to do politics with eternity in mind. His reflections, by this time putting it in the context of macropolitics in Ghana—his home country—may have morphed into the book, The political economy of heaven and earth in Ghana. Committed to his religious credentials—signalled by the adage: “With God, all things are possible” and dictum, “The believer is always right,” Prempeh starts a long voyage of looking at the world from a divine perspective—similar to St. Augustine’s history as providentialism, trying to analyse the extent to which his personal experiences and the novel coronavirus pandemic intersect between heaven and earth. From his personal experiences, I surmise that, caught in the hurdles of student leadership, sacrificing his well-obtained scholarship and impressive academic accomplishment at MISR in the interest of students, Prempeh found himself torn between Heaven and Earth. Could this have motivated him to craft the title of this book? I suppose so. Prempeh’s organic creative process has helped him to discover what he always wanted to be: Employing his Christian religious heritage as xxv

worldview to assess the world’s political economy. Also, as a Calvinist, he was never tired of sharing his philosophy about predestination with friends. Much as his Calvinist philosophy predisposed him against seeing life as mere chance; he considered life as firmly under the governance of God—which also afforded him energy to work industriously even when the odds were against him and students. To him, I wish to state, using Richie Norton words, “You will never get anywhere with your head in the clouds if you don’t turn those dreams into present-day forward motion. Show gratitude for where you came by not regretting what you could have and should have done today” I personally look at this book as a reawakening of the fifth century debates of materialism versus creationism, which was reignited 25,000 years ago. In the fifth century BCE, Socrates was opposed to the materialistic view—a view that explained the world in terms of itself, looking at the material conditions, natural laws and contingent, emergent phenomena, away from any invocation of a super natural hegemonic structure. Prempeh’s book further invites economists to broaden their discipline of economics by developing a comprehensive analysis of economic wants beyond human survival and sustenance. He looks at economic progress as a route for salvation to a new heaven on earth. To him, man/human shall not only survive on material values but by the divine word of God, which merges the creation of both the material and non-material goods—under the sovereign authority of God. Consequently, Prempeh ably reduces the discussion to the initiative of Ghana’s President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufu-Addo to support the construction of a national cathedral. For Prempeh, much as the president’s decision may not be far from political consideration, the president appreciates the centrality of religion in state governance. Considering the enormous debates that have characterized the proposed national edifice since 2017 when the president first announced it, Prempeh grapples with the question that forms the heart of the debate, “By President Nana leading the construction of the cathedral, has religion hijacked politics, or politics hijacked religion? The alternative question, I would ask would be: Can politics do without religion, can religion do without politics? These two asymmetrical questions should continue to be interrogated in a world where religion has refused to die under the force of improved science and technology. Contextualizing corruption as deeply rooted in Ghana’s historical narratives—beginning with the country’s first president, Kwame Nkrumah, Prempeh argues that the elimination of evil corruption is far from being a primarily economic or mundane issue. To be sure, he says it is not necessary as a result of human material deprivation. To him, xxvi

much as economic progress may have the redemptive power—marked by economic efficiency and growth—the divine cannot be obstructed from human repertoires of life. Focusing on Ghana as his main analytical base, Prempeh contributes to the literature of modern economic theology, which is anchored within the Judeo-Christian heritage. Repudiating materialistic philosophy and late capitalist ethos, Prempeh invites his readers to incorporate religion to overcome the egoism of what I prefer to describe as “man eats man society”—a society where one either eats or eaten; swallows or is swallowed. Picking up major issues in Ghana’s politics, indexed by the politics of Ghana’s national cathedral, prophecies and corruption Prempeh participates in macro-discourses that are often reduced to simplistic analysis on social media—more so, to the marginalization of religion as an unwanted institution in modern public governance. For this reason, questions about religion’s response to capitalism, industrialization, urbanization and secularization lie at the heart of Prempeh’s attempts at grappling with the idea of Ghana as a secular country. He invites us to move away from the superficial framing of religion as a stranger in public governance to explore the fundamental role of religion in both state formation and management. In the Political economy of heaven and earth, therefore, Prempeh evidently and convincingly argue for the integration of religion into public governance as a moral buffer. Nevertheless, he admits the religious constituency has often failed to live up to the ideals of the faith—a situation that hardens a section of the cultural elites against religion in public governance. With his recently acquired PhD in Theology and Religious Studies from one of the world’s prestigious universities—University of Cambridge, UK—Prempeh has honed his already comprehensive knowledge in African religions, and politics and stands in a comfortable zone of intellectual power. His book, therefore, remains an indispensable resource in a renewed debate over the public expression of religion in governance. I am humbled and grateful to write this foreword to, not only this book, but to my long-time friend and academic brother as we both struggle against the marginalization of Africa’s episteme in the comity of epistemes. Prempeh has stirred the debate, let it live on.

Balunywa Mahiri

Senior Research Fellow Centre for Critical Thinking and Alternative Analysis Kampala-Uganda xxvii

Figure 1: Map: Showing the major Akan-speaking Regions in Ghana (produced by Selorm Awiah Dzantor at the University of Cape Coast – UCC

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Figure 2: Map showing some Galamsey communities in Ghana

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Figure 3: Map of Ghana, indicating all the 16 regions

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Preface “One of the things that struck me after converting from an African traditional religion to Christianity was the discrepancy that is often observable between what is preached and taught in churches and the moral lives that are lived in society.” 2 The above was how Lord Abraham Elorm-Donkor, an accomplished academic and senior clergy of the Church of Pentecost (CoP), Ghana’s largest Pentecostal denomination opened his book, Christian morality in Ghanaian Pentecostalism. As an opening statement in a monography published from his doctoral thesis submitted to the University of Manchester, United Kingdom in 2011, Elorm-Donkor’s research project was, inter alia, to explore the gap in Ghana’s religious enthusiasm and social injustice, both of which co-exist as existential social reality. 3 Certainly, this question is not new, as several Ghanaian academics and religious figures had interrogated that in the 1960s. 4 The gap between Christianity, so pervasive in Ghana’s public sphere and the ubiquitous presence of a wide range of cases of corruption came against the background that at independence several analysts had assumed that Christianity would decline. 5 A foremost Ghanaian theologian and academic, Professor Kwame Bediako argued that the politicisation of the decolonisation agenda against the church and some of the nationalists’ profiling of the church as part of the agents of colonialism had created the impression that after independence the church would decline. 6 Nevertheless, contrary to expectation the church in Africa especially in Ghana (then the Gold Coast) has grown to become the major religion in the country with Christians being 71.2 percent and 17.6 percent for Muslims. 7 Not only that, since the late 1970s Ghanaian Christianity has largely become identifiable with Pentecostalism, where nearly all the churches including the historic ones like the Anglican, Catholic and Presbyterian have members who aspire and indeed 2 Lord Abraham Elorm-Donkor, Christian morality in Ghanaian Pentecostalism (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stock, 2017), p. 10. 3 Lord Abraham Elorm-Donkor, Christian morality, p. 10. 4 Sydney G. William, Akan religion and the Christian faith: A comparative study of the two impact of two religions (ed. Kwesi Dickson) (Accra: Ghana Universities Press, 1965). 5 Kwame Bediako, “Africa and Christianity on the threshold of the third millennium: The religious dimension,” African Affairs (2000): 303-323. 6 Ibid. 7 Ghana Statistical Service, Ghana Factsheet, https://statsghana.gov.gh/ghfactsheet.php.

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practice the pneumatic experiences of Pentecostalism —speaking in tongues, divine healing, and prophesies. 8 Beyond Ghanaian Christianity taking a Pentecostal turn, a phenomenon that the country shares with several African countries since the late 1980s, Pentecostals in the country and elsewhere in Africa have staged their presence in Africa’s public governance in a manner that was hardly anticipated by analysists of the 1960s. 9 The meteoric rise in Pentecostalism in Africa has the same expression in Latin America, where the political liberation theology of the mainstream churches has found explicit expression in liberation to practice spiritual enthusiastic experiences offered by Pentecostalism. 10 Both in Africa and Latin America where Pentecostalism is on the surge, citizens are encumbered with development issues such as high levels of poverty and other forms of deprivation. The continent of Africa is still struggling with the colonial legacies of underdevelopment, with Africans’ recklessness sinking the postcolonial economy through corruption and partisan politics. 11 Several theories have been proposed to explain Africa’s economic underachievement: from neo-colonial politics of controlling women, legal plurality and governance to Africa’s leadership crisis. 12 Christianity, particularly missionary Christianity has also been accused of having contributed to Africa’s underdevelopment. 8 Cephas Narh Omenyo, Pentecost outside Pentecostalism: A study of the development of charismatic renewal in the mainline churches in Ghana (Zoetermeer: Boekencentrum, 2002); Birgit Meyer, “Christianity in Africa: From African independent to PentecostalCharismatic churches,” Annu. Rev. Anthropol., 33 (2004): 447-474. 9 Paul Gifford, Ghana’s new Christianity: Pentecostalism in a globalising African economy (London: Hurst & Co., 2004). 10 Harvey Cox, Fire from heaven: The rise of Pentecostal spirituality and the reshaping of religion in the twenty-first century (London: Cassell, 1996). 11 Thandika Mkandawire, Africa: Beyond recovery (Legon/Accra: University of Ghana, 2015). 12 Walter Rodney, How Europe underdeveloped Africa (London: Bogle-L’Ouverture Publications, 1972); Samir Amin, “Underdevelopment and democracy in Black Africa: origins and contemporary forms,” Journal of Modern African Studies, 10, 4 (1972): 503-524; Oyèrónké Oyěwùmí, The invention of women: Making an African sense of western gender discourses (Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 1997); Mahmood Mamdani, Citizen and subject: Contemporary Africa and the legacy of late colonialism (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1996); Mahmood Mamdani, “Indirect rule, civil society and ethnicity: The African dilemma,” Social Justice, 23, 1/2 (1996), (63-64)145-150; Crawford Young, The African colonial state in comparative perspective (New Heaven: Yale University Press, 1994); Basil Davidson, The black man’s burden: Africa and the curse of the nation state (London: Currey, 1992); James Ferguson, Global shadows: Africa in the neoliberal world of order (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2006).

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The missionaries are often accused of having provided the religious reasons for the colonialisation of the continent. 13 It is also argued by scholars that colonialism was just a physical encounter and its ensuing exploitation of the material and human resources of Africa. Colonialism as argued, was also about epistemic imperialism, fashioned alongside colonial knowledge creation about Africa that rendered the minds of Africa both docile and enslaved to Western epistemic prisms. 14 But far from assuming that Africans were just passive observers in the colonial enterprise, scholars have identified the agentic role of Africans in shaping and negotiating with colonialism, as well as appropriating some of the new cultural and technological elements colonialism introduced to the continent. 15 In all this, Africa has received and continues to receive financial aid from the west that has not even worked to the benefit of Africans. 16 In contrast with other Asiatic countries, particularly those called the late industrialised nations (or Asian Tigers), especially China, that are said not to be as religious as Africa and Latin America, the Asian Tigers appear to have advanced in economic enrichment agenda. The question 13 Jean Comaroff and John Comaroff, Of revelation and revelation: Christianity, colonialism and consciousness in South Africa (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1991); Jean Comaroff and John Comaroff, “Christianity and colonialism in Southern Africa,” American Ethnologists, 13, 1 (1986): 1-22; J.P. Daughton, An empire divided: Religion and republicanism and the making of French colonialism, 1880-1914 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006); Katherine Luongo, Witchcraft and colonial rule in Kenya, 1900-1955 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). 14 Talal Asad, “From the history of colonial anthropology to the anthropology of western hegemony,” in George W. Stocking (ed), Colonial situations: Essays on the contextualisation of ethnographic knowledge, 314-324 (Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991); Franz Fanon, A dying colonialism (New York: Grove, 1965); Karl Ittmann, Denis B. Cordell and George H. Maddox (eds), The demographics of empire: The colonial order and the creation of knowledge (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2010); Terrence Ranger, “The invention of tradition in colonial Africa,” in Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (eds), The invention of tradition, 211-262 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983); V.Y. Mudimbe, The invention of Africa: Gnosis, philosophy and the order of knowledge (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1988). 15 Nancy Hunt, A colonial lexicon: Of birth ritual, medicalisation and mobility in the Congo (Durham, N.C. Duke University Press, 1999); Thomas Spear, “Neotraditionalism and the limits of invention in British colonial Africa,” The Journal of African History, 44, 1 (2003): 3-27; Anthony D. Smith, “The nation: Invented, imagined, reconstructed?” Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 20, 2 (1991): 353368; Luise White, “Cars out of place: Vampires, technology and labor in East and Central Africa,” Representations, 43 (1993): 27-50. 16 Dambisa Moyo, Dead aid: Why aid is not working and how there is another way for Africa (London: Allen Lane, 2009).

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that Elorm-Donkor and including myself would ask is what explains the gap? Why is religion, more so Pentecostalism that is becoming very evangelical, not engineering the expected social and moral reforms to advance human flourishing? The responses to this question, as I said above is not new. The analysis perhaps maybe new. In the early 1960s, most of the analysts concluded that Christianity as the European missionaries transported to Africa, did not resonate well with the African cultural realities ;leaving Africans with a split identity, including obliterating their moral conscience. 17 Ghana’s foremost sociologist, K.A. Busia concluded in his analysis on the issue that Christianity was like a thin veneer that did not exert any revolutionary impact on the Ghanaians social life. 18 Elorm-Donkor appreciated all the analyses but offered an interesting perspective. He takes on the Pentecostal issue of spiritual exorcism or what he calls as deliverance theology to identify Pentecostal blame culture and scapegoating malevolent spirits as the cause of their moral failures. Elorm-Donkor maintained that much as the Akan ethnic group, the group he used as case study shared several of Pentecostalism’s shared belief in the existence of malevolent spirits, the two religious traditions see their agency in relation to these spirits differently. Akan indigenous religion assumes as a priori and takes as serious the individual’s agency in living a morally acceptable life. An Akan proverb in support of this is: “If you did not see yourself growing, at least you cannot say the same thing about your moral ills.” As a religion that considers life as largely here and now, with human responsibility to keep cosmic – social and environmental order, the Akan religion like several indigenous religions are religions of “live what you believe.” It is also a non-scriptural religion and does not have a team of clergy men and women; God is also not worshipped directly, except through the mediation of the ancestors and the deities. Considering that the deities are themselves moral agents, who are a little above human beings, they have a will to act or not that could be appealed based on the transactional engagement they have with human beings. The more rituals they are offered; the more service they provide and the more service they provide, the more rituals they receive. It is 17 Sydney G. William, Akan religion and the Christian faith: A comparative study of the two impact of two religions (ed. Kwesi Dickson) (Accra: Ghana Universities Press, 1965); Matthew Ojo, “African spirituality, socio-political experience and mission” (A paper presented at the West Africa Consultation on Edinburgh 2010 at the AkrofiChristaller Institute of Theology, Mission and Culture, 23-25 March 2009): 1-19; Ronald Green, “Religion and morality in the African traditional setting,” Journal of Religion in Africa, XIV, 1 (1983): 1-23. 18 Kofi A. Busia, ‘Has the Christian faith been adequately presented?’, International Review of Mission, 1961, p. 88

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against this complex dialectic relationality between the deities and human beings that as I understand, has given rise to several questions about the religious disposition of Africans. Are Africans both incurably and notoriously religious as expressed by Geoffrey Parrinder and John S. Mbiti, respectively? 19 Or Africans are simply religiously pragmatic people as identified by Okot p’Bitek and Kwasi Wiredu? 20 I personally think that the answer lies in what we mean by religion. If we see religion as institutional requirements formed on dogmas and doctrines for people to fit in, then Africans are hardly religious since indigenous religions are highly fluid and dynamic. On the contrary, if we see religion as individual’s expression of “living what they believe” to conform with the larger moral requirements of society in their quest to turn their fortunes around and also support social conviviality, then Africans are deeply religious. Islam holds a similar view much as it is a religion, Right from the start (if “the start” is taken as the Hijra) it was also a political entity. Yes, Islam prescribes a way to be good, and yes, every devoted Muslim hopes to get into heaven by following that way, but instead of focusing on isolated individual salvation, Islam presents a plan for building a righteous community. Individuals earn their place in heaven by participating as members of that community engaging in the Islamic social project, which is to build a world in which orphans won’t feel abandoned and in which widows won’t ever be homeless, hungry, or afraid. 21

This, as I shall soon discuss will fall in line with how Kant and Schleiermacher felt when they discussed Christianity. Africans may also be considered more religious if, indeed, as Kwasi Wiredu said, “rituals are not regarded as anything other than a method of making use of super-human resources of the world. Because the powers that are called lesser gods are conceived to be in some ways person-like, and the ‘rituals’ often have a communicative component heavily laden with

19 Geoffrey Parrinder, Religion in Africa (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1969/1965), 235; John S. Mbiti, African religions and philosophy (London: Heinemann, 1969), p. 1. 20 Okot p’Bitek, African traditional religion in western scholarship (Kampala: East African Literature Bureau, 1971); Kwasi Wiredu, “Toward decolonizing African philosophy and religion,” African Studies Quarterly, 1 4 (1998): 17-46, p. 34. 21 Tamim Ansary, Destiny disrupted: A history of the world through Islamic eyes (New York: PublicAffairs, 2009), p. 24 (emphasis in original text).

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flattery.” 22 For this reason, rituals in Akan religions should be read as a communication device to dialogue with spirit worlds. The above issue of religion brings us back to the history of theorizing what people believe. As I shall discuss in detail in the course of my book, religion as an academic analytical category to index the rational study of what people believe is largely a 19th century invention of European academics. The 19th century was very critical in European history, particularly in the birth of the modern university that had research as its focus, using the methodological approaches of rationalism, positivism and empiricism, which in the case of the study of religion has been heavily influenced by Darwin’s theory of evolution. Before the 19th century, however, the Christian Reformation of the 16th century, led by figures such as Martin Luther had paved the way for not only ecclesiastical breakdown, but also European’s entry into its modernity. This modernity was indexed by several layers and spectrums of secularisation, a highly nebulous concept that has come to mean largely the diminishing role of religion – at least from the scholarly works of Harvey Cox and Peter Berger in the 1960s. 23 In the 17th century, European philosophers, who also were social scientists, including Immanuel Kant and Friedrich Schleiermacher both applied themselves to deploying liberalisation research ethic to study social realities including the phenomenon of religion. 24 The two of them took different turns in terms of the focus on religion. Kant looked at the rationalisation of God and its impact on morality, recognising the agency of the human mind. Focusing on the attributes of 1. God as the omnipotent creator of the heaven and earth, i.e., holy Legislator, 2. as Preserver of the human race, i.e., as Benevolent Ruler and Moral Guardian, 3. as Administrator of His own holy laws, i.e., as Righteous Judge, God’s moral laws must not be mystified to mean human incapability of fulfilling. To Kant, God’s moral laws are, therefore, comprehensive to human beings; humans can use their rational capacity to deduce them. As he stated, “the objective rule of our behaviour is adequately revealed to us (through reason and Scripture), and this revelation is at the same time comprehensive to every man.” 25 Wiredu, “Toward decolonizing African,” p. 34. Harvey Cox, The secular city: Secularization and urbanization in theological perspective (New York: Macmillan, 1965); Peter L. Berger, The sacred canopy: Elements of a sociological theory of religion (New York: Anchor Books, 1967). 24 Immanuel Kant, Religion within the limits of reason alone (New York: Harper & Row, 1960); Friedrich Schleiermacher, On religion: Speeches to its cultured despisers (ed. Richard Crouter) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996/1983) 25 Schleiermacher, The Christian faith (trans. H.R. MacKintosh and J.S. Stewart (Edinburg: T. & T. Clark, 1928), pp. 12-18; 31-39, cited in Schleiermacher, Pioneer of 22 23

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As I said, Schleiermacher is yet another analyst who liberally studied religion. He, instead of Kant’s focus on morality, based his analysis on religious sensitivities – what religious people experience as part of their religious itineraries, which idealised revelation. As he stated, “In childlike passivity, one feels and knows the mysterious totality of the universe is filled with immediate influences of God.” 26 From the perspective of Schleiermacher, the centrality of revelation must inform the moral life of a religious person. So, to both Kant and Schleiermacher, the immoral lives of religious people are not as a result of God’s moral perversion but the corruption of institutions and actions of human beings. The end result of these two is that human beings are moral agents who are responsible for their actions, not God and what He represents—for both as moral Creator who reveals perfect moral laws, God is not the author of immorality. From the above, if religion is not just about the institutions and rituals then what is religion? The question about what is religion was hardly answered by the 19th century European social scientists, most likely because the word religion as I have said was not used to mean rituals. As I understand, therefore, the 19th century Europeans including Émile Durkheim, Sigmund Freud, James Frazer, Karl Marx and Max Weber did not seek to define religion qua religion but rather focused more on the functionality of it. Beginning with Emile Durkheim, one of the founding fathers of sociology in the West, he considered religion from its role in society. In his Elementary forms of religious life, Durkheim functionally defined religion as a “unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden.” 27 Sigmund Freud, considered the Father of Psychoanalysis deployed his theories of psychology to explain the function of religion in society. He argued that religion was/is part of the childish primitive mind’s attempt at understanding nature. And because the primitive mind could not comprehend the repertoire of scientific explanation of reality, religion was a form of illusion that offered the primitive mind a basic unscientific satisfactory understanding of life, especially relative to dream, which came across to the primitive mind as a reality. Freud, therefore, concluded that religion is nothing short of a figment of

modern theology (ed. Keith Clements) (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991), 100-104, 272-273. 26 Ibid. 27 Emile Durkheim, The elementary forms of religious life (trans. Karen E. Fields) (New York: The Free Press, 1995), p. 44.

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imagination of the primitive mind. 28 James Frazer, who was also interested in the study of the mystic, or more specifically magic, rather concluded that religion is a form of magic, indexed by the primitive mind’s attempt at imitating nature such as rainfall. Karl Marx, who was troubled by economic exploitation that had characterised industrialised England and other European countries concluded that religion was part of the tools in the hands of the elites to perpetually cower the working class into a needless submission of wanton exploitation. Religion for Marx, therefore, was/is an opium that sedated the working class into stupor, allowing them to work in the interest of the bourgeois, hoping that the illusions of heaven would reward their efforts. 29 Marx Weber was also interested in the role religion played in helping human beings to reconcile the co-existence of two realities: the existence of a good God and the reality of pain. Religion, therefore, helps human beings to resolve the paradox of theodicy. For this purpose and to come to terms with the problem of pain, Marx was interested in how the teachings of John Calvin about predestination flowed into what he referred to as the protestant ethic of work. The question for Calvinists was about how one would know one is saved in a troubled world. According to Weber, for Calvinists the answer lay in the economic and sociological impact of salvation, which is reflected in hard work, thrift and savings – the three according to Weber gave rise to western capitalism. 30 Weber in particular, reminds me of my logic class where we had to use the Truth Table as an analytical tool to evaluate the problem of evil, as first established by Epicurus and later David Hume in his Dialogues concerning natural religion: Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? then he is impotent. Is he able, but unwilling? Whence then is evil?

I recall after my colleagues had used the Truth Table to work the statement out found the statement valid. But then, I had a question for our lecturer, Richard Ansah now a pastor of the Assemblies of God. I told him that the problem of evil is true for everyone minus the Christ, and that, the Christian God did not stand out of history to only urge His elect to strive with strong belief, determination and performance of 28 Sigmund Freud, The future of illusion (Trans/edited by James Strachey) (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1961). 29 Karl Marx, Critique of Hegel’s ‘Philosophy of right’ (trans. Annette Jolin & Joseph O’Malley) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), p. 131. 30 Max Weber, The protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism (trans. Talcott Parsons) (London: Routledge, 1930).

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rituals to overcome life’s existential challenges. Instead, He stepped into history to participate in the pain that evil brings and ended up crushing the ultimate of evil on the Cross of Calvary. So, because of what He did on the Cross, the Book of Hebrew recorded that, 14 Therefore,

since we have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. 15 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin. 16 Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need. 31

The discussions have implicitly tinkered on the state’s appropriation of religion in public governance. Since these social thinkers were writing either in the 16th century when modern state formation had begun or 19th century when the industrial revolution and the birth of the modern university were redefining state-private relations, religion definitely had to be incorporated into the analysis. Writing in the 16th century when nationalism was emerging into state formation, Kant deployed the idea of God as sovereign creator, law giver and judge to discuss the role of government in public governance. The executive, judiciary, and legislature are to ensure that governance enforced the human rational capacity to live the moral life as given by God. The issue then is what happens when the state rather becomes overly powerful to overturn the moral values about family, which is a prior to the state? This is also about power: who controls power and how is power controlled? As the clergy lost their political control, and European monarchs who had ruled on the idea of divine rights of kingship saw their absolute power eroding, the question was about how power had to be exercised. That power needed to be controlled; for me, it is very important because the public sphere is the domain of power (politics) and economic activities, both of which diminish in value when shared. The centrality of power and its dynamics then gave rise to the discussion about the modern state as social contract which was basically about how much of individual freedom is given to the state for public governance? This also means that politics did not begin as partisan politics, as it was about how citizens and those who governed had to 31 Hebrews 4:14-16. For a scholarly discussion of pain from the Christian perspective, see: D.A. Carson, How long, O Lord? Reflections on suffering and evil (Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press, 1990); C.S. Lewis, The problem of pain (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1940);

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negotiate their spaces in the public. The idea of social contract was, therefore, to define the boundaries between the rights of individuals and the role of the state in public governance. Three main European social scientists came to dominate the discourse on social contract. Basing their theories on the state of nature, which was more of an imagination than reality, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and JeanJacques Rousseau offered some useful insights into the governance of the public sphere. But to provide a reasonable response to how the public should be governed, they had to first understand the nature of human beings. The question was: Was the state of nature better than civil society? Since nature is inhabited by human beings, the question was decidedly about whether human beings are naturally good or not; the answer of which would determine how much freedom they are allowed in the public sphere. The three European social scientists offered relatively different responses, but all reinforcing the need for public governance to foster a measured liberty of the individual. Beginning with Thomas Hobbes, he in his book, Leviathan postulated that the state of nature is ungovernable as man was selfish, aggressive and unloving. 32 For this reason, there was a need for governance to be incorporated. This, according to Locke resulted in the people retracting from the state nature and entering into a kind of contract with a sovereign where they completely surrounded their natural rights to the sovereign. Writing with the disruptive effect of the English Revolution of the 17th century in mind, Hobbes argued for an absolute monarch who would tame individual preponderance to disorder. Hobbes’ theory resonates with Niccolò Machiavelli, who while reflecting on the collapse of the Roman Empire as a result of internal disruption, advised the Prince—ruler—to be strong, fearsome, rather than loved; absolute and with undivided power. 33 The problem with absolutism is that it undermines the capacity of human beings to do good and potentially stifle the creativity of individuals. Similarly, absolute power mostly falls into disuse and corruption since as Lord Acton rightly observed, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. As I shall discuss later in this chapter, dictatorial regimes can hardly be secured in the long run, especially after the demise of the authoritarian figure as it is

32 Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan: Or, the matter, forme & power of a commonwealth, ecclesiasticall and civill (edited by A.R. Waller) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1904). 33 Niccolò Machiavelli, The prince (Oxford: Infinite Ideas Limited, 2008).

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consolidated on an individual charisma as opposed institutionalisation. 34 Next after Hobbes came John Locke who in his Of civil government: Two treaties, argued that the state of nature is not lawless to justify the imposition of absolute monarchical rule. 35 Instead, the state of nature was one of mutual corporation, peace and social conviviality. In the state of nature, man enjoyed natural rights such as the rights to life, liberty and property based on reason and goodwill which fostered peace and sympathy. Yet, natural laws in the state of nature were not clearly defined which was a challenge because cognitive abilities among individuals differed markedly; there was no partial and competent interpreters of the natural laws of nature and no common authority to enforce the law of nature. All these constituted an atmosphere of what Locke considered as inconveniences in the state of nature. To overcome these inconveniences in the state of nature, individuals agreed to surrender part of their natural rights to the community made up of active participants in the governance of the commonwealth. They migrated to the formation of a state where a constituted legislature is given supreme power to protect and enforce trust in government with responsibility to protect and consolidate the natural laws against all forms of arbitrariness. The legislature did not have absolute authority to act arbitrary, but limited power to act in accordance with the trust and common consent that necessitated the transition of individuals from the state of natural to civil society. If trust is betrayed, the people can overthrow the legislature as it has gone against an established right. From the perspective of Locke, the state is formed to protect the natural rights of the governed. Jean-Jacques Rousseau also contributed to the discussion. In two books, Discourse on the origin of inequality and The social contract and discourses, he discussed the issue of governance. 36 Like Locke, Rousseau did not consider the state of nature as ungovernable, instead there was the propensity of an individual’s freedom defying limited boundaries to superimpose on others. Two things frustrated the state of nature, demographic growth and property acquisition. This created a misery that people had to exit from by entering into a social contract where 34 For extensive discussion on charisma and institution, see Max Weber, Max Weber on charisma and institution building: Selected papers (edited S.N. Eisenstadt) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968). 35 John Locke, Discourse on the origin of inequality (trans. Franklin Philip and ed. Patrick Coleman) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994); Of civil government: Two treaties (London: Dent, 1924). 36 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The social contract; and discourses (trans. G.D.H. Cole) (London: Dent, 1973).

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now living in a civil society, man who is born free and acted free in the state of nature is now encumbered with laws in civil society. The quagmire created a tension between natural rights and law. The social contract then creates a civil society where each individual invests all their power in a general body, the community. As individuals submitted their entire rights to the body of community, the community, not the sovereign, becomes both authoritative and absolute. Since it constituted the general will of the people who freely entered into it, the laws by the community must be respected as it is shielded from error. As a constitution and embodiment of the general will of the people, the laws of the community are inviolable as an individual who violated the laws violated himself or herself. Rebellion against a government who governed arbitrary was, therefore, permitted. The freedom of the individual is his submission to the general will as against personal will. The people who freely formed the community or governing state are the source of authority as opposed to the individual. The community, therefore, possesses absolute power and authority to punish dissidents as dissidents consider themselves unworthy of civil society. These theories, though very formed by a social and historic fact of the 17th century, the ideas about the “state of nature” were highly speculative and historically fictitious. So, much as the theories of the state of nature are historically untenable, they are philosophically critical in the establishment of governance. For all this, these western social scientists added to the secularisation or, to use the expression of Max Weber, disenchantment of public governance. This means that instead of the idea of divine rights of kingship where God or the divine is legislative support of the governor, for which the governed had to obey was deconstructed, at least so it appeared. Instead, by adducing a natural origin to political community based on three evolutionary stages—state of nature, the social contract, and the formation of civil society/state, human beings are made the agentic originators of the state whose consent must be the source of the authority of the governed. Also, these social scientists recognised the idea of human beings as social beings with a tendency towards gregariousness to form a community. Generally, however, all social scientists admitted that individuals are also selfish, the extent of which may vary among these social scientists, which nevertheless necessitated the formation of governance. Government, therefore, is not the imposition of an individual’s will on the governed, but to rule according to the consent by the governed. The social contract also established the need for limited government control and the formation of government based on the consent of the governed. Since individuals hardly migrate without their beliefs, translating in complex ways about how they live which predated the xlii

state as a socio-political construct, (I will discuss this later in the book) the fact remained that religion continued to exert influence in the civil society. So, by the 19th century the public role of religion, festering as part and parcel of the state had waned. The question was, why should religion as institution engage with the state? For those interested in religion and the economic predisposition of the modern state, the question is also about how the state would use religion to foster economic enrichment or economic exploitation. Weber saw the protestant work ethic as capable of engineering economic enrichment; but Karl Marx was rather concerned about the elites’ (state administrators) deployment of religion as an illusionary opium to foster the marginalisation and exploitation of the working class. For Durkheim, religion could help in fostering social order; while for Frazer, religion could perform the role of giving human beings an imaginary enthusiasm of being in control. 37 Nevertheless, the 19th century social scientists, majority of whom were influenced by Darwin’s evolution theory, were also of the opinion that religion which they largely considered a cultural construct based on the primitive mind’s uncomplicated understanding of natural phenomenon, would fall into disuse or recede from any public role. 38 In other words, through the advancement in science and technology, religion would cede to Marx Weber’s idea of rationalisation, industrialisation and bureaucratisation which would result in the disenchantment of the public sphere – setting the pace for secularisation as the diminishing role of religion in the public sphere. 39 Weber, therefore, thought that these three factors would consolidate modernity as nearly irreversible. In the 1960s, as I tersely mentioned previously, Harvey Cox and Peter Berger, considering the rise of American economic prosperity and the surge in individualism, which Robert Bellah and Charles Taylor referred to as expressive individualism and authentic individualism respectively, would undermine the public role of religion in public governance. 40 37 James G. Frazer, The golden bough: A study in magic and religion (London: Macmillan, 1900). 38 Walter H. Capps, Religious studies: The making of a discipline (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1995). 39 Max Weber, Economy and society: A new translation (edited and trans. Keith Tribe) (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 2019). 40 Robert Bellah, Richard Madsen, William M. Sullivan, Ann Swidler and Steven M. Tipton, Habits of the heart: Middle America observed (California: The Regent of the University of California, 1985); Charles Taylor, A secular age (Cambridge, MA.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007).

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Islamic political thought: A brief account The above projection of the collapse of religion sustained the secularisation thesis in the 1960s until towards the end of the 1970s. In 1979, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini led the Iranian revolution which overturned the liberal Shah region and instituted a religious state indexed by the dominance of Shi’a Islam in Iran. The relative success of the Iranian Revolution reverberated with religious resurgence in the Middle East, the home of the so-named Abrahamic Religions. Saudi Arabia, had intensively become Sunni, particularly since the rise of Mohammad ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab (1703-1792). It is not of historical coincidence that Sunni-type of Islam that has recently gestured more towards what is generally but loosely called Wahhabism registered its historic presence at a time when the modern state was emerging. Similarly, it is important to note that Wahhabism currently constitutes the main strand of Islam in Ghana, at least since the late 1960s when Hajj Umar Ibrahim Imam, born in 1932, travelled to Saudi Arabia in the early 1957 and studied at the Dar al-Hadith Institute and returned to Ghana in 1968 as the first Ghanaian graduate of higher Islamic institution of learning in Saudi Arabia. With a mind to reform Ghanaian Islam, he became the head of a branch of Sunni type of Islam called the Ahlu Sunna wal’Jamah in the late 1980s. Given that Islamic understanding of contemporary politics formulated around an attempt at recapturing the ideal 1st century Islamic ummah, it is important to discuss briefly Islamic political philosophy. Much has been written about the subject, so I will not attempt to repeat what is already known. Instead, I will highlight the foundation of Islamic political philosophy and tease out what it means for the political economy of heaven and earth in Ghana. Islamic philosophy is similar, but not the same as Christianity, however, very dissimilar from the humanistic philosophy of politics. The similarity between Islam and Christianity in political philosophy and their diversion with humanistic philosophy is the origin of human beings. Unlike the social scientists discussed above, Islamic and Christian philosophy starts with taking the creation of human beings as given. The two religions also agree with the existential reality of human imperfection, which mars society and which requires governance. The two religions disagree over the origin of the existential reality of imperfection. From Christianity, they generally appeal to the idea of original sin, beginning with Adam as the federal head of humanity whose sin led to a metastasising universal defect on everything humanity and what humanity does. Islam does not subscribe to the original sin theology of Christianity as part of the western formulation xliv

of political theology, 41 but it teaches that the Devil deceived Adam into sin which has resulted in current troubles humanity have. All said, for both Islam and Christianity, there is a need for a direct divine intervention mediated by a human being as the middle person. The two religions, therefore, believe in prophets who served such mediatory roles and revealed the will of God to man and also communicated the supplications of man to God. So, in both Christianity and Islam, there are many recognised prophets, but the two religions also believe that the prophetic role is time bound as it must be embodied in a perfect or near perfect human being to serve as the final exemplar to humanity. In the case of Christianity, Jesus Christ comes across not as the perfect prophet; but God Himself. Islam rather takes a sharp disagreement; instead points to Mohammed as Allah’s final prophet who was/is not Allah, but who is the finest human being to guide human life. Now I turn to just Mohammed and the establishment of Islamic political philosophy. I begin my discussion on Islamic political philosophy with a brief socio-historical context. 42 Muhammed lived in the 6th century in Arabia where Allah is believed to have called him into the prophethood office. His role was to declare and live the will of Allah before his people. Instead of acceptance, Mohammed was sharply rebuked and rejected by the Arabians in Mecca. The reason for the rejection of Mohammed were basically economic and political. Economically, the pre-Islamic Arabians served multiple deities, with three—al-Allat, al-Mannat and Al-uzza—being the most prominent. Through the commercialisation of religious rituals, such as ceremonial rites around the Kaaba, the controllers of the religious edifice, Kaaba made a fortune from religious tourism. 43 As Ansary wrote, “Meccans were wide-ranging merchants and traders, but their biggest, most prestigious business was religion.” 44 The second is also political. The pre-Islamic Arabian society was largely segmented around tribes who did not have a centralised government. In the absence of a centralised government, feud was quite common which is believed to have resulted in their detest for the birth of girls—as girls were considered to lack the masculine military advantage compared to their male counterparts. So, when Mohammed was called into prophethood by Allah in 610 AD, 41 Patricia Crone, God’s rule: Government and Islam (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), p. 4. 42 For more on this pre-Islamic and Islamic history, see: Robert G. Hoyland, Arabia and the Arabs: From the bronze age to the coming of Islam (London: Routledge, 2001); 43 Tamim Ansary, Destiny disrupted: A history of the world through Islamic eyes (New York: Public Affairs, 2009) p. 18. 44 Ansary, Destiny disrupted, p. 21.

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his sermons against pagan religious practices such as infanticide and the worship of multiple deities, were a direct attack on both the economic base of the religious and political structures of the Arabs. In the end, after several attempts on his life, Mohammed under divine guidance migrated to Yathrib where he was readily accepted by the people there in 622 AD. The people’s acceptance of Mohammed revolutionised the political and religious life of the people, which was not entirely different from that of Mecca. The city, therefore, assumed the name Madina to mean the city of the prophet. 45 This name is very important because it was there in Madina that the first Islamic community was established. Known as ummah, the Islamic community was under the leadership of Mohammed who combined both religious role as prophet, giving Allah’s vision to the people, and political leader enforcing Allah’s rules and ethics. 46 The ummah was also very distinct because it was to recognise no authority other than the Prophet and what he left behind as rules to govern the ethical and religious lives of Muslims. The ummah is also inviolable, such that a Muslim was not to betray a fellow Muslim to a non-Muslim for adjudication. It was a complete community where all the facets of governance, judiciary, legislature and executive were merged in the prophet. The governance structure was patterned on the acts and sayings of the prophet, all seamlessly liaising with the Qur’an – Allah’s revelation which the Prophet began receiving in 610 AD. Also, as observed by Black, contrary to the claim to unmediated contact with the divine, Islam entwined with traditional local cultures. 47 Black may be right, but it does not deflate the fact that for some Muslim writers, such as Ansary, the ummah was not like any other community as “its members believed, the embodiment of the revelations, existing to express Allah’s will and thereby transform the world.” 48 The ummah with shared ethics and rituals offered a trans-tribal social identity to the Muslims, which as said by Black had “the effect of making members instantly recognisable to one another; of making relations between relative and strangers predictable and manageable.” 49 The above narrative is a summary of the origin of Islamic political philosophy. After the death of the prophet, the issue was about Ansary, Destiny disrupted, p. 23. Anthony Black, The history of Islamic political thought: From the Prophet to the present (2nd ed) (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011), p. 9. 47 Antony Black, The history of Islamic political thought: From the Prophet to the present (2nd ed). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011), p. 10. 48 Tamim Ansary, Destiny disrupted: A history of the world through Islamic eyes (New York: Public Affairs, 2009), p. 35. 49 Black, The History, p. 12. 45 46

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succession as there was no clear succession plan left behind for the Muslims by Mohammed; 50 and it was also about what role the successor could perform. This was also an important question because before the demise of the Prophet, he had taken over Mecca and established the seat of Islamic governance therein. Thus, the issue was beyond how a successor was to be determined, whether through election (political) or inheritance (biological), the difficulty of which created a major division in Islam between the Sunni (who leaned towards political election) and the Shi’a (who leaned towards biological inheritance). 51 It was also about what role the successor would play. Would the successor perform only political with minimal religious role? Well, the answer lay in the revelations Allah had given to the Prophet and what the Prophet said and lived during his time. So, the idea of Sharia emerged out of a synthesis of the Qur’an, the Prophetic sayings and deeds. The issue was hardly contentious until Islam spread beyond Arabia and encountered a large section of non-Arabs and non-Muslims. The question was how Muslims were to relate to such group of people. Islam had already taught tolerance as the Prophet had demonstrated in his engagement with non-Muslims in Madina. But the issue was not just that; as it was also political ambition of leaders of the various Muslim groups. So, since the 7th century, when Islam spread out of Arabia to Northern Africa and later sub-Saharan Africa in the beginning of the 8th century, the issue of Islamic philosophy had been taught and applied differently—albeit not without occasional conflicts. 52 In North Africa, because the objective of the spread of Islam was both political and religious similar to settler colonies of the Europeans, Islamic states were established at the beginning of the 8th century where the Sharia was the source of governance. 53 In Sub-Saharan Africa, however, because the spread of Islam was primarily economic, carried through by black African itinerant traders who had encountered the Arab Muslims and converted to the religion, Islam was hardly established as a state religion. 54 For example, in the medieval Ghana empire whereas the chiefs may have accepted Islam, the religion was Ibid. p. 14. Adam R. Gaiser, Sectarianism in Islam: The umma divided (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023). 52 John Azumah, The legacy of Arab-Islam in Africa: A quest for inter-religious dialogue (Oxford: Oneworld, 2001). 53 Nehemiah Levtzion and Randall Lee Pouwels, The history of Islam in Africa (Oxford: James Curry Ltd., 2000); Mervyn Hiskett, The development of Islam in West Africa (London: Longman, 1984). 54 Ibid. 50 51

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not made a state religion. 55 This was true of the rest of the empires including Mali and Songhai, where even when some of the leaders established Islam as a state religion, indigenous cultures mediated the religion – giving it a more eclectic posture than what had happened in North Africa. The case of the medieval West African Empires was the same. In the Voltaic Regions, including what later became the Northern Territories of colonial Ghana, the founders of the Mole-Dagbani kingdoms appropriated and adapted Islam in the formation of the Dagbon and Gonja states in the 16th century. 56 This was after the Mande Dyula and Hausa traders had through trade introduced Islam to the Mole-Dagbani people. 57 For this reason of Islam as an indigenised religion among black Africans, the introduction of European colonialism marked a major shift in Islamic political philosophy. Both the French and British related with Islam differently. But on the whole, under colonialism Islam thrived as the colonialists did not readily allow Christian proselytization in Muslim-dominated areas. This helped the Muslims to safeguard their religion, but it did not ultimately help in the incorporation of Muslims in the postcolonial state fashioned along western philosophy of a nonreligious state. So, at independence in several West African countries including Ghana, Muslims lagged behind in their participation in postcolonial governance. Not only that, the emergence of Muslimdominated communities, known in Ghana as the Zongos are largely cut off from national politics. As I shall discuss later in the book, Nkrumah’s politicisation of religion also divided the Muslim constituency across the settler and native identities. Much as Islam is internally polarised within and just as Christianity is also very divided on doctrinal grounds, the two main religions alongside indigenous cultures, converge in desacralising political power. 58 They have always rebutted any attempt by the state to interfere with family issues that both religions consider ibadah (act of religious life for the Muslims) and covenant (for the Christians). They also share the view that ultimate political power rests with God, not the political elites—this is also recognised by the country’s constitution which invest ultimate political sovereignty in Ghanaians—similar to western political philosophy. Ibid. Nehemiah Levtzion, Muslims and chiefs in West Africa: A study of Islam in the middle Volta Basin in pre-colonial period (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968). 57 Ibid. 58 Kwame Bediako, “De-sacralization and democratization: Some theological reflections on the role of Christianity in nation-building in modern Africa,” Transformation: An International Evangelical Dialogue on Mission and Ethics, 12, 1 (1995): 5-11. 55 56

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The issue about religion and politics and the possibility of the two realms inter-percolating each other’s space in the public sphere of governance has been a subject of considerable controversy, especially since Weber and others felt religious beliefs potentially hold back rationality and modernisation. In the case of Islam for example, Armando Salvatore has observed that the Muslim’s encompassment of the doctrine of divine authority in the formation of the state is profiled as a strong fortress against the formation of a true modern state. 59 The practice of Sharia in some countries in Africa, particularly Sudan has received sharp criticism from scholars including Abdullahi Ahmed AnNaʻim who argues the full imposition of Sharia in Islam incompatible with the Qur’anic provision for freedom of religion. 60 In all this, while Ghana is not a theocratic state or directly an ummah, religion in Ghana is strongly featured in national politics almost to the point of Christianity serving as a civil religion for the country. To be sure, my argument in the entwinement between religion and politics in governance is not to say that politicians may not necessarily subscribe to the religious idioms and symbols that deploy in terms of practice. This means that religion may enter the public for instrumental imperative—to leverage religious sentiment for support. As identified by Thomson, the pervasiveness of religion in Africa is such that politicians may be promote ideologies, such as nationalism, socialism, capitalism and populism, but none of these ideas could supersede the notions of Christianity or Islam in African minds. 61 the Muslim clerics provide ritual services to politicians. Also, as it is true of other African countries, in Ghana, political prophecies—prophecies seeking to pre-empt the outcome of presidential and parliamentary elections—have become a major feature of the country’s religious map. 62 This indicates one of the sociological functions of religion, which Durkheim highlighted is the legitimacy religious rituals, beliefs and practices offer to human activities. I have already stated that Ghana’s religious plurality is also indexed on the context of an indigenous worldview that tends to provide the bridge for religious 59 Armando Salvatore, “Tradition and modernity within Islam,” in Muhammad Khalid Masud, Armando Salvatore and Martin van Bruinessen (eds), Islam and modernity: Key issues and debates, 3-35 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009), p. 4. 60 Abdullahi Ahmed An-Naʻim, Islam and the secular state : negotiating the future of Shariʻa (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 2009). 61 Alex Thomson, An introduction to African politics (3rd ed. London: Routledge, 2010), p. 69. 62 Adeshina Afolayan, Olajumoke Yacob-Haliso and Toyin Falola (eds), Pentecostalism and politics in Africa (Cham/Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).

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plurality to establish a converging point. 63 Prior to the colonial interlude, a similitude of prophecies, known in Twi/Akan language as abisa featured prominently. 64 Among other many African cultures including the Yoruba, divination was a method of uncovering hidden knowledge. 65 As I shall discuss extensively in the course of this chapter, abisa—which translates as “to ask” or “to inquire” was/is a divinatory practice to explore the will of the divine, often the deities who in Akan indigenous worldview are God’s servants to mediate between God and human beings. Through abisa, the Akan could forecast into yet-tohappen-events, such as business, politics, and social activities. The various life-cycle events, such as marriage, naming and funeral ceremonies are critical sociological activities that often demand abisa. Because these events mark a major transition in the life of either the neophyte or the deceased, that involves—though not neatly—the three stages of what Arnold van Gennep described as separation (preliminary), transition (liminary), and reincorporation (postliminary). 66 The rites are part of structuring the life of an individual, introducing him or her to the histories, social, spiritual and other aspects of communal life; at the same time, the rites define the dialectic social relationality between an individual and the community. 67 Through these rites, therefore, individuals come face to face with the rights they can enjoy and their accompanying responsibilities. For all these reasons, the various stages of transitional rites are imbued with uncertainty, anxiety and stress. As part of overcoming or negotiation around the anxieties associated with the rites of passages, usually the relatives of the neophyte would do abisa from the deities to know what are at stake. In the case of the dead, the mystical causality of a deceased is uncovered through abisa and the funerary-related rites are usually derivative of abisa. Abisa was not only about securing knowledge to preempt what lies ahead philosophically, it was necessary to bridge time— where the past and present are conjoined to peep into the future. Abisa 63 Abraham A. Akrong & John Azumah, “Hermeneutical and theological resources in African traditional religions for Christian-Muslim relations in Africa,” in John Azumah & Lamin Sanneh (eds), The African Christian and Islam, 65-84 (Cambria: Langham Monographs, 2013). 64 Opoku Onyinah, Pentecostal exorcism: Witchcraft and demonology in Ghana (Dorset/UK: Deo Publishing, 2012). 65 Toyin Falola, African spirituality, politics and knowledge systems: Sacred words and holy realms (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2022). 66 Arnold van Gennep, The rites of passage (trans. Monika B. Vizedom and Gabrielle L. Caffee) (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1960). 67 Victor Turner, The ritual process: Structure and anti-structure (New York: Cornell University Press, 1969).

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featured prominently in the court of Akan chiefs, which mediated through the osofo or shrine assistant was/is taken seriously as it implied a revelation from the realm of power, destiny and transparency. 68 The 19th century missionary, especially the Bremen as aptly demonstrated by Birgit Meyer were not necessarily against piety and other related cultic practices. 69 Rather they were concerned about how they could not readily discern between indigenous spirituality mediated by the ancestors and the deities, and those orchestrated by the Holy Spirit. For this reason, the missionaries hurriedly discarded indigenous spiritual practices as pagan and fetish. Nevertheless, some of the founders of what has generally been referred to in scholarship as African independent churches, including Grace Tani and John Nachabah (who founded the Twelve Apostles Church) and Joseph William Agyankba Appiah (later Prophet Jemisimiham Jehu-Appiah), who founded the Musama Disco Christo Church (all in Ghana); William Wade Harris, Joseph Babalola, Garrick Braide in West Africa; Isaiah Shembe in South Africa; Simon Kimbangu in Zaire, restored pneumatic practices, which though mediated by the Holy Spirit realigned converts with their ancestral past and African ethos—a past that I have said, these religious figures employed to justify the validity of the Christian faith. 70 Even so, it is important to mention that as Cabrita observed, these development of religious creativity formed part of a transnational religious network that extended by the Akan and African regions. 71 Unlike the indigenous sources of divination, which may have multiple sources, including the deities, ancestors and God, for these founders of African independent churches, the Holy Spirit was responsible mediating prophecy, which is revealing special message directly from God. 72 68 J. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu, Contemporary Pentecostal Christianity: Interpretation from an African context (Oxford: Regnum Books International, 2013), p. 28. 69 Birgit Meyer, Translating the Bible: Religion and modernity among the Ewe in Ghana (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press Ltd., 1999). 70 Joel Cabrita, Text and authority in the South African Nazeretha Church (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014); Opoku Onyinah, “African Christianity in the twenty-first century,” Word & World, 27, 3 (2007): 305-314; Allan H. Anderson, African reformation: African initiated Christianity in the 20th century (Trenton/Asmara: African Word Press, Inc., 2001); David George Burnett, Charisma and community in Ghanaian independent church (PhD thesis submitted to the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 1997); Christian G. Baëta, Prophetism in Ghana: A study of ‘Spiritual’ churches (London: SCM Press, 1962). 71 Cabrita, Text and authority, p. 10; David Killingray, “Thomas Brem Wilson and the early Pentecostal origins in Britain, 1902-10”, (n.d). 72 Burnett, Charisma and community, p. 134.

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Nevertheless, since the beginning of Pentecostalism in the Gold Coast, now Ghana, Pentecostals have attempted to define their conversion from their ancestral past as part of severing alliances with ancestral cults. Not only that, Pentecostals have been distrustful of the leadership of the African independent churches whom they accuse of having corrupted the Christian message by merging it with ancestral pneumatic practices. Since the 1990s, AICs have become less influential and declined in membership, which Pentecostal scholars argue has been as a result of some AIC’s religious figures engaging in questionable practices such as exploitation and immorality. 73 Much as this observation may be true from the perspective of Pentecostals, specifically classical Pentecostals, the point is also true that classical Pentecostals have been very relentless in attacking the AICs. 74 In all this, Pentecostals have profiled their conversion narratives as a break with their ancestral past. 75 Beyond this rhetoric of a breakup, Birgit indicates that it is more complex than simply moving nimbly away from an ancestral past. Matthew Engelke, for example, has argued that the Pentecostal idea of a break with the past needs to be understood as a discursive and strategic move, where Pentecostals continue to inhabit the two worlds of the ancestors and Christ. 76 From this purpose of a complex rupture, Pentecostals’ narrative of conversion from their past into Pentecostalism could be read as their retention of a complex engagement with their ancestral past—similar to the idea of affirmation and denunciation of the past simultaneously. 77 As Allan Anderson observed: “It draws from these sources in continuity with them while also simultaneously confronting them in discontinuity, using biblical rationale for its beliefs and practices. 78 Pentecostals often unconsciously tap into ancestral spiritual cosmogony to rationalise and justify their ritual practices as Pentecostals. The ability of Pentecostals to complexly invest in their past religious worldview as observed by Harvey Cox has been Onyinah, “African Christianity.” Birgit Meyer, “Christianity in Africa: From African independent to Pentecostal-Charismatic churches,” Annu. Rev. Anthropol, 33 (2004): 447-474. 75 Birgit Meyer, ‘“Make a complete break with the past.’” Memory and Postcolonial Modernity in Ghanaian Pentecostalist discourse,” Journal of Religion in Africa, 28, 3 (1998): 316-349. 76 Matthew Engelke, “Past Pentecostalism: Notes on Rupture, Realignment, and Everyday Life in Pentecostal and African Independent Churches,” Africa: Journal of the International African Institute, 80, 2 (2010), 177-199, 184. 77 Opoku Onyinah, “African Christianity in the twenty-first century,” Word & World, 27, 3 (2007): 305-314. 78 Onyinah, “African Christianity,” p. 307. 73 74

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successful because, “it has spoken to the spiritual emptiness of our time of reaching beyond the levels of creed and ceremony into the human religiousness, into what might be called ‘primal spirituality,’ that largely unprocessed nucleus of the psyche in which unending struggle for a sense of purpose and significance goes on.” 79 Cox identified three of the enduring legacies of “primal spirituality” that has found expression in Pentecostalism. These are primal speech, primal piety and primal hope. He explained primal speech as that which: [P]inpoints to the spiritual import of what scholars of religion sometimes call ‘ecstatic utterance’ or glossolalia, what earliest Pentecostals called ‘speaking in tongue,’ and what may now be referred to as ‘praying in the Spirit’. 80

He explained the primal hope as that which “touches on the resurgence in Pentecostalism of trance, vision, healing, dreams, dance and other archetypical religious expressions.” 81 Then with the primal hope “points to pentecostalism’s millennial outlook—its insistence that a radically new world age is about to dawn.” 82 All these strands of primal spirituality arguably find a composite expression in the centrality of prophecy in Pentecostalism. Prophecy comes across to Pentecostals as the spiritual exercise where the mind of God is made known to human beings. It is which also explicitly demonstrates the validity of the nonbinary worldview of Pentecostals, indicating God’s providential involvement in the affairs of the world. Much as contemporary prophecies in Pentecostalism is not to add or take anything from the Bible, it is through prophecies that Pentecostals tend to pre-empt or read the mind of God about what lies ahead of life, particularly about the end of time (eschatology). 83 Prophecy, among Pentecostals is also considered as a restoration of “the whole church about the ‘early rain’ of apostolic power and gifts being restored in a ‘latter rain’ for missionary activity” 84 and an audible explanation of the audible or

79 Harvey Cox, Fire from heaven: The rise of Pentecostal spirituality and the reshaping of religion in the twenty-first century (London: Cassell, 1996), p. 81. 80 Cox, Fire from heaven, p. 82. 81 Ibid., p. 82. 82 Ibid., p. 82. 83 Steven J. Land, Pentecostal spirituality: A passion for the kingdom (London: Sheffield Academic Press, 2003/1993), p. 62. 84 Ibid., p. 111.

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demonstrative evidence of the presence of the Holy Spirit. 85 All this is also embodied in the historical fact that the pneumatic experiences of Pentecostals, mediated by the baptism and filling of the Holy Spirit, is considered a fulfilment of the prophecy of Joel. 86 For all this, the role of prophecy among Pentecostals could be summed as: that which clearly indicates “a charismatic event; and that it is a person who prophesies as the Spirit of God ‘comes upon’ him not a church; and that prophecy is a very clear ‘thus saith the Lord’ and not the product of theological or ethical reflection and secular social analysis.” 87 Beyond the missiological and eschatological importance of prophecies, prophecies have socio-political and economic importance; even as it serves as an index of defining the boundaries of Pentecostal ethics. Through prophecies, Pentecostals tend to define the sartorial practices and food cultures of its members and gendered relations. 88 The closest use of prophecy, signalling a complicated continuation and resonating with indigenous worldview will preoccupy this chapter as its political application in Africa. 89 Pentecostals, whether defined broadly to include the African independent churches or the classical ones that emerged from the 1990s have always been actively involved in politics. Like Christians, prophecy has featured in inspiring them to take political action. Ogbu Kalu wrote about how Edward Wilmot Blyden, a major figure in Africa’s pan-African history, who having visited and been awed by the great pyramids of Egypt applied a Biblical reference to Egypt as a form of prophecy for “the whole of Africa, urging its people to regain agency from the memory of the Egyptian civilization.” 90 Pentecostals have since their emergence and prominence in the African public life in the 1990s used prophecy as, to use the expression of Kalu, “sign-watching to monitor geopolitical forces.” 91 Already in the 20th century, some of the figures of the AICs used the biblical reference to “Ethiopia”, especially the text that “Ethiopia shall 85 Clifton R. Clarke, “Call and response: Toward an African Pentecostal theological method,” In Clifton R. Clarke (ed), Pentecostal theology in Africa, 21-39 (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2014), p. 37. 86 Land, Pentecostal spirituality, p. 15; Acts 1-2; Joel 2. 87 Mathew S. Clark and Henry I. Lederle et al., What is distinctive about Pentecostal? (Pretoria: University of South Africa, 1983), p. 54. 88 Walter H. Hollenweger, The Pentecostals: The Charismatic movement in the churches (Minnesota: Augsburg Publishing House, 1972), p. 136. 89 Ogbu Kalu, African Pentecostalism: An introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 57 90 Kalu, African Pentecostalism: p. 34. 91 Ibid., p. 253.

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stretch forth his hand to God” to urge African nationalists onto the path of fulfilling political redemptive prophecy for Africa. 92 Considering that the ubiquitous expression of religion has hardly impacted the moral lives of Ghanaians, in particular, and Africans in general, the basic question this book hopes to answer is: Given the teleological nature of indigenous worldview, which complicates moral aptitude, could a belief in hell and heaven, as existential reality—though currently metaphysical—inform individual “livebelieve”—morality—Grenz?

In other words, would people’s moral life in public change for the better if they believe in the existence of heaven and earth? Assuming one believes in the hereafter where God, the Creator would hold one to account for what one did on earth, would that make any difference in the way people act their beliefs? On the contrary, what if one believes there is heaven where one’s sacrifices to contribute to human flourishing would be justly and abundantly rewarded, would that have any impact on one’s moral life? Also, if one were to believe that one is simply here to return to heaven and one invests all one’s impact on cultic activities, would that impact on one’s contribution to the material wellbeing of the world? Contrarily, granted one knows that all there is to life is here and now, would that affect one’s ethical predisposition towards material prosperity? I answer these questions by discussing primordial corruption whether under the pretext of inter-faith abuse, of cathedral glories or vanities, or environment and heritage destruction for money are ancient evils in new fashion. To restate my point, these issues, inter alia, that have burdened Ghana’s quest for human flourishing can hardly been addressed without a careful balance between religion and politics in public governance and socialising citizens away from “self” to live for the other. My suggestion for the creative fusion of religion and politics in the public sphere is that the Constitution of Ghana may not be perfect, but at least if its prescriptions are practised, I am certain that several of the nuisances we complain about would be significantly addressed. I am very convinced that the challenge may not be the constitution. This means that much as I do understand and appreciate the call among a section of Ghanaian citizens for a constitutional reform, that alone would hardly resolve anything ultimately the way we all expect it. I surmise that the basic function of a democratic 92 J. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu, African Charismatics: Current developments within independent indigenous Pentecostalism in Ghana (Leiden: Brill, 2005).

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constitution is to protect human ontological dignity – or to put it differently, to appreciate the natural rights of every human being. By natural rights, I follow the natural rights school of thought to argue that the rights to life, happiness and liberty are not given by any human being. Judging from my subjective Christian perspective, natural laws are given by God who created human beings in His own image. Christian theologians have provided different exegetical and hermeneutical analyses of what it means for human beings to bear the image of God—all of which have shaped my understanding of human ontological dignity. Thus, for me as an untrained theologian, my understanding of God’s image on human beings implies that human beings have inherent worth, not acquired worth. It takes the debate away from using rationality as an index of human value as rationality alone would exclude and set up some persons with cognitive challenge for marginalisation and bastardisation. Already, human history is replete with instances where children with unique physical and mental capacity away from what is considered normal, have been killed or treated as sub-human. Consequently, I am convinced that if Ghanaians are to incorporate the Christian doctrine of human ontological dignity into public governance, the country may make important headway in dealing with corruption of all shades. This is because, if one values the other human person as equally worthy of dignity, one may think carefully about anything one does, particularly if one’s action could potentially cause harm. Similarly, much of the troubles in the public sector is because of citizens measuring themselves by not just what they do; but wanting to be better than the other person. Thus, it is not just about one wanting to make money, which is not bad, but one wanting to make more money than the other which leads to competition. But the issue of money, as C.S. Lewis rightly observed is that our desire for it does not lie in fearing that if we give out, we will lose, but rather our fear of insecurity. 93 C.S. Lewis captured the potentiality of money leading us to commit evil aptly: Greed will certainly make a man want money, for the sake of a better house, better holidays, better things to eat and drink. But only up to a point. What is it that makes a man with £10,000 a year anxious to get £20,000 a year? It is not the greed for more pleasure, £10,000 will give all the luxuries that any man can really enjoy. It is Pride—the wish to be richer than some other rich man, and (still more) wish for power. 94 93 94

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (HarperCollins e-book, 2001), p. 86. Ibid., p. 123.

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My take away from C.S. Lewis is that the Lord requires us— dependent creatures to depend on Him daily. The Bible never runs out of the term “daily” when it comes to God’s relationship with human beings. In the wilderness, certainly a very difficult place for the Hebrew people who were in the liminal stage of their journey to the Promised Land in Canaan, there was every temptation on their part to amass more for fear of insecurity. Already, they had experienced hunger and were aware that in such a geographical location where they could hardly work or trade or cultivate the land or make money to take care of their needs, the temptation to gesture towards self-sufficiency was high. Meanwhile, the Lord provided for them free manna. But the Lord’s gracious provision of manna came with a strong caveat: Do not collect more than you need for a day—or to state it literally, “No one is to keep any of it until morning.” 95 Certainly, this was/is countercultural. It was irrational. It was totally inhuman. But it was with such decidedly countercultural instruction that the Lord wanted to inform the Hebrew people to rely on Him daily. It was the Lord’s own way of telling the people to stay clear of any pride of self-sufficiency. The Lord is not worried about what we have and what we could make or amass; He is rather concerned about where what we have would position our heart and its potential consequence. Wealth and the quest for it could lead us in all direction. Indexed by money, we could destroy when we sense the least danger on our journey to amass. But the Lord tames that by asking us to rely on Him daily. The Lord repeated the same instruction He gave to the Hebrew people when in teaching His disciples how to pray, He said to them to ask for their bread daily from the Father. In my piece on this subject which I shared with my friends on Facebook and WhatsApp I wrote: The Bible comes across to me as both philosophical and theology inspired book. Philosophically, it is not a philosophy as system (such as Capitalism and Marxism), but philosophy as stories. For the reason of being a philosophy as stories, we Christians identify with it, apply it to our lives and find wisdom to negotiate through life. As a philosophy in story, the Bible gives us pattern of lived experiences and the divine wisdom to apply to it. It is against the above as context that Paul, inspired by the Holy Spirit said that everything in the Bible was written for our learning. By learning from the stories, and applying its divine wisdom, we show ourselves approved and worthy to be used by God. Logically, through the stories we pick lessons and avoid needless mistakes, as the Spirit ultimately helps us. 95

Exodus 16:19.

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Theologically, the Bible is the mind of God given to us. It is the counsel of God and we don’t need anyone to counsel us otherwise. Bringing all this together on the subject under discussion - same-sex rights, we must learn a few lessons about the humbling effect of God. I have read the story of Abraham and his encounters with God several times. But l often struggled to make sense of why He allowed the enslavement of the descendants of Abraham. Did Abraham do anything wrong such that God should allow the enslavement of his descendants? Maybe theologians can help us here. Nevertheless, l find no clear answer with my extra pair of medicated glasses and cross-reference readings. All said, the Bible never leaves stories without coherency. So, when we read the whole narrative about the enslavement of the Hebrew people, what comes out very clear is that God was humbling the nation He would claim. The Lord owns us, but sin takes us away from Him. Sin gives us an arrogant sense that we are God or becoming like God. Sin gives us the audacity to occupy the centre, as we seek to dislocate God - putting Him on the periphery. Nana, this is the trap we must avoid. Let’s stay clear of God’s majestic throne. Nevertheless, given that God is ontologically worthy of our worship, He does not compete with anyone over our worship. He is rather a jealous God because to worship anything, including our sexual appetite, other than Him is to reduce ourselves beyond the dignity He has bestowed on us- His image on us. Just as Jesus never went about telling people He is God and must be worshipped, but rather pointed to His works which, indeed, brought and brings Him worship, God’s creation, including stones even worship Him. Even so, given the natural rebelliousness of the human heart, which the Bible says is desperately wicked, God chooses those He wants to relate with. He does that as part of the ultimate sovereign position to decide on the exception. From my understanding explicated above, God decided to choose Abraham and a seed from him to form a nation. To claim that nation, God must allow them to go through the existential reality of life which on the whole is about different and variegated levels of enslavements. Through the pain of enslavement, we seek an answer away from us and away from our kind or any kind below us. This was the case of a dying atheist who on his sick bed shouted at God: Is it because l don’t believe you exist that you bring me this pain? In the case of the Hebrew people, the pain of enslavement brought them closer to the God of Abraham, whom they may have forgotten. Through such a realisation and humbling, God brought in Moses who must also be humbled by taking a counter-cultural journey from the palace

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to the wilderness. It was only after God had humbled Moses that Moses qualified to be used by God. Lest l forget: Abraham himself was humbled by God by leaving everything that made him a human being - family, land and nation - to the wilderness. John the Baptist was in the wilderness, Jesus Christ was in the wilderness, and Paul was in the wilderness. Such humbling experiences in the hands of God builds in us love, empathy, kindness and patience amidst trial. More important, it keeps us in perpetual vertical dependence on God, who alone saves. The truth, however, is that we all often forget our humbling experiences in the wilderness and tend to be arrogant. To remedy this, God sometimes leaves an aspect of wilderness experience in our lives. It could be not storing up food for ourselves but depending on Him daily for supply. It could be leaving a pain of sicknesses in us, as was the case of Paul. It could be asking us to end our prayer with ‘Thy will be done.’ It could be praying to God daily as Father, indexing our ever dependence on Him as eternal children to Him. It could be calling Him our Shepherd, indicating our constant awareness of our vulnerability. It could be living in a world of widespread cancel culture. All these are ways the Lord humbles us and keeps us for Himself forever. Graciously, He seals us with His Holy Spirit, who comforts and teaches us.

My point in all this is that if our identity in public service is measured by a need to prove ourselves as a result of either competition or fear, we may fall into the trap of undermining our integrity, which may predispose us to act corruptly. It is here that I think that religion, more specifically Christianity—which is about living what we believe can help us define the boundaries of politics to advance human flourishing. The point is also that whether our identity is towards pleasing self or members of our group, we would feel oppressed and potentially compromising the virtue of honesty required for public service. Because both identities are very unstable and could hardly be satisfied. So, surmise the Christian intervention: “We are who we are by God’s grace”. Our wealth is because of who we are in Christ, not what we do. Our relationality with God as a source of our ontological dignity is aptly captured in Psalm 8:

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For the director of music. According to gittith. A psalm of David. Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory in the heavens. 2 Through the praise of children and infants you have established a stronghold against your enemies, to silence the foe and the avenger. 3 When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, 4 what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them? 5 You have made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honor. 6 You made them rulers over the works of your hands; you put everything under their feet: 7 all flocks and herds, and the animals of the wild, 8 the birds in the sky, and the fish in the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas. 9 Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! 1

I admit that this is very idealistic, but the essence of ethical teaching is not just the narrative as it is about the didactic lesson that needs to be followed to structure society for good. For example, Ananse sem, the tales about the Akan trickster hero, the spider are not meant to be believed as historically true, as they are to be studied and didactic lessons gleaned to ensure that both ethical and ontological boundaries are defined to protect human lives, as well as flora and fauna. The mystification of Ananse story or how some may read the Genesis account as historically untrue is crippling to human quest for cosmic harmony. I argue in this line because the post-Enlightenment relativisation of morality has not ultimately helped the human cause. Indeed, since the 1960s, the western world secularised its moral values, such that in the imagination of individuals, “There are no absolute truth and ethics.” This statement itself is inherently contradictory since it lays claim to absolutism. Nevertheless, as part of the post-structuralism and bastardisation of words as oppressive, it is now more difficult than ever lx

to have two people agree on what is right at least in times of stability. Meanwhile, Ghana’s constitution would be meaningless if after we have reformed it, individuals choose and pick from it what they consider ideal for them based on relativistic thinking. Obviously, governance would be impossible. I guess it is against all this that former American president, John Adams is reported to have said: “Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” Ending my preface, I discuss the issue of religion and politics as a composite discussion of public ethics. Meanwhile, because ethics and issues of moral values are as personal as they are communal, I will deploy autoethnography as a qualitative research approach that allows me to leverage my personal experiences as empirical data to engage the various topics I discuss in this book. For this reason, readers will notice that I take some of the issues very personal and also bring my faith to bear in my analyses of them. As a social scientist, I consider my subjective perspective as necessary because my theories of social sciences are hardly value free. To restate my epistemological position already in my book on Sex, gender and decolonisation: Thus, I agree with Berger and Berger that “The social sciences, whatever their uses, cannot produce judgements of value” (1983: viii). My own values as an Evangelical Christian, Akan male and a believer in the heterosexual family inform my analysis. Concurrently, while I remain tolerant of diversities of knowledge about the subject, I definitely have a position. Indeed, my position may not, of course, and rightly so, be shared by several people, including those within my social bracket. Nevertheless, I have a position that I must say is deeply partisan. At the same time, I strive to remain as academic as I avoid taking extreme positions. 96

96 Charles Prempeh, Gender, Sexuality and Decolonisation in Postcolonial Ghana: A Socio-Philosophical Engagement (Bamenda/Cameroon: Langaa RPCIG, 2023), xi.

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Chapter 1 Introduction 1. Sound the battle cry! See, the foe is nigh; Raise the standard high for the Lord; Gird your armour on, stand firm everyone; Rest your cause upon His holy Word. Refrain: Rouse, then, soldiers, rally round the banner, Ready, steady, pass the word along; Onward, forward, shout aloud, “Hosanna!” Christ is Captain of the mighty throng. 2. Strong to meet the foe, marching on we go, While our cause we know must prevail; Shield and banner bright, gleaming in the light, Battling for the right we ne’er can fail. 3. O Thou God of all, hear us when we call, Help us one and all by Thy grace; When the battle’s done, and the vict’ry’s won, May we wear the crown before Thy face. 1 Covid and Religion The global economy has been severely affected by the coronavirus pandemic. In a world where global capitalism is believed to be destroying peripheral states or set the states up for destruction through revolutions by billions of unemployed human workers, the outcome of the Covid-19 is compared with a possibility of a Fourth Industrial Revolution that would fast-track the process of the destroying economies in peripheral states. 2 It is, therefore, assumed that Covid-19 1 Hymn by William F. Sherwin, “Sound the battle cry!,” https://library.timelesstruths.org/music/Sound_the_Battle_Cry/. 2 Artwell Nhemachena, Rewai Makamani, & Oliver Mtapuri, “‘Natures’ role in 21st century revolutions? Covid-19, the fourth revolution and reposition of global capital,” in Rewai Makamani, Artwell Nhemachena & Oliver Mtapuri, Global

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could be understood as an obligatory passage point meant to force the world to transition in terms of global capital’s rituals of renewal. 3 The pandemic also overstretched all constitutional democracies that to the knowledge of some scholars has never happened. 4 But more specifically, governments everywhere invoked wide and intrusive emergency powers in responding to the public health crisis – leading to a widespread and general concerns about the legal basis of emergency powers and their proper use for legitimate public health objectives (saving lives, preventing transmission, and protecting the health of the nation). Second, constitutional balance that normally exists between the executive, the legislature, and the judiciary was disrupted, and the fundamental rights protected under international and national law were restricted on a massive scale. To reset the disruption of constitutional governance, scholars suggest a need to understand how ordinary processes of constitutional government were disrupted during the pandemic. 5 In the Middle East and Africa, the pandemic negatively impacted a region that was already struggling to recover from the effects of a decade of uprisings, failed or stalled political transitions, state fragility, economic decline, collapsing social safety nets, civil war, and international conflicts. 6 The global pandemic is wreaking havoc on welfare systems, institutions and society throughout the region (Middle East and North Africa), with far-reaching social consequences. 7 On the education front, the spread of the Covid-19 made 160 countries or more, mandated provisional school closures. The extended school closures was expected to cause not only loss of learning in shortterm, but also further loss in human capital and diminishes economic opportunities in the long-term. 8 Because of the sudden shift to online schooling, concerns are raised about whether education systems are

capitalist’s 21st century repositioning: Between Covid-19 and the fourth industrial revolution on Africa, 1-18 (Bamenda/Cameroon: Langaaa Research & Publishing CIG, 2021), p. 1 3 Ibid., 4 4 Derek M. Powell and Ebenezer Durojaye, “Constitutional resilience and the Covid-19 pandemic,” in Ebenezer Durojaye and Derek M. Powell, Constitutional resilience and the Covid-19 pandemic: Perspective from Sub-Saharan Africa, 1-78 (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), p. 1. 5 Ibid., 2. 6 Anis Ben Brik, “Introduction: Facing the wave: A journey in the shadow of the pandemic,” in Anis Ben Brik (ed), The Covid-19 pandemic in the Middle East and North Africa, 1-20 (New York: Routledge, 2023), p. 2. 7 Ibid. 2. 8 Nivedita Das Kundu and Aloysius Nyuymengka Ngalim (eds), Covid1-9: Impact on education and beyond (New Delhi/India: Vij Books India Pvt Ltd., 2021).

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equipped for such a quick scale-up in digital learning. 9 The impact of the pandemic created a huge loss in the learning process and that might continue for a longer period than expected and affect the progress. Millions of children and youth from pre-primary to tertiary may drop out or not have access to schools in the next year or so due to the pandemic’s economic slowdown. The closure of the educational institutions also obstructed the provision of the essential services to children and communities (United Nations, 2020). It is also said that millions of children worldwide missed out on early childhood education in their critical pre-school years. They missed a stimulating and enriching environment, learning opportunities, social interaction and in some cases, adequate nutrition through daily snacks & food that is provided in many educational institutions. 10 Several academics were convinced the pandemic gave lessons and prepared nations of the world for even greater pandemics. 11 It also presented opportunity for higher education to both foster knowledge and human well-being. The hope that the world could recuperate from the ravaging effects of the pandemic triggered solutions, much of involved education and several human activities migrating online. Most African universities radically shifted from face-to-face learning to elearning – which also reinforced several suggestions to reinforce the building of quality e-learning infrastructures and adequate staff and student capacities on online teaching-learning innovations. It was assumed that such measures would ensure that institutions are adequately prepared for easy adaption in teaching-learning during future lockdowns or emergencies like the Covid-19. 12 One important lesson of the pandemic when it comes to education is the recognition that classroom-based education and learning, especially in higher education and its limitations on access could now be a thing of the past as remote learning through the internet is now being embraced to reach more students. Ibid., xiii. Nivedita Das Kundu, “Introduction,” Ibid., 2. 11 Munyaradzi Mawere, Francis Machingura and Bernard Chazovachii, “The dialectics of Covid-19 and related pandemics: An introduction,” in Munyaradzi Mawere, Bernard Chazovachii & Francis Machingura (eds), Covid19 and the dialectics of global pandemics in Africa: Challenges, opportunities & the future of global economy in the face of Covid-19, 1-8 (Bamenda/Cameron: Langaa Research & Publishing CIG, 2021), 2. 12 Brenda Nachuah Laywer & Emmanuel Shu Ngwa, “The Covid-19 pandemic lockdown and the paradigm shift in lecture delivery methods in Cameroon Universities: Problems and prospects,” in Nivedita Das Kundu & Aloysius Nyuymengka Ngalim (eds), Covid-19: Impact on education and beyond, 69-86 (New Delhi/India: Vij Books India Pvt Ltd., 2021), p. 70. 9

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In all this, both economists and non-technical people can see that the world’s economies are in recession. Economic recovery may not come in time as expected, while the world has also experienced a relapse in its fight against deprivation as stated in the millennial goals. It appears that even when the economies of the world bounce back, the destabilising impact of the pandemic will be with us for quite a long time. Several members of the working class who lost their jobs as a result of the pandemic may hardly join the mainstream economy. The new work culture of extensive use of the internet may cut off a large portion of the non-literate segment of the workforce from service. The balance sheet of households may alter forever, despite any prospects of immediate recovery. Notwithstanding the devastating economic impact of the pandemic, it is true the pandemic displaced a lot out of the labour market who may never return but it also opened opportunities to selfemployment to those displaced. Though they will never go back to be employees, they are back in the labour market as both self-employed and potentially employers as some will grow their business to tale on workers. Among the devastating consequences of the pandemic are stories about the rational regime’s ability to rebirth renewed hope. Given the perceived religious-inspired conspiracies that reinforced anti-vaccine campaigns, there is a renewed agenda of forcing governments to dissociate themselves from religion. In the case of Ghana, the minority call for the state to disengage from direct interference with religion has become very strong for two competing reasons: First, the reality of a major economic recession that has sent the government back to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for debt restructuring; and second, the paradox of a beggar state similarly helping to build a religious edifice—a national cathedral. The pressure on the government to restructure the economy to defray accumulated debt would force the government to reduce public spending and welfare entitlements significantly. Already, there are concerns about the government putting an embargo on public-sector employment. All this may negatively affect economic growth, intensify poverty, and create an atmosphere of social and political instability—hence jeopardising Ghana’s democratic credentials. The escalation of religiously motivated tensions across the West African sub-region, with religious fanatics luring young men into acts of religious violence, complicates and perplexes the Ghanaian situation. We are told, mostly in the case of Ghana, that the government’s direct intervention in the public role of religion will reduce productivity and efficiency, stagnate economic recovery, and keep the country in a quagmire of economic morasses. In sum, we are told to put our trust 4

in rational institutions to solve all our challenges. In popular and academic seminars, discussants point to the perceived absence or centrality of religion in China and the Asiatic countries, and yet these countries are thriving. Paul Kagame of Rwanda has also become a model for African leaders to follow. Several popular analysts on radio and television profile him as the type of leader Africa needs in the 21st century to engineer What we are not told, however, is that both China and Rwanda and many of the Asiatic countries do not necessarily run the kind of liberal democracies that Ghanaians aspire to. At best, these countries have a façade of liberalism, but a closer observation indicates that the leaders have several dictatorial tendencies up their sleeves. China’s level of a controlled regime is more dangerous than the socalled excesses of religious fundamentalism. Leveraging digital surveillance, China has re-deployed technology, such as media censorship and monitoring of online discussion, voice and image analysis, and a massive low-level volunteer network on the lookout for suspicious activity, 13 as a form of a deity up in the sky to spy comprehensively on the lives of every Chinese person and whoever visits the country. Xi Jinping’s leadership of the Communist Party in China since he took over the reins of government in March 2013 has resulted in an absolutism that is emblematic of the sacralization of the state. The sacralization of the state, as I have said, is established through the complex use of digital surveillance systems. As a repressive state, the Chinese Communist government easily intrudes on its citizens’ private lives, even controlling their reproductive capacity, with its onechild policy, which has included forced sterilisation as a form of conformity since the 1980s. 14 Faced with a bleak response from God, China’s one-child policy has reached its cul de sac. The coronavirus pandemic has resulted in a major dip in the country’s population, posing a major threat to the country’s economic aspiration. In response, dictators never run out of schemes and apparatuses—the state is asking its citizens to broaden its reproductive capacity to 3 to stave off a looming crisis as a sharp population decline occurs. 15 Well, it is very easy to control childbirth, but what about coercing people to give birth? Through social 13 Christian Shepherd (2 February 2022), “China’s finely crafted web of digital surveillance for the Beijing Olympics has been years in the making,” https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/2022/02/02/china-digitalsurveillance-beijing-winter-olympics/. 14 Russell Goldman (31 May 2021), “From one child to three: How China’s family planning policies have evolved,” https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/31/world/asia/china-child-policy.html. 15 Ibid.

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interventions and incentives, China will have the answer. The government has proposed legalising IVF, which has been legal since 2001, and has promised to subsidise IVF and other assisted reproductive technologies. Even with this, as a result of the financial burden of having children, their economic uncertainty, and pushback on traditional ideas about the woman’s role as a caretaker at home, young people are not willing to have babies. 16 Many young people expressed a desire to focus on other careers, while others have embraced a lifestyle known as ‘double income, no kids,’ 17 rationality and technology would hardly save China. Would the government deploy techno power or recuperate ancient beliefs in childbirth? This implies that the state’s panopticon does not allow for any separation between the private and public lives of its citizens – signalling a complete and unprecedented form of totalism. Already exercising absolute control over the state, the Covid-19 pandemic provided yet another layer of pretext for the Chinese communist regime to tighten its grip over the country. As reported, “The pandemic has given Xi Jinping, China’s top leader, a case for deepening Communist Party’s reach into the lives of 1.4 billion citizens, filling out his vision of a country as a model of secure order in contrast to the ‘chaos of the West’.” 18 Against the background of the Chinese digital dictatorship, during the Olympics, several western nationalists were informed not to use their phones as they could easily be tracked. To state it more graphically in the words of Christian Shepherd that China leveraged the Olympics to expand surveillance and experiment with new procedures and technologies while honing well-testing measures of control, I quote as follows: Do not even take your cell phones into the country. Buy a so-called burner phone, traditionally used by criminals. Don’t take any kind of technology into the country that could be used to track you before or after. Just understand that while you’re there, the state is going to know 16 Alexandra Stevenson and Zixu Wang (22 January 2023), “China needs couples to have more babies: Can I.V.F. help?” https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/22/business/china-birthrateivf.html?action=click&pgtype=Article&state=default&module=stylnchina&variant=show®ion=MAIN_CONTENT_1&block=storyline_top_links_ recirc. 17 Ibid. 18 Chris Buckley, Vivian Wang and Keith Bradsher (30 January 2022), “Living by the code: In China, Covid-era controls may outlast the virus,” https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/30/world/asia/covid-restrictions-chinalockdown.html.

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everywhere you are, with everyone you meet, everything you write, everything you say, everything you hear. You just have to assume that is all being surveilled. It’s all being collected. But if you take your technology, eventually that may follow you when you go back to Paris or Budapest or Boston … Whether it’s WiFi sniffers or ID checks when you get on a train, book into a hotel, or simply go online, these are aspects of your life that you know could be tracked and analyzed -said Maya Wang, China researcher at Human Rights Watch. 19

Now, concerning Rwanda, the most celebrated country among several Ghanaian youthful segments. Since Paul Kagame took over political governance in Rwanda after the 1994 genocide, his rise to power as Howard French captured was not a result of just a “local uprising that had snowballed in popularity and momentum as it swept westward – the cover story backed by American diplomats and initially conveyed unquestioningly by many journalists or depicted as a positive development.” 20 In 2018, I had a very long conversation with two African scholars, who were in Cambridge as visiting scholars, on issues of Africa’s development at Wolfson College, where I studied. While transitioning from first year to PhD candidate, my two years of intense course work at the Makerere Institute of Social Research (MISR), Makerere University—Uganda, had introduced me to the subject of political economy. Thus, coupled with my background in African Studies, I have come to appreciate Africa’s development quandary more broadly than the extremes of blame culture and penitentiary culture. It was against the academic journeys that I appreciated my discussion over Rwanda with Drs Tinashe Nyamunda, a political economist at the University of Pretoria, South Africa and Walima T. Kalusa, a Zambian historian. After we had had an extensive discussion, taking into consideration various shades of Kagame’s narrative, we concluded that his dictatorial regime would be the aporia of his achievements. Dr Tinashe, in particular, was clear in asserting that the western world has been significantly charitable to Rwanda since the country experienced the regrettable genocide in 1994. Personally, I have not been carried away to singing the praise songs of Paul Kagame. Much as I admire his proactive and seemingly prudential use of the 19 Christian Shepherd (2 February 2022), “China’s finely crafted web of digital surveillance for the Beijing Olympics has been years in the making,” https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/2022/02/02/china-digitalsurveillance-beijing-winter-olympics/. 20 Howard W. French (30 March 2021), “The dark underside of Rwanda’s model public image,” https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/30/books/review/do-notdisturb-michela-wrong-rwanda.html.

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country’s resources, I detest some of his policies that tend to gag religious freedom and selective murder of dissenting voices. Yes, it is true that several of the developed economies, including the so-named Ancient Tigers or late industrialised countries such as Singapore and Taiwan, developed under “benevolent” dictators, the Kagame’s “benevolent dictatorial regime” is not sustainable. Before I state my reason, I must say that his regime has been more than benevolent. As document by Michela Wrong, it has been a regime of wanton human rights abuses, selective elimination of opposition, ostracization of dissenting voices, and perpetuating atrocities. 21 The western world has been deliberately quiet about the dictatorial rule of Kagame as against Rwanda’s neighbours, including Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe and Yoweri Museveni of Uganda. Both leaders are acknowledged among their peers in Africa as highly educated and ideologically sharp, compared with Kagame. Yet, Mugabe’s rule, which also involved human rights abuses and neo-patrimonialism, did not save him from the western world’s ostracization. While he was celebrated as a hero and national liberator, at the time of his death, the collapse of Zimbabwe’s economy left him in the minds of several Zimbabweans as a monstrous tyrant who mistook himself a political messiah. 22 In Uganda, Museveni does almost similar to what Mugabe did and yet the western world has not intervened to disrupt the government of Uganda. Museveni, presenting himself as the strongman of East Africa has used his military experiences and might to court complex relations with the US. Having stayed in power for more than three decades, he appeases the conservative religious community of Muslims and Christians that he is the strongman to keep Uganda from America’s metastasising sexual revolution. So, leveraging what was hardly available to Mugabe, Museveni plays off America against Ugandans and America against rising terrorists in the Great Lake region to consolidate his dictatorial regime. Meanwhile, Kagame does not compare himself with the military experiences and reputation of Museveni. But, as I have said, he is notorious for human rights abuses. The reason he has stayed, as I have said is because of the recent violent history he leverages as a resource. Similar to pain teaching more didactic lessons than experiences of felicity, Kagame wards off opposition through his re-enactment of memories of pain, which is embodied in tourism to sites of human 21 Michela Wrong, Do not disturb: A study of political murder and an African regime gone bad (New York: PublicAffairs, 2021). 22 William J. Mpofu, Robert Mugabe and the will to power in an African postcolony (Cham/Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021), p. 2.

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skulls and remains and selective brutal force. I must also concede that much as development in every society has come with some form of authoritarianism, for it to be successful, the citizenry must be disciplined to obey the laws, rules and regulations. This may explain the failure of the Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC) under Rawlings before the country re-democratization in the 1990s. The laws, rules and regulations were not enforced and complied with. Therefore, there was no citizenry discipline. The case of Paul Kagame is also interesting because he is making a positive difference. Returning to my question and explaining why his success would hardly be consolidated after him, I make reference two main factors. First, it is difficult to institutionalise dictatorial regime without continuing use of force. Because force is also encountered with hegemonic force over time, the absence of a charismatic leader who invested in force and coercion often signals the collapse of the dictatorial regime. Second, unlike the Asian Tigers that hardly have the kind of resources, but cheap labour and a Confucius work ethic that encourages workers’ voluntary participation in industrial work, discipline and harmony in the workplace in the 1960s and 1970s, 23 to attract the marauding violence of the west, Rwanda stands to fall out of favour with the west when Kagame leaves the scene and when the west feels they have pacified their conscience enough. As Henry Kissinger said of American diplomacy, “America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests.” 24 This is unlike the Asian countries where the western world continues to tacitly sustain authoritarian regimes by outsourcing their industries to the Asiatic world. This point was very obvious when during the pandemic, the western world, including France, England and Canada queued to purchase personal protective equipment from China. Currently, the western concerns with China’s depopulation are not so much about the moral aspect, but how it will profoundly reshape the global economy in the long run. The reasons as analysed by Nicole Hong are that, For years, China’s massive working-age population powered the global economic engine, supplying the factory workers whose cheap labour produced goods that were exported around the world. In the long run, a shortage of factory workers in China—driven by a more educated workforce and a shrinking population of young people—could raise costs 23 Wei-Bin Zhang, Confucianism and modernisation: Industrialization and democracy of the Confucian regions (Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000). 24 Henry Kissinger, Ending the Vietnam war: A history of America’s involvement in extricating from the Vietnam war (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003), p. 34.

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for consumers outside China, potentially exacerbating inflation in countries like the United States that rely heavily on imported Chinese products. Facing rising labour costs in China, many companies have already been shifting their manufacturing operations to lower-paying countries like Vietnam and Mexico. the economic repercussion of that to the west, given that China provides cheap labour for outsourced western industries. 25

This argument is not very strong, because to western producers, international companies are described as “footloose” precisely because they can, or are designed in such a way that they can pack and leave anytime or any for any reason. This implies that the problem described above is a problem for China not for the west because there are other countries, such Indiana and Pakistan, with high fertility rate and many poor people to be exploited. I have belaboured the above to highlight the fact that Rwanda and matter, and most African countries do not have the economic stature of China or any of the Asian Tigers. For this reason, whereas the western world would politicise international engagements and political systems, the west is mindful not to interfere with the peace and serenity in the country. Certainly, again, the same can hardly be said about Kagame’s Rwanda which is running old and stale among several of his people and the western world – all these people are bidding time for him to leave the scene peacefully. Whatever it is whether it is China and Rwanda’s dictatorship or the western world’s pragmatic international politics, the issue is that politics is deployed to perform the role of religion whereas religion is pushed aside. For example, as I shall discuss, both Paul Kagame of Rwanda and Xi Jinping of China are coveting the fundamental role of religion as a unifier, while subverting the fundamental role of politics as the management of difference. This has led to obvious incidences of abuses of human rights, especially among people who want to be free to express their dignity. The political ambience in Rwanda and China is never the same in Ghana, where the state struggles to even get pensioners to align with the government in debt restructuring. No matter how the state explains the rationale, the state is not anyone’s real family, so people would dissent. It is here that democracy comes in as a complex system. The president of Ghana could bulldozer his way through in the manner Kagame and Jinping would do, but, unlike dictatorial regimes, the president and his parliamentarians would have 25 Nicole Hong (18 January 2023), “Why China’s shrinking population is cause for alarm,” https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/18/world/asia/china-populationshrinking.html.

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to face the wrath or approval of the electorate at the ballot box. So, whereas Nana Addo Dankwa Akufu-Addo would beg to become president and could even be insulted by secondary school pupils and even hailed in some quarters as a mark of liberal democracy, one dares not try that with either Kagame or Xi Jinping. The above is not to take away the fact that the policies governments and how they are implemented are indexes of regime success. For example, Ghana’s Minister of Finance, Mr Ken Ofori-Atta, has failed to get pensioners to submit to government’s Domestic Exchange Programme – which is designed to protect the economy and enhance the state’s capacity to service public debt effectively. On this issue, the problem of the Ghanaian pensioners’ unwillingness to accept the haircut or hair shave on their pension as part of the government’s debt restructuring is not really a matter of democracy or lack of it perse but rather the belief in Ghana that the government has mismanaged the huge loans it contracted as put succinctly by Mrs Sophia Akuffu, the former Chief Justice. 26 But, of course, if President Nana Akufo-Addo has the powers of Kagame of Xi Jinping, it would be a different story. The discussion also highlights the simplicity of the idea of tenure security in the analysis of governance in Africa. Long stay in power without real power to rule, as it is in the case of several African countries would not yield much desired economic turn. At the end of it all, I have tried to discuss the simplicities of local and international politics in my analysis of religion and politics in Ghana. My argument which runs throughout this book is that it is neither political shrewdness nor technological advancement (to sum up: the rhetoric of common sense) that will ensure that human rights are respected and women their attainment of education, accept to give birth. It will be about appealing to a superior authority to give transcendental legitimization to respect human beings as ontologically worthy and ask people to endure the challenges of childbirth and childcare. Every parent should be aware that it takes a certain level of belief in God or ancestors to nurture a child without giving up. This may and for me as a Christian explain why Christianity considers marriage and the potentiality of childbirth as a divine-cultural mandate given to a biological man and woman to “procreate and fill the earth.” It may also be the same reason that Islam considers marriage as ibadah (worship) and the fulfilment of half of one’s religious 26 Ghanaweb (10 February 2023), “DDEP: This is wicked, disrespectful and unlawful – Sophia Akuffu tells government,” https://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/business/DDEP-This-is-wickeddisrespectful-and-unlawful-Sophia-Akuffo-tells-government-1711823.

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requirement. It may also be the reason for traditions of several African societies assigning significance to fecundity and phallic competence as critical for ancestor-ship. Beyond all this, for me as a Christian man and father, I sacrifice for my children because God the Father sacrificed His Son Jesus Christ for my redemption. It is also the very same reason, especially the Christian theology of subsidiarity, where the complex is broken into smaller units with the basic unit serving as the foundation of the complex, that several religious people would hardly cower to the attempts at normalising non-biologically procreative practice as samesex marriage. As I have said elsewhere, whereas In vitro fertilization (IVF) may help, that alone is not enough, as we have seen in the case of China’s struggle to repopulate, to compel people to give birth. It takes a family and a social context where man and woman play a complementary role to nurture a child that would become a godly and abiding citizen. This is in no way to argue that IVF cannot be done by couples supported by their families. All the same, following this advice the state should stay away from religion, the media have amplified the voices of a few elites whose agenda is to mute the voices of religion or the “spillovers” of religious symbols in the public sphere. Regrettably, the activities of a few religious figures, either in what the public considers as misguided communication or prophecies, have deepened suspicion about religion and its representations in the public sphere. Indeed, the argument that religion and politics should not conflate is partially true and at worse categorically incorrect. Nevertheless, as I will demonstrate throughout this book, the attempt at dualizing religion and politics and creating concrete and fossilised binaries between the two are the “truths” propagated by the secularization ideology, which is based on false and ahistorical assumptions and blinkered vision of the formation of the modern state. The goal of this book is, therefore, to deconstruct the simplistic assumption that the state cannot and must not incorporate religion and its representation in public governance. Indeed, the argument about separation of religion and state will always continue for two reasons, especially in Africa. First is the increasing liberal belief that religion or faith is personal and private. Second, the contradiction in such belief is that we are ruled and governed by constitutions and laws that are of Judaeo-Christian origins and the very existence of the modern state. For that reason, the idea of state being separate from religion is farce. Indeed, religion and state are the foundations of society and development (such as the role of religious groups in education, health and social care). It is to refute the understanding that if government interferes to dictate the contours of religion in the public sphere, it will amount to 12

the violation of human rights and national cohesion. For this reason, my book will contest the false idea that the public sphere, whether in government offices or classrooms is “naked” and neutral of all beliefs and ideas. I will show that the idea of a “naked public sphere” does not exist—it exists as a convenient myth! The public sphere looks free of religious beliefs because several people accept assumptions of a “secular” constitution when they have not understood the complexities of a merger between religion and politics in the formation of the modern state—which as I argue is a continuity of the so-called premodern world. Indeed, how neutral the public sphere should be is never defined, at least not by any of the proponents of a separation between religion and politics in Ghana’s democratic regime. It is a recent political agenda that seeks to inject into the public sphere a belief that is also religious. This means that the usual refrain that government should not interfere in religious matters is false, if not entirely ill-conceived. Both in national and global history, the government is always involved in religious affairs and those who assume that is not true are politically motivated as anyone. Deconstructing the myth that there is anything such as a separation between religion and politics is an important step towards understanding the Ghanaian government’s stake in the construction of a national cathedral. Religion is a group activity which creates a social space for religious persons to gather and participate in communal worship. As a group activity, the logic of the religious sociogenic role is streamlined and ritualized in the practice of communion (Lord’s Supper) and baptism etc. Through communal service, religious people affirm their confirmation bias in a world where they create their uniqueness as the “chosen ones” of God. Thus, whether the Buddhist Dharma, the Muslim ummah or the Christian ecclesia, congregational service is important in restructuring self-affirming religious identity. In other words, religious people redefine themselves through congregational services. The appropriation of religious rituals serves as a transforming agent as religious persons curate their social redefinition away from the “world.” As religious persons participate in rituals, we glean the importance of the interaction between personal and social activity and beliefs, which shape how religious people build epistemological traditions about seismic events. The significance of communal or cultogenic service was very much affected by the coronavirus pandemic. Indeed, long before the pandemic and it’s attending social distancing protocols, religious evangelists have since the 1920s incorporated different forms of online services, including radio, television and social media. That online and 13

offline religious services are part of religious practices predated the lockdown. 27 The novelty of the pandemic for several Ghanaian religious constituencies was that for the first time, in-person service was banned—even if temporarily. Meanwhile, part of the attributes of religion is that it appears to thrive in moments of crisis. PEW research for example indicated that when the impact of September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States of America several Americans turned to religion in the wake of the crisis. The PEW reported that “The Sept. 11 attacks have increased the prominence of religion in the United States to an extraordinary degree.” 28 Following the outbreak of the pandemic, PEW reported that “More than half of all U.S. adults (55%) say they have prayed for an end to the spread of the coronavirus.” 29 In several parts of the world, the political elites called on their respective religious constituencies to pray. In the United States of America, Donald Trump, leveraged the occasion to on Americans to reclaim their religious history to invest in prayers. In England, there was mobilization among a few Christians calling on the political elites to declare a “National Day” of prayer. 30 In the case of Ghana, the Christian President and Muslim Vice President called on their respective religious constituencies for a prayer section at the seat of government for prayer. 31 The nationwide call for prayer in Ghana had an unprecedented outcome, such that religious ecumenism, as far as I observed, was at its peak. All the various sects of Islam, including the Ahmadiyya, assembled at the Jubilee House (the seat of Government to say Aameen to the same prayers). This as I said was unprecedented because while the Ahmadiyya Muslims have been in Ghana (then the Gold Coast) since the 1920s, Ahmadiyya and the other so-named Orthodox 27 Heidi Campbell and Mia Lövheim, “Introduction,” Information, Communication & Society, 14 (2011): 1083-1096. 28 Pew Research Center (6 December 2001), “Post September 11 attitudes”, https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2001/12/06/post-september-11attitudes/?utm_source=link_newsv9&utm_campaign=item_307619&utm_medium =copy. 29 Pew Research Center (30 March 2020), “Most Americans say Coronavirus outbreak has impacted their lives,” https://www.pewresearch.org/socialtrends/2020/03/30/most-americans-say-coronavirus-outbreak-has-impacted-theirlives/?utm_source=link_newsv9&utm_campaign=item_307619&utm_medium=co py. 30 Charles Prempeh, “Religion and the state in an episodic moment of COVID19 in Ghana”, Social Sciences & Humanities Open, Vol. 4, Issue 1 (2021), pp. 1-8. 31 Ibid.

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Muslims have hardly had a good relationship. Even when the Ahmadiyya pioneered and led the western-mode of education in the Gold Coast, the other Muslims would not allow their children to be educated in Ahmadiyya schools. In 1974, the Sunni Muslims embarked on the hereticization of the Ahmadiyya Muslims, when the former met in Pakistan. 32 With all this, it was quite remarkable that the Ahmadiyya and all the other Muslims congregated without recourse to the usual rancour and internal schisms. The major challenge for the political elites was how to convince the various religious groups to accept lockdown rules. Historically, hardly had both the mosques and churches been in lockdown – at least not as a result of a mandate from the state. Nevertheless, given the challenges and potentiality of fatality that the pandemic generated, the religious authorities had to cower to the state to “lockdown” places of worship. As I have already stated, the cultogenic nature of religion is very important for the reaffirmation of self-identity. More importantly, congregational service or in-person service affords religious authorities with affordances to recalibrate religious rituals. Rituals are not just irrational repetition of religious praxes, as it is also part of reaffirming religious identity, structures of authority and control and reinforcement of catharsis relief. The importance of rituals as part of religious gatherings has been observed as necessary for “identity-forming activity and means of reproducing group’s values, social structures, and habitual properties.” 33 Rituals are also public events, making them sociogenic and part of religious communities affirming group solidarity and social conviviality. Far more important is that the public visibility of religious rituals demarcates the boundary between religion and politics. Rituals marking the limit of state control will form an important part of my book. Suffice to say that it was precisely this boundary that the state and religion have had conflictual engagements. This means that instead of people just assuming that the political elites can use power to suppress religious people, influence, as opposed to the state’s deployment of coercive force, 34 is what determines the contours of religious control. My point here is that religion as people’s appealing to something other 32 John H. Hanson, The Ahmadiyya in the Gold Coast: Muslim cosmopolitans in the British empire (Bloomingon, Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2017), p. 240. 33 Langer, Robert, Thomas Quartier, Udo Simon, Jan Snoek, and Gerard Wiegers, “Ritual as a Source of Conflict” in Ronald L. Grimes, Ute Husken, Udo Simon and Eric Venbrux (eds), Ritual, Media, and Conflict, 93–132 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 121. 34 Max Weber, Economy and society (A new translation by Keith Tribe). Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2019, 75.

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than what is empirical and materially real to make sense of the world is a priori to political party organisation or partisan politics. Also, in terms of the aetiological history of religion and politics, religion is anterior to the state. Similarly, the family is also pre-political. Also, the state is fashioned based on a social contract, where individuals voluntarily give off some of their rights to the state for public governance. Religion and family are not informed by contract. Religion and the family are based on a covenant. Against the background of the boundaries that rituals create between the state and religion in the public sphere, the universal and uniform imposition of lockdown significantly disrupted religion. This point is to say that the peculiar ritual performances of religion that define people’s sense of relationality with the transcendental is hardly extended to the religiously plural sphere. The issue is also that in a religiously plural societies spaces are provided for different religions to manifest that which also allows devotees to practice their unique rituals in the public without such a practice becoming uniformly imposed on the public a collectively-shared practice. This is far different from theocratic states where religion and politics are inseparably intertwined in such a way that the rituals of religion are the basis of public governance. 35 The priestly theocratic states, as in precolonial Ga society of Ghana and Ancient Israel, assume religious uniformity and communal ritual practices embedded in the political and social fabric in governing the public sphere. 36 Unlike Ancient Egypt where the Pharaohs were deified or seen as gods in the guise of men; the Ancient Israelites and the Ga did not deify the political leader, even when he combined religion and politics in the performance of public governance. 37 Part of stemming the tide against the sporadic spread of the coronavirus was the state imposition of a ban on all public religious rituals. That the announcement came from the state was a major source of discontent among religious persons. For example, when the government of Ghana imposed three weeks of lockdown rules in Greater Accra and Greater Kumasi in the Ashanti Region on 30 March 2020—22 April 2020, the state had to deploy the security apparatus to 35 Ran Hirschl, “Theocracy,” in András Sajó, Renáta Uitz, and Stephen Holmes, Routledge handbook of illiberalism, 152-163 (New York: Routledge, 2022). 36 Abraham Akrong, “Pre-monarchical political leadership among the Gas, with special reference to the people of La,” Institute of African Studies Review, 7 (2006): 137147. 37 Norman Russell, The doctrine of deification in Greek patristic tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).

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impose the rules. The presence of the police and soldiers in the public to enforce lockdown rule was read by a section of the Ghanaian populace as an intrusion. The protest against the security presence was also because of some abuses by some offices of the police and army— a phenomenon that was also a global reality. 38 It was for this reason, inter alia, that a female freelance preacher in Central Accra challenged the rights of the police to determine what happens to her life. She told the police that her ultimate source of authority and livelihood is in the hands of God. There was also the issue of the financial and material benefits of inperson service from both the churches and the congregations. Therefore, the push factor for in-service worship (included the fact that it excluded the churches from daily collections and congregations from prayers of healing, miracles and for visa jobs). There was also the belief among some religious people that allowing in-person service would enable them to pray against the spread of the pandemic by divine intervention. Among the Muslims, the lockdown rule was also a challenge. Whereas elsewhere in the Muslim and non-Muslim countries, Muslims had willingly accepted lockdown rule, as a mark of proving themselves as good citizens in the case of Denmark, in Ghana was a challenge. Ghanaian Muslims had a long history of refusing to cower to the dictate of a “secular state” seeking to impose on the Islamic ummah. I shall return to this in my discussion of the idea of Christian nationalism. But before then, since the colonial era in the 19th century, a large section of Ghanaian Muslims has refused to comply with the state’s formalisation of Islamic marriage. Meanwhile, the lockdown meant that Muslims had to comply with technology to mediate their religious lives. Several Muslims read the state lockdown rule as an intrusion, but with the intervention of the country’s National Chief Imam, Sheikh Osman Sharubutu, the Muslims complied. It is worth noting that two years before the pandemic in 2018, Prof. Kwabena Frimpong Boateng, Ghana’s former minister of Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation, called on the Muslim leaders in the country to use text messages in inviting Muslims 38 Festival Godwin Boateng, Saviour Kusi and Samuel Ametepey, “Covid-19 lockdown defiance, public ‘indiscipline’, and criminalisation of vulnerable populations in Ghana,” African Review of Economics and Finance, (online article (2021): 1-30; Anuli Njoku, Yusuf Ahmed and Bolanle Bolaji, “Police brutality against Blacks in the United States and ensuing protests: Implications for social distancing and Black health during Covid-19,” Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment, 2020: 1-9: https://doi.org/10.1080/10911359.2020.1822251.

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to prayers, instead of the traditional megaphones. He was reported to have said as follows: In the house of worship, why is it that the noise will be limited to the house of worship … and again maybe from the mosque, why is it that time for prayer would not be transmitted with a text message or WhatsApp so the Imam will send WhatsApp message to everyone that the time for prayer up so appears. 39

Following Prof. Kwabena Frimpong Boateng’s suggestion about how new and appropriate technology could be appropriated in undertaking religious rituals, many Muslims have assumed that the Minister of Environment, Science and Technology is pitting Muslims against Christians, and have descended mercilessly on him. 40 In all, the fact the Minister’s suggestion incurred the wrath of some Muslims brings to the fore the role rituals play in separating the domains of the state and religion. But at the same time, when Ghana’s National Chief Imam intervened the Muslims complied. Similarly, several Christian leaders re-theologised, and assign new meanings to known biblical stories such as the Passover Story in the Book of Exodus, to offer transcendental legitimacy to the lockdown rules. The success achieved by the religious leaders in enforcing lockdown rules indicates the issue was more than just the migration of religion from offline to online. This is because religion and mediatization have interacted for decades. The oddity was what came across the religious constituency as coercion from the state. 41 As I shall discuss in the section on Christian nationalism, the state has passed a law to regulate public spill overs of religion, but whether they would work the way the state anticipates is yet another issue. I will also discuss how the issue of time is important in the moral vision of religious people, especially the issue of Christian nationalism. But suffice it to say that the religious figures succeeded, more than the state, 39 Ghanaweb (11 April 2018), “Use WhatsApp not speakers for ‘call to prayer’ – Minister to Muslims,” https://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/Use-WhatsAppnot-speakers-for-call-to-prayer-Minister-to-muslims-642249. 40 Ghanaweb (13 April 2018), “Muslim groups demand removal of Prof. Frimpong Boateng for ‘call to prayer’ comment,” https://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/Muslim-groupsdemand-removal-of-Prof-Frimpong-Boateng-for-call-to-prayer-comment-642864. 41 Lene Kühle and Tina Langholm Larsen, “‘Force’ online religion: Religious minority and majority communities’ media usage during the Covid-19 lockdown,” Religions, 12 (2021), 1-19, p. 4.

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in re-deploying past religious narratives pointing to a far-reaching understanding of time in the minds of religious people. It reflects the way religious people read history and time. Time is often construed in western philosophy as linear. While there is always a beginning and certainly must be an end in chronological construction, the same is not entirely true with historical events or stories about the past. Religious narratives are philosophies as stories as opposed to philosophies as a system. Religious people, therefore, re-deploy stories of the past not as past but as necessary for making sense of the present. This brings in the philosophy of historical parallelism in historiography which for religious people provides a sense of purpose in life. Needless to say, the novel coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic unsettled the world in significant ways. Nearly overstretching the capacity of modern science, the pandemic created counter-narratives. First, it created a narrative of religion in ascendance and second, a narrative of the failure of the technological turn since the 18th century’s industrial revolution. However, is it just simply a matter of the pandemic producing antinomies for the engagement between religion and politics? Meanwhile, given my interest in religion, both as a practitioner and an academic, I reflected on what the impact of the pandemic means for Ghana and Africa. I wrote severally journalistic pieces on how Ghana could curate its way out of the pandemic, and take didactic lessons to reform public governance away from corruption—given the reported cases both local and global corruption spurred by the pandemic. 42 Similarly, the state’s mediated role in the implementation of the World Health Organization’s safety social distancing protocols impacted heavily on the sociogenic activities of Ghanaians. Not only were marriages, naming ceremonies and festivals temporarily banned, but funerals were also restricted. Worse still, without the families’ knowledge, the state took custody of and buried people who died from the virus in the early stages of the pandemic in March and April 2020. The outcome was expected. The sense of closure felt by the families of the deceased was impacted by such covert and unmarked burials of virus victims. Similar to Jacob’s case, a number of the families of the deceased remained in denial and frequently pressed the government to let them visit and bury their loved ones. Mortuaries eventually reached capacity because non-Muslims were 42 Vincent Ekow Arkorful, Nurudeen Abdul-Rahaman, Hidaya Sungjun Ibrahim and Vincent Ansah Arkorful, “Fearing trust, transparency, satisfaction and participation amidst Covid-19 corruption: Does the civil society matter? – Evidence from Ghana,” Public Organization Review, 22 (2022): 1191-1215.

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unwilling to simply discard their dead as though they were animals without the proper rituals. Funeral customs are important to many ethnic groups because of the function of funerary rites in the passage of the deceased from the limbo state of the physical and metaphysical worlds and the consequences. The Christian notions of funeral, specifically about the state of the dead, are hardly uniform, as there are Catholic Christians who believe in purgatory; Seventh-day Adventists who believe in the sleep of the soul and majority evangelical Christians who believe that the soul goes to be with the Lord soon after death. Nevertheless, for most Ghanaian Christians, funeral provides closure, reassuring the deceased families that deceased has finally severed all forms of physical relationship with the living on earth. 43 Considering the social and psychological impact that the nonperformance of funerals held for many Ghanaians I wrote several journalistic articles on the Christian belief in heaven and the need to focus their gaze on the resurrection factor. Sharing all this on social media and publishing them on online portals marked me as highly religious. But what worried a few of my friends were the several pieces I wrote in support of the state’s proposed national cathedral. As the country was floundering under the economic impact of the pandemic, which worsened as a result of historic mismanagement and the ongoing Russian-Ukraine debacle, several of my friends could not come to terms with my religious proclivities in favour of a national cathedral. Concurrently, I deploy conversations I had with my friends to provide a short biographical account of my foray into religion, specifically conservative evangelical Christianity. Aligning that with my academic training in African Studies, I discuss the complex interactions between religion and politics. The main goal of this book is to repudiate the simplistic separation of heaven and earth in analysing the behaviour of religious people. I use the idea of “political economy” to discuss heaven and earth as contexts to discuss the constant merging of religion and politics in public governance, focusing on why the state is involving itself in building a national cathedral, while the Church of Pentecost is building prison facilities; issues of corruption and the future of religion, from the perspective of the global metastasizing of artificial intelligence, social media and the response of two of Ghana’s millenarian movements: The Seventh-day Adventist Church and the Jehovah’s 43 John Parker, In my time of dying: A history of death and the dead in West Africa (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2021); Marleen de Witte, Long live the dead: Changing funeral celebration in Asante, Ghana (Amsterdam: Aksant Academic Publishers, 2001).

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Witnesses—both founded in the United States of America in the 19th century with a strong fidelity to exclusivist theology of their founders. My main argument is that, instead of religion capitulating to extreme postulations of either surging or diminishing in its public role, as a result of the pandemic, what people hold as a worldview in answering the “why” questions would remain with them, particularly when the “how” technical answers keep failing them. By implication, I seek to deconstruct the simplistic framing of religion and politics as antagonistic foes in an eternal battle. Instead, I argue that religion and politics play ontological roles that tend to require mutual inclusivity in public governance. Religion fundamentally unites differences via rituals and beliefs; while politics tend to manage differences. Both religion and politics also deal with the very same issues they each seek to solve. Religion needs to manage in co-interacting with others, and politics need unity for power to be exercised towards the human good. Either way, religious figures provide transcendent legitimation for the state to exist. I surmise that the pandemic brought out the nexus between the “why” and the “how” issues better. At the same time, it created what appears an anomaly when the political elitists insisted on building a national cathedral other than investing in social services. Autobiographical: My entry into scholarship on religions In a conversation with a friend on 5 January 2022, he was surprised that after all my schooling, including graduating with a terminal degree from the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom in 2021, I still believe in God and heaven. For this non-religious friend of mine, for me to continue to believe in God and the idea of heaven is a betrayal of scholarship. From his perspective, the belief in God and heaven is simply for the light-hearted and uninformed who are afraid of the dark. To simply state, for my friend and persons who share his position about faith in the transcendental reality, religion and its representations are part of human creation to fleece the world, privilege the creation and sustainability of the elite and impose the culture of laziness and irrationality on the gullible. 44 On the contrary, my Christian and Muslim friends are thrilled to know that I have retained my faith in God and heaven and still write in defence of the faith. Life is worth living because there is a God who created the world, has a timetable to determine its beginning and its ending; and has prepared both heaven and hell for those who accept 44 See: Karl Marx, Critique of Hegel’s ‘Philosophy of right’ (trans. Annette Jolin & Joseph O’Malley) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), p. 131.

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his offer of salvation and those who reject it, respectively. This constituency of my friends lives on the assumption of the popular song, “I have another world in view.” I am certainly a person of faith, but not religious as in simply believing in heaven and earth religion is more complex and nuanced than just believing in the imagined or real metaphysical existence. Yes, I believe in heaven, but I also recognise my existential presence on earth. As a Christian, I have wondered why I am on earth since I experienced a relapse in my faith while studying as a second-year secondary school student at the West Africa Secondary School, AdentaAccra—Ghana. The question about my existence comes under the background of my family’s religious history, the community I have lived in since 1984 and my encounters with religion and the “metaphysical”. To explain how the aforementioned relates to my interest in writing about the political economy of heaven and earth, you should first note that I was raised in a home where my late father, who passed away in December 2008, was a devout Catholic. Standard Seven was the highest level of education my father, a posthumous son, had attained. Nevertheless, I hardly ever saw him reading the Bible or praying with us. He was a quiet man who yearned to read. He frequently went to church, but I hardly ever saw him carrying a Bible. Amazingly, he was such a gregarious person that the Maamobi community famously referred to him as “My brother.” He was also very incorruptible and prided himself on never having an issue with the police regarding any criminal offences. Not only did he consider himself a man of high moral repute, but the community endorsed it. Thus, as a child, anytime I did anything wrong, whoever witnessed my misconduct would say, “You aren’t like your father.” Similarly, when I spent time playing football, whoever saw me would simply say, “You aren’t as smart and serious in life as your father.” Given that my parents were barely hard enough, my siblings and I were hardly satisfied with his moral aptitude. Indeed, there were times, a few of his work colleagues would come to our house in his absence to report to our mother that “Kwaku Prempeh is the reason you and the children are struggling.” Considering this charge against the fact that my father was not meeting my expectation of aggressively accumulating (or Marx’s primitive accumulation) like other parents, some of whom would steal hospital medicine from 37 Military Hospital to trade in the community, I was simply not happy with my father. Worst of all, my father never bought a television for us and when he did, he left it at his older sister’s house in Kaneshie, a suburb of Accra, claiming that my siblings and I would not learn. That he never brought the computer home until I was 22

12 years of age killed my love for television permanently, because our neighbours who had TV would always insist, we bathe before entering their rooms to watch TV. And since I did not fancy the idea of bathing twice daily, I decided to also avoid watching TV—non-watching of TV has remained with me till today. I also never joined him at the Catholic Church because he never answered my questions about religion the way I expected. As I shall soon talk about, in a community that was slightly dominated by Muslims, I expected my father to respond to some of the difficult questions Muslims raise about the person and deity of Jesus and the idea that the Bible is full of errors and contradictions. Mostly I would argue with him with my infantile mind, hoping to provoke him into talking. But he would remain economical with words; say a few things and left a lot unsaid. Much as my father’s choice of “slow” communication irritated me, he preferred I experience “things” about the metaphysical myself. One such experience that humbled me before him was when my gaze fell on a corpse for the first time in 1991. A week before that fateful day, I had argued with my father over the appropriate name for the dead in my Akan/Twi language. In Twi, the name for the remains of a dead person is ɛfunu, which translates as “wastefulness.” Having never seen a corpse and not appreciating the depth of the Akan philosophy about a corpse, I put it to my father that it is appropriate to refer to the remains of a dead person as “ɔbi a wewu” to wit, “someone dead”. In my mind as a 9-year-old child, I thought I was more concerned and generous towards incorporating death into the living than my father. As usual, my father had no more words for me than his usual, “That is how we have always known it.” With my father’s response about the profile of a corpse lurking behind me, I did not miss the opportunity for anything to readily set my gaze on the remains of one of the sub-chiefs of the Gruni people of Northern Ghana who passed in Accra. It happened that while my friends and I were playing football on a red gravelled ground or technically—regolith surface (for which reason we tagged it grujegruje park), just behind the house of the late chief’s compound house, the wailing of the hearse left my curiosity soaring high above my friends. While all my friends took their feet for fear of the corpse, I braced it, stood there for a few minutes and once I was certain that the corpse had been brought to the room where it was laid in state, I supported myself with an abandoned moulded cement block and cast my gaze long enough until it fell right on the remains of the late chief. That night, what I saw kept me solidly bounded to my father’s bosom until 23

my sleepless eyes saw the rising sun, as any opening of my eyes was nothing other than an apparition of the dead chief beckoning me. From that experience of unexplained and unresolved fear that gripped me for several years to come about funerals and everything related to them, including dirges, I realised my folly in thinking my father was just not abrasive enough in his actions and inactions. What further kept me away from excitedly debating my father over religious matters was what I thought was too mysterious to conceive. The incident was about a corpse that refused to be transported from Accra to Kwame Atta, a village in the Central Region of Ghana. In 1991, a member of my friend’s family died out of an attempted abortion. As a child, I decided not to get close to talking about the subject, because of the experience I narrated above. But in the 1990s, I observed a culture where adult Akan residents who died in the city were brought home where they stayed before their remains were transported to their respective villages for burial. Various sub-Akan groups had formed associations and frequently met at Circle, a suburb of Accra, where they discussed matters that border on the development of their villages and also contributed to performing the funeral rites of members. These ethnic groups which may have begun in the 1950s have been concretized in the 1980s as part of the self-construction of ethnic identities under Ghana’s military rule and also a social safety buffer from the country’s economic morass. It was against this background of ethnic solidarity that the Assin people of Kwame Atta where the deceased came from had mobilized resources to convey the remains of the deceased to their village in Kwame Atta, but first through the ritual of bringing the corpse “home” in Accra. The idea was to ensure the penultimate closure of the deceased’s life in Accra, for the ultimate closure of “home” in the village. Given my experience with the case of the Guruni chief, I had purported not to talk about the issue of the lady’s abortion which was all over the place among my friends. I refrained from even talking about rumours that she had died as a result of drinking a concoction made up of a bottle that had been grinded into powder and other herbs. powdered bottles. Considering the Christian-Muslim moralization of pre-marital sex and pregnancy in the late 1980s, young ladies who became pregnant out of wedlock were rumoured to consume a concoction made of a mixture of bottles ground into powder and other substances to terminate the pregnancy. I had heard about all these stories, but for my fear of ghosts, I avoided uttering a word about the lady’s death. For this reason, I hemmed myself in the room, the day news broke through my parents that the remains of the lady would be brought home as a transit point to Kwame Atta. This narrative is by no 24

means to dismiss the narrative as superstitious, as it captured my childhood imaginations early enough about the complexities of rituals. Unfortunately, for me, my mother’s confectionary store was right at the roadside where the hearse carrying the corpse would have to park. As my parents had said, the corpse was brought home and the hearse predictably parked in front of my mother’s store, the very day fate had selected me to attend to the store. I, therefore, had no excuse to run away, as my mother, clad in black and red to commiserate with the deceased family would not cave into my concerns. It was in a state of fear and curiosity, as I faced the hearse that I realised something strange had occurred. After all the wailing was over, the engine of the hearse refused to turn on. The driver and his assistant tried all knew to no avail. Able-bodied young men lent their voluntary service to push the hearse, but it was as if the corpse did not want to transition to the village. At this point, there the wailing intensified with the women claiming, “She is not going because she died accidentally—atɔfo wuo.” At the height of frenzied emotional discharge of sorrow, a senior church member of the same African independent church saved the situation. Known commonly as Papa Nkran, because he was a Ga person who also served as the landlord of our compound house, he came to the scene with two bottles of schnapps. After asking all the young men and women who had gathered around the hearse to give him the way, he performed liberatory prayer, soon after which the hearse engine was brought to life and the deceased concurrently taken to the village for the final funeral rites. Combined with the case of the Guruni chief, this incident drew my attention to the fact that was no need for me to always desire to experience what my father intentionally left undiscussed. I also lost interest in persistently probing what was not materially sensible. That was the end of my debate with my father over some issues, but certainly, it did not dim my interest in studying religion. Going back to my father, his moral character paid off when he passed away peacefully at home on December 13, 2008. As far as I can recall, having lived in the Muslim community for nearly four decades, my father was the only non-Muslim whose death elicited “Allahu Akbar” 45 from the lips of nearly every Muslim. Nearly all the Muslims who heard about his death said, “May Allah grant him Al-Jannah” and insisted we his children prayed for his soul as a way of remembering his good deeds. My mother was the exact opposite of my father. She has no formal education. Very active and uncompromising Pentecostal Christian, her theology was simply depending on the Holy Spirit, evidenced by 45

To wit: Allah is the greatest.

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speaking in tongues, which she shared with her fellow community of Pentecostals a language of heaven. She stopped at nothing other than always appealing to God, making an imagined reality of bridging heaven and earth by speaking in a heavenly language. My mother would pray over everything, including medicine we bought from the chemist, whose store was next to our house and whenever we were sick, she would simply take water and blessed it for us to drink. One such pneumatic practice saved me from what appeared like an ulcer when I was about 14 years. Nevertheless, my mother’s quest for pneumatic experiences, which to her translated into healing nearly complicated my health. At about ten years old, the doctors diagnosed me with asthma, which my mother readily interpreted as the outcome of bewitchment. Meanwhile, my father was asthmatic and I was the only one who had inherited it until one of my younger siblings also grew asthmatic. Considering the mystical causality my mother read into my ill health, which obstructed my ambition to be a footballer, my mother solicited the help of the lead religious figure of one of the oldest African independent churches in Ghana. The church, which was called Odiyfo Nkansah church, was just right on our compound. The spiritual leader whom we simply called “Osofo” was famous for his healing prowess. Thus, when my mother informed “Osofo” about my health, he quickly organized a ritual that involved aromatherapy – which is referred to in my language as ɛpunu. In addition to that, Osofo prepared a concoction made of a mixture of honey and some herbs that had a repugnant smell, which left me vomiting all day. The experience of ɛpunu nearly killed me, as I suffocated severally; while the repugnant smell from the concoction left me hating honey forever. From the above experience with Osofo’s healing practices, I started forming simplistic understanding of what I thought was religion, which provided the impetus for my rejection of Christianity when I was in my second year at the WASS – later in my academic life, however, I have come to appreciate the several areas of spiritual understanding of life that overlap in important ways with Akan indigenous traditions. 46 But before then, I was a member of my church’s Sunday School; a fully participating member of the “I am a Teenager for Christ” at the Maamobi Assembly of the Church of Pentecost (CoP). The Teenager for Christ preceded the CoP’s Youth Ministry. 46 Karen Lauterbach, Christianity, wealth, and spiritual power in Ghana (Cham/Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) and Emmanuel Kingsley Larbi, Pentecostalism: The eddies of Ghanaian Christianity (Accra: Centre for Pentecostal and Charismatic Studies, 2001).

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At school, at the Kotobabi Presbyterian Primary School (KPPS), my classmates and I hardly discussed religion. We barely understood the various segments of religious affiliations, not to talk about the complexities of dogmas. Meanwhile, as a Basel mission school, established in the 1960s, KPPS recuperated the historic Basel practice of deploying the classroom as the space for socialising pupils into a Calvinistic moral culture. Thus, every Wednesday, we congregated to listen to sermons from invited religious figures or any of the teachers who volunteered to share the word of God with us. Fridays were dedicated to learning to sing old hymns and learning new ones. By the time my classmates and I transitioned from KPPS to the Kotobabi “15” Junior Secondary School and completed our Basic Education Certificate Examination in 1998, the religious landscape in Accra had taken a seismic turn towards religious conflict. In 1997, I was baptised into the CoP and offered the right to take part in the Lord’s Supper. Given the moralization of the ritual, which I will discuss in the course of this book, I was becoming very aware of my Christian beliefs. Under the leadership of my Sunday School teacher, Teacher Cynthia Biney, I realised that I did not have to study Christian Religious Studies (CRS) in secondary since it could cost my faith to suffer a shipwreck. The argument was that the CRS curriculum was developed by a supposed group of liberal Christian Theologians, including Prof Benjamin Abotchie Ntreh, who later became one of my favourite undergraduate professors of the Old Testament at the University of Cape Coast (UCC). But the very reason I was told not to reads CRS was the same motivation that stirred my passion for the subject. Around the same year that I was baptised in 1997, the Sunni Muslims had witnessed a major surge since the reformation of the sect in the 1960s, under Al-Hajj Imam Ibrahim Umar. Hajj Umar was Ghana’s first graduate of the Islamic University in Saudi Arabia in 1968 after he left the country in 1958 in search of further Islamic studies. 47 Under Hajj Umar, Islamic religious reforms, embodied in the enforcement of Muslim’s women public use of the veil became highly politicised. Before that, the idea of young women wearing the veil was hardly known in Muslim communities (often referred to as the Zongos). Also, having broken ranks with moderate Sunni Muslims over the method of daawa (proselytization), Hajj Umar and his friends mobilized the nationwide Sunni Muslims who identified with him to form the Ahlu-Sunna al-Jamait of Ghana.

Ousman Murzik Kobo, Unveiling modernity in 20th century West Africa Islamic reforms (Boston: Brill, 2012). 47

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At the turn of the millennium and under the leadership of Hajj Umar, the Ahlu-Sunna in Ghana overreach their boundaries to align with their counterparts in Nigeria to organise bi-annual religious “conventions”—alternating between the two countries. It was usually during such gatherings in Maamobi that the community was flooded with polemical religious books against Christianity. I have already mentioned the books of the South African Islamic preacher, Ahmed Deedat. Personally, it was during that period that I also heard and read about the Gospel of Barnabas, which the Muslims said remained the only incorruptible Bible—considering the Book contradicted most of the historical narratives about Jesus Christ, including his deity and crucifixion. Serving the evangelism drive of the Muslims against Christians, the book became readily available at a very cheap price on the local markets. I became curious about the Gospel of Barnabas, asking about why it was not in the Bible. It was at this point that I contacted one of my early mentors in the Christian faith, Rev. Dr Rockeybell Adatura. Adatura is a Christian Apologist, who has been involved in dialoguing with Muslims in Ghana and abroad, including the US about the truth of the Christian faith. From his explanation of the canonisation of the Bible, the standard against which books that were accepted into the New Testament were determined, I understood the reason for the exclusion of the Gospel of Barnabas in the Bible. The canonisation of the Bible, specifically the New Testament, was based on the following criteria: The book should have been written by an Apostle or someone who walked closely with an Apostle (such as Mark), it must have internal consistency—in terms endorsing the dogmas of the Christian faith, particularly the deity, humanity and atoning work of Jesus Christ; the narratives must also conform with the lived socio-historical fact about Jesus Christ. 48 All this came against the background of global religious resurgence in the late 1970s. As I observed in the Zongos in the 1990s that the surge in religion, especially following the Iranian Revolution in 1979, several Muslim countries, based on an ideologically-driven quest for evangelism, sponsored several Zongo youth to study in the Arab world, 48 For discussions on the canonisation of the New Testament, see: Norman L. Geisler and Shawn Nelson, Evidence of an early New Testament canon (Matthews, North Carolina: Bastion Book, 2015); Norman L. Geisler and William C. Roach, Defending inerrancy: Affirming the accuracy of scripture for a new generation (Michigan: Baker Books, 2011); Lee Martin McDonald and James A. Sanders (eds), The canon debate (Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, Inc., 2002); F.F. Bruce, The canon of scripture (Illinois: Illinois InterVarsity Press, 1988).

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including Kuwait, Egypt, Syria, and Saudi Arabia. 49 The ideologicallyoriented education Muslim youth received in partly Sunni-related schools in Arabia partly contributed to the several intra-Islamic conflicts that rocked Maamobi and several other Muslim communities in the 1990s. It was against this whirlwind of religious resurgence that the climate for interfaith interactions became very fragile and tenuous. The AhluSunna condemnation of the Tinjaniyya Sufi Muslims as introducing innovation (Bida) into Islam polarized the Muslim communities in Accra and Kumasi. 50 The division within the Muslim community affected intra-Islamic marriages, where a few Ahlu-Sunna converts threatened to divorce their Tijaniyya spouses. The communities were also inundated with several mosques, as none of the two groups would hardly pray in the other’s mosque. In the community, the sharing of food among Muslims and Christians had constituted an important faith-informed act that fostered peaceful inter-religious interactions. The sharing of food, as gift, which indexed partly Marcel Mauss’ principles of gift as the obligation to give; the obligation to receive and the obligation to reciprocate – fostered conviviality among the religious the religiously plural community. 51 Nevertheless, Muslims and Christians became so divided that it affected the historic inter-faith food-sharing culture that characterised the religious festivals of these two major religions of the Zongos. 52 Nevertheless, Muslims and Christians became so divided that it affected the historic inter-faith food-sharing culture that characterised the religious festivals of these two major religions of the Zongos. 53 Meanwhile, before proceeding to secondary school, I travelled with my mother and my youngest siblings out of Accra, for the first time to 49 David E. Skinner (2010), ‘Da’wa and Politics in West Africa: Muslim Jama’at and Non-Governmental Organizations in Ghana, Sierra Leone and the Gambia’ In Barbara Bompani and Maria Frahm-Arp(eds.), Development and Politics from Below: Exploring Religious Spaces in African State, 99-130 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). 50 Yunus Dumbe, “Islamic polarisation and the politics of exclusion in Ghana,” Islamic Africa, 10, 1-2 (2019): 153-180. 51 On the discussion on the principles of gifts, see: Marcel Mauss, The gift; forms and functions of exchange in archaic societies (trans. Ian Cunnison) (London: Cohen & West, 1966). 52 Charles Prempeh, ‘“Food before pressure”: Food and food culture in Muslim inner-city in Maamobi-Accra since the 1980s,’ African Journal of Social Sciences Education, 2, 1 (2022): 1-21. 53 Charles Prempeh, ‘“Food before pressure”: Food and food culture in Muslim inner-city in Maamobi-Accra since the 1980s,’ African Journal of Social Sciences Education, 2, 1 (2022): 1-21.

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visit my maternal uncle. My uncle until he passed in 2021 was a practising Buddhist and had several Buddhist literature. When I visited him, he gave me a collection of Buddhist books, some of which I started reading before furthering my education at the secondary school level. Thus, in 1999 when my secondary education at the West Africa Secondary School (WASS), was established in 1946, I observed and read a few pieces of religious literature that inspired my interest in religious studies. Consequently, as already mentioned, against the advice of Teacher Cynthia Biney, my Sunday School teacher, I enthusiastically chose CRS against Government – one of the commonest subjects she had recommended to me. Coming from a background of personal and community-related religious experiences, I was progressing steadily in my study, for which reason my CRS teacher, Nana Kyei Kwabiah, adopted me as his mentee for mentorship in the field of religious studies. For reasons, including adventures with ideas and theories, while transitioning from first year to second year in 2000, I relapsed in my Christian faith, in fulfilment of the concerns of my Sunday School Teacher. I established myself as a formidable critique of Christianity, often debating fiercely members of the Scripture Union, a British para-Church organization that has been operating in Ghana since the late 19th century. 54 My friends and I formed a religious non-conformist group, known as the “Wretched Messiah” with the prohibition against an open display of religious symbols, taking of photography and non-public engagement with studies. Nevertheless, we were expected to demonstrate strong intellectual abilities to the point of leading as best students in the various subjects in General Arts. To be sure, the Wretched Messiah group lived its name – nearly all of us who formed membership came from financially poor homes. Around this time, I became keenly aware of religious complexities and invested in the study of Islam. I read Islam quite extensively and bought a translated English copy of the Qur’an from a Tijaniyya Muslim friend in 2001. Regrettably, my studying the English Qur’an incurred the wrath of my Sunni Muslim friends in the Maamobi community who felt I was going to use my knowledge of the Qur’an against them. Pitching my friend from Shi’a Islam against the Sunni Muslims over the Qur’anic issue, I handed over the Qur’an to the Sunni Muslims. Eventually, I completed secondary school in 2001 as a full-blown “freethinker” a self-given profile I hardly understood—except to know 54 Peter Barker and Samuel Boadi-Siaw, Changed by the word: The story of Scripture Union in Ghana (Accra: Scripture Union Ghana/Asempa Publishers, 2003).

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that I did not belong to any institutionalised religion. A few months after I had completed secondary school in August 2001, my community and the world were shocked to watch on television the caption: “America under attack”. This was a shock to several of us who had read in Government Class or so we thought we had understood, as a de facto non-Government as it contradicted my CRS class in SSS, that America’s thriving liberal democracy, as opposed to the communist world, insulated the country from attack. But what appeared to me as a shock turned out to be a source of jubilation for a section of the Muslim community. A few of the conservative Sunni clerics happily reconciled what became as 9/11 as part of God’s pronouncement of judgement on a country that they refer to as the “Great Shaitan” on earth. The Millennium was heralded by 9/11 as the fulfilment of the religious apocalypse. On the eve of the new millennium, there was a widespread rumour in Ghana that a huge stone would fall from the sky and crush everyone to death. The complex problems of Y2K, or the year 2000, which denoted a change in computer system to meet the demands of the millennium, later turned out to be the stone. However, the legend surrounding the stone was comparable to the night before 1990, when it was believed that everyone would perish. Therefore, 9/11 came in handy for the justification of religious eschatological teaching when the world transitioned into the new millennium without a stone falling from the skies. Much as the religious community in Ghana, especially a section of the Sunni Muslims saw 9/11 as divine judgement on America, the fact that religious violence against the power bloc of the world brought in its wake a new set of radical atheists. Writers, including Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins became pioneers of new atheism whose writings sharply repudiated every modicum of credibility religion ever had. Books such as The end of faith; God is not great, and The God delusion by Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins, respectively found their way into Ghana via local booksellers with international connections. 55 Soon after secondary school, I read these books but I did not find intellectual justification for atheism, as I hardly understood their theories. 56 More so, I became more concerned about not getting 55 Sam Harris, The end of faith: Religion, terror, and the future of reason (London: Free Press, 2006); Christopher Hitchens, God is not great: The case against religion (London: Atlantic Books, 2007); Richard Dawkins, The God delusion (London: Bantam Press, 2006) 56 For the history and philosophy and materials on atheism, see: Stephen Sebastian Bullivant, The Cambridge history of atheism (Cambridge: Cambridge University

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admission to the university. So, instead of just brooding over the challenges that had burdened my admission to the university, and the fact that my academic progression and prospect may suffer, I while away time studying the history of ancient under Drs Maulana and Osei Kwame at the Du Bois Centre in Accra. I also became a student of Muammar Gaddafi’s Third Universal theory, after a friend, nicked named Swanzy, introduced me to Gaddafi’s Green Book later in 2001. I excelled in my study of the Third Universal theory to the point that the Libyan government suggested I accepted an offer of a scholarship to study in Libya. But I turned the suggestion down since I felt I was too young to go to a foreign country. Around this time, there were several debates between Christians and Muslims over theological issues such as the person and work of Jesus Christ, the credibility of the Bible, the Promise of the Holy Spirit and the Christian dogma of the Trinity. This debate which became popular in the 1970s gained momentum in the 2000s, featuring on radio theologians including Rev. Dr Rockeybell Adatura and Sheikh Ishaq Nuamah. There was also brother Ayoub. I followed these ongoing debates very closely and realised there was more to religion than I had assumed as a secondary school student. Through the mentorship of Dr Adatura, I had nearly all the questions I had about Christianity answered. These were honed by my reading of other Ghanaian academics who also worked as apologists, including Rev Dr John Azumah and Rev Ahmed Adjei. I later studied with the major nonmainstream Christian groups, such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Seventh-day Adventists and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (which has been operating in Ghana since the 1960s). 57 Through Press, 2021); George H. Smith, Atheism: The case against God (New York: Prometheus Books, 2016); David Ramsay Steele, Atheism explained: From folly to philosophy (Chicago: Open Court, 2008); Michael Onfray, In defense of atheism: The case against Christianity, Judaism, and Islam (trans. Jeremy Leggatt) (Toronto: Penguin Group, 2005); Alister McGrath, The twilight of atheism: The rise and fall of disbelief in the modern world (London: Rider, 2004); Robin Le Poidevin, Arguing for atheism: An introduction to the philosophy of religion (London: Routledge, 1996). 57 For a comprehensive study of these religious movements, see: Andrew Holden, Jehovah’s Witnesses: Portrait of a contemporary religious movement (London: Routledge, 2022); ); Emmanuel Abu Kissi, Walking in the sand: A history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Ghana (Utah: Brigham Young University, 2013);Peter B. Clarke (ed), Encyclopedia of new religious movements (London: Routledge, 2006); Claudia Lauper Bushman and Richard Lyman Bushman, Mormons in America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998); Kofi Owusu-Mensah, Saturday God and Adventism in Ghana (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1993); Philip L. Barlow, Mormons and the Bible: The place of the Latter-day Saints in American religion (Oxford: Oxford: University Press, 1991) Max Assimeng, Saints and social structures

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all this, I studied the doctrinal differences within the Christian faith. Reading topics such as the centrality of the name Jehovah to the Jehovah’s Witnesses; the importance of the Sabbath observation among the Seventh-day Adventists and the unique teachings of the Mormons such as baptism for the dead, polygyny, sexual purity—all broadened my understanding of religion as more complex than just a uninformed tradition; it also helped me to appreciate the phenomenology in my study of religions, later when I was at the University of Cape Coast. More important, my reading of all these, alongside my personal experiences, have added to my perspectives about the impact of religious plurality on both the lives of religious people and the study of religious experiences. Since the 1940s, several academics have explored the interface between indigenous worldview and Christianity and Islam. 58 They have particularly observed in the case of Ghana that much as there has been antagonistic relationship between indigenous worldview and Pentecostal Christianity, there are at the same time increasingly recognised complex relationship between the two – that tends to be mutually reinforcing. The two religious traditions build on the shared perspective of the unity of cosmos, which is to say, the intertwined interplay between the physical and the spiritual worlds as part of making sense of the world. 59 As my interest in re-studying and reconsidering Christianity peaked, a friend, then a member of Nicholas Duncan-Williams Christian Action Faith suggested I enrolled in a Bible school. Thus, in 2003, I enrolled at the Dominion Theological Seminary of the Action Chapel and sat under the tutorials of Rev Dr John B. Ghartey, who later became the (Tema/Ghana: Ghana Publishing Corporation, 1986). Hans Werner Debrunner, A history of Christianity in Ghana (Accra: Waterville Publishing House, 1967). 58 K.A. Busia, “Has the Christian faith been adequately presented?” International Review of Mission (1961): 86-89; George S. William, Akan religion and the Christian faith: A comparative study of the impact of the two religions (Accra: Ghana Universities Press, 1965): Birgit Meyer, Translating the devil: Religion and modernity among the Ewe in Ghana (Eritrea: Africa World Press, Inc., 1999): Matthew Engelke, “Past Pentecostalism: Notes on rupture, realignment, and everyday life in Pentecostal and African independent churches,” Africa: Journal of the International African Institute, 80, 2 (2010): 177-199; Ogbu Kalu, African Pentecostalism: An introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008); David Maxwell, “Witches, prophets and avenging spirits: The second Christian movement in North-east Zimbabwe,” Journal of Religion in Africa, XXV, 3 (1995): 309-339; 59 Kwabena J.D. Amanor, “Pentecostal and Charismatic churches in Ghana and the African culture: Confrontation or compromise?” Journal of Pentecostal Theology, 18 (2009): 123-140.

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General Secretary of the Assemblies of God Church, Ghana. Through Ghartey, I became aware of the Calvinist-Arminian debate in protestant Christianity. Initially, through the influence of Ghartey’s book, Dispensationalism, and the works of American theologians, including R.B. Thieme Jnr, I became convinced and accepted Arminianism, focussing particularly on the theology that history is divinely divided into multiple ages in which God acts with humanity in different ways. 60 But at the end of 2003, in my quest to delve deep into Christian apologetics, I wrote to American conservative evangelical apologist Robert Morey, who sent me nearly all his books. Religiously reading Morey’s book, and comparing his arguments with other theologians, I became a five-point Calvinist and remained so until today. By the time I finally gained admission to the University of Cape Coast for my undergraduate studies in 2003, I had become a highly convinced conservative evangelical Christianity with a strong predisposition towards Calvinism. I also mastered my study of religion, which helps me to appreciate life as providentially structured and appreciate the vicissitudes of life as part of God’s sovereign rule. Incidentally, I read African Studies, which had just begun in 2003 for my degree and mastered my study of the traditions of beliefs and practices of African religions. I continued and excelled in my study of religions for the first time I registered 3As in three courses I took at the religions department in 2006. Having now graduated with a terminal degree in religious studies from the University of Cambridge and with a dissertation that explored the interface between Pentecostalism and indigenous Akan traditions, I am bringing my knowledge of religion on the impact of the novel coronavirus pandemic. My goal in this book, therefore, is to discuss the trajectories of religion in Ghana since the turn of the millennium, focusing on how the pandemic has affected or is expected to affect the future of religious beliefs and practices. At the time of the pandemic, the world, including the western world, expectedly experience a minor religious resurgence with some world leaders appealing to God for help. The pandemic created the impression that science or rather the philosophy of scientism had failed in responding to human needs. Before the pandemic, there were scientists, including Michio Kaku, who predicted that science and technology would help human being to overcome most of life’s vicissitudes. 61 Personally, I started reading 60 Jeffrey Bingham and Glenn R. Kreider, Dispensationalism and the history of redemption (Chicago: Moody Publishers, 2015). 61 Michio Kaku, Physics of the impossible: A scientific exploration into the world of phasers, force fields, teleportation, and the time travel (New York: Doubleday, 2008).

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Yuval Noah Harari’s three volumes in 2019 and completed the last one just early enough before the pandemic struck. 62 After reading Harari, I got the impression that the world may become a bit better for humanity. Nevertheless, the pandemic also reaffirmed my faith that I should not expect the world to be any better, but rather expect a new world as promised by Jesus Christ. 63 The reality of the pandemic also stimulated my renewed interest in the interface between religion and politics. Caught in California when the pandemic struck and leaving just a day before the global lockdown, I became keenly aware of the force of religion in the world. The expectation of whether religion would surge or diminish in the post-Covid world has not yielded to anyone’s victory of metanarrative. Religion has both surged and diminished, to be on the safer side. But to argue whether indeed religion had had both a rise and decline, one must also reconsider one’s understanding of what the phenomenon of religion is all about. Is religion merely irrational beliefs, structured into practices to serve as social control forces in regulating people’s public lives? Or is it just part of the enduring influence of humankind’s pre-modern past that needs to be discarded in the face of modernity? Certainly, my non-religious friend who squirmed at my continuing belief in God had these questions or assumptions in mind. Others who anticipated religion would surge back more prominently appeared to be a bit disappointed. For example, recent polls indicate that Christianity is a minority religion in England. Could this give further credence to and fulfilment of the predictions that the centre of gravity of Christianity has finally shifted from the West – England as one time the epicentre of Victorian Christianity? But am I just a Christian who believes in heaven without thinking through its implications? Do I also just believe in the materiality of the earth without any recourse to the transcendental? At any rate, what does it mean for religious people to believe in heaven on earth? Assuming religious people believe that they are here on earth to go to heaven, similar to AP Carter’s (arranged by Albert E. Brumley) “This world is not my home,” 64 or Theophilus Opoku’s “ɔhɔho ne mamfrani” (to wit:

62 Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A history of humankind (London: Vintage, 2014); Homo deus: A brief history of tomorrow (London: Harvill Secker, 2016); 21 lessons for the 21st century (London: Vintage, 2018). 63 Cf. Revelation 21. 64 AP Carter (1931), arranged by Albert E. Brumley, “This world is not my home” https://christianmusicandhymns.com/2022/09/this-world-is-not-my-homelyrics-story-and-video.html.

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“stranger and foreigner”), 65 then what would that mean for their responsibility to the earth? In the same vein, assuming a group of people believe that life is just here and now and that all talks about the metaphysical are sheer nonsense and the irrational impulse of the primitive mind, then what would that mean for the idea of justice and share vision of human “common good”? Not only that, assuming human beings can elicit ethical values by just thinking through things rationally and measuring our actions by its consequence, how should we think about the axiom “the end justifies the means”? Similarly, if morality and how we define it has a prior existential reality, then what happens to human freedom? Should we just stay away from this moralizing of life, but simply trust science and technology to solve our problems as and when problems come up? Admittedly, the above questions are very complex that have tested the minds of philosophers for ages. But these are also questions that human beings may continue to split hairs over. Nevertheless, without assuming I have an immediate answer to them that may be universally shared, I take inspiration from the Ghanaian philosopher, Kwasi Wiredu, to take a particularistic perspective by concretizing my reflections on the Ghanaian case. 66 Since the precolonial era, politics and religion have united ranks in defining governance in the various societies that morphed into postcolonial Ghana. Whether through the appeal to any real or imagined ancestor for inspiration, religion was at the heartbeat of it. However, talking about religion as if it were some distant realities to which people mindlessly paid cultic attention is also insufficient. It is not a crude reductionism to the idea that Africans are notoriously or religious, nor is it the idea that Africans attribute pragmatism to religion. 67 Needless to say, it was also arrogant for Emil Ludwig to have assumed that the idea of God was a philosophical undertaking the so-called untutored African was cognitively incapable of conceptualizing. 68 Presbyterian Church of Ghana Twi Hymn, 791.1 About Theophilus Opoku Kwasi Wiredu, Cultural universals and particulars (Bloomington, Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1996). 67 John S. Mbiti, African religions and philosophy (London: Heinemann, 1969); Geoffrey Parrinder, Religion in Africa (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1969); Okot p’Bitek, African religions in Western scholarship (Nairobi: East African Literature Bureau, 1971); Kwasi Wiredu, “Toward decolonizing African philosophy and religion,” African Studies Quarterly, 1, 4 (1998): 17-46. 68 Edward William Smith, African ideas of God: A symposium (London: Edinburgh House Press, 1961), p. 1. 65 66

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Whatever it is, what we call religion comes to the academic world with an attempt to tease out what people believe in scientific analysis. As a product of 19th-century western thinkers, who wanted to make sense of the world, by exploring the aetiological origin of religion to explain how actions and inactions, Darwin’s evolutionary theory proved handy. Leveraging the Darwinist evolution of everything progressing from simple to the complex linear trajectory traditions of faith, particularly of people of the non-western world (a very confused term though) were reduced to fetishism, irrationality, inanity, and downright irreconcilable with scientific thinking. 69 Indeed, since the independence decades of the 1960s, several African scholars have responded to the western anthropologists’ denigration of the traditions of faith of Africans. In the case of Ghana, key among these African thinkers have included J.M. Sarbah, J.E. Casely Hayford, S.R.B. Attoh Ahuma, Kobina Sekyia, J.B. Danquah, K.A. Busia and Kwame Nkrumah. 70 To be sure, at the anthropological turn of the 1920s, several western anthropologists for very complex reasons, including political correctness, wrote partly in exoneration and favour of the “savage nobles’” culture. 71 In the case of the Gold Coast, several of these Europeans, including Rattray went far to the point of romanticising the Asante/Akan cultures. As to pacify the epistemic damage their ancestors of the early 19th century had done to the narratives of the Akan, Rattray opted for producing a theocentric equivalent where the Akan God was rated as similar to the JudeoChristian God of the missionaries. 72 Acting as the prior and foremost writer of the Akan, Rattray’s work became a major source of inspiration E.B. Idowu, African traditional religion (London: S.C.M., 1973). John Mensah Sarbah, Fanti customary laws: A brief introduction to the principles of the native laws and customs of the Fanti and Akan districts of the Gold Coast with a report of some cases thereon decided in the law courts (London: W. Clowes and Sons, Ltd., 1904); Joseph Ephraim Casely Hayford, Ethiopia unbound: Studies in race emancipation (London: C.M. Philips, 1911); ); Samuel Richard Brew Attoh Ahuma, The Gold Coast nation and national consciousness (London/New York: Routledge, 1971); Kobina Sekyi, The blinkards, a comedy: and, the Anglo-Fanti, a short story (Accra: Readwide Publishers/Heinemann Educational, 1997); J.B. Danquah, The Akan doctrine of God: A fragment of God Coast ethics and religion (London: Lutterworth., 1944); K.A. Busia, The position of the chief in the modern political system of Ashanti: A study of the influence of contemporary social changes on Ashanti institutions (Oxford: Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, 1951); Kwame Nkrumah, Neo-colonialism: The last stage of imperialism (London: Nelson, 1965). 71 Godfrey Wilson, “Anthropology as a public service,” Africa, 13, 1 (1940): 4361; Adam Branch, “Decolonizing the African Studies Centre,” The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology, 36, 2 (2018): 73-91. 72 R.S. Rattray, Ashanti (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1923), p. 141. 69 70

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for later Gold Coast writers, such as J.B. Danquah and Busia. For the purpose of this book, I limit myself to the idea of the Akan divine name of “Twereduampong Kwame,” which Rattray wrote about. According to Rattray, the Asante similar to the Hebrew people worshipped God on a Saturday, hence the idea of “Kwame.” 73 Regrettably, Danquah and Busia carried this argument through without critically first assessing Rattray’s assertion. As I have written elsewhere, Danquah and Busia got it all wrong in their inheritance of Rattray’s romantic intellectual legacy. 74 All said, by the eve of independence, religion became concretized in the postcolonial country’s vision of a better future, with some arguing whether Christianity, in particular, would survive the surge in nationalism. 75 Since the 1950s, religion and politics have merged in complex ways that tend to excite and annoy Ghanaians. When the political elites deploy the main religions, specifically Christianity, Islam and indigenous belief systems to advance nation-building, the populace celebrates; but when religion appears to overstep their boundaries into much of public governance, a section of the public repudiates it. Meanwhile, the antinomy of religion in Ghana has never diminished the continuing role of Ghana’s public sphere. It is either a religious community, like the Church of Pentecost builds prison reforms, usually considered the preserve of the state or the president promises to build a national cathedral considered the realm of religious communities. 76 Whatever the argument, the issue of Ghana as a “secular” country becomes highly complicated whenever Muslims and Christians deploy the term to defend their respective stances. It also complicates the simplistic profiling of Ghana as a “secular” state or a “Christian” state. As part of this book, I therefore, in Chapters One and Two analyse the centrality of religions in shaping Ghana’s democracy, focusing on the contentious issue nexus between religion and politics in state formation. As the maturing of Ghana’s liberal democracy, since the 1990s, fosters the accommodation of minority religions in the public sphere, the contentions over Ghana’s “secular” status have become a Ibid. Charles Prempeh, “Decolonising African divine episteme: A critical analysis of the Akan divine name of God (Twereduampon Kwame),” Journal of Religion in Africa 52 (2022): 269-291. 75 Kwame Bediako, “Africa and Christianity on the threshold of the third millennium: The religious dimension,” African Affairs, 99, 395 (2000): 303-323. 76 Charles Prempeh, “Religion, Social Media and the Discourse on Prisons: An Analysis of the Responses to the Church of Pentecost (CoP) Prison Project in Ghana”, Prison Service Journal 256 (2021): 38-43. 73 74

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subject of contentions. 77 This is precisely because the political elites have often struggled to negotiate their way around the nexus between religion and politics. However, before anyone readily charges the political leadership of needlessly crossing the line of demarcation between religion and politics, without any partisan interest, we also need to understand the fundamental role of partisan politics and how it plays out in state formation in Ghana. Impliedly, the chapter will context the simplistic profiling of the proposed national cathedral by a section of the middle class as “nonsense” and a signal demonstration of a state running off the track on its priority. While conceding the role of religion in Ghana’s public governance, I also defer to the concerns of both the religious constituency and the middle class that despite the overwhelming presence of people who ascribe to religion, corruption keeps sinking the nation. The charge of corruption and perceptions of corruption on ascendency is admittedly a worrying situation. Several people have been marginalized and forced to perish because of different layers of corruption in both the lower and higher domain of public life. Even so, it is not just enough to draw a neat line between religion and corruption, as it is important to also understand how religion and the state operate in the enforcement of law and order. Given this as context, Chapters three and four of this book discusses the complex nexus between religion and politics. I argue that the religious constituency does not have the instrument of violence and coercive instrument to punish corrupt members. As I shall discuss, religious communities may pressure the state the punish corrupt persons; but that in many instances is the furthest they could go. Otherwise, religious communities turn ritual practices, such as communion to mark the lines between church members whose public moral lives are exemplary and those whose bring disgrace to the church. The question is also about whether the church applies the rule equally among the various social clusters of its members. I also argue that in public governance, corruption, much as it is hated, has its political 77 Charles Prempeh, “Balancing religious freedoms and the right of education of minorities in Ghana: A focus on access to public senior high schools by Rastafarians,” In Maame Efua Adadzi-Koom, Micchael Addaney and Lydia A. Nkansah, Democratic governance, law, and development in Africa: Pragmatism, experiments, and prospects, 193-222. Cham/Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022); Charles Prempeh, “Secularism, interfaith marriages and reengagement with the study of IslamChristian relations in Ghana,” Journal of Liberal Arts and Humanities (JLAH), Vol. 1, No. 2 (Feb. 2020): 39-54.

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economy. The question, therefore, is can anything good come out of corruption? Or could corruption serve any productive value? Without seeing corruption as fatalistic, since its perceived political economy diminishes before its debilitating effect, Chapters Four and Five of my book will discuss the role religion could play in the fight against corruption. Leveraging the argument of Kwame Gyekye of corruption as a moral challenge, 78 I will discuss the corruption of all kinds a moral challenge that will require moral reformation to deal with. My contention in these Chapters is that since Ghana’s overwhelming religious constituency appeals to the metaphysical realm as the ultimate determinant of justice and moral curation, I will touch base on how Christians and Muslims could apply their theologies to advance the common good as part of waging a crusade against corruption. Much of my analysis as usual will be informed by my subjective Christian understanding of how religion could minimise corruption. Thus, while I do appreciate the institutional and legal approaches to the fight against corruption, I think that it will take someone who is decidedly a “fool” for Christ with heaven as his or her ultimate home to give up on corruption or even create space for it. I will then conclude by reaffirming the need for Ghana’s religious constituency to carefully balance the belief in heaven and earth, taking the two as a political economy to support human flourishing. In so doing, I deconstruct the simplistic profiling of Ghana’s Christians as blindly pursuing Christina nationalism. The story behind this book This book is a contribution to the debate around the national cathedral in particular and religion and politics in general. Written by a Christian, my goal is to apply my understanding of the social sciences to assess the merits and otherwise of the various debates. This means that I take a shift from the narration and analysis between religion and politics in extant literature. 79 Instead, I build on what is available in the 78 Kwame Gyekye, Tradition and modernity: Philosophical reflections on the African experience (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. xi. 79 John S. Pobee, Church and state in Ghana, 1949-1966 (Legon/Accra: University of Ghana, 1972); John S. Pobee, Kwame Nkrumah and the church in Ghana, 1946-1966: A study in the relationship between the socialist government of Kwame Nkrumah, the first Prime Minister and first President of Ghana, and the Protestant Christian Churches in Ghana (Accra: Asempa Publishers, Christian Council of Ghana, 1988); John S. Pobee, Religion and politics in Ghana: A case of the Acheampong era 1972-1978 (Accra: Ghana Universities Press, 1992); Paul Gifford, Ghana’s new Christianity: Pentecostalism in a globalising African economy (London: Hurst & Co., 2004); Paul Gifford, African Christianity: Its public role

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literature to discuss a paradox: Why is Ghana’s overwhelming religious constituency not exerted much influence in curating the country’s moral aptitude for human flourishing? To be sure, I am also partisan in a way, as I do not claim to be neutral. 80 The field of social science, to which I belong, is never neutral; it is also not a space where one can assume to avoid taking sides ideologically. Knowledge, as a whole, is also a political project. Michel Foucault brought out the intertwinement between knowledge and power more clearly. Knowledge is not neutral to the extent that since the 19th century, the social sciences have framed what is philosophically more complex in fostering as system of social control. 81 Ideological side-taking is part of the social sciences, since the “social sciences, whatever their use cannot produce judgement values.” 82 Ideological side-taking is part of the social sciences, since the “social sciences, whatever their use cannot produce judgement values”. 83 Nevertheless, in a pluriverse of ideas, the pathways of intellectual and ideological peaceful co-existence is not the erasure or muting voices; as it is about holding conviction without confrontation. Contestation of theories must, therefore, be for the sake of intellectual exercise, massing of different epistemological menu to foster human flourishing, rather than to side-line and marginalise – which could reduce academic freedom to the tyranny of majoritarian voices. So, the issue is more about conviction without discarding all possibilities of consensus building to advance human progress than any pretentions of ideological neutralities. My value judgment is very positive because I believe that religion and politics should be combined in governance; however, this should be done carefully and thoughtfully to avoid straying into either of the two extremes. The family and religion are pre-political institutions that do not depend on the willingness of any political elites to grant or deny rights. The right to marry and have children and the right to worship a particular deity is not given by the state; the state guarantees. Since the public sphere is a (London: Hurst, 1998); Ebenezer Obiri Addo, Kwame Nkrumah: A case study of religion and politics in Ghana (New York: University Press of America, 1997); Seth Tweneboah, Religion and politics and the state in Africa: Applying legal pluralism in Ghana (New York: Routledge, 2019); Abamfo Ofori Atiemo, Religion and inculturation of human rights in Ghana (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013). 80 Anthony Giddens, The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1984 81 Michel Foucault, Power/knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings, 1972-1977 (New York: Vintage, 1980). 82 Brigitte Berger and Peter L. Berger, The war over the family: Capturing the middle ground (London: Hutchinson, 1983), p. viii. 83 Ibid., p. viii.

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“market” of competition of ideas, the possibility of religion producing outliers through “othering” may result in conflict. The duty of the state is, therefore, to manage religious differences to stem any tide against religious disagreements reaching the false precipice of collapse. Given my positionality as a Christian with a strong leaning towards conservative evangelicalism and with a firm belief in the heterosexual conjugal union in a social context as necessary for upholding the ends of civilization together, this book is unapologetically partisan. At the same time, my position is not extreme to the point of simply dismissing alternative views. I also do recognise the validity and the sentiment expressed by those opposed to the national cathedral. I appreciate their concerns that it looks quite “foolish” that in the face of an economic downturn, the state is aiding the construction of a religious edifice. I also support their perspective that the state should invest in providing social services. For this reason, my book is far from polarising the Ghanaian front. Nevertheless, my book brings out my conviction that having Christians who are deeply committed to their faith is most important for nation-building. Such Christians who are prepared to denounce materialism in favour of Christ; Christians whose theology about work is industriousness, frugality and prudent spending 84 and those whose relationship with their neighbours is informed by social conviviality as taught by Christ and those who have an assuming character because Jesus Christ Himself condescended so low to redeem them. My interest in writing about religion and politics was piqued when the world was unsettled by the coronavirus pandemic. I was hoping that with the pandemic, religious people, particularly those who profess faith in Christ would reinvest in the generosity of Christ, embodied in salvation by grace, to be altruistic. I expected that Christians would embody the courage to refine aspects of religious life where interaction church attendance is nothing short of transaction faith, based on the assumption that God is there to supply human needs and to respond to the human beck and calls so that when He appeared to have failed, devotees just drop Him. Similarly, I was hoping that people would not just demonstrate religiosity by praying everywhere in the country, but privatise it when it came to issues of corruption in both private and public offices. That the fight against corruption must not just be about institutional reform, but individual’s moral aptitude also comes against the centrality of self-embodied ethics in reforms. From the educational perspective 84 Ref: Marx Weber, Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism (Trans. Talcott Parsons) (London: Routledge, 1993).

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that is capable of birthing a just society – free from corruption, scholars have suggested a need for corruption to be fought at tripartite dimension, specifically, human person, institution and ideology. 85 It is suggested, therefore, that an educational reform must be reformed taking into recognition all the encompassing of the constituents of life and society: the human being as both spiritual and material, time as past, present and future, to reform that contributes to training the moral sensibilities of students as part of the ideological purification of a corrupt society. 86 All this implies bringing a critical mind to the criticality of ethics in the fight against corruption in society. More specifically, I refer to religious ethics, which is an embodied ethic – which demystifies ethics as something as either institutional or unattainable, but rather incorporates the investment of a spirit, an ethos, in a physical body. 87 The point is also that, as observed by Leahy both public institutions and religion are deeply involved in a struggle to translate right attitudes about public policy into their institutional lives. 88 Similarly, as he observed, “public policy issues more often than not impinge on matters of consequence to human life and so they often end up in the moral domain”. 89 All this implies moral discernment which according to Leahy incorporates both the irony of religious ethics called discernment and rational analysis in a moral decision marking. 90 It is also true that ethics cannot be isolated from its social context, as suggested by Shawn has been the major “dualistic legacy underpinning the discipline of sociology that separates mind from body, public from private, and social from moral.” 91 The interdependence of morality leads me to relational sociology, which Abbott conceptualised “sees individuals and their agency as being the product of the relations in which they are embedded.” 92 Applying relational sociology to morality, Abbott brings to the fore the importance of seeing moral action and moral subjectivity are 85 Bartholomew Nnaemedo, “The role of philosophy in a corrupt society: Deconstro-reconstructive approach,” Journal of African Traditional Religion and Philosophy, 1, 1 (2017): 41-60. 86 Ibid. 87 John T. Leahy, “Embodied ethics: Some common concerns of religion and business,” Journal of Business Ethics, 5, 6 (1986): 465-471. 88 Ibid., p. 467. 89 Ibid., p. 467. 90 Leahy, “Embodied ethics,” p. 470. 91 Rhonda M. Shaw, Ethics, moral life and the body: Sociological perspective (Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), p. 3. 92 Owen Abbott, The self, relational sociology, and morality in practice (Cham/Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), p. 2.

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constituted and shaped within relationally and entangled interaction. 93 Indeed, relational sociology has the benefit of helping avoid two extremes: holist/objectivist modes of thinking and individualistic theories. 94 To be sure, I appreciate all the above analysis as insightful in helping understand the moral values people identify with. Nonetheless, I am very much attracted to the agency individuals carry. Far from arguing that individuals have isolated and relationally unaffected ethics, a position that Archer provided insightful analysis, 95 I maintain that individuals are responsible for their actions and inactions. I am particularly impressed and convinced by Gyekye’s argument that corruption is a moral, but also deeply personal issue. He wrote: Political system or process may be improved, its weakness removed; economic situation may improve and salaries of public officials may be increased; legal institutions may be improved, the powers and activities of law enforcement officers augmented and punishments for convicts of politically corrupt acts increased, yet none of these attempts at dealing with political corruption will eradicate it or considerably minimize it. 96

Arguing about how difficult it is for the law to deal with a moral issue, Gyekye maintained that “when it comes to the field of morality, the field of human conduct, when it comes to making a man to ‘behave like an upright man,’ the law becomes powerless. 97 Taking the conversation beyond the realms of philosophy and relational sociology, Elorm-Donkor, applies self-embodied ethic to Pentecostal Christians, who are the majority of Protestant Christianity in Ghana. Elorm-Donkor discussed embodied ethics as moral imperative that must deconstruct Pentecostals’ penchant of appealing to malevolent spirit as a scapegoat from moral failure. He argued that the Pentecostal Christian should focus on addressing the weakness of self in developing a sound moral character that reflects that of God. 98 The centrality of the Holy Spirit complements the efforts of the Christian as he seeks to excel in moral aptitude. For CoP leaders, Ibid. Ibid. 95 Margaret S. Archer, Being human: The problem of agency (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). 96 Kwame Gyekye (1997). Tradition and modernity: Philosophical reflections on the African experience. Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 203. 97 ibid., p. 213. 98 Lord Abraham Elorm-Donkor (2017). Christian morality in Ghanaian Pentecostalism. Oxford: Regnum Books International, p. 193. 93 94

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Christians have to lay claim to the text in Philippians 2:12, which enjoins them to work out their own salvation through moral regeneration because the Spirit enables them. To help the CoP Christian develop a moral character that is conducive for socioeconomic development of Ghana, they have to reproduce the Akan scheme of human responsibility for their moral failures and the Pentecostal practice of investing in the help of God to get out of their moral dilemmas. 99 Consequently, as members of the CoP fuse the Akan philosophical view of absolute human responsibility of moral failure (as opposed to blaming some external forces) and depending on the power of God to regenerate them to regard character formation or a constant effort to habituate or embody the character of Christ as being primary goal of the Christian life. 100 As I subscribe to the individual’s agency, I want to reduce the theories I have attempted to explain to my own subjective experiences. To be sure, by personally musing over these issues with my subjective and intersubjective experiences, I am not making any claim of selfrighteousness or seeking to grind an axe with anyone, as I am always confronted by my own daily failures. Instead, my goal here is to drive home the point that whereas public policies and religious institutions may share the same goal of morally reforming public governance, institutions, filled by individuals with competing interests, could create their own nemesis. I, therefore, agree with Leahy that, in matters of morality, we should not only overstretch the capacity of institutional agencies to reform, be it religious or not, instead, we also pay attention to individual’s capacity for discernment—personal moral choices and institutional policies. Related to religion and public governance, my goal in personal reflections, which may come across as soliloquy, is to index how we have tried and continue to try to live what I believe as a Christian and academic. I do this against my acceptance of the definition of morality which Grenz defined as “the actual living out of one’s beliefs of what is right and good where such conduct as stealing, cheating and lying are regarded as bad or wrong.” 101 My goal is also to affirm scholarly works that have discussed the various socio-cultural factors that tend to generate corruption in Ghana’s public sector. According to these studies, public officials are often caught in the

Ibid., pp. 190-192. Ibid., p. 192. 101 Stanley J. Grenz, The moral quest: Foundations of Christian ethics (Leicester: Apollos, 1997), p. 23. 99

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interplay between culturally acceptable norms and professional expectations of public life. 102 Nevertheless, researchers have concluded that, “overall corruption scandal in society is a product of individual’s selfish desires for riches and /or status and the exogenously solicited corruption/favour from societal members which may emanate from the public officer’s social affiliations.” I personally admit that breaking an ethical dilemma, between loyalty to one’s cultural norms and work ethics, is not always easy as any decision one takes leaves another challenge unresolved. Doing the right thing does not end moral dilemma. 103 The result of this is my personal reflection and how I handled it as an individual in a public institution. The story of Ghanaians who have felt betrayed and traumatised, 104 some of whom have vowed not to return home is part of the reason we cannot disengage self-embodied virtues, which in my subjective understanding is best resolved by one’s positionality in faith. Apart from my own reflection, I will discuss the case of another colleague. Personally, having been appointed as a Research Fellow at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Kumasi, Ghana-West, I expected to be understood about my social status. I chose KNUST as a Research Fellow against a lecturer at the University of Cape Coast (UCC), where I had my undergraduate education and where my academic roots and conviviality are firmly established. I decided against the call from my former professors at the UCC for KNUST because I wanted to have time for my young family that was stuck in England because of social and economic challenges. I had explained all this to my employers and work colleagues and yet, I felt oppressed. While I worked hard to execute my mandate as a Research Fellow, recording 20 publications and 2 books and individually researched and authored 33 new courses for postgraduate studies in African Studies at the Centre for Cultural and African Studies, where I work as a Research Fellow and has developed and similarly taught it as part of service teaching, I was hardly understood. What I felt were needless calls for me to return home came across to me as part of the difficulty Christians have in living their faith. I felt 102 Emmanuel Yeboah-Assiamah, Kwame Asamoah, Justice Nyigmah Bawole and Issah Justice Musah-Surugu, “A socio-cultural approach to public sector corruption in Africa: Key pointers for reflection,” Journal of Public Affairs, 16, 3 (2016): 279-293. 103 Christopher W. Gowans (ed), Moral disagreements: Classic and contemporary readings (London: Routledge, 2003). 104 A selection of written materials that index Ghanaians who felt betrayed included: Kwame Nkrumah, Dark days in Ghana (London: Panaf Books, 1968).

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deeply betrayed by Christian friends, some of whom had encouraged me to both apply and accept my appointment. Not only that I was personally traumatised whenever I was called home. There were times I returned home after spending not less than £1200 only to meet my students for two days! It was during one such visit home at the end of August 2022 only to receive a distressed call about my wife who was nearly crippled by post-partum health complications. My two kids: 1 and 4 also needed my attention. Against all this, the university authority who promised to help me with accommodation had completely treated the issue very lightly and dismissively when I reminded him about my challenge of “homelessness” in Ghana. My name was finally removed from the list by the administrator who had benefited from my generosity and who had willingly asked me to fill out a form so I could get a university residency. I’m still unsure of the motivation behind her actions. Ironically, despite knowing about my family issues in England, this administrator never stopped sending me disrespectful messages and insisted that I go back to Ghana and only follow her instructions. I reflected on my challenge with the so-called Ghanaian spirit of “crabism” or what one of my African American professors, Adwoa Asantewaa at the UCC called “Factors and collaborators” in evil, usually a mark of retrogression, which also sustained both the two evils slavery and colonialism. Initially, I thought was I wrong in discarding the views of friends in England who suggested I did not return to Ghana because they thought a “spirit” in the country tends to undermine any progressive spirit. For me, I thought this was one of those “holier than thou” dispositions of the Ghanaian diaspora, but I am beginning to rethink the idea that most Ghanaians are pretentiously religious, who wore religious garbs and hold fat religious symbols to only cover the moral nakedness. This was after I read a deeply troubling short account of one of my friends from Cambridge. Ebenezer Antwi Gyamera is a personal friend; he was my junior at the University of Cape Coast (UCC – 2006 – 2010) where we both had our undergraduate studies. Later he and my wife, with whom they share a common faith as Seventh-day Adventists, met at the School of Nuclear and Allied Sciences (SNASS) of the University of Ghana. Established jointly by the Ghana Atomic Energy Commission (GAEC) and the University of Ghana (UG) in co-operating with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IEA), Vienna, Austria, in 2006, the SNASS runs postgraduate programmes with specialisation including nuclear agriculture. He wrote his MPhil thesis on plant and virology. Having enrolled at the SNASS in 2011 Gyamera completed his Master of Philosophy in Nuclear Agriculture in 2013. He read courses such as mutation breeding, nuclear law, radiation biology, soil 47

science, and virology. Later in 2015, he enrolled at the University of Cambridge for his doctoral studies in Plant Virology and completed them in 2019. While studying in Cambridge, Dr Gyamera was known to several of us to have suffered from all forms of implicit and explicit racism. There were times, he was reported to have visibly broken down emotionally. For all these reasons, Dr Gyamera accepted to return home to apply the skills he had acquired to contribute to Ghana’s agricultural industry. He joined the Cocoa Research Institute of Ghana (CIRG), as a virologist. Historically, the CIRG began as a continuation of the establishment of the Gold Coast Department of Agriculture at Tafo to investigate problems of diseases and pests in 1938. In 1944, it was renamed the West African Cocoa Research Institute (WACRI) with a sub-station in Ibadan, Nigeria and some research activities undertaken in Sierra Leone. As a research institute, it was in the mid-1965 that the government set up a committee of experts from the University of Ghana to identify by-products that could be produced from cocoa. 105 Given that agriculture, with much emphasis on cocoa, is the mainstay of Ghana’s economy, 106 Dr Gyamera has incorporated revolutionary and novel research in his work, much of which he shares with the public on his social media handles, especially Facebook— which has significantly helped democratised communication in Ghana and globally. 107 In January 2023, social media was saturated with a video of five police officers in Memphis, Tennessee, who grotesquely beat a black man, Tyre Nichols, to death. On 29 January 2023, reading racism into the horrific murder of 29-year-old Nichols and reflecting on his own experiences of the same in Cambridge—which pales into nothing compared to how is marginalised in Ghana, Dr Gyamera on his Facebook as follows: My encounter with ‘racist people’ has led me to a very painful conclusion. The majority of people who have been most abusive and judgmental toward me are people of my race, ‘Black Racists.’ It’s been 3 years since I returned to Ghana from the UK. Some of the things I’ve

105 https://www.devex.com/organizations/cocoa-research-institute-of-ghanacrig-128493. 106 Joseph Kofi Teye and Ebenezer Nikoi, The political economy of the cocoa value chain in Ghana (Working Paper, APRA, 2021). 107 Agana-Nsiire Agana and Charles Prempeh, “Of farms, legends, and fools: Reengaging Ghana’s development narrative through social media,” Media, Culture & Society (2022): 1-17.

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endured from my fellow black Ghanaians within these past few years, even the most hellish white racist can not comprehend. 108

When I read Dr Gyamera’s comment, I was both troubled and saddened, given how much I know he had endured in Cambridge and the hope my wife and me had invested that Ghana would give him a good treat. Already, UK’s systemic racist culture has a long history of racial discrimination against Africans—indexed through its involvement in the enslavement of Africans, which has recently become so subtly expressed and yet structured to reinforce racist comments, while at the same time recusing protectors from charges of racism and also rationalising existing inequalities between groups. 109 As Stella Dadzie expressed in her comment on “Despite a recent government report denying the consequences of institutional racism, the impact can be seen in every aspect of our society, not just in relative health, housing, education and job prospects but also in the attitudes expressed in our everyday encounters and social media.” 110 African children in England are also at a higher risk of ‘adultification’ (preconception of children which may lead them to being and perceived as being more adult-like) than children of other groups of people. 111 Another trained human virologist—Dr Sabastine Eugene Arthur, with whom I share the undergraduate university (UCC) and postgraduate institution (Cambridge) has advised himself against plying his profession in Ghana until later in his life. I was personally thinking that since the Ghanaian public appeared to have appreciated his significant contribution to educating Ghanaians about the pandemic, he would have settled in Ghana. To be sure, not all our friends who returned to Ghana appear to be struggling. Dr Thomas Yeboah is doing well as a Research Fellow at the Bureau of Integrated Rural Development (BIRD) at the KNUST 108 https://www.facebook.com/ebenezer.gyamenaantwi. Dr Ebenezer Gyamena Antwi permitted me to share his story in my book. 109 Peter Fryer, Staying in power: The history of black people in Britain (London: Pluto Press, 2018/1984); Afua Hirsch, Brit(ish): On race, identity and belonging (London: Vintage Digital, 2018); Martha Augoustinos and Danille Every, “Contemporary racist discourses: Taboos against racism and racist accusations,” In Ann Weathrall, Bernadette M. Watson and Cindy Gallois, Language, discourse and social psychology, 233254 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). 110 Peter Fryer, Black people in British empire (London: Pluto Press, 2021/1988), p. x. 111 Jahnine Davis and Nicholas March, “Boys to men: The cost of ‘adultification’ in safeguarding responses to black boys,” Critical and Radical Social Work, 8, 22 (2020): 255-259.

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where he had his undergraduate education. Nevertheless, on the whole, skilled Ghanaian diasporans tend to struggle when they relocate to the country. Not only that people of African descent who return to Ghana often complain about multidimensional social exclusion. 112 My integration into the Ghanaian public service has suffered several layers of retrogression, but I thought I could stem the challenge by just concentrating on what I could do best. However, thinking alongside the expected moral reform that the pandemic did not bring to the Ghanaian public, on 31 March 2022, I presented a well-patronised seminar paper on the topic of this book, “The political economy of heaven and earth”. At the end of a presentation that elicited many conversations among participants, I shared the following with my fellow Research Fellow at the Centre for Cultural and African Studies, as part of my aspiration: My prayer is that we will collaborate, complement one another and endeavour to push one another to reach our collective goals in life. After all, as my presentation and project seek to achieve: We are not here because of heaven; if it is, why did the Lord bring us here? we are here to provide service; to make life better than we came to meet it. … I plead with all of us to work together as a family. Let us work together to make things work. When the glory comes, we will all benefit.

Far from pretending to be any better, I have personally wanted my father to be alive so I discuss with him how to negotiate the public sector. Regrettably, by the time I became conscious of what my father did for a living, he had long left the public service and joined the private sector in the early 1990s. Similarly, by the time I completed university in 2008, my father died two or three months after my graduation. Concurrently, while I cannot tap into my father’s philosophy and ethics about how to survive public service, often considered very toxic to those who want to hold to their moral aptitude, I have his integrity as my guide. I have resolved that no matter the situation, I will refuse to privatise my Christian conscience. Instead, I will trust God to stand “alone” and stand shoulder to shoulder with other Christians who share the vision of moral integrity in public service to serve humanity in faithfulness to Christ Jesus, our saviour. I will remain committed to 112 Charles Prempeh, “Balancing religious freedoms and the right of education of minorities in Ghana: A focus on access to public senior high schools by Rastafarians,” In Maame Efua Adadzi-Koom, Micchael Addaney and Lydia A. Nkansah, Democratic governance, law, and development in Africa: Pragmatism, experiments, and prospects, 193-222. Cham/Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022).

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Him who said that I should be industrious, for work is not a curse, but a divine cultural mandate. 113 Meanwhile, as Carol Dweck rightly said, “Your failures and misfortunes don’t threaten other people’s selfesteem. Ego-wise, it’s easy to be sympathetic to someone in need. It’s your assets and your success that are problems for people who derive their self-esteem from being superior.” 114 On social media, a comic picture went around that indicated the common humanly-shared aversion for envy and jealousy. Yet, as to whether anyone of us is yet to take the Bible’s advice that, “consider others as higher than yourself” as a daily bill is a challenge that can be fulfilled, in my estimation, by persons whose lives are deeply touched and transformed by Christ and whose ultimate vision is heaven.

Figure 4: Cartoon on jealousy

Even so, the content of this book comes back to a certain paradox that has been the concern of nearly everyone. The paradox is the antinomy between an overly religious country and concurrent pervasive corruption. I will reflect on this in my conclusion. But suffice it to say that at the beginning of the 19th century, Christianity was not a world religion. By the century’s end, Christianity had become a world religion. Cf. Genesis 2:15 Carol S. Dweck, Mindset: Changing the way you think to fulfil your potential (New York: Ballantine Books, 2006), p. 159. 113 114

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In Africa, through missionaries’ adoption of creative proselytization strategies, such as the assimilation of some aspects of indigenous cultures, the translation of the Bible and other public kinds of literature such as John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s progress, the religion appealed to more Africans. 115 This means that as Christians turned away from the 19th century totalising condemnation of African cultures as pagan, 116 more Africans accepted western education, including Asante people – including those in exile in Seychelles – who initially had resisted. 117 Since the late colonial era of the 19th century, several African converts to Christianity took steps to accept Christianity, more particularly the bible on their terms and reinterpreted it for their personal and social redefinition. 118 Bible translation brought into focus the significance of the relationship between actors and institutions, the interaction between personal and social activity and belief, as well as the general problem of how religious and cultural knowledge is created, apprehended, distributed and utilized – all impacting Africa’s positionality in the contemporary world. 119 By the beginning of the 20th century, several Africans, as I discuss in the book, had taken Christianity as part of Africa’s self-identity construction. This was part of the decolonization zeal and cultural revivalism in the so-called Third World countries. 120 However, by the time of the moratorium in the early 20th century, 121 the impact of Christianity on the moral lives of several Africans became a subject of interest to many Africans. The question was also asked about whether Christianity would survive for long in Africa – I discuss this in Chapter Two. While Christianity has survived as a major force 115 Isabel Hofmeyr, The portable Bunyan: A transnational history of the ‘Pilgrim’s progress’ (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004). 116 Brian Stanley, The Bible and the flag: Protestant missions & British imperialism in the nineteenth & twentieth centuries (Leicester/England: APOLLOS, 1990). 117 C.K. Graham, The history of education in Ghana (London: Frank Cass & Co. Ltd., 1971); I.R. Stone, “The education of Ashanti children during the exile in Seychelles,” Transactions of the Historical Society of Ghana, 14, 1 (1973): 113-116. 118 J. Pashington Obeng, Asante Catholicism: Religious and cultural reproduction among the Akan of Ghana (Leiden: Brill, 1996); Ogbu Kalu, African Christianity: An African story (Pretorian: Department of Church History, University of Pretoria, 2005). 119 Lamin O. Sanneh, Translating the message: The missionary impact on culture (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis, 1989). 120 Joel Cabrita, David Maxwell and Emma Wild-Wood, Relocating Christianity: Interdisciplinary Studies in Universal and Local Expression of the Christian Faith. Leiden: Brill, 2017), pp. 5-6 121 Emele Mba Uka, Missionaries go home? A sociological interpretation of an African response to Christian missions: A study in sociology of knowledge (Berne/New York: Lang, 1989).

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in Africa, the moral challenge of corruption remains similarly a major obstacle to Christian integrity. In the 1960s, several African academics began reflecting on the gap between what Africans profess as Christianity and moral character in public. 122 As if to placate Africans, the missionaries who had long left were blamed for not interacting adequately enough with African cultures. This left Africans with a split identity that was hardly rooted in any particular tradition of thought and action. 123 It is also true that indigenous religions – with a strong advantage of theological inclusiveness and amenability to change – provide a hermeneutical and theological resources for ChristianMuslims in Africa. 124 The outcome is Busia’s conclusion that Christianity among the Akan was either superficial, alien or both. 125 He concluded that Christianity was like a thin veneer that did not interact well with the Akan traditional religion. Since the 1960s, the issue remains that Christianity or at least as it is understood in Africa and the world has not exerted the expected moral transformation for public life. In his book on Pentecostal ethical boundaries, Girish Daswani perceptively reflected on how Pentecostals in Ghana continue to struggle to stay within the boundaries of Pentecostal ethics. 126 The same is true of Elorm-Donkor work, who pays attention to the difficulty Pentecostals face in reconciling their rhetoric with practical exemplary moral life. 127 In a recent co-edited book on Christianity and social change in contemporary Africa, Nyamnjoh and Carpenter provided an enriched understanding of the problems as well as possibilities, focusing on ethical concerns and psychological maladies that arise in 122 Christian G. Baëta (ed), Christianity in tropical Africa: Studies presented and discussed at the seventh international African seminar, University of Ghana, April 1965 (Boca Raton, FL: Routledge, 1968). 123 S.G. Williamson, Akan Religion and the Christian Faith: A Comparative Study of the impact of two religions’ Accra: Ghana Universities Press, 1965), p. 93; Mathias Kwesi Forson, Split-level Christianity in Africa: A study of the persistence of traditional religious beliefs and practices among the Akan Methodists of Ghana (PhD Thesis, submitted to the Faculty of the E. Stanley Jones School of World Mission and Evangelism, Asbury Theological Seminary, 1993). 124 Abraham A. Akrong & John Azumah, “Hermeneutical and theological resources in African traditional religions for Christian-Muslim relations in Africa,” in John Azumah & Lamin Sanneh (eds), The African Christian and Islam, 65-84 (Cambria: Langham Monographs, 2013). 125 K.A. Busia, ‘Has the Christian faith been adequately presented?,’ p. 88 126 Girish Daswani, Looking back, moving forward: Transformation and ethical practice in the Ghanaian Church of Pentecost (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015). 127 Lord Abraham Elorm-Donkor, Christian morality in Ghanaian Pentecostalism (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2017).

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some of new Christian movements, such as the neo-Pentecostal and militant fundamentalist groups. 128 Putting all the above together, religion in the public sphere is contested as a major obstacle to Ghana’s development. The last attempt at bringing into the public sphere any religious symbols, in my case the national cathedral, tends to stir an uproar against religion. Since the middle of the millennium, several young men and women have identified with humanism as an alternative to what they consider religious hypocrisy. In 2007, while I was studying at the University of Cape Coast Ghana, I attended a conference that brought several African atheists together to deliberate on the alternative moral vision for Africa’s quest for development. Also, by 2016, a young Ghanaian man, known as Avraham ben Moshe, with multi-religious experiences had formed what he referred to as the Common Sense Family (CSF). Much as the CSF is not well organised and structured to serve as a major alternative humanistic vision to religion, Ben Moshe’s oratorical competence and rhetoric, which he is believed to have cultivated as a trader of herbal medicine in commercial buses as part of his life’s economic journey, endears him to several of the youths. Again, though minimally educated, at least with a secondary school certificate, Ben Moshe had been deeply influenced by his one-time mentor, Rabbi Moshe Perez, director of the Institute of Noahic Studies in the US, who is very popular on social media. Through his overwhelming influence that resulted in the conversion of Ghana’s Ali Ibrahim into Judaism, the latter took the name Avraham Ben Moshe: the Moshe represented his paternal attachment to Moshe Perez, his Avraham (as a replacement of the Arabic rendition: Ibrahim) and ben to represent his paternal attachment to Rabbi Moshe Perez. But on social media, Avraham ben Moshe was influenced by Michael Skobac, educated at Northwestern University and Yeshiva University, and has been involved in Jewish education and outreach work since 1975. As a specialist in any countermission since 1983, he established the New York branch of JEWS FOR JUDAISM and served as a consultant to the New York Jewish Community Relations Council Task Force on Missionaries and Cults. 129 He promotes Jewish rights to the land of Jerusalem and retains an active presence on social media YouTube – with several lectures and teachings, usually targeted at Christianity. 130 128 Francis B. Nyamnjoh and Joel A. Carpenter, Christianity and social change in contemporary Africa Vol. I (Bamenda/Cameroon: Langaa RPCIG, 2020). 129 https://jewsforjudaism.org/staff/rabbi-michael-skobac. 130 https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Michael+Skobac.

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Dabbling in some form of Egyptology and syncretic religious philosophies, Avraham Ben Moshe made a swift u-turn against every form of religion. Since 2016, therefore, he has gained fame on social media as a major voice against theistic religions, especially Islam and Christianity. Through the responses of a non-paid church office of the Church of Pentecost, Emmanuel Amissah, Avraham’s polemics against Christianity have waned in gaining public traction. He has nevertheless become aggressive towards Islam—which has compelled a young Muslim man to dedicate much of his YouTube space to responding to him. Whatever it is, elites who are frustrated by the paradox between religious pervasiveness and overwhelming corruption often call on Avraham Ben Moshe to critique religion. But the paradox is not just the concern of the elites or the emerging humanist groups in the country. The churches are also worried. The Church of Pentecost, Ghana’s largest Pentecostal denomination that emerged in the 1930s, 131 has incorporated several measures to shore up religious influence in reforming moral lives in the country. For example, since his election into office as the Chairman of the CoP, Apostle Eric Nyamekye has dedicated his first term to reshaping Ghana’s moral landscape for productivity. Taking the theme, “Possessing the nation,” the CoP seeks to partner with the state to cure the public of all moral malice. 132 As I write, the political elites have also invested in institutions and legislation to as part of structuring the ethical lives of people to sanitise the public for economic activities to take off. Meanwhile, it is commonest to find a Ghanaian accusing everyone of corruption apart from themselves. Academics would also write copiously about corruption and yet are not themselves free from the canker. That a university would conduct three-layer interviews to recruit a lecturer when one seating could have done is telling enough. Against all this, the middle class is convinced that religion and politics should not intersect in public governance. They think that the less religion, the more efficient and productive use of individual and national resources. As I said, it is against this simplistic answer to Ghana’s challenges that I have taken up this book as my contribution to the public debate. I reckon that Ghana has made considerable progress in overcoming the challenges of underdevelopment. But the fact remains that since the 131 Christian Tsekpoe, Intergenerational missiology: An African Pentecostal-Charismatic perspective (Oxford: Regnum Books International, 2022). 132 Charles Prempeh, “Religion, Social Media and the Discourse on Prisons: An Analysis of the Responses to the Church of Pentecost (CoP) Prison Project in Ghana”, Prison Service Journal 256 (2021): 38-43.

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1960s, the country is still struggling with the colonial and self-imposed characteristics of underdevelopment such as extreme poverty, illiteracy, and joblessness. My response to these challenges is, contrary to the majority position, more religion in the public sphere. The rest of the book proves my thesis through an analysis that entwines history and contemporary trends in the intertwinement between religion and politics. Some of the narratives I raise are known to religious scholars who may find them boring. But given that I intend this book to serve as a textbook, I am also considering the non-history of religion and politics and need a context to understand the current development in the field.

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Chapter 2 State Formation and the Politics of Ghana’s National Cathedral Introduction In March 2017, as part of his independence national address to the people of Ghana, the president of Ghana, Nana Addo Dankwa AkufuAddo, declared his intention to lead the construction of a national cathedral for the country. 133 Since that declaration, the proposed national cathedral has become a vortex of multiple, vexatious discussions. This is precisely as the project is seen as the president’s initiative at fostering his ambitions and personality cult in the annals of Ghana’s political history. Some individuals have pointed to the national cathedral as an example of religion “hijacking” politics. 134 Similarly, others have described the plan as a travesty of Ghana’s secular status. It was against this background that James Kwabena Bomfeh (popularly known as Kabila), a member of a non-ecumenical-remnant Seventhday Adventist, led by Lawyer Baasit Aziz Bamba, a Muslim and academic, went to the Supreme Court to challenge the constitutionality of the national cathedral. 135 Yet, other organisations, including the Trade Union Congress, have accused the state of mixing up its priorities, suggesting that the money and resources for the cathedral could have been used to provide needed social services, like schools

133 Communications Bureau (March 6, 2021), “Speech delivered by the president of the Republic, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufu-Addo, on the occasion of the 60th Independence anniversary celebration”, https://www.presidency.gov.gh/index.php/briefing-room/news-style-2/161speech-delivered-by-the-president-of-the-republic-nana-addo-dankwa-akufo-addoon-the-occasion-of-the-60th-independence-anniversary-celebration (September 13, 2021). 134 George M. Bob-Milliar and Karen Lauterbach (January 21, 2019), “The politics of a national cathedral in Ghana: A symbol of a corrupted government, or reaching Wakanda?”, https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/religionglobalsociety/2019/01/thepolitics-of-a-national-cathedral-in-ghana-a-symbol-of-a-corrupted-government-orreaching-wakanda/ (Accessed: September 13, 2021). 135 Ghanaweb (March 11, 2017), “Kwabena Bomfeh sues AG over national cathedral”, https://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/Kwabena-Bomfehsues-AG-over-national-cathedral-517876 (Accessed: September 13, 2021).

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and hospitals. 136 In all of this, there is no doubt that partisanship and religious competition for attention in the public square have also obscured clarity on the subject. This is to the extent that while the Christian community is raising its funds, as part of the government’s efforts in providing land, to build the national cathedral, Ghanaians are still not pacified. The partisan discontent with the project has been voiced by Alhaji Abdul-Rahman Harruna Atta, a Muslim journalist, who has been writing scathing, polemical, and incendiary journalistic articles about the edifice. 137 The tensions that the proposed national cathedral has elicited could be attributed to many factors, but the key among them is the narrow understanding of the utility value of the edifice when completed. For example, Kwaku Sintim-Minsa (KSM), a veteran Ghanaian comedian, known in the showbiz industry as KSM, sarcastically said, “God is not homeless to need a cathedral”. 138 This is against the background that, while the Supreme Court ruling in 2019 cleared all obstacles for the cathedral to be constructed, the project continues to receive a barrage of criticism from a public that is increasingly becoming hostile to the Christian faith. 139 Unfortunately, the voices of the cathedral 136 Ghanaweb (October 15, 2018), “National cathedral ‘misplaced priority’ – TUC” https://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/NationalCathedral-misplaced-priority-TUC-692619 (Accessed: September 13, 2021). 137 CitiNewsroom (August 23, 2021), “Harruna Attah writes: Cathedral of doom; concerns of Muslims brushed aside” https://citinewsroom.com/2021/08/harrunaattah-writes-cathedral-of-doom-concerns-of-muslims-brushed-aside/ (Accessed: September 13, 2021); Abdul-Rahman Harruna Attah (August 30, 2021), “AbdulRahman Harruna Attah: Akufu-Addo’s cathedral: A desperate throw of the dice” https://www.myjoyonline.com/abdul-rahman-harruna-attah-akufo-addos-cathedrala-desperate-throw-of-the-dice/ (Accessed: September 13, 2021); CitiNewsroom (August 17, 2021), “Amb. Harruna-Attah Write: Religion in Ghana – A letter to Nana Addo and Bawumia”, https://citinewsroom.com/2021/08/amb-harrunaattah-writes-religion-in-ghana-a-letter-to-nana-addo-and-bawumia/ (Accessed: September 13, 2021). 138 Ghanaweb (July 31, 2021), “God is not homeless – KSM reacts to the construction of national cathedral”, https://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/God-is-nothomeless-KSM-reacts-to-the-construction-of-national-cathedral-1321564 (Accessed: September 13, 2021). 139 Ghanaweb (November 17, 2019), “SC dismisses suit against Akufu-Addo over National Cathedral”, https://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/SC-dismisses-suitagainst-Akufo-Addo-over-National-Cathedral-802920 (September 13, 2021); Ghanaweb (January 23, 2021), “Supreme Court throws out suit against National Cathedral”,

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“apologists” have been drowned by the sea waves of criticism that push back against the project. Nevertheless, many themes could be drawn from the discussion to point to layers of simplicities in public discussions about the project. In this paper, we aim to discuss two of such themes, namely secularism and development. To recapitulate our key points: Two main criticisms are levelled against the cathedral: the first is the purported status of Ghana as a secular country. The second is the significance of religion in the repertoires of development. But public simplistic discussion of these two themes obscures the antinomies of modernity. As part of the rhetoric of modernity, religion is expected to recede as societies supposedly make progress. 140 Consequently, nations are expected to secularise, driving religion to the private sphere in favour of development as materialistic, visibility, and tangibility with monetary or economic value. Religion and development: A theoretical foundation The goal of this section is to explore how the idea of secularization and modernization have contributed to the debate on the relationship between religion and development. Before the 19th century, the politics of Medieval Europe was such that religion and politics were hardly divided. The belief in God as the source of public governance and social relations was almost a must for every pre-modern European. 141 Since the 19th century (at least in the modern era), attempts have been made to separate religion from politics. The broad base of human life was compartmentalised into two spheres: the sacred and the secular. Religion was to occupy the sacred sphere (which was private) while politics was to occupy the secular sphere (which was public). Religion was considered ‘irrational’ and anti-progress and should be left to survive as an individual private affair. Politics was considered to operate on rationality and modernity and should be allowed to exist in the public. That religious beliefs were ‘irrational’ and its relegation to the private sphere had implications for the idea of development. Development was considered to hinge on rationality, logicality, and the https://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/Supreme-Courtthrows-out-suit-against-National-Cathedral-717482 (Accessed: September 13, 2021). 140 Harvey Cox, The secular city: Secularization and urbanization in theological perspective (New York: Macmillan, 1965); Peter L. Berger, The sacred canopy: Elements of a sociological theory of religion (New York: Anchor Books, 1967). 141 Charles Taylor, A secular age (Cambridge, MA.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007); Talal Asad, Genealogies of religion: Discipline and reasons of power in Christianity and Islam (Baltimore, MD.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993).

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will to challenge the status to bring about progress and improvement in the lives of people. Since religion was said to be conservative and less inclined to change, its role in the provision of social services was considered tenuous. In the same way, development was conceived as modernization—which is a radical break with the past. This radical break with the past implied challenging the status quo and conventions and questioning received ‘wisdom.’ Religion was considered incapable of breaking away with the status quo and challenging its convention. The disdain against religion in the public sphere was such that development literature and development practices avoided the discussion on religion and development was considered a taboo. 142 If religion is considered incapable of challenging the past then there would be no conversion to Christianity, Islam and their reformist movement. Development is definitely about the past. When Rostow wrote about modernisation theory, he modelled it on the industrial revolution in England. That was in the past. While religion was considered incompatible with development, Max Weber’s work, The Protestant Ethic, was revolutionary in pointing out the extent to which some aspects of religion could facilitate development. By harping the protestant ethic, which emphasised hard work, frugality, and investment, Weber demonstrated how Protestantism paved the way for western capitalism and industrialisation. Over the years, many other western scholars have also pointed out the reconcilable relationship between religion and development. Rodney Stark argued that Christian theology, which emphasised more on orthodoxy (right teaching) as opposed to orthopraxy (right practice), was the foundation of the development of western Europe. 143 More recently at the turn of the millennium, trans-national organizations, such as the World Bank, has come to appreciate the significant role religious leaders are playing and could play in providing social services to stem the tide against rising poverty. 144 From this reason, the interface between religion and development has shifted from an imagined conflictual prisms to a mutual convivial valve where religion has been recognized as fostering holistic material and spiritual welfare of human beings. 145 142 Kurt Alan Ver Beek, “Spirituality: A development taboo,” Development in Practice, Vol. 10, no. 1 (2000), pp. 31-43. 143 Rodney Stark, The victory of reason: How Christianity led to freedom, capitalism and western success (New York: Random House Trade Publishing Group, 2005). 144 Katherine Marshall & Marisa Van Saanen, Development and faith: Where mind, heart, and soul work together (Washington, D.C.: The World Bank, 2007). 145 Nadine Bowers Du Toit, “Development and religion,” in Birgit Weyel, Wilhelm Gräb, Emmanuel Lartey, and Cas Wepener (eds), International handbook of practical theology, 89-102 (Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2022).

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Whether Christian theology enhances development or not, the secularisation theory of the 1960s, ruled religion out as irrelevant for development. The argument was that the ‘modern’ world has outlived its need for religious superstition. It was taken for granted that one could not be modern without throwing off religious yoke. 146 The idea that religion was irrelevant to the modern world and would consequently fizzle out based on three myths about its origin. The first was Sigmund Freud’s projection of religion as emerging from man’s defencelessness and his need for an almighty father. The second was Karl Marx’s assumption that religion existed to provide temporary relief to the exploited working class. 147 The third is about the evolution, which argued that religion evolved in piecemeal as human beings made progress in life. 148 All these theories could be condensed into the assumption that religion is a human creation and has no divine origin. Consequently, if religion has a human origin, then the argument followed that, changes in human conditions—enlightenment as opposed to illusions, classlessness, as opposed class conflict, and advancement, as opposed to primitivity would spell the end of religion. Both the concept of secular and modernity, the perceived paired enemy of religion, have conceptual difficulties. 149 Historically, the term ‘secular’ and ‘secularist’ were introduced into English by freethinkers in the middle of the nineteenth century to avoid the charge of being “atheist” and “infidels,” terms that carried suggestions of immorality in a still largely Christian society’. 150 But largely the basic assumption that was held was that modernity and tradition/religion cannot coexist without one displacing the other. 151 Secular and modernity were mutually inclusive to displace religion and tradition. 152 The arguable 146 John Micklethwait & Adrian Wooldridge, God is back: How the global rise of faith is changing the world. London: Penguin Books, 2009), p. 10. 147 Karl Marx, Critique of Hegel’s ‘Philosophy of right’ (trans. Annette Jolin & Joseph O’Malley) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970). 148 Kathleen Bliss, The future of religion (London: Penguin Books, 1969), pp. 9-11. 149 Anil Nauriya, “Relationship between the state and religion: antinomies of passive secularism,” Economic and Political Weekly, 24, 8 (February 1989), pp. 405406), p. 405 150 Talal Asad, Formation of the Secular: Christianity, Islam and Modernity (California: Stanford University Press, 2003), p. 23. 151 Joseph R. Gusfield, ‘Tradition and Modernity: Misplaced Polarities in the Study of Social Change’, American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 72, No. 4 (Jan., 1967), pp. 351-362. 152 Johan Verweij, Peter Ester and Rein Nauta, ‘Secularization as an Economic and Cultural Phenomenon: A Cross-National Analysis,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 36, 2 (Jun., 1997): 309- 324, p. 310.

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incompatibility between modern and tradition led to the conclusion that religion and chieftaincy would not survive the modern world. Chieftaincy in Ghana, for example, was seen as the antithesis of modernity. 153 Meanwhile, two of the lead proponents of secularization, Harvey Cox and Peter Berger, have long recanted their position in favour of religion. 154 Nevertheless other scholars have also raised concerns about the supposed failure of secularisation theory and yet still hope that secularism will triumph. Even though this assertion is confusing, they attribute the perceived failure of secularisation to many factors. One such factor is the failure of the secular project to provide a secular culture. This is the position of Meera, who argued that the perceived failure of the secular project was primarily because of the failure of providing secular culture. In her analysis, the disassociation of state and church, which relegates religion to the private sphere, was not supported by the secularisation of the public sphere. In other words, while the private sphere was left unrestricted as the domain of religion, the public sphere, which supposedly had displaced religion, was also not filled with secular culture. 155 Consequently, religious people bring back their beliefs and superstition to the public sphere. The problem with Meera’s analysis is that she failed to define and conceptualise what she meant by secular culture. What constitutes secular culture? How do we derive secular culture? Meera failed to see the public sphere, not just as a political sphere, but also as social sphere, where interactions and actions take place. The idea of what Wilfred M. McClay has referred to as the ‘naked public square’ 156 is based on a false assumption that the public sphere is value-free and neutral. It is impossible to create a public sphere that is value free. For example, if we take theistic beliefs and assumptions away from the public sphere, we replace them with atheistic beliefs and assumptions. In that sense, theism, which is theocentrically driven and laden with values, is replaced with atheism, 153 Richard Rathbone, Nkrumah and the Chiefs: The Politics of Chieftaincy in Ghana, 1951-60 (Athens: Ohio university Press, 2000), p. 3. 154 Harvey Cox, “The Myth of the Twentieth Century: The Rise and Fall of Secularization,” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, 23, 1/2 (Spring, 2000), pp. 1-13; Peter L. Berger (ed), The desecularization of the world: Resurgent religion and world politics (Washington, D.C.: Ethics and Public Center; Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans, 1999). 155 Meera Nanda, p. 40, ‘Secularism without secularisation: Reflections on God and Politics in US and India, Economics and Political Weekly, Vol. 42, No. 1 (Jan. 6-12, 2007), pp. 39-46, p. 40 156 Wilfred M. McClay, “Two Concepts of Secularism,” The Wilson Quarterly (1976-), vol. 24, No. 3 (Summer 2000), pp. 54-71, p. 56.

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which is anthropocentrically driven and also laden with values. In that sense, if one takes creationism as etiological myth about the origin of the universe and all that are found therein, one is most likely to replace it with evolution, which also has an etiological myth about the origin of the universe. In the end, the public sphere never becomes neutral; it only experiences a discursive change in ideology. Morris has argued that the whole idea of secularisation fed into Christian theological assumptions about the need for revival. He maintained that as Christians claimed religion was losing its influence and society was saddled with immorality, corruption and political decay, Christians made a case for revival. 157 Morris assertion raises questions that are fundamental to the Christian faith, and that also challenge the theory of secularism. For example, was there every time society never suffered any form of moral decay? Has there also been a time when Christian ethical values were universally shared in a particular geographical area? Even so, as Morris pointed out, social scientists built on this assumption to refine and formulate debate about secularism. Beyond these difficulties, some scholars have argued that the idea of the secular is religion that has been shorn of its doctrines. Graeme Smith, one of the lead proponents of this idea, argued that secular ethic, or what might qualify as secular culture, is a Christian ethic that has been weaned off its theological underpinnings. By implication, he argued that secularism is a masked religion that has been stripped off its doctrines. Secularisation is, therefore, taking Christian ethics to the public sphere without accompanying it with Christian doctrine. 158 This position is also not without problems. It assumes that religion, and in his discussion, Christianity, is the origin of ethics. Claiming Christianity as the source of morality is not universally shared. Taking the case of the source of morality in Africa, it has been argued by Oladipo that since African traditional religion is not a revealed religion, it is difficult to invoke religion as the source of morality. 159 In relation to religion in Ghana, it is curious to examine how the various religions have struggled to saturate the public sphere with ethical values that would enforce human flourishing.

157 Jeremy Morris, “Secularization and Religious Experience: Arguments in the historiography of modern British Religion,” The Historical Journal, 55, 1 (2012): 195219. 158 Graeme Smith, A Short History of Secularism (New York: I.B. Tauris, 2008), p. 2 159 Olusegun Oladipo (2004). Religion in African Culture: Some Conceptual Issues,’ in Kwasi Wiredu (Ed.). A Companion to African Philosophy. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd, p. 361

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Others have also argued that instead of celebrating the supposed failure of secularisation, attention should be focused on how secularisation has reshaped religion. Daniele Hervieu-Leger argued that secularism has brought about autonomisation of belief. In other words, secularisation provided space for individuals to critique and in some cases challenge some of the core teachings of institutionalised religion, in the process devising ethics that are irreconcilable with the teaching of institutionalised religion. 160 This has deepened freedom of religious conscience and made it difficult for religious beliefs and practices to be transferred from one generation to the other. This has meant that religion is increasingly losing its role as a sole mechanism of control. The sacralisation of individual agency in matters of beliefs and ethics has dealt a serious blow to the power of social control of religion. As Steven Bruce has observed, the consequence of this is that as religion loses its social power, it becomes harder for each generation to socialise its children in the faith. It also becomes progressively harder for those who remain religious to preserve the cohesion and integrity of their particular belief system. He continued that as religion becomes increasingly a matter of free choice, it becomes harder to maintain boundaries. 161 The individuation and autonomisation outcome of secularism has had remarkable expression in Ghana. The constitution of Ghana guarantees freedom of religion and conscience to every adult Ghanaian (from eighteen years and above). 162 And since Ghana is religiously plural, the constitution upholds the right of individuals to freely choose the religion of their choice. This constitutional provision has impacted heavily on ecclesiastical control of religious devotees. I argue, however contentiously that the rise of young men and women who openly declare themselves as humanists and atheists and take religion to task could be attributed to the freedom that secular ethos affords. More recently, the complex issues of secularization has been assessed—focusing on some indexes of secularization—by Jörg Stolz. He reviewed the various scholarly indexes of secularisation, including insecurity, education, socialisation, secular transition, secular

160 Daniele Hervieu-Leger, “The Twofold limit of the notion of secularization,” In Linda Woodhead (ed), Peter Berger and the Study of Religion, 112-128 (London/New York: Routledge, 2001), p. 112 161 Steve Bruce, Secularization: In Defence of an Unfashionable Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp 2-3. 162 E.K. Quarshigah, “Legislating Religious Liberty: The Ghanaian Experience,” BYU Law Review, 2 (1999): 589-607.

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competition, pluralism and regulation. 163 Stolz made an important contribution by advancing the prospects of secularisation as a mutual inclusive discussion of the various theories about the subject. Taking up the correlation between insecurity and religiosity, an argument is advanced that countries with high existential insecurity are more religious than countries with low existential insecurity. However, standing alone as an explanatory model in support of the secularisation thesis, as identified by Stolz is not convincing, as evidence is still mixed. The second index of secularisation is education. It is argued that the capacity of education to provide an alternative explanation to religious ones would negatively impact religiosity. But Stolz argued that educational reforms are rare and bound to specific socio-historical contexts, and it is not at all clear whether the thesis could be applied trans-nationally. He also takes up the issue of socialisation. It has been argued that parents exert a strong influence on the socialisation of their children such that the more religious parents or less religious parents would determine the religiosity of their children. Nevertheless, insightful as it is, Stolz discussed other scholarly factors that influence the socialisation of children. These factors include the national context, schools, and the replacement of religious cohorts. In other words, if parents are highly religious or less religious, other mediating factors such as the pervasiveness of religion outside of the home would impact the religious disposition of children. This led him to discuss the idea of secular transition as a determinant of secularisation that scholars have put forward. It is argued that a linear transition takes place over time, producing first religious parents, whose possibility of passing on religious values is hampered by external context—schooling and the state. The outcome of this produces children who are less religious as they are adequately supplied with parental religious norms. These parents who are less informed on religious values may produce children who may not be religious at all. But again, as Stolz argued this argument is highly speculative and could not readily be accepted as holding factual in the secularisation thesis. Nevertheless, related to the secular transition is the issue of whether there is an alternative answer to the role religion plays in society. He argued that religion performs both transcendental and immanent roles. For the transcendental, it is difficult to have a nonreligious alternative. But for the immanence role, there is a functional differential to the social services religious constituencies provide. Even so, Stolz argued that the fact that an alternative is found for, say, 163 Jörg Stolz, “Secularization theories in the twenty-first century: Ideas, evidence, and problems, Presidential address.” Social Compass, 6,2 (2020) 282-308.

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counselling away from the pastoral role of a counsel, is not enough to imply that religiosity would lose its stronghold. The issue of religious pluralism, which was tipped in the 1960s to produce the effect of secularisation has not been fully realised. This is because, as Stolz observed, the plurality of religions may give religious people multiple choices to consume religions. The final factor to gauge secularisation is state control of religion. The thesis is that the strong control state exerts over religion, through legislation and incentives, is the perhaps of a decline in religion in the public sphere. As Stolz argued this is not entirely factual as religion is also more abstract that may easily subvert the state’s material attempts at control. Much as all these factors may negatively impact the public role of religion, I agree with Stolz that the challenges he raised with each of them could be resolved through a combination of the different theoretical approaches. Impliedly, a synthesis of all the theories, against the context of modernization, may best explain the future directions of secularisation. I find Stolz’s conclusion significant for my discussion. First, I agree with him on the fact that the outcome of the various theories on secularization cannot be universally applied without problems. Second, I also identify with him that, instead of treating the various indexes of secularisation as mutually exclusive, there is a need for a synthesis to make sense of the complexity of secularisation. Applying the conclusion of Stolz my analysis, I argue that the various factors of secularisation are both strong in the Western world and Ghana and yet, their impact on the religious disposition of the two geospatial contexts is complex and must be understood at the individual level and the socio-cultural contexts. More importantly, I invest in the argument that much as individual subjectivity is strong in determining the extent to which the various indexes of secularization impact their religiosity, this may be more appropriate for the Western context than the Ghanaian context. I shall, therefore, incorporate in my analysis the intersectionality between the various indexes of secularization, indicating why religion – whether in Ghana or the West— could hardly be both privatized and left out of all public conversations. The discussion about secularization also comes against the background of a global religious resurgence since the 1970s. The resurgence of religion in the twenty-first century has birthed the proliferation of different religions globally. The rise of new religions and their spread to other parts of the world has been sustained by modernity and globalization. In other words, while modernization was tipped to push religion to the margins or bury it entirely, the elements of modernization, which has facilitated transportation and improved upon the means of communication, have contributed to the 66

crisscrossing of religions across global boundaries. In the Ghanaian context, the 1970s and 1980s witnessed the penetration of some religious groups, such as the Shi’a Islam and the Nation of Islam that were hitherto hardly known to the Ghanaian religious space. 164 Ghanaian religious space became a potpourri of different religions. The coming into force of the1992 Constitution of Ghana, which saw Ghana’s re-democratising after about a decade of military regime, has given consideration to the religious plurality of Ghana. The constitution guarantees freedom of religion and association. It also frowns on any attempt to mortgage the rights of individuals to practice the religion of their choice, particularly if in pursuing their religious interest, they do not jeopardize the interest of individuals and the security of the state. Thus, while the idea of a secular Ghana is fraught with conceptual difficulties, Ghana is appropriately a religiously plural nation than a secular one. 165 Structural adjustment and religion Since independence, the vision to propel development has been key on the agenda in Ghana. The independence of Ghana was marked by widespread optimism since it was considered the opportunity for the people of the Gold Coast (Ghana) to demonstrate their ability to govern themselves. All the leaders that have served Ghana so far had contributed to providing social service to relief Ghanaians of poverty. But military interventions in Ghana’s politics and some of the legacies of colonialism—such as the reduction of Ghana’s economy as a raw material production economy—have had a corrosive effect on Ghanaians. More so, the corruption that burdened the administration of Kwame Nkrumah and lack of prudent spending set the economy of Ghana on the track of future collapse. 166 By the 1980s, the economy of 164 De-Valera N.Y.M. Botchway and Mustapha Abdul-Hameed, “Was it a nine days wonder? A note on the proselytisation efforts of the Nation of Islam in Ghana, c. 1980s-2010,” In Dawn-Marie Gibson and Herbert Berg (Eds.). New Perspectives on the Nation of Islam, 95-117 (New York/London: Routledge, 2017). 165 Charles Prempeh, “Balancing religious freedoms and the right of education of minorities in Ghana: A focus on access to public senior high schools by Rastafarians,” In Maame Efua Adadzi-Koom, Micchael Addaney and Lydia A. Nkansah, Democratic governance, law, and development in Africa: Pragmatism, experiments, and prospects, 193-222. Cham/Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022); Christopher Y. Nyinevi and Edmund N. Amasah, “The Separation of Church and State Under Ghana’s Fourth Republic,” Journal of Politics and Law, 8, 4 (2015): 283-291, p. 286. 166 Douglas Rimmer, “The crisis in the economy of Ghana,” The Journal of Modern African Studies, 4, 1 (1966), pp. 17-32; Bill Buernar Puplamu, “A political and

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Ghana had taken a sharp nosedive, as a result of corruption, drought, and poor mismanagement of state institutions. The Nigerian government at the time did not support the military coup in Ghana as it was considered an affront to the hierarchical structure of the army. This was because the 1981 coup Rawlings staged in Ghana was an inversion of military coups, following a junior ranked officer overthrowing a senior ranked officer. The Nigerian government, therefore, obstructed the good economic treaties it had with Ghana. They adopted strict protectionism that affected Ghanaian traders who traded with Nigeria. They also gave a difficult trade deal with Ghana oil export and import. 167 The challenge was exacerbated by the deportation of about one million Ghanaians from Nigeria. This development was worsened in the face of the state-centric approach to development that Jerry John Rawlings, Ghana’s military leader, had assumed. As part of curbing corruption, Rawlings centralized development. As a government that believed in revolution, chiefs and Christians were not given much say in the administration of the state. These institutions were considered anti-revolutionary. But in the face of increasing economic challenges, Rawlings appealed to the international financial institutions—the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund for financial assistance. In response, these financial institutions demanded economic liberalization and political restructuring. 168 The state was asked to engage private institutions in the running of the economy. Also, neoliberal policies, such as removal of subsidies on education, health, and agriculture, were imposed on the state as aid conditionalities. 169 While these reforms, which were named as Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) were meant to keep the economy from total collapse, it made life difficult for many Ghanaians. Given that the core of the political economy of Ghana – education, agriculture, and health—were severely affected, economic history of Ghana,” In Frederick Bird & Stewart W. Herman, International businesses and the challenges of poverty in the developing world, 64-74 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004). p. 66. 167 Conversation with Rev. Dr. Johnson Afrane-Twum, the head pastor of Christian International Ministries, a Pentecostal church in Koforidua, Ghana, on February 6, 2020. 168 Giles Mohan, “Adjustment and decentralization in Ghana: a case of diminished sovereignty,” Political Geography, 15 ,1 (1996): 75-94, p. 81. 169 Ragnhild Overå, “When men do women’s work: Structural adjustment, unemployment and changing gender relations in the informal economy of Accra, Ghana,” The Journal of Modern African Studies, 45, 4 (Dec. 2004), pp. 539-563; HoWon Jeong, “Liberal economic reform in Ghana: A contested political agenda,” Africa Today, 42, 4 (4th Qtr., 1995), pp. 82-104.

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there were demonstrations in urban areas in protest against the political regime. The SAPs led to the introduction and implementation of the education user fee and ‘cash-and-carry’ in public universities and government hospitals, respectively. 170 In response, the international monetary fund introduced the Programme of Actions to Mitigate the Social Costs of Adjustment (PAMSCAD) to mitigate the impact of the structural adjustment. 171 But the most important impact of the SAPs was the de-centralisation of the provision of social services to Ghanaians. The government in the face of these challenges appealed to and won the support of chiefs and churches in resolving Ghana’s economic challenges. 172 Incidentally, it was during this period that chieftaincy adapted to the situation through the invention of “Nkosuohene,” labelled also “development chiefs.” The idea of “Nkosuohene” was believed to have been pioneered by the late Asantehene, Otumfuo Opoku Ware II during the celebration of his twenty-fifth jubilee of kingship in 1985. 173 But this cannot be entirely true as different version of the name such as “Mpuntuhene”—non-royal chiefs and Europeans who provided social service. For example, Gomoa Takyiman had selected US Peace Corp who assisted in building middle school bloc and were honoured with the “Mpuntuhene” title in the 1960s—though a few of them left before they were installed. 174 The main goal of the invention of “Nkosuohene” or “Mpuntuhene” was to create non-royal titles for persons who could support the development of Asanteman and Ghana. The practice spread to other Akan and nonAkan areas. 175 Candidate for these non-royal stools expanded to include foreigners who had demonstrated interest and capacity to support socio-economic development. Since the 1980s, many prominent nonroyal Ghanaians and non-Ghanaians have been made “Nkosuohene”. The core issue here is that the state receded and some of its 170 W.K. Asenso-Okyere, Adote Anum, Isaac Osei-Akoto & Augustina Adukonu, “Cost recovery in Ghana: Are there any changes in health care seeking behaviour?” Health Policy and Planning, 13, 2 (1998), pp. 181-188. 171 Kwabena Donkor, “Structural Adjustment and mass poverty in Ghana,” In Peter Townsend & David Gordon (eds.), World poverty: New policies to defeat an old enemy (Bristol: The Policy Press, 2002), pp. 197-232. 172 Jeong, “Liberal,” p. 97. 173 Marijke Steegstra, “Development encounters: Westerners and chieftaincy in Southern Ghana,” In Jon Abbink & Andre van Dokkum (eds.), Dilemmas of development: Conflicts of interest and their resolutions in modernizing Africa, 228-241 (Leiden: African Studies Centre, 2008), p. 228. 174 Interview with Mr Kofi Ata (Samuel Budu), Cambridge on 5 March 2023. He had his elementary education at the Gomoa Takyiman in the 1960s. 175 ibid, p. 229.

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responsibilities were offloaded to other institutions which did not have budgets for picking up the tab of the fallout caused by the aloofness of the state. it really does not matter who decided to call traditional leaders “development” chiefs or whatever. They had no money to do what the state should be doing. The conflation of development as materialism points to a western axiom that reckons time is linear. Following this linear construction of time, societies are expected to progress from “primitivism”— characterised by religion—to “civility,” characterised by legal rationality, routinised in economic value. This framing of time and progress is concretised and universalised in the fact that, after two hundred years of western imperialistic dominance of other social spaces, a humanistic western paradigm of development has become universally hegemonic in development theories. Consequently, as the west appears to have become deeply secularised, the rest of the world is expected to follow suit. This western hegemony partly explains the hostility from the west, since the last few decades, nourished hostility (sinophobism) towards China, which as a revitalised old civilization, has refused to cast its civilization along the paradigm of the west. With this vortex of issues, it is important to re-evaluation of Ghana’s status as a secular state. this is because, while the Supreme Court dismissed the simplicity of Kabila’s case of Ghana as a secular country, the issue of secularism has yet to be settled. Academics have not adequately provided a robust historical genealogy of the concept, more so, as it relates to the formation of modern Ghana. 176 Thus, all complex religio-moral issues against Christianity, such as homosexuality, comprehensive sexual education, and the running of historic mission schools, are argued from the perspective of the country’s supposed secular status. Attacking any religious belief, practice etc with the conviction of destroying religion will most likely and always fail, because such an attack brings out the instinctive or if you like trained instincts of religious people to defend their faith. What is irrational about faith is what helps people of faith to live in a world full of irrational events— such as random fatal diseases, disasters, and usually human ontological selfishness. Politics lies at the belly of alternative views. The light is the 176 We must acknowledge the works of John S. Pobee (1991). Religion and politics in Ghana. Accra: Asempa Publishers; Seth Tweneboa (2019). Religion, law, politics and the state in Africa: Applying pluralism in Ghana. New York: Routledge; Ebenezer Obiri Addo (1999). Kwame Nkrumah: A case study of religion and politics in Ghana. Lanham, MD: University Press of America; Abamfo Ofori Atiemo (2013). Religion and the inculturation of human rights in Ghana. London/New York: Bloomsbury Academic.

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same; the lamps differ; the same tears, different people. Politics makes no absolute claims—promises anything absolute—heaven, hell etc. The politics of a national cathedral Admittedly, the prefix national to the cathedral presumes a certain complexity already. How national is a national cathedral? Is something national when the state is sponsoring or when a religious community undertakes a project that has a national significance? And what is the idea of the nation/state itself? Is Ghana not a secular country? How secular is Ghana? All these questions have been simplistically reduced to the nexus between the state and religion in both historic and contemporary public and academic discourses. Much as these questions have always been asked, in the case of Ghana’s Fourth Republic, it is the case of a proposed national cathedral that has invested fresh debate over the place of religion in governance. As part of his 60th independence address to the nation in March 2017, the then-newly elected president of Ghana, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufu-Addo, announced his attention to building a national cathedral for the country. Spontaneously and much expectedly, the response from the country was swift—in condemnation of the proposal. The issue was quite murky when the president categorically stated that the project was part of his promise to God. While it is true that the president had tried three times unsuccessfully to be president, the issue was whether the president could nationalise his ambitions. By way of repetition, the immediate response the government had to face was generated by James Kwabena Bomfeh, known in the political space as Kabila, who led by Dr Basit Bamba, sued the nation for many things, but primarily for breaking the country’s secular constitutional status. 177 Predictably, the secular basis of Kabila was summarily dismissed by the apex court of the land. 178 Others also referred to the project as “an

177 Ghanaweb (11 March 2017), “Kwabena Bomfeh sues AG over national cathedral,” https://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/Kwabena-Bomfehsues-AG-over-national-cathedral-517876; GH Headlines (6 July 2017), “Suit against national cathedral adjourned sine die,” https://ghheadlines.com/agency/dailyguide/20170706/48425696/suit-against-national-cathedral-adjourned-sine-die//. 178 Godwin Akweiteh Allotey, “Supreme Court dismisses Bomfeh’s suit against national cathedral,” https://citinewsroom.com/2019/01/supreme-court-throwsout-bomfehs-case-against-national-cathedral/.

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example of religion ‘hijacking’ politics in the sense that the role religious institutions have historically played is changing.” 179 Yet other critics of the project assert that their discontent with the project is not just a matter of religion being private but a personal promise by then candidate Nana Akufo-Addo. It was not party manifesto for it to become a national requirement or duty. The second, according to critics, was the deception that it would not be state funded except seed fund but turned out that the state has so far spent considerable amount. The out-of-control cost to the state and the secrecy of the cost and payments to beneficiaries as well as the cost of the site (destruction of business, homes and public residents, etc) are such that some businesses are allegedly in court for compensation. Third, it is also said that a site could have been found at the outskirts of Accra and good transport connections provided to have reduced the cost. Even so, since 2017, the mood of public conversations around the subject has risen and fallen, based on a major national disruption. The countries go quiet about it whenever the government cites major achievements—this was particularly when the president rolled out a nationwide national free senior high school education process. Popularly known as Free SHS, the president fulfilled a promise that was quite unprecedented on a national scale. In postcolonial Ghana, Nkrumah rolled out free education that affected the Northern Regions, but hardly the entire nation, since the colonial legacy of underdevelopment was more visible in the north than the southern part of the country. Nevertheless, whenever the country runs into an economic crisis or the government is read by a section of the public to have sunk the nation in crisis, the discussions settle on interrogating the relevance of the national cathedral. As usual, the government makes appeal to a few recorded to defend itself. The government’s reasons for supporting the cathedral paled in the face of the disruptive impact of the novel coronavirus pandemic. The outbreak of the pandemic in 2020 and the state’s concurrent imposition of World Health Organisation-led lockdown rules in the major cities of Accra and Kumasi inspired a renewed debate over the cathedral.

179 George M. Bob-Milliar and Karen Lauterbach (21 January 2019), “The politics of a national cathedral in Ghana: A symbol of a corrupted government, or reaching Wakanda?” https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/religionglobalsociety/2019/01/thepolitics-of-a-national-cathedral-in-ghana-a-symbol-of-a-corrupted-government-orreaching-wakanda/.

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The government had to now come clear to explain that the project was going to be significantly fund by the government. It was also clarified that the state only provided land and seed capital for the project. But this reasons hardly convinced a section of the Ghanaian community. Given that all these were occurring in an electioneering year, the issue was both politicised and weaponised by the opposition party for political reasons. I must also state that, given that the issue is religiously sensitive, dealing with a huge percentage of Ghana’s religious constituency, even members of the opposition had to exercise discretion in the manner they dismissed the cathedral as economically unimportant. After all the usual politicisation of the cathedral, and to the disappointment of opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), the NPP won the elections—this was after the NDC had challenged the Electoral Commission’s declaration in the country’s Supreme Court and the court ruled in favour of the NPP. The NDC lost their case, because of lack of convincing evidence, but instead of the issue about the cathedral dying down, it gained prominence in public. A section of the Ghanaian public renewed discussions about the cathedral. The basic argument was that state had a misplaced priority experienced in comments and titles of journalistic articles, some of them, especially those written by Alhaji Abdul-Rahman Haruna Attah, could read as highly incendiary. 180 Matters never went well with the NPP government and the cathedral. When the impact of the pandemic was diminishing, with concurrent economic activities appeared to be picking up, the ongoing Russia-Ukraine debacle recalibrated discussions on the cathedral. The war has had impact on global economy, given the economic status of Russia and Ukraine as major oil and agricultural producing countries. 181 The telling impact globally, including Ghana, paved way for individuals to mobilise themselves against the government. A major youth wing that leveraged the economic situation to charge the state governors of incompetence in managing state resource was the #FixTheCountry, led 180 Citi Newsroom (23 August 2021), “Harruna Attah writes: Cathedral of doom: Concerns of Muslims brushed aside,” https://citinewsroom.com/2021/08/harruna-attah-writes-cathedral-of-doomconcerns-of-muslims-brushed-aside/; Abdul-Rahman Harruna Attah, “Corona and the folly of ‘national’ cathedral,” https://www.myjoyonline.com/corona-and-thefolly-of-national-cathedral/. 181 Peterson K. Ozili, “Global economic consequences of Russia invasion of Ukraine,” 1-34, https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4064770; Toyin Falola, “The war on Ukraine and its impacts on Africa,” https://ntm.ng/2022/04/09/the-war-in-ukraine-and-its-impacts-on-africa/.

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by leaders, including Cambridge doctoral graduate student of law, Mawuse Oliver Barker-Vormawor. After all the calls for the state to disengage from the cathedral and amid rising downward economic morass, galloping inflation, the Cedi depreciating against foreign currency, the Parliament of Ghana voted to censure the country’s Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Attah. 182 The failed censure resulted in the Speaker of Parliament, Alban Bagbin, constituting an eight-member ad-hoc committee to investigate allegation levelled against Minister. One of the major accusations against the Minister was his “unconstitutional withdrawals from the Consolidated Fund in blatant contravention of Article 188 of the 1992 Constitution supposedly for the construction of the President’s cathedral.” 183 At the end of the Committee’s investigation and Parliamentary voting, the finance minister was exonerated—albeit within a deeply partisan context. 184 Nonetheless, if the finance minister had been found guilty, it will have been a monumental case—the first time since Ghana re-democratised in the 1990s. It would have also enhanced the credibility of the opposition party as a credible party in waiting. But that the minister retained his “innocence” of all charges, it showed the possibility of how the taxpayers’ resources were wasted; much as it indicated the extent of the country’s polarised partisan politics. Assessing the debates over the National Cathedral The outcome of the Parliamentary voting on the committee’s report and the recent appreciation of the country’s currency (Cedi) and an economic downturn that has seen a marginal upturn appears to have quieted the call for the minister to resign. Nevertheless, instead of the charge of economic imprudence on the part of the minister, the print and electronic media redirected public criticism against the cathedral. 182 Ghanaweb (10 November 2022), “Vote to censure Ken Ofori-Atta to be laid before parliament,” https://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/business/Vote-of-Censure-againstKen-Ofori-Atta-to-be-laid-before-Parliament-1659887. 183 Kabah Atawoge (18 November 2022), “Censure committee: Ofori-Atta’s response to Minority allegations [Full text]” https://citinewsroom.com/2022/11/censure-committee-ofori-attas-response-tominoritys-allegations-full-text/. 184 Ghanaweb (8 December 2022), “Ofori-Atta ‘acquitted’ as vote of censure motion fails,” https://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/Ofori-Attaacquitted-as-vote-of-censure-motion-fails-1677134.

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The conviction several persons hold that the cathedral is a misappropriation of state funds has resulted in what I have observed as confrontation polemics, as opposed to dialoguing. It is against this background that I read, Prof Kwasi Prempeh, the head of the Centre for Democratic Development – Ghana, who referred to the project as vanity. Again, Selorm Dramani Dzramado, Communication Officer for Justice for Ghana, a pressure Group in Ghana, may be right in profiling the country as non-theocratic, nevertheless may also be incendiary to call the project “useless.” 185 In all this, my observation is that the Ga political authority has said nothing – or at least not made their opinion against the edifice in public. It will be of interest to interrogate this. Similarly, Muslim leaders, including the Shi’a, the Ahlu Sunnah and Ahmadiyya have not openly spoken against the cathedral. At least, the National Chief Imam donated GH¢50,000 to support the project. Much as Abdul Rahman Harruna Atta claims the Imam was coerced, neither the Chief Imam nor his spokesperson, Sheikh Aremeyaw Shaibu. Not only the Muslim religious front but hardly any of the Christian leaders of the major denomination in the country have openly spoken against the cathedral. Even the Catholic Secretariat that had a concern were not against the cathedral, but rather the deficit of broad consultation to incorporate them. Instead, Christian groups with a strong theological resentment towards religious ecumenism, such as the Seventh-day Church that had operated in Ghana since the 1860s, 186 have on one of those rare occasions contributed to the project. Also, hardly have any of the major political leaders spoken against the cathedral. At least, the former president of Ghana, Mr John Dramani Mahama and the opposition leader of his party in the country’s Parliament, Haruna Iddrisu, said they are not against the edifice, except that they want transparency in the use of national 185 JoysNews (21 December 2022), “The Pulse: National Cathedral – Arise Ghana and Justice for Ghana demand termination of contract”, https://www.google.com/search?q=justice+for+ghana+demonstration+against+n ational+cathedral&rlz=1C5CHFA_enGH855GH855&sxsrf=ALiCzsakjjzHzbPY6 WKJwzNkp1ZAprlZQA%3A1671692658271&ei=cgGkY7CREJLNgQbT_6vADA &ved=0ahUKEwiwkse41Iz8AhWSZsAKHdP_CsgQ4dUDCA8&uact=5&oq=justi ce+for+ghana+demonstration+against+national+cathedral&gs_lcp=Cgxnd3Mtd2l 6LXNlcnAQAzIFCCEQoAE6CggAEEcQ1gQQsAM6BggAEBYQHjoFCAAQhg M6CAghEBYQHhAdOgQIIRAVOgcIIRCgARAKOgQIIRAKSgQIQRgASgQIRh gAUNEOWKY5YKxFaAFwAXgAgAFdiAHCD5IBAjI3mAEAoAEByAEFwAEB &sclient=gws-wiz-serp#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:fd43a07e,vid:1wP5CWGCjR8. 186 Kofi Owusu-Mensa, Saturday God and Adventism in Ghana (Frankfurt am Main: P. Lang, 1983).

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resources for such a project. 187 Even though he was responding to the concerns of the members of the Justice for Ghana, who petitioned Parliament, the Minority leader stayed clear of the national cathedral where he converges with the demands of the group. Also, the Ga traditional authority, the custodians of Accra, have not been openly heard in contesting the project. If anything at all, Nii Osu Alata Mantse, the Osu Chief and vice president of the Greater Accra Regional House of Chiefs, was at the Thanksgiving Service of the national cathedral board on January 2 2023 at the site of the building project. From the foregoing, it will not be enough to either rubbish the edifice as both vain and an intrusion of religion into the public sphere. It calls for a relook at the nexus between religion and politics in state formation and the role of leaders; and the philosophy of citizenship. Under this section, my main argument is that religion and politics have hardly been at odds in state formation; while the idea of citizenship and priority are hardly uniform, nor do they easily succumb to harmonisation. In all, the section lays the claim that controversies over the national cathedral bring to the fore complex issues that need teasing out as Ghana continues on the path of re-democratisation. Undoubtedly, what comes across as incendiary comments have been undertaken for the motive of protecting the vulnerable. Nevertheless, it is not clear to me whether insults and casting slurs achieve anything meaningful. Tolerance means allowing the views of others to be heard—justice involves audi alteram partem. To make my point, I will provide evidence from pre-colonial societies, colonial regimes and post-colonial Ghana to indicate that the state formation thrives on ideas of religion. This is because religious bolsters politics either institution/legacy building or subverting or resisting the ruling class. Admittedly, this section of my project is not new, as there is a long history of religion and politics, including the Sokoto Caliphate in governance. however, given that my aim is to appeal to non-academics, as well, I will bring out this argument—all indexing my goal of presenting this book as a textbook Next, I will discuss the fact that the “artificiality” of state formation creates complicated ideas of citizenship and priorities. To begin with, I look at the idea of religion. Until the 19th Century, the term religion was hardly used as an academic category. To be sure, the term was not used to imply that an aspect of a people’s belief could be teased out and studied—to the point of discrediting beliefs as irrationality. To be sure, 187 GNA (6 December 2022), “Minority not against National Cathedral – Haruna Iddrisu,” https://www.myjoyonline.com/minority-not-against-nationalcathedral-haruna-iddrisu/.

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such an intellectual exercise was a product of the secularisation of culture in the Western world in the 19th Century. By the 19th Century, the Western world had shifted from the church and cathedrals as spaces for experiencing the “awe” of life. Instead, the museums and theatres became areas for several people to admire the spectre and wonders of life—based on human creations. Two events accentuated the major seismic shift: The first was preEuropean history before the Christian Reformation of the 16th Century. Before the 16th Century, Christianity served as the only canon against which everything was measured. Under the strong and overwhelming ecclesiastical control, individuals with contrary religious opinions in mundane matters such as science risked being put to death. 188 Those accused of any spiritual duplicity—often witchcraft—were burnt at the stake. 189 For this and many more, the pre-Reformation is often referred to in the annals of European history as the Dark Ages. The ethos of the Dark Ages was believed to have stagnated scientific development, the formation of modern states and the ideas of citizenship. The Christian Reformation was, therefore, a major rupture in the cultural and scientific history of Europe. The Reformation did not only broke ecclesiastical power, but it also unintentionally marked Europe’s entry into its modernity—marked by the rise of the modern state, human rights, and non-theological base for epistemic production. So, by the 19th Century, Europe had made considerable progress in secularising its culture, particularly in finding alternative answers to issues of faith and beliefs. 190 The European search for an alternative answer to beliefs was boosted by the work of Charles Darwin, a biologist from Cambridge, whose theory of evolution in Origins helped the course of social scientists—offering them an alternative to Christian theology of creationism to explain the history of origins. Darwin’s biological theory that organisms evolve from simple to complex, instead of the direct involvement of an intelligent creator, provided an intellectual tool for social scientists to probe into religion. 191 Given the overwhelming and enduring influence of Christianity since the Dark Ages, the arsenals of evolution were used against the Christian God. The understanding is 188 John Merriman, A history of modern Europe: From the renaissance to the present (3rd edition) (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2010), p. 302. 189 Ibid., 121; Nigel Cawthorne, Witch hunt: History of a persecution (Slough: Arcturus, 2003). 190 Hugh McLeod, Secularisation Western Europe, 1848-1914 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000). 191 Radek Kundt, Contemporary evolutionary theories of culture and the study of religion (Bloomsbury: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015).

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that: to understand Christianity, a complex religion, one must understand the simple religion of the so-named primitive people. 192 With such an understanding, the 19th Century coincided with anthropology, as a discipline. Anthropology involves the study of the non-literate cultural Other. 193 Conflating writing with civilization, the near absence of literate culture “primitive” cultures was a major reason for such societies to be used as a litmus test to prove the origin of Christianity. If the religious beliefs of “primitive” people could be dismissed as springing out of a deficit of scientific knowledge about science, then Christianity could be dismissed. As I have said, the idea was that Christianity was said to be an evolved complex religion of “primitive,” including Durkheim’s study of aboriginal totemic worship. 194 Consequently, not only were Europeans fixated on knowing about “primitive” cultures, but they were also interested in formulating theories to study religion “scientifically”—separating beliefs from rationality—a creation of sterile duality. So, if beliefs were irrational in origin, then religion and its attending rituals could be ruled out of public governance—the idea of the secularisation of the public or the simplistic division of religion and politics in governance. Through the works of Sigmund Freud, considered the pioneering figure in psychoanalysis; Herbert Spencer, and James Frazer, religion was simply dismissed as nothing short of a demonstration of the scientific irrationality of the “primitive” mind. 195 But religion as Harvey Cox said, “religion means something quite different from attaching credence to doctrines.” 196 Around this same time, Western industrialisation was crystalising. As a result, industrial bourgeois industrialists exploited labourers—who subsisted on the false superstructure/consciousness of 192 James R. More, The post-Darwinian controversies a study of the Protestant struggle to come to terms with Darwin in Great Britain and America, 1870-1900 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1981). 193 Francis B. Nyamnjoh, “Blinded by sight: Divining the future of anthropology in Africa,” Africa Spectrum, 47, 2-3 (2012): 63-92; Mwenda Ntarangwi, David Mills & Mustafa H.M. Babiker, African anthropologies: History, critique, and practice (Dakar: CODESRIA, 2006). 194 Jacob K. Olupona (ed), Beyond primitivism: Indigenous traditions and modernity (New York: Routledge, 2004); Durkheim, The elementary forms of religious life (A new trans. Karen Fields) (New York et al.: The Free Press, 1995). 195 Sigmund Freud, The future of illusion (Trans/edited by James Strachey) (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1961); Herbert Spencer, The principles of sociology Vol. I (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1899); James G. Frazer, The golden bough: A study in magic and religion (London: Macmillan, 1900). 196 Harvey Cox, The future of faith (New York: HarperOne, 2009), p. 18.

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religion, instead of their due wages. For this reason, Karl Marx, a social scientist/philosopher, who observed the terrible conditions of labourers and yet did not resist because of the promise of heaven, concluded that religion is the opium of the masses and the sigh of the oppressed. 197 To ensure the freedom of labourers, and to overturn the exploitation of capitalists, religion must be discarded, as an illusion. For postponing acting in life for the promise of a good afterlife, yes is an illusion. Anthropologists have also argued that traditional religions in non-Western societies are society upside down; people worship the thing they value most, ancestral worship; the value of kinship. I do not know if this formulation or idea is in any way short of lived realities we see in Africa—I will respond with the idea of worship and veneration— Peter Sarpong and Kwasi Wiredu. The discussions above certainly put religion as highly antagonistic to human flourishing—contrary to science. For this reason, I deduce the following questions: are religious people just suffering from mental neurosis? Could the activities of religious people simply be conflated with those of mentally deranged people? And is Christianity against science—making it an anathema in the classroom? Similarly, is religion a challenge to public governance, such that religion and politics need to be separated as irreconcilable? To be sure, religion—as I shall conceptualise very soon—has been weaponised and politicised to perpetuate human suffering; marginalising minority rights and causing political upheaval. Similarly, religion is said to have obstructed the advancement of modern medicine among some religious constituencies. Until the beginning of the 20th Century, for example, several Faith-based churches, including the Faith Tabernacle churches did not allow the use of western medicine. The perceived and real success of faith-healing in the face of the 19th Century bubonic plague had consolidated faith-only as the means of healing. James McKeown, the founder of the CoP broke with the Faith Tabernacle Church in Ghana, primarily because he accepted western medicine to heal from malaria, which nearly killed him. 198 Religious groups, such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses do now allow blood transfusion, a situation that medically could result in mortality. 199 I have personally observed that some students’ academic and financial 197 Karl Marx, Critique of Hegel’s ‘Philosophy of right’ (trans. Annette Jolin & Joseph O’Malley) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), p. 131. 198 Tsekpoe, Intergenerational, p. 79. 199 Ghanaweb (8 January 2014), “Woman dies for refusing blood transfusion,” https://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/Woman-dies-forrefusing-blood-transfusion-297262.

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advancement has not always benefited from the SDA church’s strict enforcement of Sabbath observance. 200 Sadly, witchcraft accusers have been burned at the stake, and some religious leaders have used religion dishonestly to marginalize people. 201 Nonetheless, it may be quite simplistic to assume religion is all about impeding both human rights and obstructing scientific revolution. While it is not my intention to mention all the things religious groups have done in supporting human flourishing, religious practices and beliefs have been found to help in healing. 202 Christianity was instrumental in advancing modern science and the idea of human rights. 203 Not only that but opium was consumed by intellectuals in European history as a “sigh” from the stress of dealing with human vicissitudes, not religion, which promises heaven as a way of offering a “sigh” away from existential challenges. I cite Karl Marx full on this as follows: The foundation of irreligious criticism is this: man makes religion; religion does not make man. Religion is, in fact, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet gained himself or has lost himself again. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man, the state, society. This state, this society, produce religion, which is an inverted world-consciousness, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritualistic point d’ honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human being because the human being has attained no true reality. Thus, the struggle against religion is indirectly the struggle against that world of which religion is the spiritual aroma. The wretchedness of religion is at once an expression of and a protest against real wretchedness. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world 200 One of my roommates at the University of Cape Coast, who was a strict Adventist and never studied or wrote exams and quizzes on Sabbath days ended with a Third Class. As an Agricultural Science student with a lot of workload credit hours, the Third Class did not permit him to pursue a postgraduate programme in his field. The last time I met him in 2010 after he left the UCC in 2006, he had left the SDA church and had also diverted to reading a different program. 201 Ghanaweb (27 July 2020), “90-year old woman beaten to death for being a witch,” https://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/90-year-oldwoman-beaten-to-death-for-being-a-witch-1015108. 202 Leslie D. Weatherhead, Psychology religion and healing (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1959). 203 Tom Holland, Dominion: The making of the western mind (London: Little, Brown, 2019).

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and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is a demand for their true happiness. The call to abandon illusions about their condition is the call to abandon a condition which requires illusions. Thus, the critique of religion. 204

Therefore, I will discuss how the religious community, especially Christians, react to the issue of pain and suffering as well as their role in offering relief throughout this essay. I will talk about this from a humanistic standpoint. My goal is to refute overly-simplistic counterarguments about religion and pain, not necessarily to valorise. Before I discuss the role of Christianity in responding to human existential challenges, I want to provide an analysis of the centrality of religion in state formation—from the precolonial to the postcolonial. My goal is to argue against the simplistic idea that religion and politics are antagonistic and at odds with public governance. Instead, I argue that the two institutions are mutually inclusive in public governance. But I will start with a fundamental conceptualization of religion to make sure my understanding is not interpreted incorrectly. I have already mentioned that religion is more than just rituals and beliefs, and that religious people are not irrationally anti-scientific. Religion is about a set of worldviews that enable people to make sense of the world—to answer the “why” and “how” of life. 205 To concretise worldview as a form of regiment to guide people’s lives, religions evolve and improvise existing practices as rituals. Through rituals, people within the religious community provide institutions to foster the desired moral aptitude in devotees. For example, the communion helps to provide a reason for religious people to be united. In classical Pentecostal churches, like the CoP, the rules of the Lord’s Supper, often a tall list of prohibitions against smoking, drunkenness, and adultery, are consciously leveraged to “police” the private and public moral lives of members. More importantly, through beliefs and rituals, the religious constituency directs the loyalty of devotees primarily to God, His earthly representatives, and then political leaders. This hierarchy and layers of religious loyalty have been well articulated in St. Augustine’s City of God, which, inter alia, was both in response to the Roman government’s charge that Christians were responsible for the collapse 204 Karl Marx, Critique of Hegel’s ‘Philosophy of right’ (trans. Annette Jolin & Joseph O’Malley) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), p. 131. 205 Charles Prempeh, Gender, Sexuality and Decolonisation in Postcolonial Ghana: A Socio-Philosophical Engagement (Bamenda/Cameroon: Langaa RPCIG, 2023).

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of the Roman Empire and to structure the loyalty of Christians. As I shall discuss later, the strength of religion in all this is the answer it gives to our existential imperfections. Therefore, religion provides meaning in a meaningless world and performs the role of uniting differences around beliefs and rituals. Religion also establishes ethical and ontological boundaries for its followers. Some moral rules govern inter-human relations, and violations do not always result in harsh punishment. For example, when a devotee commits fornication or adultery, he or she is not seen to have committed a crime that closes the gate of heaven to such a person. Such a crime is akin to private délit. On the other hand, a violation such as murder in the church is considered a crime and a public offense that is punishable by the state. 206 The church turns over criminal cases to the state for three primary reasons: First, according to religious peoples, human life is ultimately owned by God; second, and relatedly, murder is a repudiation of God’s creation—destroying life, which is only within God’s rights and might; and finally, the state lacks the coercive or instrument of destruction to punish. 207 All put together, religious unity, established around a dogmatic creed and the recognition of God the Father and Jesus Christ as His appointed redeemer, is consolidated on love, not law. Because the religious community is established on the basis of a faith-based covenant rather than a law-based social contract. The above makes one’s identification with a religious community highly voluntary, such that once one joins, one is obliged to follow the religious rules for private and public conduct. All the above provides a reason for religion to perform a fundamental role as a unifier of differences. People of all backgrounds who desire to join a religious community voluntarily sublate their peculiar, contrary moral philosophies to it. For this reason, among Pentecostals or several Protestant groups in Ghana, a child is not baptized into the church; instead, a child is dedicated to God at birth. Among the Catholics, while a child is baptized at birth, the child is taught through church structures, catechism or basic Christian doctrines to prepare the child to make a choice for or against the church—though the church expects the former. At the same time, because a convert’s family is above the church, severing ties with one’s church does not result in physical punishment. Nevertheless, one may suffer psychological trauma as one would not receive both emotional K.A. Busia, The challenge of Africa (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1962). See: William Andrews, Government and judgement: A biblical theory of government (Cambridge: Grove Books Ltd., 2018). 206 207

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and social support from the church. Sometimes, family members of the church from which one breaks away may become antagonistic. But, in all, since joining a church is voluntary, once one joins, one must obey its rules, and once one leaves, one must be free to do so. In a sense, religion hardly dualizes the lives and activities of devotees between the public and private. Religion creates a community that does not strictly divide between sacred and secular. People, at least the various religious constituencies in Ghana, hardly separate their beliefs between “home” and the workplace. As I have already discussed, this hardly implies that religious people have frequently succeeded in protecting public law from corruption, which is also fundamentally moral. Instead, it implies that religious people will reject any public law that repudiates what they consider an ontological boundary between God and human beings. For example, during colonialism and postcolonial Ghana, the religious communities have resisted any attempts by the political elites to interfere with family life. The Muslim resisted the British attempt at formulising Islamic family law in the Northern Territories in the beginning of the 20th century; 208 Christians resisted Nkrumah’s ideological training of young people; 209 also, Muslims and Christians resisted the intestate succession law that they read as taking gender-relations upside down. 210 For example, the religious community sees marriage as a divinecultural mandate between a biological male and female to procreate under the atmosphere of a formally constituted social relation. As a result, if the state attempts to pass a law to the contrary, the religious community rejects and opposes it. fights back. This may explain the reason several of Ghana’s religious people have staged both legal and moral protests against the local and western efforts at sexual liberalization in Ghana. Otherwise, as I have said, issues such as adultery and fornication are treated as violations of Christian monogamy, while same-sex marriage is a repudiation of the ontological constitution of heteronormativity. Even so, with the issue of corruption, which serves as a major paradox in a country with an overwhelming Christian and religious constituency, one could respond as follows: First, a crime in public JND Anderson, Islamic law in Africa (London: H.M.S.O., 1954). John S. Pobee, Kwame Nkrumah and the church in Ghana, 1946-1966: A study in the relationship between the socialist government of Kwame Nkrumah, the first Prime Minister and first President of Ghana, and the Protestant Christian Churches in Ghana (Accra: Asempa Publishers, Christian Council of Ghana, 1988). 210 Elom Dovlo, “Religion in the public sphere: Challenges and opportunities in Ghanaian lawmaking, 1989-2004,” BYU Law Review, 3 (2005): 629-658. 208 209

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office is a crime against the state and its citizens; so, the state has a primary responsibility to punish perpetrators. Second, while the church as an institution can hardly be charged with corruption, the church, as I have said, does not have the instrument of violence to punish corruption. Third, the charge of corruption could be deeply political, so that it is not always easy to decipher allegations against real cases of corruption. This, in my reading, may explain why reports on corruption often use the phrase “perception of corruption index.” It may also explain the difficulty the church may have in disciplining its members accused of public corruption. Does the church have a sophisticated instrument of investigation to investigate the public lives of its members? Would the deeply polarized partisanship in the country allow the church to discipline alleged corrupt church members? We can discuss the above in terms of politics. Politics is fundamentally about the management of public resources for the “common good.” It is also about power, influence and resistance, which can include the use of resources or force to get others to do one’s bidding. Based on the social contract, individuals give up part of their rights to be governed by elected individuals. 211 The elected individuals are subject to periodic elections as part of accountability. There are also institutions, such as the legislature, the judiciary, and the executive, that ensure the rule of law and prevent abuse of power. The media—print and electronic (social media) also serves as a conduit for information between citizens and governors. 212 Public governance is based on law, rational engagement in dialoguing, rather than morality. 213 While this is simply stated, it is not always easy to neatly divide the two in terms of socialising and choreographing human life for the common good. One could argue that law is what it is because it must be rational to everyone, so often laws must be written—or canonised through rational deliberations. Morality is not always based on “rationality.” In other words, whereas one must have a reason to do or not do things in public, one needs not have a humanly constructed reason to obey moral orders. 211 David Hume, “Of the original contract,” In Essays moral, political, and literary, 452-473 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1963/1777); John Locke, The second treaties of government in two treaties of government (edited by Peter Laslett) (Cambridge: University of Cambridge, 1988/1689); Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The basic political writings (Indianapolis: IN: Hackett, 1987). 212 Francis B. Nyamnjoh, Africa’s media, democracy, and the politics of belonging (London: Zed Books, 2005). 213 Jürgen Habermas The structural transformation in the public sphere: An inquiry into category of bourgeois society (Cambridge, MA.: The MIT Press, 1991).

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The temptation from the above is that one would want to argue, then, that law is politics, just as morality is religion, to separate the two spheres. But to demonstrate the two are not separable, I will give one example of the law against murder (not necessarily killing). I am yet to read about any pre-modern and/or modern state that passes a law in support of murder or that does not have a written or unwritten law against murder. But I am yet to find any convincing human-oriented rationality against murder that may not have a counterargument in support of murder. To be sure, there are altruistic suicide in imperial Japan; 214 the cannibalism of the people of Papua New Guinea, 215 killing of twins in traditional African societies; killing of kings in the Great lakes’ region (if the king was associated with adversity), 216 but all these are deeply moralised by their labelling. “Altruistic” suicide means, it was not undertaken for granted but to achieve a constructive purpose, the “cannibalism” of Papua New Guinea means it is morally reprehensible; and killing of twins is also a violation of life—hence, the reasons for it could be generalised as uniform across societies in Africa. 217 In all this, killing, more than murder, in pre-colonial societies was not taken lightly. In the case of the Akan, for example, it was only the king who could order for someone to be killed. In all, we could read cases of destruction of life as either part of the mystification of the world or destruction for constructive reason. For all this reason, any legitimate answer to the enigmas of life, such as how a woman could give birth to two people at the same time in just a few minutes intervals and why disasters occurred which warranted human sacrifices were all bound to eliminate killing for constructive purposes. Indeed, that is what has happened over the centuries – through local initiatives and missionary support. What rational argument would one give to someone who loves to kill for fun—a sadist—particularly if two conditions are not considered constant: First, that human life is intrinsically valuable, and second, that punishment for murder is unquestionably necessary - both here and now - for the criminal? Taking the first argument, if human beings are 214 David Lester, “Altruistic suicide: A look at some issues,” Archives of Suicide Research, 8, 1 (2004): 37-42. 215 Gillian Gillison, “Cannibalism among women in the Eastern highlands of Papua New Guinea,” in Paula Brown and Donald Tuzin (eds), The ethnography of cannibalism, 33—50 (Washington: Society for Psychological Anthropology, 1983). 216 Cf. Dmitri M. Bondarenko and Marina L. Butovskaya (eds), The omnipresent past: Historical anthropology of Africa and the African diaspora (Moscow: LRC Publishing House, 2019). 217 Helen L. Ball and Catherine M. Hill. “Reevaluating ‘Twin infanticide’”, Current Anthropology, 37, 5 (1996): 856-863.

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simply elevated apes, what rational reason can we offer to prevent murdering an elevated ape? Considering the second reason, assuming the punishment for murder is limited to just the material world, what hope will there be for the human quest for justice, especially for those whose loved ones are murdered by sadists—sadists who kill themselves afterwards? What non-contrary rational argument can we give to someone who murders on the understanding that life is simply here and now? At best, accounts such as Chris Kyle’s The American sniper or Ronen Bergman, Rise and kill, all index that fact that people love to kill, but certainly with impunity—because it is irrational. 218 In my understanding, the above complexity implies that law alone will not be enough to govern the public sphere. Aside from the political rationality of law, which obviously appeals to the head, something else must be non-rational in order to persuade people to follow the law. Again, using the case of murder, beyond the passing of legitimate laws against such a crime, people must firmly believe that human beings are ontologically valuable and have the same rights to existence. The idea of human ontological dignity, which is necessary for sustaining the law against murder, cannot come from the public but from religion. In other words, the religious community applies love for neighbour to avoid murder based on the idea of a common God who created all human beings. State formation: A nexus between religion and politics The above means several things for state formation and the nexus between religion and politics. As previously stated, religion uses beliefs and rituals— mystification—to bring people together across differences. 219 Nevertheless, religious insistence on ensuring and fostering unity slips into uniformity, where members who do not follow the ethos of uniformity suffer multidimensional social exclusion. 220 Nearly all the major religions admit that women, as mothers and primary nurturers, are primarily responsible for the transition of the 218 Chris Kyle, American sniper: The autobiography of the most lethal sniper in U.S. military history (New York: William Morrow, 2013); Ronen Bergman, Rise and kill first: The secret history of Israel’s targeted assassinations (London: John Murray, 2018). 219 Adrian Hastings, The construction of nationhood: Ethnicity, religion and nationalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). 220 Charles Prempeh, “Daring to be different in an imagined Muslim ummah in Ghana: A critical reflection of a non-conformist Muslim woman,” In Aminkeng A. Alemanji, Clara Marlijn Meijer, Martins Kwazema and Francis Ethelbert Kwabena Benyah (eds), Contemporary discourses in social exclusion, 119-142 (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022).

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values, beliefs, and rituals of the religion from one generation to the next. For this purpose, in several cultures, women’s implicit exogamy is imposed on them, while the idea of women’s role as performers of expressive responsibility tends to foster domesticity—which runs roughshod over the modern ethos of sexual and gender liberalization. 221 Concurrently, several of the major religions have struggled to enforce the liberal ideas of gender equality, which tend to be conflated with gender equity (the stance of religious groups). Much as religions have struggled to foster internal unity by imposing uniformity, politics covets religion. Nearly, every major religion has struggled with schism at some point in its history. Nevertheless, because religious identification is usually a matter of one’s exercise of freewill, some religious groups with special claim to exclusivity such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Seventh-day Adventists tend to foster uniformity among members. Politics, as I have said, is about the management of resources to support human flourishing. But the state is also a social construct—a concatenation of people from various family, lineage, clan, ethnic, and religious backgrounds. The major challenge for the state is how to unite people to pursue and achieve a common agenda. While religion claims to unite and prepare people for eternal bliss (or heaven), politics also tends to unite people for earthly bliss. However, while religion sustains loyalty to beliefs and rituals through the promise of a yet-to-be-achieved vision, politics promises to change the reality of imperfection. Much as religion tends to blame evil spirits—manifesting in human moral failures—as the ultimate cause of human predicaments, politics deploys a materialistic understanding of it. This makes politics not only an issue of the management of resources but also the pursuit of propaganda and the rhetoric of projects and social service to convince the public about the reality of progress against life’s existential challenges. The problem is that, while religion often succeeds in socializing devotees to accept—without necessarily becoming apathetic toward— life’s problems, politics frequently fails. To be sure, religious blaming of evil as the ultimate source of human problems has not always resulted in a happy ending or even fostered public ethical life religious people– as I have already discussed. Religious leaders have used eschatological and dispensational theologies to force devotees into harmful practices and eventually fatality throughout history, both 221 Charles Prempeh, “Religious reforms and notions of gender in Pentecostal Christianity: A case of the Church of Pentecost”. In Nimi Wariboko & Adeshina Afolayan (Eds.), African Pentecostalism and World Christianity: Essays in Honour of J. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu., 75-87 (Eugene: Pickwick Publications, 2020).

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locally and globally. Sometimes, religious people sell off their properties in anticipation of the soon return of their saviour. The SDA community has been disappointed by the failure to predict Jesus Christ’s second coming, and Asante people are said to have given up their material possessions because they expected Christ to return in 1959. Inadequate religious explanations for issues of persistence and pain have also led to austere religious responses, such as food prohibitions and rejection of blood transfusion. Non-participation in economic productivity on certain days, unfettered belief in miracles, and the “name it and claim it” gospel. This is often the case when religious leaders fail to convince devotees about the continuing presence of pain and suffering. Even so, religious groups have over the decades succeeded in incorporating the logic of science to make sense of events that, in the past, would have been assigned eschatological reasons. For example, as a millennial church, which involves a belief in believers spending 1000 years of bliss with Christ in heaven, the church has had several disappointments in fixing dates over the millennium, 222 which, as I have said, has often generated apathy in members. Thus, to stem the tide against the possibility of rending the recent coronavirus pandemic as a signal of the end of the world, the leadership issued a statement cautioning members to avoid assigning an eschatological reading to it. 223 Other Christian groups and Muslims all issued reinterpretations of their religious texts to compel their members to follow what the public perceived to be socially disruptive lockdown rules. 224 Religion has, therefore, succeeded in resolving its own antinomies. Politics, on the other hand, struggles to manage difference. Managing differences under a democratic regime is the most difficult. This is because the ethos of liberal democracy is about fostering individuals’ rights to happiness, liberty, and prosperity, all of which morph into the state’s appreciation of plurality in the public sphere. The public sphere is also the sphere of economics and politics, which both involve competition. The competitions that economics and politics generate in the public sphere often overwhelm the capacity of the law to deal with them. As I have explained, there is always a rational 222 Ronald L. Numbers & Jonathan M. Butler (eds), Millerism and millenarianism in the nineteenth century (Tennessee: The University of Tennessee Press, 1993). 223 General Conference (25 October 2021), “Reaffirming the Seventh-day Adventist Church’s response to Covid-19,” https://adventist.news/news/reaffirming-the-seventh-day-adventist-churchsresponse-to-covid-19-1; https://buckhannonwv.adventistchurch.org/seventh-dayadventist-stance-on-the-covid. 224 Charles Prempeh, “Religion and the state in an episodic moment of COVID19 in Ghana”, Social Sciences & Humanities Open, Vol. 4, Issue 1 (2021), pp. 1-8.

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reason for someone to violate stated laws—as if the idea that “laws are meant to be broken” is certainly true. Also, as I have stated, beyond the rationality of the law, people’s consciences need to be appealed to. So, similar to Ruth Benedict’s concept of shame and guilt cultures, which she developed while studying the people of Japan after WWII, shame culture appeals to the law, whereas guilt culture appeals to the conscience. 225 Politics tend to appeal to the shame culture, where the panopticon of investigative journalists tends to expose real and perceived corrupt citizens and high-ranking state officers. The outcomes of such investigations are often streamlined, in the hopes that a culture of public shame will contribute to stemming the tide against corruption. The logic of shame culture—the streaming of corrupt deals captured on the panopticon—is based on the logic that rational human beings would avoid corruption in order to avoid public shame. To be sure, the panopticon has been helpful in exposing corrupt acts. But because shame culture is also about “not being caught doing evil,” several corrupt people devise more sophisticated means of hiding their corrupt acts from the panopticon. This also makes the construction of corruption as a rational issue exceedingly difficult. For example, the idea of shame culture has informed calls for Ghanaians to enforce institutions to fight corruption. Since corruption—which according to Gyima-Boadi, is often used to refer to a broad range of illicit or illegal activities—remains a major transnational challenge. Admitting it as transnational challenge, for the former General Secretary of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, observed as follows: Corruption is an insidious plague that has a wide range of corrosive effects on societies. It undermines democracy and the rule of law, leads to violation of human rights, distorts markets, erodes the quality of life and allows organized crime, terrorism and other threats to human security to flourish. This evil phenomenon is found in all countries—big and small, rich and poor—but it is in the developing world that its effects are more destructive. Corruption hurts the poor disproportionately by diverting funds intended for development, undermining a Government’s ability to provide basic services, feeding inequality and injustice and discouraging foreign aid and investment. Corruption is a key element in economic underperformance and a major obstacle to poverty alleviation and development. 226 225 Ruth Benedict, The chrysanthemum and the sword: Patterns of Japanese culture (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1967). 226 Kofi Annan, “Forward,” in UN, United Nations against corruption, iii-iv (New York: United Nations, 2004), p. iii.

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I will concretise all that at the continental level where the scourge of corruption is such that it is rated as posing a major threat to peace and stability, casting an ominous shadow over the prospects for social, economic, and political progress—all undermining constitutionalism, democracy, good government and respect for the rule of law. 227 It has been observed that throughout the post-independence period, the development effort of Ghana has been hampered by pervasive patronage and corruption—often used to refer to a large range of illicit or illegal activities—both in the state and private sectors. 228 Corruption, needless to say, has far-reaching negative impact on human flourishing and remains rife in Ghana and globally. 229 The history of Ghana and human society, in general, has been a chronicle and continues documentation of different layers of corruption. In Ghana, several studies have examined the various facets and ramifications of this social canker. Some have looked at corruption and its impact on public procurement of Ghanaian infrastructural project. 230 Others have explored the complicity of the media in cases of corruption. 231 However, before we are tempted to exonerate any particular political party from the problem of corruption, I will provide, what may come across as pedantic to experts. Even so, I consider a brief historical overview of cases of corruption since independence to help the nation lean on its past and cast its vision into the future sincere efforts are made to stem the tide against. In all this, my interest is not to necessarily hold the heads of government as corrupt, as it is to repudiate both the simplistic over-celebration and over-condemnation of a particular head of state in matters of corruption. I will begin with the postcolonial 227 Charles M. Fombad and Nico Steytler, “General introduction,” in Charles M. Fombad and Nico (eds), Corruption and constitutionalism in Africa: Revisiting control measures and strategies, 3-14 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), p. 3. 228 Bruce J. Berman, “Capitalism incomplete state, culture and the politics of industrialization,” In Wisdom J. Tettey, Korbla P. Puplampu, Bruce J. Berman (eds,) Critical perspectives in politics and socio-economic development in Ghana, 21-44 (Leiden: Brill, 2003), p. 22. 229 Nicholas Ryder and Lorenzo Pasculli (eds), Corruption, integrity and law: Global regulatory challenges (London: Routledge, 2020). 230 E. Osei-Tutu, E. Badu and D. Owusu-Manu, “Exploring corruption practices in public procurement of infrastructural projects in Ghana,” International Journal of Managing Projects in Business, 3, 2 (2010): 235-256. 231 Amankwah, Adwoa S., Ginn Assibey Bonsu, and Peter White. “Media exposé of judicial corruption in Ghana: Ethical and theological perspectives.” Legon Journal of the Humanities 28.1 (2017): 1-9; Asah-Asante, Kwame, and Isaac Brako. “Media crusade against corruption in Ghana’s fourth republic (2004-2012).” International Journal of arts and sciences 7, no. 2 (2014): 77-86; 2014; Jennifer Hasty, The press and political culture in Ghana (Indiana University Press, 2005).

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government of Nkrumah. Under Nkrumah’s government in the 1960s, corruption, nepotism and discrimination based on party affiliation became widespread. 232 The corruption in his government was such that Nkrumah himself was not immune, as he devoted considerable resources to the “uneconomic” creation of employment. 233 It is also reported that Nkrumah was supposed to have borrowed £1,800 from the chairman of the Finance Committee of the Convention People’s Party (CPP) to pay for the importation of a Cadillac. When the issue was investigated under his own instigation, he is said to have conceded that it was a “a new ruling class of self-seeking careerists.” 234 It is also reported that some of the members of his government were very corrupt, which he admitted. Krobo Edusei’s wife was said to have gone to the extreme of importing a gold-plated bed from Great Britain. 235 Nevertheless, as Killick, admitted, corruption was a minor reason for the poor performance of state enterprises under Nkrumah. 236 The NLM claimed that one of its goals was to ward off corruption in the Asante nation. 237 Under Acheampong’s regime, corruption was so rampant that the word kalebule (or clever bully) came to represent “hoarding, profiteering and the unbridled cheating meted out against the majority of the few.” 238 Nkrumah is also accused of having left Ghana with a serious balance-of-payments problems. For example, Herbert H. Werlin argued that beginning of a foreign reserve of $500 million at the time of independence, Ghana, by 1966, had a public external debt of over $800 million. 239 It is against this issue, engineered by weak institutions of governance, that Werlin alleges that corruption have yielded negative result in Ghana, instead of its functional value in United States of America. The above analysis, while insightful is also overly simplistic. It did not take into consideration American imperialism of the 1960s that peripherized developing nations, plunging their resources to build the

232 Joseph R. Oppong and Esther D. Oppong, Ghana (Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 2003), p. 62. 233 Tony Killick, Development economics in action: A study of the economic policies in Ghana (2nd edition) (London: Routledge, 2010), p. 57. 234 Roger S. Gocking, The history of Ghana (Westport Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2005), p. 101. 235 Ibid., 132. 236 Killick, Development, p. 266. 237 Gocking History, p. 105. 238 Ibid., p. 174. 239 Herbert H. Werlin, “The consequence of corruption: The Ghanaian experience,” Political Science Quarterly, 88, 1 (1973): 71-85, p. 73.

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US economy. Nevertheless, Nkrumah put up a strong defence against the charge of corruption when he said: Right from the foundation of the Party, as everyone in Ghana knows, I have waged a ceaseless war against corruption. In the “Dawn Broadcast” made on 8th April 1961, I stressed the need to eliminate it from our society: “I am aware that the evil of patronage finds a good deal of place in our society. I consider that it is entirely wrong for persons placed in positions of eminence or authority to use the influence of office in patronising others, in many cases wrong persons, for immoral favours. I am seeing to it that this evil shall be uprooted, no matter whose ox is gored. The same thing goes for nepotism, which is, so to speak, a twin brother of the evil of patronage … . My difficulty was to get the police to enforce the principles I laid down. It was when I personally supervised the direction of criminal investigation against ministers and prominent Party members that anything was done. 240

Nkrumah added, I never handled any money personally for any external or internal purposes and this included my own salary. All drawing both on governmental and my personal accounts was counter-signed by civil servants who were responsible to the Auditor-General for all public expenditure and who, for my own purposes, recorded my personal expenditure. Anyone of these officials could have produced a full and valid statement of how every penny was dealt with by the President’s Office and exactly how my own salary was spent by me personally. If this had been done it would have been shown that I refused to accept, as a political gesture, any of the expense allowances allotted to the President by law. In the same way, if my Will had been published in full it would have shown that I left nothing even to my own family but bequeathed everything I did possess to the Party and the State. 241

During Limann’s regime, corruption became so pervasive and worse the economy simply became stagnated – rendering it impossible for government to revive the economy. 242 The extent of corruption is such

Kwame Nkrumah, Dark days in Ghana (London: Panaf Books, 1968), p. 68. Nkrumah, Dark, p. 70 (emphasis, Nkrumah’s). 242 Senyo Adjibolosoo, “Ethnicity and the development of national consciousness: A human factor analysis,” In Wisdom, et al., Critical perspectives in politics and socio-economic development in Ghana, 107-132, p. 124. 240 241

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that Africa’s “cultural line” is described as “corruption” 243. under Rawlings, corruption did not end. He himself admitted that kalebule had returned in disguise at the opening of the country’s Parliament in 1998. 244 Yarrow has observed that by 1984 Rawlings himself had become very disillusioned with the revolutionary process, as his regime suffered all kinds of corruption it had initially railed against. 245 This also means that since the country re-democratized in the 1990s, gaining global rating as a model of democracy for Africa, corruption remains grim and perhaps worse. For example, Fortune Agbele observed that the country’s transition to pluralism resulted in a competitive particularistic regime instead of ethical universalism. The result, as he observed, is that access to and the distribution of power was closed to plurality, but open to only those within the ruling elites. The situation structures the practice where all top public positions tend to be filled with members from the winning party—creating a conducive environment for the system to be delayed out to favour those in the ruling group; rent seeking opportunities for ready exploitation. 246 In 2001, when Ghana experienced a major regime change, under the New Patriotic Party’s leader, JA Kufour, he declared what he termed as a “Zero tolerance for corruption.” 247 Meanwhile, Kufour’s government was charged of having allowed corruption to fester and when he felt compelled to respond to the public, he said corruption is as old as Adam. Much as corruption is, indeed, as old as the history of mankind itself, 248 Kufour’s assertion of a historic truism and existential social reality suffered deliberate public politicisation and misinterpretation to index his endorsement of the canker. The fight against corruption has included the religious constituency wading into the public, shredding all ideas that religion should be privatised. Karen Lauterbach reported that in a convention entitled, “Anti-armed robbery fasting and prayers” organized by Pastor Joshua Kas-Vorsah in Daban, Kumasi, one of the themes was to root out 243 Henry M. Codjoe, “Is culture the obstacle to development in Ghana? A critique of the culture-development thesis as it applies to Ghana and South Korea,” In Wisdom et al., 335-364, p. 344. 244 Gocking, History, p. 247. 245 Thomas Yarrow, Development beyond politics: Aid, activism and NGOs in Ghana (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), p. 20. 246 Fortune Agebele, “Political economy analysis of corruption in Ghana,” European Research Centre for Anti-Corruption and State-Building, Working Paper No. 28 (2011): 1-59, p. 5. 247 Gocking, History, p., 257. 248 Ghulam Shabbir and Mumtaz Anwar, “Determinants of corruption in developing countries,” The Pakistan Development Review, 46, 4 (2007): 751-764, p. 751.

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corruption. 249 As corroborated by P.M. Theron and G.A. Lotter, who called on Christians to live exemplary lives; apply the golden rule of Jesus Christ as a guiding principle for everyday life. Similarly, they charged Christians to willingly act as whistle-blowers and participate in the transformation of society. 250 It has, however, been debated whether religion is necessary in the fight against corruption. At least, research has indicated that countries that have a high predominant Christian population tend to infuse Christian ethics of freedom into the public sphere, which support human flourishing and, in the process, put corruption in check. 251 Nevertheless, relating to this to Ghana, where Christianity is a dominant religion and yet corruption is high, we could glean from the responses of Beets that in such a country, perpetrators of corruption may be relatively few while the victims of these perpetrators of corruption may be relatively poor and numerous, and these victims may seek solace through their religion. 252 This also means that if rich countries that have secularised have citizens who are perceived to be hardly corrupt, the issue is not about their natural displeasure in the canker, but the state’s ability to provide social service. 253 Nevertheless, as I have discussed, the means through which rich nations ward off corruption among their citizens is largely routed their elites aligning with elites in poor nations to perpetrate corrupt activities externally—usually victimizing and further impoverishing poor nations. Since the country’s political currents of re-democratization, state and para-state organizations have all invested in institutional reforms to combat corruption. We have state institutions such as the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), established in 1993 with a vision of ensuring “A Free, Just, and Equitable Society where Human Rights and Dignity are Respected, where Power is Accountable, and Governance is Transparent”. 254 The country also established the Serious Fraud Office in 1998, later renamed as the Economic and Organized Crime Office in 2010, was to prosecute and to recover from officials who had criminally accumulated from the 249 Karen Lauterbach, Christianity, wealth and spiritual power in Ghana (Cham/Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), p. 83. 250 P.M. Theron and G.A. Lotter, “Corruption: How should Christians respond?” Acta Theologica, 32, 1 (2012): 96-117. 251 S. Douglas Beets, “Global corruption and religion: An empirical examination,” Journal of Global Ethics, 3, 1 (2007): 69-85. 252 Ibid., p. 83. 253 Ibid., p. 83. 254 Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice, https://chraj.gov.gh/vision-and-mission/.

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state. 255 In 2006, the “Whistle Blowers Bill” was passed into law to encourage citizens to willing provide information on corrupt activities. 256 There is also an Office of the Special Prosecutor, established in 2017, with a vision of “rendering corruption costly and unattractive in all its forms in the public and private sectors through sustained repression and suppression.” 257 There are also non-state organizations such as the Ghana Centre for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana), established in 1998 with a mission to “promote and deepen democratic consolidation, good governance, and inclusive growth and development.” 258 The CDD, under its former leader, E. Gyimah-Boadi, indicated that a major breakthrough in the fight against corruption is for the nation to become intentionally aware of the serious problems associated with corruption and find a solution to it. 259 The measures against corruption have also involved a call for women to be incorporated as agentic citizens to infuse social values that abhor corruption into Ghana’s fight against corruption. 260 Nevertheless, Namawu Alhassan Alolo observed in 2007 that women’s role in the fight against corruption fail unless corruption opportunities and networks are restrained through the state’s implementation of anti-corruption strategies. 261 Also, since corruption is very rampant in the public sector of the country’s economy, others have suggested a need for a strong, independent and well-resourced internal audit regime to fight corrupt activities. 262 Similarly, while the media is held complicit in corrupt charges, it is suggested that the fight against the canker can succeed partly with the involvement of the media—characterised by investigative journalism, professionalism, and

255 John E. Spillan and Domfeh Obed King, Doing business in Ghana: Challenges and opportunities (Cham/Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), p. 20. 256 Ibid., p. 20. 257 Office of the Special Prosecutor, https://osp.gov.gh/about/vision-andmission. 258 The Ghana-CDD, https://cddgh.org. 259 Gyimah-Boadi, “Confronting,” p. 1. 260 Clara Kasser-Tee, “The role of women in the fight against corruption in Ghana,” Development in Practice, 31, 4 (2021): 477-483. 261 Namawu Alhassan Alolo, “Fighting public sector corruption in Ghana: Does gender matter?” In Sarah Bracking (ed), Corruption and development: The anti-corruption campaigns, 205-220 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), p. 205. 262 Kofi Fred Asiedu and Eric Worlanyo Deffor, “Fighting corruption by means of effective internal audit function: Evidence from the Ghanaian public sector,” International Journal of Auditing, 21 (2017): 82-99.

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favourable state interventions in media work. 263 After a survey by the Institute of Economic Affairs, Joseph Atsu Ayee recommended that the fight against the scourge of corruption could be overcome if the problem is seen as composite one. He, therefore, suggested that a bipartisan approach to fighting corruption, improvement in overall governance situation; development of a culture of integrity, transparency and accountability; use of some traditional values and practices; viewing the fight against corruption from a long term perspective; transformational leadership; training and education on ethics and ethical behaviour; use of smart technology and e-governance; and additional pressure from civil society and development partners on the government. 264 Admittedly, and rightly so, these are excellent recommendations, the state and non-state establishments have achieved so much in their fight against corruption and ensuring an equitable society. But the ideals of a “free, Just, Equitable society that ensures the rights of everyone in an inclusive society—where corruption is not tolerated”—to paraphrase the vision of all institutions and the essence of the state—can hardly be achieved by law and its attending shame culture. Could it be that as observed by Victor Le Vine that the vexing problem of corruption and the difficulty in curbing is possibly because “those seeking to eliminate corruption are themselves tainted with it; under such circumstances, investigations, or legislative remedies become ineffective, or pointless, or elaborate exercise in hypocrisy”? 265 Satirising those who assume the posture of “holier than thou” in the fight against corruption, Ghanaian novelist, Ayi Kwei Armah captured such hypocrisy as follows: There was a lot of noise, for some time, about some investigation designed to rid the country’s trade of corruption. designed by whom? Where were the people in power who were so incorrupt themselves? There was nobody around who was all that excited; though of course men were willing to talk of commission. The head of it was a professor from Legon. From Legon, they said, in order to give weight and seriousness to the enterprise. In the end it was being said in the streets that what had to happen with all these things had happened. The net had been made in the special Ghanaian way that allowed the really big corrupt people to pass 263 Joseph Yaw Asomah, “How can the private media be strengthened to investigate and expose corruption in Ghana? Understanding Ghanaian perspectives,” Journalism Practice, 2022, DOI: 10.1080/17512786.2022.2074520: 1-24. 264 Joseph Atsu Ayee, The Ghanaian enquiry revisited (Accra: Institute of Economic Affairs, Ghana, 2016), p. 5. 265 Victor Le Vine, “Corruption in Ghana,” Transition, 47 (1975): 48+50+52-61, p. 48.

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through it. A net to catch only the small, dispensable fellows, trying in their anguished blindness to leap and to attain the gleam and the comfort the only way these things could be done. And the big ones floated free, like all the slogans. End bribery and corruption. Build socialism. Equality. Shit. A man would just have to make up his mind that there was never going to be anything but despair, and there would be no way of escaping it, except one. That could wait. Meanwhile the days could go on like this. A man could learn to live with many, many things before the end. Many, many things. 266

Figure 5: Pen adi Ghana awu

Just like the fight against corruption, the reasons for corruption are both diverse and vexatious. Weak institutions, including regime’s unwillingness to put anti-corrupt laws into full force and neo-colonial tendencies have been blamed for the pervasiveness of corruption. Vine invited us to move away from the simplistic and general analysis of the causes of corruption. Instead, he argues that context/condition analysis, taking into account transformation socio-cultural and political conditions are critical in finding out the causes, as well as providing an antidote to it. It against this background that he argued that much as corruption is not new to precolonial societies, the colonial intrusion and its imposition of alien institutions of governance in the late 19th century worsened the canker. It created “big man”, as he called them, who readily leveraged the colonial legacies of governance to enrich themselves at the expense of the state. 267 In Congo, one of the richest 266 Ayi Kwei Armah, The beautyful ones are not yet born (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1968), pp. 180-181. 267 Vine, “Corruption,,” p. 50.

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countries, and perhaps most politically unstable since its independence in 1960, corruption, mediated through clandestine economic activities is said to contribute to the strengthening of political authority. 268 That indigenous institutions and customs can hardly be blamed for corruption was reinforced by Joseph Atsu Ayee who, after a survey arrived at the conclusion that: Traditional and cultural values and practices may not necessarily be the major causes of corruption in Ghana. traditional practices themselves do not support corruption; it is rather individuals who misinterpret some of these practices for their own selfish needs or ends. 269

In all of this, the issue of corruption is not randomly repudiated. It is said to have a functional value that allows for laws to be bend to provide for those on the peripheries of life—who following the laws strictly would never get their needs met. 270 This could follow the consequentialist framing of morality based on the “end justifies the means.” Even so, the crusade against corruption cannot be left to “when we get there we shall cross,”—similar to Chris Wright’s moral argument that, “We should just act so as to promote well-being, following our moral common sense in very situation we find ourselves in.” 271 This argument is banal that cannot be used to fight any moral challenge, because part of human ontological selfishness reproduces common sense that reinforces relativistic ethic. Assuming there is no moral standard to govern the public sphere, the result will be nothing short of “Am I my brother’s keeper.” It is the banality of the “I” against the need to concretise the imaginary “We” that corruption continues to metastasize as a global social scourge. However we look at corruption, whether locally or transnationally, I agree with G. Blundo and J-P Olivier de Sardan’s observation of that “Corruption has two faces: the first overtly illegal one is broadly condemned and the second, which is legitimized by social practices, is tolerated and sometimes

268 William Reno, “Clandestine economies, violence and states in Africa,” Journal of International Affairs, 53, 2 (2000): 433-459, p. 434. 269 Joseph Atsu Ayee, The Ghanaian enquiry revisited (Accra: Institute of Economic Affairs, Ghana, 2016), p. 5. 270 Edward Van Roy, “On the theory of corruption,” Economic Development and Cultural Change, 19, 1 (1970): 86-110. 271 Chris Wright (2020), “A refutation of Kantian and Benthamite ethics,” https://www.wrightswriting.com/post/a-refutation-of-kantian-and-benthamiteethics.

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encouraged—albeit ‘unofficially’. 272 Having undertaken an anthropological research on corruption in the non-African world, Cris Shore and Dieter Haller concluded that the universality of the canker implies that: Europeans and Americans cannot assume that grand corruption is something that belongs primarily to the non-Western ‘Other’ or to publicsector officials in defective state bureaucracies: corruption (both massive and systemic), we should not be surprised to learn, can be found in the very heart of the regulated world capitalist system. 273

The basic axiom for the vision of an equitable and just state to be established, beyond the issue of enforcement of law and institutionalisation is the question of: “How do I love and care for another person’s interest other than mine?” Materialist and rationalist analysts may be inspired by Marx’s materialist reading of history to attribute everything to human orchestration—class conflicts or elite capture. The reason for the formation of elitism and classism may be complexly defined as part of the fault lines of the agricultural revolution and later the industrial revolution of the 18th century, supported by false consciousness (religion). 274 From the Marxist perspective, the law itself could be part of the problem, as laws tend to favour the elite. 275 At any rate, as Ali bin Thalib said, a hungry person cannot be moral. The law is good and effective to the extent that people feel compelled by the satisfaction of the needs to obey it. For the operation of the law to be effective, people must be free to obey it. In other words, until people are satisfied by the needed conditions that make life worth living, they would hardly obey the law. It is for this reason that one of the philosophies I read from Gaddafi’s Third universal theory is that “necessity legalizes whatever is prohibited.” From the Christian perspective, not until God put Adam and Eve in a ready-made Garden, God did not give Adam and Eve any set of laws. In fact, in the Garden of Eden, the only command given to Adam and Eve was for them not to eat of the Tree of good and evil— 272 G. Blundo and J.-P. Olivier de Sardan, “Why should we study everyday corruption and how should we go about it?” in G. Blundo and J-P Olivier de Sardan, Everyday corruption and state: Citizens & public officials in Africa, 3-14 (New York: Zed Books, 2006 – emphasis in original text), p. 9. 273 Cris Shore and Dieter Haller, “Introduction – Sharp practice: Anthropology and the study of corruption,” in Dieter Haller and Cris Shore (eds), Corruption: Anthropological perspective, 1-28 (London: Pluto Press, 2005), pp, 1-2. 274 Friedreich Engels 275 Hugh Collins, Marxism and law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982).

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which actually was to demarcate the boundary between God as creature and human beings as creatures. In the same sense, God did not give the Israelites any law until God had first redeemed them from enslavement in Egypt. Until any group of people are freed from what enslaves them (poverty, illness, deprivation), their obedience of any laws would be a challenge. In Ghana, every social challenge is also considered a legal challenge. For this reason, any discontentment against poverty, bad roads, poor sanitation and squalid living conditions compels a section of Ghanaians to call for a constitutional reform. 276 Sometimes the call for constitutional reform leads advocates on the path of impugning the integrity of the imminent lawyers and constitutional experts who drafted the country’s 1992 constitution – the longest in the country’s history. For example, on 7 January 2023, Ghana celebrated its Constitutional Day. The following Monday on 7 January 2023, Mr Yaw Anokye Frimpong, a private legal practitioner, said on the country’s national GTV Morning Breakfast program, hosted by Kafui Dey, that Ghana’s constitution is a transitional document. Lawyer Yaw Anokye Frimpong’s leveraged his study of transitional justice to firm his justify his claim that that the 1992 constitution was satisfied to satisfy the military to give up power and return the country to a democratic regime. As the issue of constitutional reform was discussed to the point of vilifying the drafters, the chairman of the committee of experts that drafted the proposal of Ghana 1992 Constitution, said that the drafters were mindful and never cowered to any seduction or fear to favour the military at the time. Not only that the men and women who drafted the constitution were arguably the best brains to undertake the task. I will mention the names of these eminent men and women to help citizens realise two things: First, the persons involved in the drafting of the constitution were honest and dissent; and second, it is important their names are known to inspire the cultivation of yet another generation of men and women who would put the nation ahead of self. They were, apart from S.K.B. Asante, Osagyefo Oseadeeyo Dr Agyeman-Badu (Omanhene of Dormaa), Mrs Justice Annie Jiagge (Retired Justice of the Court of 276 Edna Agnes Boakye (14 January 2022), “Ghana needs urgent constitutional reforms – Senyo Hosi,” https://citinewsroom.com/2022/01/ghana-needs-urgentconstitutional-reforms-senyo-hosi/; Enoch Randy Aikins (28 April 2022), Amending Ghana’s constitution can protect its democratic gains,” https://issafrica.org/iss-today/amending-ghanas-constitution-can-protect-itsdemocratic-gains; Joyonline (4 January 2023), “Solidaire Ghana asks Akufu-Addo to revisit constitutional reform,” https://www.myjoyonline.com/solidaire-ghana-asksakufo-addo-to-revisit-constitutional-reform/.

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Appeal), Mr. L.J. Chinery-Hesse (Former Chief Parliamentary Draftsman Attorney General’s [AG’s] Department), Mr Ebo BentsiEnchill, Ghana Bar Association (he later became the president of the Ghana Bar Association), Dr. Kwadwo Afari-Gyan (then lecturer in Economics at the University of Ghana). Dr E.V.O. Dankwa (Senior Lecturer in Law, University of Ghana), Mrs. S. Ofori-Boateng (Director of Legal drafting AG’s Department). 277 To be sure, I will concentrate on a few of them to gesture their prominence and sense of integrity. I will just concentrate on Annie Jiagge and Dr Kwadwo Afari-Gyan. Annie Jiagge, born in 1918 in French Togoland, Annie Jiagge received her LLB in 1949 and was called to the Bar at Lincolns Inn in 1950. She was the first woman in Ghana. She returned to Ghana (then the Gold Coast) and became a magistrate in 1953, a circuit court Judge in 1959, a Judge of the High Court in 1961 and was appointed the Court of Appeal (the highest court in Ghana at the time) in 1969 and was later president of the Court of Appeal from 1980 until her retirement in 1983. She was a member of the constituent assembly that wrote the constitution of Ghana’s Third Republic in 1979. She was a promoter of women’s rights and was the principal architect of the Declaration on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women. She founded the Ghana National Council on Women and Development and the moderator of the programme of the World Council of Churches from 1975 and 1983 to combat racism and was instrumental in mobilising the WCC against apartheid. 278 Kwadwo Afari-Gyan was born on 18 June 1945 at Anyimon in the Brong Ahafo Region of Ghana. He attended Ghana first government school Achimota (1924) and Adisadel College for his A Levels and also graduated from the University of Ghana in 1967 with a B.A. degree in Philosophy. He went on to attain a MA degree in African politics in 1969 from the same university. He also studied in the United States where he was awarded a PhD in Political Science from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1974. He later served as one of Ghana’s longest electoral commissioners, who had a successful career—19932015. 279 As an electoral commissioner, he was very instrumental in 277 Nana Dr S.K.B. Asante (17 January 2018), “The work of the committee of experts on the 1992 Constitution,” https://www.modernghana.com/news/829027/the-work-of-the-committee-ofexperts-on-the-1992-constitutio.html. 278 Gatehouse (23 October 2020), “Black history month – Justice Annie Jiagge,” https://gatehouselaw.co.uk/black-history-month-justice-annie-jiagge/. 279 University of Ghana Alumni Relations Office, “Kwadwo Afari-Gyan,” https://ar.ug.edu.gh/kwadwo-afari-gyan.

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transitioning Ghana from one democratic regime to the other and significantly helped in stabilizing the country’s democratic gains. Certainly, aspects of the constitution such as Article 71 which is said to be very loaded with benefits to the ruling elites could be considered. But even here, we need to be considerate of the challenges embedded in Ghana’s politics—the cost as well as the benefits accrued to public servants. I personally would want to ask that if we call on people to serve free of charge, are we not venturing into the realm of religion, where we are called to serve rather than to be served? Otherwise, who would sacrifice so much for the sake of nation-building? Nevertheless, to upset the bourgeoisie of any constitutional benefits, Marxist-inclined academics and advocates have supported the rise of the socialist state with a vision towards communism. From the perspective of a liberal state, the reason for injustice may be unfair and unmitigated state control over the means of production. The solution, then, is to give people the freedom to work in order to accumulate wealth. This idea inspired the rise of the liberal capitalist state, where the market is left under the control of the free market. But in the end, as Adam Smith rightly observed, “it is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest.” 280 While Smith’s observation could be explained in multiple ways, my understanding is that self-centeredness, which is at the heart of human beings, creates a situation where revolutions hardly benefit the marginalised for whom revolutions are often staged, while capitalists often lack the moral rectitude to redistribute their wealth. In the end, the socialist world never reaches the promised world of classlessness, as revolutionaries often become oligarchs. My own conviction is that both the clarion call of the free market and revolutions have not produced the equitable and inclusive society to which the state and para-state organizations aspire. Religion plays a key role in people’s lives. In the West, religion was very dominant through the practice of “divine right of kings,” where rulers made claim to political office by appealing to God as their source of authority. However, the 19th century witnessed a rapid erosion of religion in western political and social thought. Some great thinkers, following the industrial and scientific revolutions, began to question the logic of religion in the public space, a development that marked the

280 Adam Smith, An inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations, Vol. I (Indianapolis: LibertyClassics, 1981), 27.

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separation between “state” and “church.” 281 In Africa, religion continues to determine the contours of politics. The ubiquitous expression of religion in Africa is such that the African landscape is religiously charged to the extent that it is almost impossible for secular atheism to thrive. Mbiti has rightly made the point that Africans are notoriously religious. Religion features prominently in every facet of life in Africa. In this paper, I explore the role religion plays in Ghanaian politics. According to the paper, religion and politics are so intertwined in Ghanaian politics that it is difficult to draw a line between the two. Pre-colonial and post-colonial Ghanaian politics have witnessed several instances where political elites appropriated religious symbols and themes to achieve a political goal. The paper maintains that the resurgence of traditional religion in Ghanaian politics is emblematic of the fact that the marriage between religion and politics will stay with us for a very long time. This book is to emphasise that argument, by using the entanglement between religion and politics to discuss contemporary matters of public governance. Religion is such an influential force in human life. In general, man is thought to be homo religious because every man seeks and seeks meaning in life. Historians and anthropologists have concluded that there is no society, “primitive” or ‘civilised’ that is bereft of an idea of God. The idea of religion is universal, though the expression of religious philosophy and ideas differs from one society to another. In the industrialised West, until the sixteenth century, when the word atheism first appeared in the Oxford English Dictionary 282, and until the nineteenth century, when there was an industrial and scientific revolution, religion was very strong among the people of the West. In fact, until the French revolution and the emergence of French philosophers such as Voltaire, who argued for a separation between the “church” and “state,” the source of the authority of the king was essentially religion. 283 Religion was so dominant in politics that the expression “divine right of kings” became the political jargon in the languages of the West, and the political paradigm was “cuius region,” “eius religio,” a Latin phrase that translated to “the religion of the ruler is the 281 Heinz-Gerhard Haupt, “Europe in the 19th century: Some comparative notes,” Estudos Avançados, 22, 62 (2008): 77-93. 282 The idea of doubting the existence of god predates the use of the word in the English language. The Christian bible makes allusion to the existence of atheism when it states in Psalm 14:1a that, “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.” R. Albert Mohler Jr. (2008). Atheism Remix: A Christian Confronts New Atheist. Illinois: Crossway Books 283 Michael Burleigh, Earthly powers: Religion and politics in Europe from the enlightenment to the great wars (London: Harper Perennial, 2005).

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religion of the ruled.” 284 It was in the 19th century that the relevance and logic of religion and belief in a supernatural force were questioned. This was as a result of the breakthrough in scientific inquiry and the theory of evolution, popularized by Charles Darwin, that questioned the validity of a belief in an intelligent ultimate being. The 19th century therefore earmarked a call for the separation of “church” and “state” in European politics. Great thinkers such as Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl Marx, Charles Darwin, and Sigmund Freud 285, were at the forefront of crucifying the belief in God. And, because modernization in the West means secularization, religion was relegated from public to private space—it became a matter of individual choice. But it must be stated that even with this development, which has witnessed the beginning of the path of secularisation, religion continues to play a role in the lives of individuals and groups in the West. Religion is so pervasive in Africa that it permeates every aspect of African life. Religion features prominently in all major activities— politics, economics, and social. Religion is thus invoked during the installation of a new chief, the naming of a child, burial ceremonies, initiation rites, festivals, and the cultivation and harvesting of new crops. Considering the ubiquitous expression of religion in the life of the African, one can say that the African is born to religion, is initiated into religion, dies to religion, buries himself in religion, and is reincarnated into religion. Because of the commonplace of religion in the life of the African, some scholars have concluded that the African cannot be separated from his religion. Mbiti, for example, has posited that Africans are notoriously religious. Parrinder has also opined that Africans are incurably religious. Religion is such a big part of African life and their culture that it is almost impossible to separate religion from other parts of African life. It could be said without any fear of contradiction that the African worldview is chiefly shaped by religion. The widespread visibility of religion in the lives of Africans provided fertile ground for impinging religions such as Islam, Christianity, and other Eastern religions to thrive. The messengers of these missionary-oriented religions found that the African environment was religiously charged and, as a result, did not encounter much difficulty in spreading their religious ideas and 284 Joseph H. Shennan, The origins of the modern Europe state, 1450-1725 (London: Hutchinson University Library, 1974) 285 Nietzsche said God had died; Karl Marx said religion is the opium of the masses, Charles Darwin attributed creation to chance/evolution and not an intelligent creator, and Sigmund Freud said religion is a figment of imagination. All these great thinkers dismissed the belief in God.

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proselytizing. Because of the pervasiveness of religion in Africa, some scholars have asserted that secular atheism is a foreign notion that cannot thrive in the African soul. That the African is indeed thoroughly religious is found in the Akan proverb Obi nkyere akwadaa Nyame, to wit: “No one teaches the child about God.” The idea of God, the fulcrum of religion, is believed to be innate and inborn. The child grows with the idea of the existence of God already in mind—there is no tabula rasa as far as the knowledge of God is concerned. So, in Africa, there is no need for a complicated argument about the existence of God. Religion finds expression in both the public and private lives of Africans, and as a result, there is no separation between the “sacred” and the “profane,” the “church” and the “state” in the African cosmogony. The two are intertwined and complement each other in defining African life. This paper seeks to argue that in Africa, religions, including Islam, Christianity, and African traditional religion, have been appropriated to achieve a political end. With a focus on Ghana, the paper will highlight the extent to which religion, particularly Christianity, has been used in the political arena. I do acknowledge the fact that other religions, such as Islam and African Traditional Religion, have also been appropriated by politicians to achieve a political end, but I will concentrate on Christianity because, historically, most politicians have appropriated Christian themes and texts more than Islam and African Traditional Religion to achieve a political agenda. This is probably because most of these politicians are either Christians or have had Christian missionary education, and so are familiar with the Christian Bible. According to some modernity theorists, with the widespread dissemination of scientific knowledge carried across by the spirit of globalization, religion would have lost its hold on Africa. But the opposite is true in Africa. Even in the face of science, Africans continue to appeal to religion to find solutions to the existential challenges of life. For example, while the West is working around the clock to find an antidote to the threat of Ebola in some countries in West Africa, Prophet T. B. Joshua, the General Overseer of the Synagogue Church of All Nations, has suggested that his “holy water” is capable of curing Ebola and has, as a result, distributed over 2000 bottles of the “holy water” to countries affected by the Ebola epidemic. Ghana is constitutionally a secular country, but the presence of religion in every activity of the country is very obvious. Though a secular country, every major social gathering begins with a prayer from representatives of the three major religions in the country: Christianity, African Traditional Religion, and Islam. 105

The preamble of the 1992 Constitution of Ghana, “In the name of the Almighty God,” shows the extent to which religion occupies a prominent place in Ghanaian politics. Also, the furore that surrounded the suspension of the pouring of libation during state functions under the leadership of the former head of state of Ghana, Prof. John Evans Atta Mills, bespeaks the centrality of religion in Ghanaian political discourse. Another observation of the Ghanaian sense of religion is expressed in the fact that discussions and activities in public institutions such as the courts, parliaments, and other public institutions are preceded by prayers. The country, per the Constitution, gives recognition to important religious festivals: Christmas (December 25), Boxing Day (December 26), and Easter Monday for Christians. The Muslims in 1995, under the aegis of the national Chief Imam, Sheikh Osman Nuhu Sharubutu, also prevailed over the Rawlings government to have two recognised holidays: Id Fitr (the end of Ramadan) and Id Adhar (the feast of sacrifice). We also have several instances where religious leaders have strayed from the religious environment to comment on political issues 286. In Ghana, the church has played no small role in challenging the dictatorial tendencies of the military regimes. The church, for example, was quite vocal in criticising the Rawlings administration for human rights abuses in the 1980s. The church has always assumed the role of the moral conscience of society, and as a result, it has been very firm in condemning practices that jeopardize human rights. This paper proceeds on the premise that religion has so much influenced political activities in Ghana. Religion continues to be appropriated by political leaders to achieve political ends. Specific issues that will be addressed in this paper include the role of religion in pre-colonial politics in the Gold Coast, now Ghana, the appropriation of religious symbols by early post-colonial Ghanaian political leaders, and the role of religion in politics, beginning from 2000 to 2012.

286 A case in point is the nomination of Nana Oye Lithur for the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection. Upon her nomination, a number of religious and para-religious organisations, such as Concerned Clergy Association of Ghana, emerged challenging her nomination. The group called on the president John Mahama to reconsider his nomination of Nana Oye Lithur for that ministry. This was because of Oye Lithur’s advocacy for homosexuals in Ghana.

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Religion and politics in pre-colonial Ghana: The Case of the Chieftaincy Institution The chieftaincy institution is one of the oldest institutions that survived the onslaught of colonialism, albeit not without some changes. The institution is so much respected by centrally planned societies in Ghana. The strength of the institution rested on religion. The chief was respected, venerated, and accorded the needed dignity, inter alia, because he occupied the ancestral stool (Gyekye, 1996). Among the Akan people of Ghana, the chief was called Nana (grandfather) because he was the occupant of the ancestral stool. Concerning the sacred nature of the stool on which the chief sits, Sarpong has observed that: The word “stool” is very often used to indicate the office of the chief and the king. It is also the symbol of the soul of the nation. The chief’s stool renders him sacred and worthy of direct communication with the ancestors. It is thus the symbolic source of all kingly power and authority.287

The chief’s installation is deeply entwined with religion. Before his installation, the priest consults the deities and ancestors to seek their approval and consent. Bob-Milliar (2009) correctly points out that behind every stool or skin is a powerful deity. The chief, after his installation, was sacralised. The sacralisation of the chief is based on the rituals that are performed for him. Akrong captures this as follows: The rituals of installation, which legitimatise traditional leadership status and roles, suggest that the installation process transforms an ordinary person into a sacred person, who then becomes the representative of the spiritual founders of the society and hence the locus of spiritual power and authority. This transformation, accomplished through installation rituals, confers the status that qualifies one to act as the society’s leader. One can therefore not be a leader without the ritual and procedures of installation, which legitimates leadership and make one a representative of the spiritual founders of the society. 288

The chief then assumes the status of mediator between the living and the living-dead (ancestors). The rituals of installation also 287 Peter Sarpong, The sacred stools of the Akan (Tema/Ghana: Ghana Publishing Corporation, 1971), p. 33. 288 Abraham Akrong, “Religion and Traditional Leadership in Ghana,” In Odotei K. Irene and Albert K. Awedoba (eds.), Chieftaincy in Ghana: Culture, Governance and Development, 213-230 (Accra: Sub-Saharan Publishers, 2006), p. 196.

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legitimised the status quo of the chief’s ability to perform some rituals and sacrifices that are very critical to the existence and sustenance of the society. In the event of an epidemic, the chief was expected to perform rituals to mitigate such disasters. During important gatherings such as festivals, the chief is expected to perform rituals that are needed to reinforce the relationship between the living and the dead. Consistent with African cosmogony, the chief plays a dual role as a political leader and a religious leader. The dual role of the chief did not so much change during the colonial period, and the impinging religions—Christianity and Islam—could not assail these duties of the chief. In post-colonial Ghana, there is a resurgence of African Traditional Religion, and the chief continues to play his religious roles as dictated by tradition. It is thus obvious that in the worldview of pre-colonial Akan societies, the line between the sacred and the profane, or “church” and “state,” was very thin. In acephalous societies such as the Tallensi in Northern Ghana, the role of the Tindana is emblematic of the religious role of the chief among the Akan. Because acephalous societies lacked formal chiefs, the Tindana invoked religious powers to maintain peace and stability in the society. 289 For example, one of the rules of ancestral veneration was that individuals were to consider themselves as one since they worshipped at the same ancestral shrine. Bloodshed was thus avoided because of the ancestral shrine. In societies that were initially theocratic—inseparably merging religion and politics in public governance and determination of the moral fabric of society, such as the Ga and the Ewe, religion was instrumentalized to achieve political ends. It is clear from the above that the thin line between religion and politics, which has found expression in contemporary politics, has a history that goes deep into pre-colonial societies in Ghana. Not much has been written on religion and politics during the colonial period. This is not to say that enough has not been written about missionary education in the country. But missionary education has gone through different historical epochs, such that the missionaries by the 19th century were carefully not to readily identify with the nationalist ambition of colonial administration. 290 Also, in the 19th century, missionary education was more about preparing Christian 289 Meyer Fortes, “The political system of the Tallensi of the Northern territories of the Gold Coast,” in Meyer Fortes and E.E. Evans-Pritchard (eds), African political systems, 239-271 (London: Oxford University Press for International African Institute, 1970). 290 Brian Stanley, Christianity in the twentieth century (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2018).

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converts for both earthly and eternal life than ideologically preparing them for colonial governance. 291 This may explain Nkrumah’s decision to “secularise” the postcolonial mission schools. 292 But what is obvious is that there is compelling evidence to suggest that the colonial administrators and the Christian missionaries worked hand-in-hand to ensure the administration of the Gold Coast. The missionaries-built schools and were in charge of managing the schools they built. The colonial governor did not interfere with missionary activities much, except in Muslim-dominated areas where they feared allowing Christian missionaries to operate freely would incur the wrath of the Muslims, effectively destabilizing colonial administration. This partly explains why the Northern Region of Ghana 293 and Northern Nigerian remained closed to Christian missionaries for a very long time. Thus, until 1924, when Achimota College was built by Sir Frederick Gordon Guggisberg, the schools in colonial Ghana, then the Gold Coast, were under the administration of the missionaries. 294 The colonial governor did not interfere with the church using the schools to proselytise. Again, since the Anglican Church was the official Church of England, the head of the Anglican Church presided over all state functions during the colonial period. This was the situation until the period of independence, when Dr. Kwame Nkrumah opened up the religious space for both Muslims and adherents of African Traditional Religion. The colonial governor also relied extensively on the church for the training of clerks, secretaries, and other trained personnel for the public service. Religion and politics in post-colonial Ghana Nkrumah’s claim that Ghanaians should seek the political kingdom first, and then everything else will fall into place had a material Brian Stanley, The world missionary conference, Edinburgh 1910 (Cambridge: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2009), 167-204. 292 Charles Prempeh, “Balancing religious freedoms and the right of education of minorities in Ghana: A focus on access to public senior high schools by Rastafarians,” In Maame Efua Adadzi-Koom, Micchael Addaney and Lydia A. Nkansah, Democratic governance, law, and development in Africa: Pragmatism, experiments, and prospects, 193-222. Cham/Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022). 293 There is a theory that seems to suggest that the colonial governors deliberately disallowed the Christian missionaries from proselytising the Northern part of Ghana in order to keep the Northerners illiterate so that they could use them as labourers in the South. 294 C.K. Graham, The history of education in Ghana (London: Frank Cass & Co. Ltd., 1971). 291

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dimension. It was believed that material prosperity would follow political independence. He appropriated that text from the Bible on the eve of independence to psyche Ghanaians up for a better life in an independent Ghana. Nkrumah, who had a degree in divinity, was deeply religious. He considered himself a non-denominational Christian and a Marxist socialist. It is said that he fasted on Fridays and meditated on the Bible. Nkrumah had a good relationship with Sheikh Ibrahim Nyass, the Senegalese itinerant preacher. Kwame Nkrumah is known to have consulted with and also solicited the assistance of ritual experts to achieve a socio-political end. A case in point is his invitation of Sheikh Ibrahim Nyass, a Senegalese Tijaniyyah religious leader, to perform some rituals to expel the evil forces that were perceived to militate against the successful construction of the Akosombo dam in 1963. It is believed that but for the intervention of the Tijaniyyah Sheikh, the construction of the Akosombo Dam would not have been possible. Nkrumah also flirted with African Traditional religion. For example, upon his release from prison in 1951, he performed a traditional rite, washing his feet in the blood of a sacrificial sheep in front of his adoring supporters. 295 This incident as I have said indexes the extent to which politicians instrumentalised religion to achieve and political end. But it also indicated the mutual inclusivity between religion and politics in governance and exercise of power. Nkrumah is also believed to have solicited spiritual assistance from Alhaji Iwa of Kankan in Guinea. According to Pobee (1991), Alhaji Iwa provided Nkrumah with spiritual assistance, and upon the death of the former, Nkrumah travelled to Guinea to perform rituals on the grave of Alhaji Iwa. Nkrumah’s dependence on Alhaji Iwa popularised the idea of Nkrumah’s Kankan Nyame in Ghana. The use of the title “Osagyefo” by Nkrumah has some religious connotation. In Akan, Osagyefo 296 means a redeemer. From the Christian perspective, this title belongs to the Lord Jesus Christ. Nkrumah may have used the term to inform Ghanaians of his role in liberating the country from colonialism. In fact, immortality was even associated with Nkrumah. After he survived the assassination attempt on his life, Nkrumah was said to be immortal. The Evening News, the official paper of the Convention People’s Party, compared Nkrumah to Jesus and read: 295 Darrell Reeck ‘The Castle and the Umbrella: Some Religious Dimensions of Kwame Nkrumah’s Leadership Role in Ghana’ Africa Today, Vol. 23, No. 4, Civil Religion in Africa (Oct.-Dec., 1976), pp. 7 - 27 296 Osagyefo is a contraction of two Akan words, ‘Osa’ which means war and ‘Ogyefo’ which means redeemer. So, Osagyefo means someone who redeems his people from war.

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Angels were singing “the Messiah is coming” when, in 1909, at Nkroful, a woman was labouring to bring forth the Apostle of Freedom.

Also, Messiah. Nkrumah is all right; Nkrumah is our Messiah Nkrumah never dies; if you follow him, he will make you fishers of men. (Bartels, 1965:13, cited in Clarke, 2006:11) 297

David Burnett summarises the logic of Nkrumah’s use of religious symbols as follows: The use of clear Christian symbolism illustrated the widespread influence of Christian ideas among the people of the Gold Coast, and Nkrumah, as an astute politician, realised the value of biblical imitation for slogans in his political campaigns. The biblical imagery provided readymade metaphors to communicate his message to people who had, at least, heard the preaching of a Christian evangelist, even if only a minority were Christians (Burnett, 1997:187, cited in Clarke, 2006:11).

Nkrumah’s appropriation of religious symbols could be interpreted to mean that he tried to make Christianity meaningful to the liberation struggle of Ghanaian Christians against colonial rule. Nkrumah was also very critical of the historical churches—Presbyterian, Methodist, Catholic, and Anglican. He saw the historical churches as collaborating and aiding the colonial administration. In response to that, he courted the friendship of some of the leaders of the African Independent Churches (AICs). Since the AICs were challenging some of the teachings of the historical churches that presented some African cultural practices in a bad light, Nkrumah saw the AICs as close to the liberation struggle of Ghanaians in particular and Africans as a whole. Nkrumah’s flirtation with the AICs and his appropriation of Christian symbols for political gains brought him into antagonism with the historical churches. He was severely criticised by some of the leaders of the historical churches. The Rt. Rev. Richard Roseveare, the Anglican Bishop of Accra, was one of Nkrumah’s critics, accusing him of distorting Christian teaching and promoting atheism in the Young Pioneers Movement. Roseveare was expelled from the country but allowed to return after three months after the Christian Council had protested his expulsion (Reeck, 1976:21). Nkrumah’s critique of the 297 Clarke, R.C. ‘African Indigenous Churches in Ghana: Past, Present and Future,’ Journal of African Instituted Church Theology. Vol. II. No. 1, 2006, 1-28.

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church and the ensuing confrontation he had with church leaders could be related to the image of the church as a movement. This was observed by Dan White Jr as follows: It’s been said that Christianity started out in Palestine as a community, moved to Greece and became a philosophy, went to Rome and became an institution, and went to Europe and became a government.” 298

Nkrumah certainly was not an atheist; he encouraged the representation of religious leaders from Christianity, Islam, and African Traditional Religion to be present at all state functions, especially Independence Day. His only concern was that he saw the possibility of religion polarising the new born nation, and as a result, he passed the Avoidance Discrimination Act of 1957, which rendered it illegal for political groups to be organised on religious, ethnic, and regional bases. It is possible that Nkrumah dabbled in religion to establish legitimacy for his administration. Of course, coming from a cultural background where the chief’s power was derived from religion, it could be concluded that Nkrumah saw in religion the potential to establish his legitimacy as a leader. Kofi Abrefa According to Max Assimeng, the administration of Busia saw a revival in religious activities. Church attendance became the order of the day among public office holders. Busia, a lay preacher of the Methodist church, unlike Nkrumah, promoted the historical churches at the expense of the African independent churches. Acheampong’s government saw the re-emergence of spiritual churches in the country. Though a Catholic, Acheampong courted the friendship of the spiritual churches. In 1977, when there was a long period of drought, Acheampong’s government organised a national week of repentance and prayer. It is relayed that when Acheampong was pressured by Ghanaians to do something to reverse the situation, he answered, “Am I God to cause rain?” Acheampong was known for his sarcastic responses. Under Rawlings’ military regime in 1981, a number of Christians perceived the Rawlings’ revolution as an anti-Christian revolution. According to Atiemo, Christian programs were not aired on national television or radio. The regime also witnessed the vicious verbal attacks on Christianity by Vincent Damuah, who was an ally of the PNDC government. The regime considered Christians as anti-revolutionary, who dissented with Rawlings’ excesses of spilling the blood alleged 298 JR Woodward and Dan White Jr., The church as movement: Starting and sustaining missional-incarnational communities (Illinois: IVP Books, 2020), p. 56.

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corrupt former political officers, including General Ignatius Kutu Acheampong—former military head of state. Christians were compelled to work on Sunday mornings instead of going to church. The regime’s perceived anti-Christian stance came to a head with the passing of PNDC Law 211 (1989), which required all religious groups to register with the National Commission on Culture. When the law came into effect, two religious groups were immediately banned: the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (also known as Mormons). Members of the Christian Council and the Catholic Bishop Conference restricted their members from obeying the law. The PNDC regime remained quiet about it, even though the law was still in effect until the promulgation of the 1992 Constitution, which gave more rights to religious affiliation and expression. All this gestures the complex interface between religion and politics and thin line between the two when applied to governance for various reasons. Religion and politics in Ghana since the turn of the millennium Religion has occupied and continues to occupy a prominent place in Ghanaian politics. On the eve of the 2000 elections, the then opposition party, the New Patriotic Party, used religion as an instrument to canvass for votes. They composed a song that featured their candidate, John Kufuor, as a God-fearing man, with a vision who could save Ghana from oppression and suppression. 299 During the 2000 election campaign, the New Patriotic Party, hereafter NPP, appropriated the song, Ewuradze Kasa (God speak), composed by Cyndi Thomson, a member of the Church of Pentecost. The pitiful tone of the song attracted the solidarity of the Ghanaian populace to the political campaign of the NPP. The song was transposed into the political environment to reflect the socio-economic situation of Ghana. A number of Ghanaians saw in the song the cry for God to intervene in the affairs of Ghana, and the NPP presented itself, by using the song, as the God-designated party to redeem the country. The NPP used the country’s economic situation at the time, which had taken a nosedive, in their message, “Hwe wa setena mu, na to aba pa, to wit, “check your livelihood and vote well.” Cyndi Thomson’s song is believed to have contributed to the success of the NPP in the 2000 elections. Indeed, many Ghanaians had grown tired of the PNDC/NDC government and were campaigning for change, but the role of Cyndi Thomson’s 299 We need a man to save Mother Ghana. A wise man like J.A. Kufour. A humble and a God-fearing man with a vision. To save our mother Ghana from oppression and suppression. To make Ghana, a happy home

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captivating song in securing the NPP’s victory cannot be overstated. Again, ex-President Kufuor, then-Candidate Kufuor, cast himself as the Moses who would deliver Ghana from its economic quagmire. On a campaign platform in 2000, Kufuor remarked: “I believe God will use me to deliver his people on December 7.” 300 Mills, on the part of the National Democratic Congress, hereafter NDC, was presented as Joshua who was to take over from Moses (Rawlings). 301 Mills was again perceived as the symbolic representation of the Comforter, who was to take over from Jesus Christ (Rawlings). Again, the use of religious images and metaphors may not be a sign of religiosity, but certainly a political tactic or strategic use of religion – which also reinforces my argument that religion and politics realign in governance. Shortly after ex-president Kufour had taken over the reins of administration from the NDC, he paid a visit to the late president of Togo, Gnassingbe Eyadema, and just when he returned, there was a stampede at the Accra Sports when the two strongest football clubs, Kumasi Asante Kotoko and Accra Hearts of Oak, were involved in a football match that resulted in a late 2:1 victory in favour of Hearts. The supporters of Asante Kotoko could not accept the defeat and started throwing chairs and bottles at the referee. The police on guard responded to the situation by firing teargas into the spectators, which resulted in a stampede as spectators were struggling to get out of the stadium. Unfortunately, that incident resulted in the death of about 127 spectators from both sides of the clubs. Some Ghanaians quickly read meaning into the event by claiming that Kufuor had gone to Togo, a neighbouring country, to perform some rituals that demanded blood. Accordingly, the rituals were an explanation for the victory of the NPP, and as a way of thanking the deity that had enabled them, the NPP had to provide human blood, hence the stampede that claimed the lives of many Ghanaian football supporters on May 9, 2001. After the incident, Kufour and some high-ranking members of the NPP, led by the National Chief Imam of Ghana, Sheikh Usman Nuhu Sharubutu, went and performed rituals at the stadium to appease the spirits of the deceased persons, who were alleged to be haunting spectators at the stadium. Apart from the rituals performed by the 300 Gifford, Ghana’s New Christianity: Pentecostalism in a Globalizing African Economy, 177, cited in Frederick Acheampong, ‘Christian Themes as Campaign issues: A Feature of Ghana’s 4th Republican Elections’ A Conference paper delivered at Religion, Politics and National Peace Conference at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Religions Studies Department (19th-22nd September, 2012) 301 This featured prominently in a Ga expression of a political phrase: J.J. efe eko, Atta Mills baa chano, to wit, Rawlings has done his part, Atta Mills will continue.

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National Chief Imam of Ghana, Ghanaians were called upon to pray for the deceased and to also pray for such an event to never occur again in the country. Instead of dealing with hooliganism in sports and training our police on crowd control mechanisms, we find a disaster linked to religion. The political effect of this religious act was that it deflected the accusation against Kufuor for dabbling in occultism for political gain. 302 This would have made the president very unpopular and also ruin his ambition to contest for second term in office. The involvement of the National Chief Imam may have also inured to the benefit of the NPP, a party that has a historical record of having expelled migrants. I am specifically referring to the party NPP traces its historical ancestry, the United Party of K.A. Busia. In 1969 Busia, the next civilian head of State of Ghana, passed the Aliens Compliance Order that is believed to have resulted in the expulsion of Ghana’s migrants. 303 In September 2007, a group of lesbians, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) activists wanted to hold a conference in Ghana, but the religious leaders of the country prevailed upon ex-President Kufour to disallow it. As a Catholic and also a deeply religious person, Kufuor heeded the protest from the religious groups in Ghana and disallowed the hosting of the conference in Ghana. Kufuor’s religious beliefs also prevented him from amending the Act against Unnatural Sexual Relations, which includes homosexuality, in order to accommodate and decriminalize LGBT people in Ghana. Religion was also particularly important during the administration of ex-President Kufuor. He reinstated the teaching of Religious and Moral Education in 2008, after the new educational curriculum, designed by Prof. Jophus Anamoah-Mensah, the former Vice Chancellor of the University of Education, Winneba, had recommended the suspension of the teaching of the subject in 2007. Though some members of the Afrikannia Mission protested against the reintroduction of RME on the grounds that it promotes foreign culture at the expense of Ghanaian culture, Kufuor insisted that the subject should be taught at the basic school level. His argument was that religious education was important in moulding the character of the next generation of Ghanaian leaders. The purpose of religious education is not to teach Ghanaian children about their respective religions, as is/was to introduce them to the others’ religion to foster tolerance in a religiously-plural country. It was also to 302 Comfort Max-Wirth, Juju and statecraft: Occult rumors and politics in Ghana (PhD thesis submitted to Victoria University of Wellington, 2016). 303 Margaret Peil, “The expulsion of West African aliens,” The Journal of Modern African Studies, 9, 2 (1971): 205-229.

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tease out the various shared values embedded in the Ghana’s religions to promote public discipline. The teaching of religion in schools has a deep history, so we could peek into history to determine when religious education became part of the academic syllabus of schools in Ghana. Traditionally, there was a formal education system that prepared people to serve as priests and priestesses in traditional society. However, with the advent of Europeans in the 15th century, which witnessed the establishment of schools, religious education became part and parcel of the formal education system. The schools were used as part of the process of converting Africans to Christianity. So much emphasis was placed on the teaching of the Christian faith; however, there were some differences in denominational teachings. In all the missionary schools—Wesley Girls in 1836 and Mfantsipim in 1876 (both Methodist), Adisadel College in 1910 (Anglican), St. Augustine College in 1935 and Holy Child in 1945 (both Roman Catholic), and Presbyterian Boys School in 1938 (Presbyterian)—the teaching of religion, particularly Christianity, was high on the curriculum. In post-colonial Ghana, religious groups continue to establish schools to encourage and sustain the teaching of religions. We have tertiary institutions such as Valley View University, established by the Sevenths Day Adventist Church in 1979; Methodist University by the Methodist Church in 2000; Islamic University College by the Shi’ia Muslims in 2002; Catholic University by the Catholic Church in 2003; and Pentecost University College by the Church of Pentecost in 2003. Thus, religious bodies in Ghana, through the establishment of schools, continue to influence the contours of Ghana’s politics. The incorporation of religious education into the school curriculum of missionary education explains the popularity of Christian themes among the political elites in Ghanaian politics. The 2008 elections in Ghana were keenly contested. Religion was appropriated to serve the interests of the two dominant parties, the NPP and the NDC. The late president John Evans Atta Mills, then candidate Mills, was marketed by his party as a man of peace, hence his title, “The Prince of Peace.” Contrarily, Nana Addo Danquah Akufo Addo, the candidate for the NPP, was seen by the opposition, the NDC, as aggressive and warlike. The NDC’s candidate was projected as a good Christian, a God-fearing man, and a man of peace. As a result, the NDC did not regard their candidate’s use of a title that is restricted to Jesus Christ, the Christian saviour, as blasphemy. Although some Christian religious leaders, who had a soft spot for the NPP, argued against Mills’ use of the title, that did not stop the NDC from appropriating the title. But here again, Akofu Addo was seen as Joshua, 116

who was to continue with the work Moses (Kufuor) had already started. Akufo Addo was to take the Israelites (Ghanaians) to the promise land (economic prosperity). Rawlings campaigned on the idea that Atta Mills was the liberator who was to deliver Ghanaians from an economy that had taken a nosedive. The political propaganda against the NPP’s candidate as an aggressive person came to a head when, on the eve of the 2012 general elections, he said in a speech to his party supporters and sympathisers that, “All die, all die.” While some political pundits saw the statement as harmless, others perceived it as capable of triggering ethnic conflict in Ghana. This occurred against the backdrop of the 2016 NPP’s campaign slogan, “The Battle is the Lord’s” 304, major theme in the Bible. Indeed, if the NPP saw the battle (the elections) as a “battle of the Lord’s,” then there was no need to fear that the party would resort to violence when the elections did not go in its favour. It is important to note that while some members of the NPP cited the National Anthem of Ghana, partly the part that says, “Bold to defend forever, the cause of freedom and of right,” to defend the “All die, all die” mantra, some, as usual, resorted to the Bible to give the expression a Christian blessing. They cited the case of the four lepers in the bible recorded in II Kings 7:3–4, 305 who decided to face the inevitability of death as they went to the camp of the enemies at Arameans in search of food. But no amount of damage control mechanisms could reverse the detrimental effect the “All die, be dead” statement had on the fate of the party; once the Pandora box had been opened, no amount of energy could be exerted to keep its contents from exploding. The NDC, the then ruling government, capitalised on the statement against Nana Addo in their campaign. It is also interesting to note that the statement was given a religious twist by some religious leaders, who were against the NPP’s candidate. For example, the leader of the Hezekiah Apostolic Ministry in Ghana,

304 The campaign theme of the NPP was taken from II Chronicles 20:15, which reads: ‘He said: “Listen, King Jehoshaphat and all who live in Judah and Jerusalem! This what the Lord says to you: Do not be afraid or discouraged because of this vast army. For the battle is not yours, but the Lord’s.” 305 In II Kings 7:4, it is recorded: ‘Now there were four men with leprosy at the enterance of the city gate. They said to each other, “Why stay here until we die? If we say, ‘We’ll go into the city’ – the famine is there, and we will die. And if we stay here, we will die. So, let’s go over to the camp of the Arameans and surrender. If they spare us, we live, if they kill us, then we die.

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Pastor Kwabene Adjei, told Gold News that the NPP was going to lose the 2012 elections because of his “All dies be die’ statement. 306 On the other hand, candidate Mills was marketed as a humble man, a God-fearing man, and a prince of peace. The NDC appealed to the religious consciousness of Ghanaians and finally succeeded in winning the elections. Indeed, when President Mills assumed the helm of the administration, he did quite a lot to prove that he was deeply religious. On several occasions, when he was accused of gradually converting the castle, the seat of government, into a prayer camp, his response was very sharp and forthright: “I wish the whole of Ghana was turned into a prayer camp.” The zeal with which the president was turning the castle into a prayer camp was of concern to some Ghanaian religious leaders. So, on September 17, 2009, at a symposium put on by the Danquah Institute, Rt. Rev. Asante Antwi told the president not to turn the castle into a prayer camp. Though President Mills claimed to be a Christian, he was said to wear a magic ring on the middle finger of his left hand that enabled him to win the 2008 elections. On Monday, May 16, 2012, on the Metro TV program “Good Morning Ghana,” Dominic Nitiwul, the NPP MP for the Bimbila constituency, made and supported the following claim: President Mills wore a ring during the electioneering campaign; he didn’t wear it before, and he hasn’t worn it since. I’m just relaying information from their side of the political divide that claims it’s a magical ring; trouble is brewing, and these things are bound to come up. 307

One important development in understanding religion and politics in Ghana is the emergence of prophets of the Christian church, who have developed a penchant for predicting the winner of an election. It has been posited that some self-styled prophets take upon themselves the task of determining in advance which candidate is going to win an election. Usually, such prophets claim that God has revealed the outcome of an election to them in advance. T.B. Joshua, the founder of the Synagogue Church of God, claimed that he prophesied the victory of Atta Mills in the 2008 elections. According to him, God had revealed to him that President Mills was going to win the 2008 elections 306 Doris Frimpommaa Adunya, ‘Pastor links Akufo Addo’s fall to his ‘all die be die’ statement’ http://myradiogoldlive.com/index.php/politics/1307-pastor-linksakufo-addos-fall-to-his-all-die-be-die-statement. Accessed: 23/08/2014. 307 Mills used magic ring to win Presidency; Dominic Nitiwul alleges http://politics.myjoyonline.com/pages/news/201105/65438.php, published August 9, 2011, accessed: 23/08/2014.

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after the elections had gone to a third round. It’s difficult to say whether these prophets are correct in their predictions. Mills indeed won the 2008 elections, but was it really revealed to T.B. Joshua as the latter claims? Given the political climate and the sorry state of Ghana’s economy in 2008, it was very conspicuous that Mills would win the elections. Again, logically, Mills stood the chance of winning the elections because he had already contested twice without winning, and now that he was contesting for the third time, it was likely that he would get some sympathy votes from Ghanaians. Finally, the issue of TB Joshua predicting the 2008 run off was very easy and may not be divine because the mathematics of the last constituency to vote (Tain) was such that it favoured NDC. Considering that Mills was running for office for the third time in 2008, he enjoyed greater popularity than Nana Akuffo Addo, who was entering the race for the first time. These explanatory factors make it possible for any political analyst to accurately forecast Atta Mills’ victory. Two prophets, Bismark Opesah Otoo, president of Jesus Delivery Ministries, and Rev. Owusu Bempah, of Glorious Word Power Ministries, had predicted Nana Addo’s victory on the eve of the 2012 elections. Bempah predicted that Nana Addo would win but would not be declared the winner, contrary to Otoo’s prediction that Nana would win by a landslide. The prophecies of these two divine prophets did not materialise. Thus, one is tempted to doubt these prophets’ predictions regarding Ghanaian politics. But when eventually Akufu-Addo won the 2020 presidential elections in Ghana, to consolidate his own self-claim as the nation’s prophet, Owusu Bempah gave the current president of Ghana, Nana Addo Dankwa AkufuAddo, a horn of strength during the presidential inauguration of the president in 2017. 308 Given that Akufu-Addo had tried unsuccessfully for two terms to become president, Owusu-Bempah claimed that his prayers, morphing into prophecy, had aided the realisation of AkufuAddo’s rise to the highest office in the land. The horn was also to ease his access to power as part of contributing to public governance, indirectly in accordance with his claim as the prophet of the nation. The roles that the Hebrew prophets played in Israelite politics may be related to how Christian prophets foretell the results of political elections. The majority of the Hebrew prophets were renowned for being politically engaged. They acted as God’s representatives to rule 308 Ghanaweb (19 March 2017), “Owusu Bempah presents ‘horn of strength’ to Akufu-Addo”, https://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/Owusu-Bempahpresents-horn-of-strength-to-Akufo-Addo-520213.

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Israel, correcting leaders when they made mistakes. When Israel was a theocracy, the prophets combined the roles of a priest, king, and judge. And the prophets continued to play a significant role in the governance of the state even after Saul, Israel’s first king, led his people into a monarchical society. Before the political leaders made any important decisions, they were consulted. Closely related to some prophets prophesying the victory of a particular candidate is the emergence of gospel musicians who sing on campaign platforms in support of politicians. We have already alluded to how the NPP appropriated the song a particular candidate is the emergence of gospel musicians who sing on campaign platforms in support of politicians. We have already alluded to how the NPP appropriated the song “Ewuradze Kasa” by Cindy Thomson in their campaign in 2000. In the 2012 elections, the ace Ghanaian gospel musician, Evangelist Diana Asamoah, who is known for her captivating spiritual songs, composed a campaign song titled, “Wo na me yi wo,” to wit, “You are the one I have chosen,” to support Nana Akufo Addo. The song portrayed Nana Addo as the God-chosen leader to redeem Ghana. The song also urged Nana Addo not to panic because he was the one the Lord was going to use to take Ghana to the promise land (economic prosperity). Others, including Isaiah Kwadwo Ampong, also known as Great Ampong, and Grace Ashy, wrote songs with biblical themes to support the NPP candidate. Usually, these gospel musicians, who sing in support of a particular politician, do so with the conviction that God has revealed to them that the particular politician they are rooting for is the preferred leader for Ghana. The resurgence of African Traditional Religion in contemporary Ghanaian politics Some scholars have opined that Africans enter any foreign religion with two legs wide open: one in the new religion and the other in the old religion (African Traditional Religion). 309 Christianity and Islam, as well as other Eastern religions, have not completely succeeded in displacing African Traditional Religion. 310 Most Africans do not see any contradiction between keeping the new religion they have been converted to and making recourse to their traditional religion when the

309 E. Bolaji Idowu, African traditional religion: A definition (London: S.C.M. Press, 1973); John S. Mbiti, African religions and philosophy (London: Heinemann, 1969). 310 Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, Tolerance and tension: Islam and Christianity in Sub-Saharan Africa (Washington, DC.: The Pew Research Center, 2010).

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need arises – clothing the religion with an enduring legacy. 311 This phenomenon is very much seen in politics in contemporary Ghana. Some Ghanaians have repeatedly urged politicians to swear not only to the gods of the Bible and the Qur’an, but also to the deities of the country – especially Antoa Nyama in the Ashanti Region of the country. 312 This call comes from the notion that the god of the Bible and the Qur’an, with his concept of deferred punishment, has been very passive in observing corrupt politicians getting away with their mischief with impunity. Mallam Ali Yusif Issah recently called for a spiritual duet between himself and ex-President Kufuor to meet at the shrine of Antoa Nyama in the Ashanti Region to prove whether he (Mallam Ali Yusif Issah) actually stole the $46,000 that he was accused of stealing. 313 The call to engage African deities in contemporary politics in Ghana also stems from the perception that the state’s judicial system has often failed to prosecute politicians who dabble in corrupt practices. Again, it is widely held in Ghana that only the deities can reveal the truth in contentious matters. This may explain why former President Rawlings has repeatedly urged ex-President Kufuor to visit the shrine of Antoa Nyama so that the latter can establish his innocence in relation to accusations of corruption levelled against him. 314 Similarly, in 2016, Henry Lartey, leader of the Great Consolidated Popular Party, invited

311 Kofi Asare Opoku, “African traditional religion: An enduring legacy,” In Jacob K. Olupona & Sulayman S. Nyang (eds.), Religious plurality in Africa: Essays in honour of John S. Mbiti, 67-82 (Berlin/New York: Mouton De Gruyter, 1993). 312 Ghanaweb (24 June 2019), “Manhyia chases NDC members for invoking curses on EC chair, others,” https://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/Manhyia-chasesNDC-members-others-for-invoking-curses-on-EC-Chair-757551; Ghanaweb (5 June 2020), “NPP primaries: Offinso NPP youth invoke curses on party executives,” https://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/NPPprimaries-Offinso-NPP-youth-invoke-curses-on-party-executives-971362: Ghanaweb (29 May 2018), “Swear by ‘Antoa Nyamaa’ if Nyantakyi never gave you money – Asafo Agyei to Akufu-Addo,” https://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/Swear-by-AntoaNyamaa-if-Nyantakyi-never-gave-you-money-Asafo-Agyei-to-Akufo-Addo-655674. 313 Graphiconline/Myjoyonline (14 January 2014), “Mallam Issah dares Kufuor: Meet at Antoa if you are a man,” https://www.graphic.com.gh/news/politics/mallam-issah-dares-kufuor-meet-meat-antoa-if-you-are-a-man.html. 314 The Daily Guide (22 July 2004), “Let’s go to ‘antoa’ – JJ dares JAK,” https://www.modernghana.com/news/59458/lets-go-to-antoa-jj-dares-jak.html.

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Rawlings to Antoa over an alleged $2m Abacha gift to Rawlings. 315 It is clear that most Ghanaian politicians fear Antoa Nyama more than they fear the god of the invading religions, so it is common for people to invoke Antoa Nyama’s powers when they feel they have been treated unfairly. The manipulative use to which politicians put indigenous deities may not be entirely different people swearing on the Bible even when they are lying—all indexing daily religious use of religion that appears to have no effect. The justification given by some politicians who invoke the powers of Antoa Nyama is that the goddess instantly strikes by either killing the guilty party or making the life of the person who is cursed miserable. The constant invocation of Antoa Nyama in Ghana’s political discourse shows not just how Ghanaians have despaired for lack of alternative in state institutions to deal with matters bothering the state. The current situation in Ghana is such that religion continues to exert a profound influence on the lives of many Ghanaians. Atheism has not gained much ground in Ghana, even though there are a few Ghanaians who do not hold allegiance to any religion. Politics and religion are inextricably linked, as is increasingly obvious and fashionable. Because Ghanaians in general are highly religious, politicians will continue to use and appropriate religious themes and texts to achieve a political objective. Several factors will ensure that religion continues to be vibrant in Ghana. The proliferation of Pentecocharismatic churches and the resurgence of African Traditional Religion will continue to give life to religion in Ghana. The only danger is that religion has the potential to drive passion for good or bad, and so it is appropriate for politicians to avoid appealing to religious fanatics by contextualising religious themes in their electioneering campaigns. In Africa, modernization is not imply a naked public sphere devoid of religious influence, which in the West leads to secular atheism. 316 Africans have often incorporated religion into their daily activities in the public sphere. Most African societies accept religion as a part of public life; in Ghana, the symbiotic relationship between religion and politics is therefore a given assumption. This explains why politics and religion are so closely intertwined in Ghana that it is impossible to distinguish between the two. Religion has featured prominently in politics since pre-colonial Ghana. The linchpin of the chieftaincy 315 Ghanaweb (18 October 2016), “Henry Lartey invites Rawlings to Antoa over $2m Abacha gift,” https://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/Henry-Larteyinvites-Rawlings-to-Antoa-over-2m-Abacha-gift-478555. 316 Gavin Hyman, A short history of atheism (London: T.B. Tauris, 2010).

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institution is religion. 317 Religion continues to be very important in Ghanaian politics today. Beginning with Ghana’s first president, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, Ghanaian politicians have often appropriated religious themes, symbols, and text from religious scriptures for political expediency. Following the perceived failure of the state institutions to deal swiftly with issues of corruption and political vindictiveness, it is common for politicians to invoke the prowess of some deities, such as Antoa Nyama, for political motives. It is clear from the discussion above that religion plays a significant role in Ghanaian politics, and, in contrast to modernist theory, 318 religion will continue to exert influence on Ghanaian politics for a long time. Since Africa has not experienced the major intellectual revolution that called for a separation between the “church” and “state” in Europe, it is doubtful whether Africans will ever relegate religion to the background in the future. The current existential challenges facing many African countries will continue to make religion a vital source of solace for several Ghanaians. The slow technological advancement of many African countries will continue to make religion a viable alternative to explaining the inexplicable mysteries of life. Christian nationalism: An assessment of Jeffrey Haynes’ discussion of Ghana A major challenge in both public and academic discourses on Africa is discussants’ overdependence on theories minted and brewed in the western to discuss sometimes very unique case on continent. Kwabena Akurang-Parry has described disposition of Africans has been analysed another form of Western imperialism euphemistically called Globalization. 319 He described educated Africans who become channels for the diffusion of imperialist Western theories as “penarmed robbers” whom he also described as a class of people, [W]ho steal from the state to enrich themselves. Their cargo cult is expensive cars. Have five of them and you are a successful person. Their food is pizza, KFC, Chinese perfumed rice, burger king, and all. They attend classes to learn how to use Japanese chop sticks. And the effects are there for all to see: fat couples and their bloated children struggling to walk through the doors of KFC! Fattened old men, both white and black, Akrong, “Religion and Traditional.” Cox, The secular; Berger, The sacred. 319 Kwabena O. Akurang-Parry, Velvet seekers: Africans orbiting these parts (Tema/Ghana: Digitbooks, 2022), p. 49. 317 318

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struggling to take their young teenage girlfriends to KFC, Burger King, and all. 320

Discussing Western scholarship on Africa, Akurang-Parry wrote as follows: Most Western scholars of African history on the pedestal of fame don’t speak and neither do they understand the nuances of African languages. As a result, most Western historians of African history, especially the contemporary generation, don’t use oral history harvested from the very people they study and write about. They rely on the violence of Western texts cobbled by biased and even racist colonial officials, Christian missionaries, and adventurer-travellers, as their key sources of African history. 321

Taking inspiration from Akurang-Parry, I also lean on Francis Nyamnjoh who has convincingly argued for centring the traditions of knowledge of Africa, otherwise the decolonisation agenda is nothing short of a treadmill race where African scholars hardly push the trigger hard enough against western epistemic injustice. 322 I have borrowed from these eminent African scholars because the debate over religion and politics, once again, brings into sharp focus the peripherizing African perspectivism and imperialist imposition of its epistemic irrationality on Africans. The debate over the national cathedral dovetails with Jeffrey Haynes’ usage of the concept of Christian nationalism as Ghana’s emerging profile. To be sure, the use of the term is not common in both popular and academic discourse. This is not to say, however, that Ghanaians do not have an expression that smacks of Christian nationalism. For example, as I have already said, the cathedral has been designated to symbolise an attempt by conservative religious groups to hijack the state. It is also claimed that Ghana is not a theocratic state, while campaigners and advocates of minority sexual rights claim that the intrusion of the religious group, particularly Christians seeking to impose their sexual ethics, and the accompanying punitive measures smack of Europe’s Dark Ages. It is interpreted as a regression of Ghana’s liberal democracy since the 1990s.In the interest of my analysis of the idea of Christian nationalism, I will liberally cite Ibid., p. 49. Ibid., p. 51. 322 Francis B. Nyamnjoh, Decolonising the academy: A case for convivial scholarship (Basel: Carl Schlettwein Lecture 14, 2020). 320 321

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the position of the advocates of LGBTQ+ rights who said about the family bill: Seeks to send the country back centuries into the past. Its language of “recant and treatment” echoes the Middle Ages of Europe, where the state and the church, driven by misguided notions of heresy and witchcraft, hunted down innocents in the name of God and religious values. Blinded by religious zealotry and intolerance, the theocratic state and its church forced innocent, vulnerable persons to “recant” their religious beliefs and burned nonconformists at the stake in the misguided belief that their gruesome murders would somehow purge their souls of evil. 323

The above expression brings out the idea of what is popularly considered Christian nationalism: Christians seeking to saturate their public sphere with Christian values and ethics. The concept is very nebulous, imprecise, and contradictory, making it unsuitable to use to designate Ghana. Such an attempt is considered incongruent with the ideals of democracy. For example, as the tussle over a bill to promote heterosexual rights and Ghanaian family values. Known as “Promotion of Proper Human Sexual Rights and Ghanaian Family Bill, 2021”, the advocates, including Mr Moses Foh-Amoaning, (a legal practitioner) seeks “to provide proper human sexual rights and Ghanaian family values; proscribe LGBTQ+ and related activities in Ghana.” 324 With this stated objective of a bill, advocates in support of minority sexual rights have charged that Ghana’s Parliament “ought not to become a party to a fanatical crusade of intolerance and extremism of the 21st century.” 325 I will discuss all these in the context of Jeffrey Haynes, who has written extensively on Ghana’s religious and political narratives and who takes the issue to the level of framing Ghana’s liberal democracy as being threatened by Christian nationalism. But before I refute the simplistic claim of Haynes, I will provide a brief historical context for the concept of Christian nationalism, limiting myself to the regime of America’s 45th President, Donald Trump. On January 6, 2021, in Washington, DC, America’s democracy was perceived as having come 323 Memorandum to Select Committee on the Constitutional, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs on the: Promotion of Proper Human Sexual Rights and Ghanaian Family Values Bill, 2021, p. 1 324 Promotion of Proper Human Sexual Rights and Ghanaian Family Values Bill, 2021, https://cdn.modernghana.com/files/722202192224-0h830n4ayt-lgbt-bill.pdf. 325 Memorandum to Select Committee on the Constitutional, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs on the: Promotion of Proper Human Sexual Rights and Ghanaian Family Values Bill, 2021, p. 1.

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under support from Trump supporters, the majority of whom held flags with Christian symbols. The embattled Trump is said to have stoked the rage of the mob as a result of his incendiary and reckless comments. Trump is said to have urged his supporters to fight hard to overturn the outcome of the elections, or else they would not have a country anymore. Accordingly, his incendiary comments set young men and women on a purposeful rampage as they gathered on the country’s Constitution Avenue and the National Mall towards the Capitol building. Trump’s signature red MAGA (Make America Great Again) baseball caps carried inscriptions such as “Stop the Steal.” On the whole, the episode was considered a major threat to America’s democracy. Katherine Stewart claimed in the New York Times that the Christian nationalists “styled themselves as patriots.” But it makes a glimmer of sense once you understand that their allegiance is to belief in blood, earth, and religion rather than to the mere idea of a government “of the people, by the people, for the people” (emphasis in the author’s). 326 Blaming America’s conservative Christians, Stewart wrote: The role of the faith-based messaging sphere is less well appreciated. Pastors, congregations, and the religious media are among the most trusted sources of information for many voters. Christian nationalist leaders have established richly funded national organisations and initiatives to exploit this fact. The repeated message that they sought to deliver through these channels is that outside sources of information are simply not credible. The first requirement for Mr. Trump’s claim was the formation of an information bubble that was impervious to correction. 327

Barbara Plett Usher reporter with the BBC in Tennessee, US graphically drew out the Christian symbolism of January 6 as follows: The sight of rioters carrying crosses and Christian flags and even praying together exposed just how much religious and political identities had begun to merge on the right—bonded by a belief that the 2020 election had been stolen from Donald Trump.328

326 Katherine Steward (6 January 2022), “Christian nationalism is one of Trump’s most powerful weapons,” https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/06/opinion/jan-6christian-nationalism.html. 327 Ibid. 328 Barbara Plett Usher (17 December 2022), “Christian nationalists – wanting to put God into US government,” https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada63902626.

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The title of Barbara’s article aptly describes the assumption that religion and politics are mortal foes. It reimagines the secularist idea of a naked public square in governance while theologically creating an impression of a creator God who, through his devotee human beings, is attempting to insert himself into the US government. Needless to say, the idea that God has no place in public governance fuels all the major attempts at stamping out any religious symbol from the public sphere. It creates emotional discharge among so-called secularists who squirm at finding religious people wanting to have a say in public matters— particularly what is taught to their pre-university pupils. With the family, as I have said, constituting the basic unit of society, the sexual revolutionists have sought to disengage and disempower parents from having a say on the sensitive subject of sexual education. This brings me to an incident that happened on the Islamic radio station, Unity FM 93.5, on January 23, 2023. During a phone-in programme dubbed “School Random Show” that involves pre-teens calling in to respond to a quiz-like type of question as part of educating them on current affairs, the host asked the children about what they learned in school as part of ensuring interactive communication. In that context, when one boy responded that he learned “toxic masculinity” in school, the host quickly cut in to say that “there is nothing like toxic masculinity in Islam or society as a whole.” The incident I have narrated above may look simplistic, yet it is embedded with complexities. Is it true that some men abuse women? How is that to be addressed? What does it mean for the schools to determine what constitutes a set of male behaviours that harm society, particularly women? When, in my case, the nurses at a hospital in Birmingham asked me to excuse them as they discussed the outcome of my wife’s unborn baby with her alone? Were they pre-setting my wife against me? If my wife intended to take any decision, such as an abortion, that would be framed as having autonomy over her body. While the above questions do not readily lend themselves to easy answers, all the narratives about Christian nationalism point to the assumption that Christian values and liberal democracy are mutually exclusive. This is usually the case when Christians challenge the state’s promotion of same-sex and abortion rights. But before anything else, I must say that given the multiple shades of Christianity and to be certain that Christian nationalism is usually associated with white Americans, the term that is now used is “white Christian nationalism.” In the case of Ghana and Africa, because there are hardly any visible racial

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distinctions that mark the layers of Christianity, Jeffrey Haynes simply used the term “Christian nationalism.” 329 Turning my attention to Haynes, I must say that Hayne’s article represents his efforts at evaluating the interface between religion and politics in Ghana, a field that, as I have said, has been one of his comfortable areas since the early 1990s. He has also published extensively on the subject, both in Ghana and globally. 330 Nevertheless, he makes several sweeping generalisations and inaccurate assumptions that need responses. I take the liberty to discuss him extensively because I had the chance of encountering him at a MIASA conference at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, on 2-4 November 2022. During his presentation, which involved his usual unproblematized discussion of the use of the concept of secular and secularism, he conveniently avoided my questions related to the concept. In his article and several of his works, he views politics as merely matters of public governance that must be free of religious influence. Haynes’ understanding of secular religion implies that individuals should hold their religion as personal, private, and subjective—to be shielded from public governance. So, a Christian should separate his faith from his public life. A Christian academic must not write about the convictions of his faith against practises such as same-sex marriages; a Christian must not be heard in public praying against abortion; a Christian must not be allowed to even publicly talk about his faith in some jurisdictions. Given this complex and inseparable entwinement between religion and politics, Hayne’s conception of politics as a dualization between religion and politics does not bring out the nuances of the two realms. Historically, emerging from the 18th and 19th centuries’ ideas of the social contract, politics is about the management of differences. This is precisely because the public sphere is a space for multiple individuals to compete for power and wealth. The struggle for power and wealth frequently resulted in a highly polarised public sphere. Political leaders are thus elected not to take sides in the conflict, but to manage it and keep it from polarising the state. This is also due to the fact that, unlike religion, which fundamentally unites people through beliefs and 329 Jeffrey Haynes (24 October 2022), “Christian nationalism poses a threat to human rights in Ghana,” https://theconversation.com/christian-nationalism-posesa-threat-to-human-rights-in-ghana-192518 330 cf. the following sums up much of his works on Ghana: Jeffrey Haynes, Revolution and democracy in Ghana: The politics of Jerry John Rawlings (London: Routledge, 2022).

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ritualised into a regimental lifestyle based on a social covenant, politics is founded on a social contract. As Cox observed, religion is ritualised through song, story, virtual representation, and gesture as part of the narratives that shape a people’s identity. 331 For this reason, when religion plays the role of politics, there is tension; just as when politics plays the role of religion, there is tension. In the case of Ghana, one area where religion and politics tend to cohere is when what the majority of people consider the foundation of society, such as the family, is perceived to be under threat. 332 Haynes claims that the state-sponsored construction of a national cathedral is a threat to Muslim-Christian peaceful interaction. This is far from factual. Yes, historically, Muslims have been alarmed whenever the state—both colonial and postcolonial—attempts to interfere with the public against Islam or tamper with Islamic family law. For this purpose, since the 1930s, the Muslim community has often resisted any attempt by the state to determine Islamic family law and similarly contested the census figures allocated to them. 333 But Haynes, in his discussion of so-called Christian nationalism, choreographed himself against the fact that Muslims have not been against the cathedral. The initial concern, for political reasons, was the location of the cathedral. To ensure that the cathedral does not compete with the national mosque, also in Accra, the cathedral should be away from Accra. As I have said, the national chief imam has even contributed to it. While Harruna Attah, partly for partisan reasons and her personal agenda, claims the national chief imam was pressured to go to the cathedral, neither the chief imam nor his secretary make that claim. 334 Similarly, in seeking to impose the idea of Christian nationalism on Ghana, Haynes did not define his use of religion in reference to the people of Ghana. This, as I have mentioned, limited his understanding of religion as Ghanaians have to privatise their religion when in public. Religion is a set of worldviews that some people use to make sense of the world. It is about the stories people tell about themselves that help in the reaffirmation of their identity and self-affirmation of their role in public governance. It is what people turn to in the event of crises and seismic socio-economic and political disruptions. It is about how Cox, The future, p. 39. Charles Prempeh, Gender, Sexuality and Decolonisation in Postcolonial Ghana: A Socio-Philosophical Engagement (Bamenda/Cameroon: Langaa RPCIG, 2023). 333 JND Anderson, Islamic Law in Africa. 334 Ghanaweb (31 August 2021), “National cathedral: Chief Imam was pressurized to donate – Haruna Attah,” https://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/National-CathedralChief-Imam-was-pressurized-to-donate-Haruna-Attah-1345375. 331 332

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people respond to issues of marginalisation in a world with multiple layers of injustice. It is about how people relate both theocentrically and anthropocentrically. It is also about who claims ultimate authority when making decisions that contradict political leaders. Putting all this together, it is overly simplistic for anyone to assume that Ghanaians will just go to the public sphere without having their religion accompany them. It goes against Anna-Riikka Kauppinen’s observation of the above non-binary between religion and politics, personal and state. Charismatic Pentecostal media practitioners have since the 1990s produced spiritually motivated personal development programmes to build suitable character for economic prosperity. 335 Instead of just the usual framing of religion as counterproductive to economic enrichment, Anna-Riikka remarked that the purpose of Christianmediated personal development is to offer Ghanaians concrete tools to bridge the gap between work and faith and direct attention away from the Devil into spaces and circuits of future transformation. 336 Given the preponderance of religion in Ghana’s public sphere, therefore, I agree with Anna-Riikka that there is a direct interface between postcolonial development as a converging point between “the world” and God’s kingdom. All this is possible because the western imposition of a neoliberal regime, as part of modernising the country, did weaken the state and, instead of modernization without religion, enlarged the presence of religion as co-creators of economic prosperity and nation-building. It is not accurate, therefore, for a conversation about the national cathedral to serve as an index of religion seeking to hijack the state. Anna-Riikka is similarly right in her assertion that instead of the secular ethos of democracy relegating religion to the private sphere, the transition to democracy heightened the public presence of religion in Ghana. 337 Continuing from the above, in discussing the current nexus between religion and politics as an index of Ghana’s postcolonial political reality, framing the country as trapped in the cog of the wheels of Christian nationalism is not historically robust. This is because the colonial regime possessed the weapon of violence and could use it to the point of total destruction of the colonised (Frantz Fanon, 1963). Meanwhile, while the Weberian construction of the modern state is indexed by the 335 Anna-Riikka Kaupinen, “Citizens for Ghana and the kingdom: Christian personal development in Accra,” Spirituality, Organization and Neoliberalism, 2020: 128. 336 Ibid., p. 14. 337 Ibid., p. 12.

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rational and structural legitimization of the elite’s access to coercive power, 338 political elites in postcolonial, politically liberal Ghana do not have the luxury of brute force. Unlike the colonial regime, any attempt to use force by postcolonial leaders was met with predictable backlash. That was one of the reasons for the challenge to Rawlings, who Haynes described as having a strained relationship with the church. Meanwhile, Rawlings, like Nkrumah, as I have already mentioned, attempted to undermine religious freedom, even as they attempted to use religion as a counter-hegemonic force against religious people. Rawlings was not entirely against religious leaders, as the author claims. He was rather opposed to Christian leaders who challenged his excessive use of power, including revoking the licence and banning the operation of the Catholic Standard newspaper in 1985. 339 Rawlings could not tolerate Jehovah’s Witnesses who refused to submit to the sacralization of state institutions, similar to the western intolerance of evangelical Christians who refuse to cower to the sexual and moral progression agenda, with leaders like Barak Obama classifying them as lying behind the pale of time. Charging them with spying for the US, Rawlings banned the Jehovah’s Witnesses from operating in Ghana through the controversial Religious Bodies Registration Law (PNDC Law 221) in 1989. 340 At this point, I recapitulate what I have already said about the entwined complementary roles religion and politics play in public governance. Religion needs the power to ensure unity—that power is “love” and trust, which the author may refer to as “soft power” in one of his works. Nevertheless, when soft power is used, a religious constituency tends to excommunicate its members, which may be quite problematic in a world of heightened individual rights. Even so, religious affiliation is highly voluntary – at least before one enters into it. Since one makes a choice, one is obliged to stick to the ethos of one’s voluntarily chosen religion. In the case of politics, one does not voluntarily choose to belong to a state—at least not when one is a minor, as in the case of Ghana. But because politics also needs to be able to unite people to achieve the complex idea of the “common good,” it tends to take on the role of 338 Max Weber, Economy and society (A new translation by Keith Tribe). Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2019, 75. 339 nana essilfie-conduah, My talk: Articles for the Catholic Standard, 2017-2020 (n.d.). 340 Smith Oduro-Marfo, “Eyes on you while your eyes are on God: State surveillance of religion in Ghana under the Provisional National Defence Council regime,” Surveillance & Society, 16, 4 (2018): 399-409.

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religion. As a result, political elites in Ghana/Africa and other parts of the world have frequently incorporated religious logic into state formation by “sacralising” mundane things like national symbols and anthems, including flags, constitutions, state institutions, and so on. For this purpose of “sacralization,” any attack on these mundane materials is considered treason—at least in the case of Ghana. For example, when the Ghana flag was designed, the country opted to interpret the colour “red” as a signification of those who died for Ghana. Where in the world do people get the idea of “blood” as sacrifice and what is the relevance of it to nation-building? Certainly, the idea that someone died to save Ghana implies that one must also die to keep the country alive—the birth of the country’s postcolonial nationalism. This idea connotes sacrifice, which the political elites borrowed from religion to mainstream their control of power. Also, in the 1970s, when the country’s former military leader, General Ignatius Kutu Acheampong, initiated the country’s pledge, one cannot read the content of the country’s pledge as anything “secular” in the loose sense of the word. The national pledge reads as follows: I promise on my honour, to be faithful and loyal to Ghana my motherland I please myself to the service of Ghana With all my strength and with all my might I promise to hold in high esteem Our heritage won for us Through the blood and toil of our father And I pledge myself in all things to uphold and defend the good name of Ghana So, help me, God.

These words can hardly be defined as “secular,” and assuredly, rationality alone will not be enough to convince Ghanaians to die for an imagined state. More compellingly, as a non-settler colony like South Africa and Zimbabwe, Ghanaian nationalists did not have to intentionally lift weapons or exert themselves militarily to ward off colonialism. Ghana has a case that suggest that three of its exservicemen, Sergeant Cornelius Adjetey, Corporal Attipoe and Private Ordartey Lamptey, who fought in the World Wars on the side of the British sacrificed their blood for the nation. To be sure, the exservicemen were also not necessarily embarking on a nationalist course to secure Ghana’s interest: They were pursuing their interests compelling the British governor to fulfil its promise to ex-servicemen. It was out of their agitation that a colonial officer Superintendent C.H. 132

Imray opened fire on them at the Christianburg Crossroads on 28 February 1948. 341 In the end, the elites had to re-enact the history of Ghana, vesting it with religious sentiment and symbolism to inspire the formation of a socially convivial citizen who would have undivided loyalty to the state. For all this reason, Acheampong had to tap into religion to exercise power over an imagined united country that was splitting apart politically and under the heavy yoke of economic recession. Acheampong needed religion to fuel the nationalisation of development as part of his “Operation Feed Yourself” agenda in the 1970s. Having ruled Ghana from 1972 to 1978, Acheampong is reported to have constantly called for weeks of “national prayer and repentance” to solicit transcendental answers to Ghana’s economic challenges. 342 This religious ambience of Ghanaian elites infusing religion into public governance has continued into the neoliberal currents of politics, not because it is historically true but because it enhances governance. Embedded in either the state calling on religious communities to pray for the country’s Akosombo hydro-dam to be filled by God’s generous rain or religious communities devoting their prayers towards the recuperation of the country’s failing Ghana Airways, which was founded in 1958 but has since gone bankrupt, has been very expressive in its use of religion. 343 This also explains why Habermas’ definition of the public sphere as an open space for rational activities is not applicable to Ghana (Meyer, 2004).Also, instead of religion and politics opposing each other to the point of complete annihilation, as observed, religion provides alternatives to the search for security that drives people into the courts of religious functionaries. 344 This also implies that, in contrast to those who make light of public religious expression, Asamoah-Gyadu is absolutely right when he averred that: “In the context of Africa’s seemingly incurable religiosity, however, seeking solutions to problems in the context of religion may not be an aberration.” 345 It is for this reason that Asamoah-Gyadu was so foresighted in asserting that “Pentecostal spirituality, which takes indigenous religious worldviews of mystical causality seriously, may 341 Adrienne M. Israel, “Ex-servicemen at the Crossroads: Protest and politics in post-war Ghana,” The Journal of Modern African Studies, 30, 2 (1992): 359-368. 342 J. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu, “‘Christ is the answer’: What is the question? A Ghana airways prayer vigil and its implications for religion, evil and public space,” Journal of Religion in Africa, 35, 1 (2005): 93-117, p. 113. 343 Asamoah-Gyadu, “‘Christ is the answer.’” 344 Ibid. 345 Ibid., p. 94.

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continue to be the representative face of Christianity on the continent.” 346 Other scholars, including Stephen Ellis and Gerrie ter Haar have observed the African epistemologies do not dualize between the invisible realm of power and the lived social world. 347 Power on the continent, as I must add, elsewhere, is connected with the nonmetaphysical realm. Concurrently, unlike Hayne’s assertion that Pentecostals are suddenly taking over the state, the overwhelming presence of Pentecostalism should be read against the background of the spiritual eclecticism that its religious functionaries incorporate as an index of responding to every emerging issue of public life. It should also be read as Pentecostals undertaking special needs that the historic churches left unaddressed. 348 The need for religious dynamism without ethical and ontological boundaries to sustain religions’ influence in the public sphere was similarly observed by Harvey Cox. He argued that two factors may underline the endurance of any religion: the ability of the religion to include and transform at least certain elements of preexisting religions, which still retain a firm grip on the subconscious, and also equip people to live in a rapidly changing world. 349 Given that religious people are themselves highly eclectic in the consumption of religion, I have already mentioned how Pentecostal leaders retheologised and re-interpreted the Old Testament narratives to reconcile Christian adherence to controversial lockdown rules and the will of God. Asamoah-Gyadu is right that, as several Ghanaians have also observed, those in leadership and those charged with solving a problem deploy religion as a charade to hide their ineptitude. 350 This is generally true. Nevertheless, as Harvey Cox recounted, despite the relentless progress and gain science and rational assessment have contributed significantly to solving or pushing back but it has its limit, as it does not adequately answer the why question. 351 The importance of religion in answering enigmatic why questions is because, as I have already said, human beings are creatures who seek meaning, and they do so, usually Ibid., p. 94. Stephen Ellis & Gerrie ter Haar, “Religion and politics in Africa,” in Elias Kifon Bongmba, The Wiley-Blackwell companion to African religions, 466-482 (Chichester: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2012). 348 Paul Gifford, African Christianity: Its public role (London: Hurst, 1998), p. 329. 349 Harvey Cox, Fire From Heaven: The Rise of Pentecostal Spirituality and the Reshaping of Religion in the Twenty-first Century (Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1995), p. 214. 350 Asamoah-Gyadu, “Christ,” p. 113. 351 Harvey Cox, The future of faith (New York: HarperOne, 2009). 346 347

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at the point of expressing awe and wonder over the termination of life. Cox succinctly stated this: The awareness of one’s own mortality raises the question of the meaning of life, and this eventually spawned philosophy, religion, and culture. But the enigma remains and eventually leads any thoughtful person to face the terrifying issues it inevitably poses: What am I? What are we in all this? 352 In practice, religion and politics are not supposed to mix in terms of their fundamental functions, but political elites use religious ethos to build nations. The reason for this is not far-fetched, precisely because, as I have said above, the idea of the state is a social construct, or to use Anderson’s term, a “cultural artifact” 353 that can readily disintegrate without the mystification of the imagined sense of unity or what Anderson called imagined community. 354 The postcolonial state is imagined because most of their fellow members will never meet and yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion. 355 It is not only a nationalistic feeling that is socially constructed, the very idea that we are Africans is also a socio-historical construct in Africa’s struggle against colonialism. 356 From the perspective of social psychology, it is nearly impossible for an individual to establish an intimate bond with more than 150 people. 357 Given that the idea of Ghana as a modern state was borne out of an assemblage of a mixture of several conflictual ethnic groups, it was simply prudent that Nkrumah deployed religion—his idea of Consciencism—to foster national unity. The colonial governor used both coercive and diplomatic means to unite the colonial state. It is Dennis Austin assumed that such an establishment, considered democratic, was indispensable for framework for any prospect of democratic government that may emerge as a postcolonial reality. He further claimed that African indigenous political regime and Pan-

Ibid., p. 25. Benedict Anderson, Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism (London: Verso, 1991), p. 4. 354 Anderson, Imagined. 355 Ibid., p. 6. 356 Ali A. Mazrui, “On the concept of ‘We are all Africans’,” The American Political Science Review, 57, 1 (1963): 88-97. 357 Rob Brooks, Artificial intimacy: Virtual friends, digital lovers and algorithmic matchmakers (New York: Columbia University Press, 2021), p. 53. I. William Zartman (ed), Collapsed states: The disintegration and restoration of legitimate authority (London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc., 1995). 352 353

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African sentiments would not yield anything as a viable alternative. 358 However, postcolonial leaders lacked both the overwhelming use of violence and the unity required to rule. Not only that, but the postcolonial state was also birthed completely sick from the day one for any efficient governance—justifying scholars indexing the continent as failed, collapsed etc. The colonial regime undermined pre-existing political institutions, which rendered the postcolonial state nearly ungovernable and exposed its precarity to all forms of corruption. 359 The colonial intrusion is also said to have corrupted chieftaincy, made chiefs more powerful than they were – all festering corruption and precolonial structures of accountability were undermined. 360 The colonial state was also built on a highly undemocratic bureaucracy that was characterised by despotism and arbitrariness, a contempt for users, inordinate privilege, and the use of intermediaries, corruption and favours. 361 To add to setting the post-colonial state of Africa on collapse, the colonialist deployed their control of the financial system of erstwhile settler colonies to ensure the rule of the remnant/minority Europeans through their control of central financial regime. 362 I take the liberty to cite Agyeman-Duah who has aptly captured this: The colonial Governor was generally felt to be apart from the people, his distance effectively symobolized by the fortified white walls of the Christianborg Castle from where he ruled. This perception led Akanspeakers to refer to the Government as the ‘aban’—the ‘fortified seat of power’—which had seized the commanding heights of the country’s political and economic resources, and had created a dependency relationship between itself and the people. Everything began and ended with the Government, as demonstrated by the ludicrous practice of 358 Dennis Austin, “Reflections on African politics: Prospero, ariel and Caliban,” International Affairs, 69, 2 (1993): 203-221, p. 204. 359 Victor Le Vine, “Corruption in Ghana,” Transition, 47 (1975), p. 50. 360 Merima Ali, Odd-Helge Fjeldstad, and Abdulziz B. Shifa, “Did British colonial rule in Africa foster a legacy of corruption among local elites?” Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 179 (2020): 80-100, p. 82. 361 G. Blundo and J.-P. Olivier de Sardan, “Everyday corruption in West Africa,” G. Blundo and J.-P. Olivier de Sardan, “Why should we study everyday corruption and how should we go about it?” in G. Blundo and J-P Olivier de Sardan, Everyday corruption and state: Citizens & public officials in Africa, 69-109 (New York: Zed Books, 2006 – emphasis in original text), p. 71. 362 Tinashe Nyamunda, “Money, banking and Rhodesia’s unilateral declaration of independence,” The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 45 (2017): 746776; Tinashe Nyamunda, “British sterling imperialism, settler colonialism and the political economy of money and finance in Southern Rhodesia, 1945-1962,” African Economic History, 45, 1 (2017): 77-109.

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officials commissioning pit-latrines in villages. In effect, local creativities and initiatives were blunted, and any sense of personal social responsibility was detrimentally skewed. Many Ghanaians commonly refer to public property as ‘abandea’—it belongs to the ‘aban’—with the implication that it can be stolen, abused, or destroyed with no direct consequence. The Government is still considered to be a foreign entity. 363

Not only that the postcolonial state is filled by African elites who envied the colonial regime and deployed the method of duplicity to achieve a political goal. This was expressed in joke that was widely circulated on social media in 2020. I transcribed as follows: A Little story about a big man who died and went to the other side. On that day, God has decreed that whoever arrives must choose where to go, whether heaven or hell. So, this man was excited, he demanded to visit hell first and he got into something which looks like a lift and he went down to hell. When the doors opened, things were glorious. The devil had no tail, the devil had no horns, he even met his friends, they were healthy, eating well, drinking well, making merry. Then it was time up and he then demanded to be taken to heaven. In heaven, the picture was nice, angels floating around, good music, the Lord Almighty presiding and reigning supreme. Finally, he was asked, what is your choice? Because you are not going to be judged. There is no judgment today, judge for yourself. He thought, you know these bishops have been telling lies and spoiling the name of the devil. The devil is a very fine man. He looks after his people. Now, all these imams in the mosque making noise saying Satan, Satan, this man is not bad at all and in any case heaven seems to be overrated. As a matter of fact, it is a bit boring. That was the debate in his head so when the angel asked him to choose, he said; “I have chosen that I will go to hell, now that I have seen it with my own eyes.” And the angel said get into the lift. He got into the lift and it took him down, but when the doors opened, things had changed. The place looked like a desert, his friends were wearing dirty clothes, they were eating from the garbage pit and the devil was now complete in his devilish regalia, the tail was out, the horns were out and he was carrying a whip. So, he tiptoed towards the devil and said excuse me Sir, you remember me, don’t you? I was here the other day, you surely remember me and Lucifer said go to hell, I don’t remember you. What do you have to say anyway? He said you know the other day, things were very nice here, things have been changed for the worst today, what’s happening? The devil said, “I am sorry my friend, the day you came,

363 Baffour Agyeman-Duah, “Ghana, 1982-6: The politics of the P.N.D.C.” The Journal of Modern African Studies , 25, 4 (1987): 613-642, pp. 614-615.

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we were campaigning so now, therefore, we need to tell our people to know that there is life after campaigns. Thank you very much. 364

This makes the postcolonial state vulnerable to the artificiality of nationalism. As expressed nations, they are challenged by “sub”nationalisms within their borders—nationalisms that, naturally, dream of shedding this sub-ness one happy day.” 365 For this reason and considering that “nation-ness is the most universally legitimate value in the political life of our time,” 366 then religion’s role in constructing postcolonial Ghana makes the political elites the legatees of precolonial indigenous non-binary cosmogony as the claim any pride in “nationness”. Incorporating historical analysis into it, the critics of Pentecostals’ involvement in politics would have appreciated the fact that as far back as the heydays of nationalism in the 20th century, Pentecostalism— loosely considered a movement with much emphasis on pneumatic experiences—played a key role. Several of these Pentecostal leaders, including Prophet Williams Wade Harris of Liberia, Garrick Braide in lower Nigeria, Samson Oppong in the Gold Coast, Babalola and Oshitelu among the Yoruba, and Simon Kimbangu in lower Congo, were highly political in their Christian proselytization. Their interest in using Christianity to assert African self-identity and cultural assertion in the face of Eurocentrism was nothing short of providing theological ammunition to West African political nationalists in the mid-1940s. 367 In the case of Ghana (which was then called the Gold Coast), Joseph William Egyanka Appiah used religious idioms to talk about different ways to resist foreign rule. 368 As one of his descendants told me, “He was a nationalist par excellence who supported Ghana’s first president, Kame Nkrumah.” In the case of later 1920s Pentecostals, now collectively referred to as “classical Pentecostals,” they produced Ghana’s first speaker of the postcolonial National Assembly, Mr. J.R. Asiedu. 369 Personal transcription. Anderson, Imagined, p. 3. 366 Ibid., p. 3. 367 David A. Shank, Prophet Harris, the ‘Black Elijah’ of West Africa (Abridged by Jocelyn Murray) (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1994). 368 De-Valera NYM Botchway, “In the name of God resist! – Prophet Jemisimiham Jehu Appiah and the African religious nationalism in the twentieth century Gold Coast” in Moussa Traoré and Tony Talburt (eds), Fight for freedom: Black resistance and identity, 49-77 (Accra: Sub-Saharan Publishers, 2017), p. 49. 369 CoP, History of the Church of Pentecost Vol. I (Accra: Pentecost Press Ltd., 2005), p. 125-126. 364 365

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The entire concept of Christian nationalism is framed against the determination of Christians in Ghana and around the world as dangerous and a threat to human rights. Haynes conflated this to imply a threat to peaceful interaction between Muslims and Christians. Haynes even wrote as though Ghanaian Christians are entrapped by the Global Christian Right, which flourished during the 1970s. What appears to Haynes and other public commentators as a major paradigm shift that has seen Pentecostals supplant the public sphere at the turn of the millennium is not new. Beyond its historical antecedent, as I have written, Pentecostals consider it their duty to protect the sanctity of the human family. Just like the majority of the religious constituency in Ghana, Pentecostals read the attempts to foster samesex rights in the Ghanaian state as a travesty of both the ethical and ontological boundaries around marriage. To conflate the demands of Muslims and minority sexual rights, Haynes and those who profile themselves as advocates of human rights index the national cathedral as a threat to minority rights, including Muslims. Nevertheless, any cursory observation of the Ghanaian religious ambience would notice that the proposed national cathedral and issues of LGBTQ rights hardly divide the majority of Ghanaians— at least not from the major religious constituencies, Islam and Christianity. In fact, none of the major political parties have publicly criticised the national cathedral or supported the country’s LGBTQ rights legislation or the current law under consideration on the subject. If anything at all, the officials of the Muslim groups are not against the national cathedral, given that the country’s National Imam has donated a huge amount of money in support of it. The various political parties, particularly the country’s major opposition party, have often clarified their stance that they are not in principle against the national cathedral. The major concern of the opposition is for the state to be transparent with its contribution to the project. The initial concern of Muslims was not the cathedral but its location; they wanted it away from Accra. The charge against Christians in Ghana is that they are sponsored by perceived anti-gay Christian rights in the US. This is a highly problematic argument and an insult to the agency of Ghanaian Christians. Regrettably, this kind of scholarship recapitulates the myopic and narrow perspective of the Hamitic hypothesis, which attributes anything that sounded quite problematic to some partisan scholars as having had an external origin. 370 Again, a glance through church history in West Africa, in general, and the Gold Coast, in particular, would reveal that Christians in the Gold Coast asserted their 370

Harvey Cox, The future of faith (New York: HarperOne, 2009), p. 1.

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agency as far back as the 18th century, which marked the second major re-entry of western missionaries. It was on the Gold Coast that the Wesleyan mission church first experienced a schism in Africa. Way back in the 1840s, a group of Gold Coast Wesleyan Christians protested against the missionaries’ partial allowance of the consumption of alcohol. 371 The author could read the work of Francis L. Bartels, The Roots of Ghana Methodism, or Sundkler’s volume on A history of the church in Africa. But more to the point, Christians and other religious people consider themselves universal citizens with fellow devotees across the world. In Christianity, St. Augustine’s The City of God creates a binary of existence for Christians with clearly demarcated limits of loyalties—the City of God and the Kingdom of Men. In response to accusations that Christians were complicit in Rome’s demise, Augustine argued that the Christian was not obligated to the earthly city, where his existence is both secondary and transient. The frustration of several “secular” analysts is to find religious surged. The surge in religion since the 1980s was least anticipated precisely because as observed by Harvey Cox many thoughtful writers had confidently predicted the imminent demise of religion. They had held the belief that “Science, literacy, and more education would soon dispel the miasma of superstition and obscurantism. Religion would either disappear completely or survive in family rituals, quaint folk festivals, and exotic references in literature, art, and religion. Religion, we were assured, would certainly never again sway politics or shape culture” 372 Nevertheless, instead of modernity burying religion, Cox wrote, “The soothsayers were wrong.” Instead of disappearing, religion—for good or ill—is now exhibiting new vitality all around the world and making its weight widely felt in the corridors of power.” 373 To be sure, Cox separates the surge in religion from the fundamental return of religion. As he stated, “Many observers mistakenly confuse this resurgence of religion with ‘fundamentalism,’ but the two are not the same.” Fundamentalism is dying. Arguments will still rage about whether the Christian Right in America is fatally divided or sullenly quiescent. Debates rage about whether the dwindling support for radical movements in Islam is temporary or permanent. But as the twenty-first century unfolds, the big picture becomes clear. 371 Francis L. Bartels, The roots of Ghana methodism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965). 372 Cox, Future, p. 1. 373 Ibid., p. 1.

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Fundamentalism, with its insistence on mandatory belief systems, nostalgia for a mythical, uncorrupted past, claims to an exclusive grasp on truth, and - at times - proclivity for violence, is turning out to be reargued attempts to stem a more sweeping tidal change. 374 Nationalism and Christianity: A brief analysis Another source of frustration for writers is that an increasing number of Christians refer to Ghana as a “Christian country,” but do not tease it out theoretically. As for what they mean by Ghana being a Christian country, often they wish to see a Ghana that is imaginatively tethered to religion liberated and wince at the vagueness of the profiling of Ghana as an index of a Christian country. Meanwhile, there is hardly any need to fret over the popular designation of Ghana as a Christian country, as the profile is more about culture than politics. Indeed, culturally, the role of the 19th-century missionaries and the colonial administrators has left indelible traces of hybridised cultures—a mixture of European, African, and Christian. Specifically, complex Christian cultures had characterised Ghana’s public image through the educational system, which was historically established and controlled by missionaries, and the colonial governance structures, which privileged the Anglican church until the postcolonial era. Thus, without belabouring the point further, I argue that the labelling of Ghana as a “Christian country” should not be conterminously conflated with the political governance of the country. Nevertheless, the above context leads me to discuss the idea of Christian nationalism as a nexus between the Kingdom of God and religious or Christian citizenship. I will draw inspiration from St. Augustine, The city of God. Using Augustine’s thesis, I conduct analysis through references to other extant texts to demonstrate the complexities of the concept of Christian nationalism, particularly when applied to Ghana. To begin, the word “nationalism” conjures both negative and positive emotions depending on the sociohistorical context. In the history of Africa, the idea of nationalism, which began as the cultural rejuvenation of the colonised people in the late 19th century and crystallised in the post-World War II mid-20th century, carries significant weight and implication. Historically, colonialism was not just about material engagement but also about cultural encounters between Europeans and Africans, which as expressed by Fanon “The colonized is elevated above his jungle status in proportion to his adoption of the mother country’s cultural 374

Ibid., p. 2.

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standards. He becomes whiter as he renounces his blackness, his jungle.” 375 The encounters were mainstreamed through the profiling of the cultures of the colonised as barbaric, fetishist, and inferior. Given that the peripheral world of the colonised and, indeed, the world of the Metropolis was hardly binary, the European condemnation of the cultures of the colonised similarly implied the condemnation of their traditions and beliefs. Decades of European colonialism and imperialism robbed Africans of the benefit of progressive development. Thus, instead of civilisation and progress, Africa experienced retrogression at a progressive rate. The scourge of colonialism was so severe and sharp that Africans lost the initiative to pursue development by using the resources available to them to better their lot. Thus, slavery and colonialism suffocated and truncated progress in Africa. The colonial enterprise hugely affected African culture. Through the schools established by the colonisers, Africans were taught to perceive themselves as inferior to Europeans. The effect of western colonisation also affected the psychological framework of Africans. Gyekye also asserts that an important feature of the African colonial and post-colonial experience that has had enduring effect is the mentality acquired by the African people regarding their perceptions of the ‘African way of life’ compared with the ‘European way of life.’ 376 That mentality, he continues, invariably leads many Africans to prefer European ‘thing’ even if the African equivalent of the ‘thing’ is of comparable worth. Thus, that mentality—colonial mentality— engenders apism and so subverts originality and creativity, because it makes people look outside rather than inside for standards of judgment. The most enduring effect of the colonial experience on the African people relates to their self-perceptions, to skewed perceptions of their own values—some of which (values) can, on normative grounds, be said to be appropriate for life in the modern world. There is therefore some justification for asserting that much of our contemporary African life is an unexamined life, badly in need of serious fundamental examination. Recurrent problems in our political, ideological and educational systems; our irrational rudiments to debase or denigrate our values and to apotheosize those of others; our irrational readiness to gleefully borrow institutional and ideological systems from outside, oblivious of the fact that such alien systems were hammered out on the anvil of the 375 Franz Fanon, Black skin, white masks (trans. Charles Lam Markmann) (London: Pluto Press, 1986/1952/1967), p. 18. 376 Kwame Gyekye, The Unexamined life: Philosophy and the African experience (Accra: Sankofa Publishing Ltd, 2004).

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cultural and historical experiences of other people’s; our unconscionable readiness to tinker at complex and ramifying problems by applying simple therapies to our personal, social or national problems, coupled with flirtations with, or love for, the superficial. These features of our political, mental and aesthetic life have undoubtedly resulted from the lack of serious and profound examination of African cultural life and experience, particularly since the early euphoric days of our political independence. It is a spillover effect of colonialism. 377 Okot p’Bitek has also observed that apemanship is one of the major detrimental effects of colonialism. 378 He argues that apemanship kills creativity and initiative to develop. According to him the attempts by Africans to be the shadows of EuroAmericans constitute the major challenge facing the African continent. Ngugi succinctly captured the psychological impact of colonialism as follows: The biggest weapon wielded and actually daily unleashed by imperialism against that collective defiance is the cultural bomb. The effect of a cultural bomb is to annihilate a people’s belief in their names, in their language, in their environment, in their heritage of struggle, in their unity, in their capacities and ultimately in themselves. It makes them see their past as one wasteland of non-achievement and it makes them want to distance themselves from that wasteland. It makes them want to identify with that which is furthest removed from themselves; for instance, with other peoples’ languages rather than their own. It makes them identify with that which is decadent and reactionary, all ‘those forces which would stop their own springs of life. It even plants serious doubts about their moral rightness of struggle. 379

Much as Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, writing also from the settler colonial experiences of Kenya, expressed the cultural imperialism of colonialism as a universally shared in Africa and much of the colonised world, we must also be careful not to conflate how this happened in both settler and non-settler colonies and which European power was involved. In settler colonies such as South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Kenya, the Europeans had both political and economic agendas. Economically, which the colonisers shared with their counterparts in non-settler colonies, they planned to loot and exploit the colonised’s natural Ibid., p. 71. Okot p’Bitek, Africa’s cultural revolution: Essays (Nairobi: Macmillan Books for Africa, 1973). 379 Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Decolonising the mind: The politics of language in African literature (Harare: Zimbabwe Publishing House, 1987), p. 2. 377 378

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resources for the benefit of Europeans, including those in the Metropole. Inspired by the mercantilist economic idea, the economic motivation for the colonisation of the African world was equally shared among the European powers. In non-settler colonies in other parts of Africa, including Ghana, the Christian missionaries were quite careful not to overly identify with their counterparts who wielded political influence. In the case of Anglophone Africa, the British had, by the late 19th century or late colonial era, significantly secularised their political regime to the extent that they were not very enthusiastic about interrupting the local religious climate. 380 In light of this, the British were reluctant to allow Christian missionaries into northern Nigeria and northern Ghana, which already had a strong Islamic presence. In the case of Ghana, however, the British have intervened marginally in local religious politics since the Bond of 1844, ensuring that what they considered inhuman ritual practises were eradicated. The British attempted to abolish some aspects of the puberty transition rites of the Krobo of the south-eastern part of Ghana. 381 On this front of interrupting indigenous cultures that the colonisers found inhuman, the Christian missionaries largely identified with the ruling class. This collaboration between missionaries and the ruling class to stem the tide against some indigenous cultures resulted in a sometimes very complex conflation of the roles of Christians in settler and non-settler colonies. I have already established the fact that the two types of colonies should not be readily homogenised, not least when discussing the role of Christianity in the colonising or civilising mission. Even so, I must say that the civilising mission that the missionaries carried with them was enabled through the ruling elites, who often applied coercion to cower the colonised into submission. This needs to be properly historicized as by the 19th century, the idea of “civilizing missions” had taken multiple turns, including the missionaries’ incorporating indigenous cultures to advance both the translation of the Bible and the consolidation of African social systems. 382 The nemesis of the 18thcentury industrial revolution in England resulted in the missionaries reconsidering their charge for Africans to look to England as the model 380 Effah Ababio, ‘Conflict, Identity and Co-operation – The Relations of the Christian Church with the traditional, colonial and national state in Ghana with special reference to the period 1916-1966’ (PhD Thesis Submitted to the University of Edinburgh, 1991 381 E. K. Quashigah, “Legislating religious liberty: The Ghanaian experience,” Brigham Young University Law Review, 589 (1999): 589-607. 382 Kwame Bediako, Jesus in Africa: The Christian Gospel in African history and experience (Akropong-Akuapem/Ghana: Regnum Africa, 2000).

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Christian nation. As a result, by the late colonial era, missionaries were heavily invested in promoting aspects of colonised cultures that they believed resonated with Old Testament Hebrew culture. 383 During this period, several European missionaries became self-critical about the contortion of the civilising mission. Aware of the ethical slippages in the western civilising mission, Albert Schweitzer, a 20th-century missionary to Lambarene in Gabon, conceptualised civilization as: The ethical perfection of the individual as well as society” He continued, “The will to civilization is, then, the universal will to progress that is conscious of the ethical as the highest value.” “Despite the great importance we attach to the achievements of science and human progress, it is obvious that only humanity that is striving for ethical ends can benefit in full measure from material progress and can overcome the dangers that accompany it. 384

So, regarding the issue of slaves being held in the dungeons in the castles where there were churches for Europeans to practise their faith, we could ask whether that was not because the Europeans did not consider Africans as humans or less humans? Was it not also because slavery was an economic enterprise for them and therefore the end justified the means? If Christian priesthood class administered their faith to the Europeans in the slave castles but did not do anything about slavery, were they not complicit? How do we explain the huge benefits of slavery to Christian faiths across Europe and America? Could we easily discount the culpability of Christianity in the slave trade when as late as 2022, the Anglican Church apologized for “past links to slavery”? 385 The preceding implies the importance of academics historicizing missionary history in Africa. It is not enough to show images of castles in Ghana as a contrast or as it attempts to establish a link between slavery and Christian missionary work. This trend of populist analysis is enlivened by the fact that often enslaved Africans languished in dungeons and superimposed on it is a chapel where European pray and 383 Brian Stanley, The Bible and the flag: Protestant missions and British imperialism in the nineteenth and twentieth century (Leicester: Apollos, 1990). 384 Albert Schweitzer, Out of my life and thought: An autobiography (Baltimore/Maryland: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), p. 148. 385 AFP (10 January 2023), “Church of England apologizes for links to slavery,” https://www.africanews.com/2023/01/10/church-of-england-apologizes-for-linkstoslavery//#:~:text=United%20Kingdom,leader%20of%20the%20Anglican%20Chur ch.

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receive mass. The first time I visited the Elmina castle, built by the Portuguese in 1982, I was similarly appalled to find the dungeon and chapels in the same space. But after close reading, I have since realised that the history of Europe especially since its encounters with Constantine’s imperialization of Christianity and until the 16th-century reformation was deeply religious. As part of the European dictum of governance, cuius regio, eius religio (literally “whose realm, their religion” – meaning that the religion of the ruler was to dictate the religion of those ruled,” nearly every European had to identify with Christianity. 386 With power organised around a religious base that enveloped the state with a transcendental legitimisation through the idea of “divine rights of kingship,” several of the Europeans who were in the Gold Coast and other colonised world in the 15th century held a Christian cultural identity without convincingly practising the Christian faith—at least, as the missionaries themselves observed in the 19th century. This may have informed the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby’s, anchoring his apology when he visited the 17th century castle on Ghana’s Cape Coast where enslaved Africans were held before being transported to the Americas on British slave ships, with the admission: “It is to the Church of England’s eternal shame that it did not always follow Christ’s teaching to give life. It is a stain on the wider church that some Christians did not see their brothers and sisters as created in the image of God, but as objects to be exploited.” 387 As a solution, he added: Our response must begin on our knees in prayer and repentance. In calling on the God who blesses the broken, the reviled and those who mourn. In looking to God who transforms, redeems and reconciles. But our response does not end there. We are called to transform unjust structures, to pursue peace and reconciliation, to live out the Beatitudes in big ways and small. 388

It was during the Christian Reformation of the 16th century that, in addition to the breaking of ecclesiastical power, freedom of religious

386 John Merriman, A history of modern Europe: From the renaissance to the present (3rd ed) (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2010), p. 146. 387 The Archbishop of Canterbury (15 February 2023), “Archbishop of Canterbury visits former British ‘slave castle’ in Ghana,” https://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/news/news-and-statements/archbishopcanterbury-visits-former-british-slave-castle-ghana. 388 Ibid.

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conscience was birthed. 389 It was also the outcome of the Reformation that contributed to the birth of nationalism and modern state formation in Western Europe. The collapse of ecclesiastical authority revitalised the secularization of politics, which sustained the idea of the modern state and nationalism. With the surge in nationalism, the 17th century was quite bloody as several European nations competed for sovereignty from religious and “deified” leaders. The spill of nationalistic-driven conflicts resulted in the drafting of the Treaty of Westphalia, two peace treaties signed in October 1648 in the Westphalian cities of Osnabrück and Münster, that brought an end to the Thirty Years’ War and peace to the Roman Empire. 390 The Treaty of Westphalia may appear to have ended the Third Year War but it did not end Europeans’ quest for a sovereign nation-state and its quest to dominate other cultures. 391 In the 18th century, the French Revolution, led by Napoleon Bonaparte resulted in the dislocation of political authority from the realm of religion. The revolution had a domino effect in Europe and even America, which, partly inspired by the French Revolution, declared its independence from King George III of Great Britain in 1776. 392 For the above reason, the 19th century was a major historical shift in Europe’s politico-religious narratives. By the 19th century, Protestant missionaries had established mission societies to engage in missions in Africa and elsewhere around the world. At the same time, nationalism, following the French Revolution in the 18th century, was also taking shape. 393 As a result of violence and senseless bloodshed, nationalism assumed a very bad name in the minds of later 20th-century western scholars. Several of these 20th-century scholars, such as Benedict Anderson and Ernest Gellner, have deconstructed the destructive effects of nationalism by exposing its constitution as a cultural invention. 394

389 Siba N’Zatioula Grovogui, Sovereigns, quasi sovereigns, and Africans (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), p. 8. 390 Derek Croxton, “The Peace of Westphalia of 1648 and the origins of sovereignty,” The International History Review, 21, 3 (1999): 569-591. 391 Grovogui, Sovereigns. 392 Merriman, A history of modern Europe. 393 Albert A. Boahen, Topics in West African history (London: Longman, 1966). 394 Anderson, Imagined communities; Ernest Gellner, Nationalism (London: Verso, 1991).

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Overall, nationalism in late nineteenth-century West Africa was about cultural rehabilitation. 395 It was about Africans defining themselves through their cultures, which, according to Nkrumah, had become highly hybridized as a result of Africa’s multiple cultural contacts with Arabs and Europeans since the 7th century, beginning with the Arab invasion of Egypt. 396 By the 1940s, nationalism in several parts of Africa had become quite revolutionary or militaristic. In the case of Ghana, which before then was called the Gold Coast, stalwart nationalists included J.B. Danquah and Kwame Nkrumah. However, as I have said, in the minds of contemporary European political philosophers and scientists, nationalism smacks of danger, bloodshed, and belligerent international engagements. For this reason, when “nationalism” is used in reference to Christianity, the assumption is that Christianity is seeking to take over the modern “secular” state. Western observers should interpret Christian nationalism as part of evangelical Christians’ religious efforts to moralise the public sphere with Christian ethics, which are frequently framed as a challenge to minority sexual rights. Overall, Christian nationalism is portrayed as the antithesis of human rights; it is also accused of impeding migrants’ rights in the Western world. Concurrently, when western scholars, including Jeffrey Haynes, use the word “Christian nationalism” in reference to Ghana, he argues that it is potentially dangerous to the rights of persons who lay claim to same-sex orientation. He sees the current religious support for the Family Bill against minority sexual rights legislation as the pinnacle of Ghana’s Christian nationalism. He said this is also symbolised by the proposed national cathedral. Nevertheless, is it true that Christianity is anti-democracy and liberal rights for individuals? This is a question that may be subjectively answered. Several authors have rightly identified instances when Christian missionaries participated in the wanton violation of the rights of Africans. Even Albert Schweitzer was not sure whether Africans were ready for independence, as he appeared to have infantilised the people of Gabon. In Ghana, the missionaries have been accused of destroying indigenous cultures and fostering the idea of the superiority of Euro-Christian cultures. It is in this light that I discuss below the 395 J.E. Casely Hayford, Ethiopia unbound: Studies in race emancipation (London: C.M. Philips, 1911); Kobina Sekyi, The blinkards (Accra: Readwide; London: Heinemann, 2005). 396 Kwame Nkrumah, Consciencism: Philosophy and ideology for decolonization and development (London: Heinemann, 1964); John A. Azumah, The legacy of Arab-Islam in Africa: Q quest for inter-religious dialogue (London: Oneworld Publications, 2001).

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concerns that a few Ghanaian writers, in both popular and poetic writings, have negatively assessed Christianity. Evangelism is a form of colonialism: A response to Efe Plange On 22 November 2018, Efe Plange, a Ghanaian doctoral student in the Rhetoric and Writing Studies Doctoral programme at the University of Texas at El Paso wrote an article titled, “Evangelism is a form of colonialism.” Through the facilitation of Ebenezer Afanyi-Dadzi, Plange’s article was published as a feature article on citinewsroom. 397 I take the liberty to expand further my response to Plange’s feature article, which was similarly published as a rejoinder on citinewsroom on November 29, 2018. published the article. Plange’s article discusses John Allen Chau, a 26-year-old native of Vancouver, Washington, and a Christian missionary who was killed by the people of Sentinel Island in India’s Bay of Bengal. The members of the island have been isolated for centuries. They are aggressive and hostile towards outsiders who attempt to interact with them. Also, under Indian law, the island is off-limits to visitors. Following his Christian mandate to preach the gospel truth to all, John decided to go to the islanders to share God’s word with them. John knew that he was putting his life on the line when he decided to go to the island. In a note to his family before he set off for the island, he wrote, “You guys might think I’m crazy in all this, but I think it’s worthwhile to declare Jesus to these people.” He also added: “Please do not be angry at them or God if I get killed—rather, please live your lives in obedience to whatever He has called you to, and I will see you again when you pass through the veil.” As a Christian, I agree with John’s initiative to present the Gospel to the islanders. Nonetheless, our secular culture has slammed his initiative, with many describing Christian evangelism as a form of colonialism. Plange’s article expresses such a view. While the article raises issues that are critical and should be of interest to Christians involved in mission work, I think that Efe glosses over some basic issues about colonialism, Christianity, and evangelism. She identified herself as a Christian in the article, but her interactions with people of different religious backgrounds, particularly Hindu and Buddhist, predispose her to reconsider Christian evangelism. Her Afrocentric bent and respect for other religions make her opposed to the exclusivity of salvation in Jesus Christ. As a result, the Christian mission of evangelism with the 397 Efe Plange (22 November 2018), “Evangelism is a form of colonialism,” https://citinewsroom.com/2018/11/evangelism-is-a-form-of-colonialism-article/.

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explicit intent of conversion is nothing short of colonialism. She clearly contradicts Jesus’ command to Christians to witness the uniqueness of the Christian message to the world. Since Efe’s argument is not novel among academics, I will respond to it by appealing to history to point out the flaws in her argument. As an Akan with some degree of knowledge about my ethnic group, I will draw on Akan examples to make my point. This is not to overlook the importance of other ethnic groups in Ghana and Africa, as far as Christ’s mission to Africa is concerned. The first flaw in Plange’s argument is that she conflates Christianity and colonialism. Since this is usually what is harped on by critics of the Christian mission among the Akan, I will spend some ink setting the record straight. While it is true that some of the European missionaries who came to Africa were bent on establishing an alliance with other European colonial powers to Christianize the continent, it is not true that all the Europeans who came to Africa had one purpose. It is the homogenization of Europeans who came to Africa in the fifteenth century that has informed people’s understanding of Christian missionaries. It is important to state that NOT all the Europeans who came to Africa shared the same interest in looting the resources of the continent. Broadly, three categories of Europeans came to Africa: missionaries, merchants, and mercenaries (administrators). While sometimes there was overlap of interest, we must be clear that, in many instances, the three groups had their interests conflicting with each other. To understand this complex mix, we need to periodize the coming of Europeans and missionaries to Africa. Following Kwasi Wiredu’s defence of the compatibility between cultural universals and particulars, I will limit my discussion of the distinctive roles of the Europeans to the Akan of the Gold Coast. 398 In the fifteenth century, the Portuguese were the first to sail to the coast of Ghana (then the Gold Coast). Their interests converged on religion and trade. Initially, they did not make clear their political intentions. They demonstrated religious and economic engagement with the people of the Gold Coast. And so, when they first met Kwamena Ansa (whom they referred to as Caramansah), the chief of Elmina, they had two requests: first, convert the chief to the Christian faith; and second, secure a parcel of land to build a warehouse where they could keep their wares. 399 398 Kwasi Wiredu, Cultural universals and particulars (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996). 399 Joseph K. Adjaye, Elmina, ‘The little Europe’: European impact and cultural resilience (Accra: Sub-Saharan Publishers, 2018).

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Presciently, the chief of Elmina refused to cave into both requests. He turned down the request to become a Christian. This was obviously because the demands of Christianity were at odds with the demands of his office as a traditional leader. In terms of the construction of a warehouse, Kwamena Ansa knew that living close to “strangers” (the Portuguese) was likely to undermine their friendship. Accordingly, Kwamena Ansa told the Portuguese (led by Don Diego d’Azambuja and other emissaries) that their friendship would be solidified if they (the Portuguese) kept straddling Portugal and Elmina. Some historians of Africa relay that, under pressure, Kwamena Ansah gave the Portuguese a parcel of land (believed to host the deities), hoping that the deities would kill the Portuguese. As fate would have it, the Portuguese survived and built what is now the biggest castle in Africa (Elmina Castle) in 1482. The outcome of the castle was the infamous and barbaric slave trade. 400 In the fifteenth century, it is clear that because of many factors, principally the conflation of economic and religious motives, the Europeans did not succeed in mission work. The prominent church historian, Lamin Sanneh, has rightly referred to the fifteenth century as the quarantining of Christianity. 401 This is true because, in the early stages, the Europeans were not keen on converting the people along the coast of Ghana. The priests who had followed the merchants to the coast satisfied themselves with doing their core duty: providing religious service to the merchants in the castles. We can safely conclude that in the fifteenth century, Christianity did not make any significant inroads into the hearts of the people of the Gold Coast. 402 Organized mission work in the Gold Coast began in the nineteenth century, on December 18, 1828, with the Basel (Basle) missionaries. The father of the Basel Mission in Ghana was Andreas Riis. Andreas Riis, who arrived in Accra in 1832, was not keen on engaging in politics. He avoided creating any false impression that he was in bed with the Danish colonisers of the coast of Accra. He refused to allow the Danish governor, F.S. Morck, to offer him protection anytime he moved into the Akuapem area. He refused to hoist the flag of the Danes in Akuropon, to signal his disinterest in representing political interests and Danish authority. Andreas Riis and the other Basel missionaries, including Peter Peterson Jager and Christian Frederich Heinze (a medical missionary from Saxony), refused to identify with the Danish 400 401

1983). 402

Adjaye, Elmina. Lamin Sanneh, West Africa Christianity: The religious impact (London: Hurst, Ibid.

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political authority. Because Andreas Riis persistently refused to cave into the pressures of the Danish governor, he was temporarily kept in detention. 403 In fact, the political neutrality of Andreas Riis reflected the stance of the Basel Mission Committee, which had written to their missionaries to stay away from colonial politics. Later, when Riis was freed, he permanently moved to Akuapem. He became so influential in his engagement with the Akan people that he was called Oseadan (the great builder). He pioneered brick construction in the Akuapem range. 404 He undertook to keep his neutrality during the colonising mission to the extent that he was considered a friend of traditional political actors. 405 In most cases, when Akan chiefs had issues with the governor, they would fall on Andreas Riis to intervene. In some cases, he mediated Akan intra-ethnic conflicts. Another missionary who was also influential in the nineteenth century was Thomas Birch Freeman, who came to the Gold Coast in 1838. Thomas Birch Freeman is considered the father of Methodism in Ghana. Just like Andreas Riis, Thomas Birch Freeman was very careful not to involve himself in colonial politics, which could undermine his relationship with the Akan, particularly the Ashanti. He succeeded in establishing Methodism in the Gold Coast, including Ashanti territories, because he was able to weave through the complex terrain of engaging culture and the gospel. The Asantehene, Kwaku Dua (I), considered Freeman a peaceful person. 406 Leaving the historic churches aside, I will now focus my attention on James McKeown, the founder of the Church of Pentecost. Usually, Pentecostals are considered hostile to Akan culture. McKeown’s mission strategy, however, provided an alternative account to this narrative. When James McKeown arrived on the Gold Coast in 1937, he was clear about the need to avoid destroying the Akan cultures. Concerning his accommodativeness of the Akan culture, he told Christine Leonard, who wrote the book, A Giant in Ghana, that:

Ababio, ‘Conflict, Identity and Co-operation.’ M.A. Kwamena Poh, “Church and change in Akuapem,” In Christine Oppong (ed), Domestic rights and duties in southern Ghana, 57-67 (Legon/Accra: Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana, 1974). 405 John S. Pobee, “Church and state in the Gold Coast in the Vasco da Gama era, 1492-1947,” Journal of Church and State, 17, 2 (1975): 217-237. 406 John Milum, Thomas Birch Freeman: Missionary Pioneer to Ashanti, Dahomey, and Egba (New York: Publishers of Evangelical Literature/London: S.W. Partridge & Co., 1893?). 403 404

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Despite all my years in West Africa and Northern Ireland, I have kept my Scottish speech and ways, as is the right of every man. I did not come to change Africans; I came to tell them they should be proud to be African...I taught them the Bible, got them to know Jesus, and told them if God is giving children, He hasn’t got to send one to England for a nose [sic] to put on an African!! 407

The Church of Pentecost and the historic churches have all reengaged with different Akan cultures. This is to the extent that in contemporary Ghana, many of these churches have accepted some peculiar Akan institutions, including the chieftaincy. 408 Political independence came with religious independence for many Ghanaian Christians. As many Ghanaians took over the leadership of the church they inherited from European missionaries, they involved themselves in the business of inculturation (contextualized theology) to build bridges between some Ghanaian cultures and Christianity. Those who accuse European missionaries of destroying African cultures are rarely able to provide specific cultural idioms of Ghanaians and Africans that were destroyed. In most cases, such flawed arguments have come from European anthropologists who are interested in studying the uniqueness of others to advance their academic careers. 409 Also, there have been Afrocentric scholars who are bent on recapitulating some African cultures. In most cases, again limiting myself to Akan, the missionaries’ prohibition of some Akan cultures, such as polygyny, extreme forms of widowhood rites, witchcraft practices, the killing of twins or children with strange features, and indigenous slavery, were part of Christian redemption for those on the fringes of society. Because these practises did not benefit those on the margins of society, many Akan people were drawn to the Christian faith’s redemptive mission. Scholars in other parts of Africa have made a similar observation: Christianity appealed primarily to people who were socially and politically isolated. I am convinced that Efe Plange, who is the founder of Pepper Dem Ministries, will consider the prohibition of these Akan cultural practises redemptive for women. 407

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Christine Leonard, A Giant in Ghana. Chichester: New Wine Press, 1989), pp.

408 Charles Prempeh, “Religious innovations of chieftaincy in Ghana: Pentecostal Christianity and the complex persistence and transformation of Akan chieftaincy” Religion Compass, (2021): 1-13, DOI: 10.1111/rec3.12426. 409 Mwenda Ntarangwi, David Mills, & Mustafa H.M. Babikar (eds), African anthropologies: History, critique and practice (London: Zed Books, 2006); Francis B. Nyamnjoh, “Blinded by sight: Divining the future of Anthropology in Africa,” Africa Spectrum, 47, 2-3 (2012): 63-92.

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The second reason for the flaws in Efe Plange’s article is her failure to see the basis of Christianity, which is conversion (turning away from false beliefs to Jesus Christ). While conversion may involve turning away from some cultural beliefs and practices, it is different from deculturalization. It is, therefore, impossible for Christians to go about their mission without making converts (through the Holy Spirit). As a result, while Christians cannot exchange conversion for universalism, the question that must be addressed is: how should Christian’s approach conversion without destroying cultural practises that are innocuous (from a Christian standpoint)? Admittedly, it is here that some of the missionaries to the Akan failed. The hastened condemnation of every aspect of Akan culture by some of the missionaries did not align with the dialogical nature of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The dismissal of Ephraim Amu from the pulpit because he wore cloth while he preached was one of the extremes of the cultural imperialism of some of the missionaries. But the truth is that the Christian mission and its power of cultural conversion are foreign to any culture. The Jews were against the Christian faith because it created bridges between “sinners” and “saints” at the extremes of the cultural imperialism of some of the missionaries. But the truth is that the Christian mission and its power of cultural conversion are foreign to any culture. The Jews were against the Christian faith because it created bridges between “sinners” and “saints.” The Greeks also could not accept Christianity because they considered it a senseless religion. Currently, in Europe, there is a resurgence in spiritism, framed around the New Age Movement—a fusion of western science and Eastern spirituality. It must also be emphasised that while Europeans used words like “paganism,” “fetishism,” and “primitive” to refer to some aspects of Akan cultural practices, these words were not coined in Africa. The Europeans used the same words to describe some aspects of their cultures. It is, therefore, wrong to assume that the Europeans were uncritical about their own cultures, which were counter-cultures to the Christian faith. With this in mind, since the beginning of the twentieth century, most Christian missionaries have been very sensitive to different cultures. The fact that most Christian missionaries spend their time looking for points of convergence where they can engage other cultures exemplifies how the Christian mission has maintained its tradition of cultural respect. Christianity claims to hold the truth that must be shared with the rest of the world. This truth, which is embodied in the person and work of the historic Jesus Christ, cannot be compromised. Incidentally, Jesus told Christians to go into the world not to convert but to preach and 154

teach. As part of the preaching, the Holy Spirit will do the conversion. Most people have confused preaching, teaching, and conversion. This is because there is a thin line of demarcation between preaching, teaching, and conversion. Christians are to do the teaching and preaching and allow the Holy Spirit to do the conversion. This missionary strategy is borne out of the fact that Jesus said that no one can come to Him unless His Father draws one closer. This is not to say that Christians should undermine the centrality of the Christian message by shifting from particularism (the claim that salvation is limited to Jesus Christ alone) to universalism (the claim that salvation is possible apart from Christ). Christians cannot shy away from the uniqueness of their message. While this may be a counterculture to the postmodern world (where truth is relativized), Christianity maintains its fervour by preaching that salvation is by grace alone, through faith, and in Christ alone. The other aspect of Plange’s article was her claim that Christians should stay away from other cultures. This argument lacks insight into the changing face of global culture and politics. In fact, the question in scholarship is no longer whether indigenous cultures should be left alone (as that is now obsolete); rather, the question is who should first go to indigenous people. The capitalization of global economic activities and neoliberalism (accompanied by the search for raw materials) have put indigenous cultures under serious threat. The socalled pigmies in the Great Lakes Region of East Africa continue to suffer exploitation from their neighbours. Their lack of education and ignorance of modern methods of doing things have left them vulnerable to pillages. The excessive pillaging of autochthons has raised concerns among world leaders about providing some form of protection to such people. There is no doubt that Christian missionaries have proved more efficient in bringing hope to autochthons than any known groups, both governmental and non-governmental. The ability of Christian missionaries to study the language of autochthon has opened opportunities for autochthon to receive an education. Education has also meant that autochthons are empowered to resist exploitation. The work of Christian missionaries among autochthons, including the Sawi and Wai Wai, has been an incredible blessing. In conclusion, the Church continues to engage culture since the cardinal teachings of Christianity and the required lifestyle are countercultural in orientation. But separating autochthons from the touch of Christianity is to deny autochthons the empowerment to face the riddles of the modern world. Aside from Efe Plange, an academic and poet whose poem has become a key resource in their fight against what they see as Christian nationalism, Kofi Awoonor is a key resource 155

in their fight against what they see as Christian nationalism. The debates in Ghana against the national cathedral have given his poem “The Cathedral” new meaning. In the following section, analyse the poem. The National cathedral and a critique of Kofi Awoonor’s “The Cathedral” Given the toxic opposition against the building of a national cathedral in Ghana, many Ghanaians have resorted to Kofi Awoonor’s poem, “The Cathedral,” as a source of inspiration to consolidate their misplaced opposition. I was fortunate to have read the poem both in senior high school and at the University of Cape Coast. So, certainly, I am not oblivious to its interpretations. In the following paragraphs, I will flesh out why we cannot use the poem against the cathedral. First, the poem is never value-free. Kofi Awoonor was a member of the Afrikania Mission, a neo-traditional group that was founded by the erstwhile Catholic priest and dissident, Osofo Okomfo Vincent Damoah. He was also a strident critic of the Christian faith. Awoonor wrote the poem as part of his unrelenting antagonism against Christians and what they stand for. As a traditional revivalist group, Afrikania Mission is bent on making Christianity unpopular by distorting the faith. Of course, the surest way to win a war is to strike first. And that was exactly what Awoonor did with his “The Cathedral” poem. To simply state it, the poem was meant to stir public uproar against Christianity. It must be mentioned that Kofi Awoonor was a product of his generation. Ghana’s political independence resonated with intellectual independence. Consequently, in the 1960s and 1970s, many nationalist scholars assigned themselves the task of rewriting, reconstructing, deconstructing, and refuting the epistemic injustice they perceived Europeans had done to Africa. As a student of African studies, I admire the efforts of these scholars. But some of them were hardly measured and balanced in their responses. And because most of them were reactionary scholars, they glossed over some aspects of our cultures that needed to be critiqued and pruned. The sense of atavism among these scholars obscured their sense of objectivity and criticality in their analysis of “African culture.” In the end, they promoted a similitude of what may qualify as “anti-racist racism.” The rhetoric of some of these nationalist writers was intended to stir up Africans against anything European. Kofi Awoonor was part of that generation of African nationalist scholars. He excelled in his art of condemnation to the extent that he was accused in academic and popular discourses of having reinvested 156

the Ghanaian social space with re-tribalisation, embodied in his book, The Ghana Revolution: Background Account from a Personal Perspective. 410 The book is not only repulsive, but it also poses a threat to Ghanaian nationhood! His poem, “The Cathedral,” was also part of the blame culture that many Africans have used to explain the predicament of the continent. Without a doubt, colonialism and slavery had a horrendously negative impact on Africa and Africans. However, excessive focus on the negative effects of colonialism and the externalisation of the continent’s problems has given Africans a way to avoid acknowledging their involvement in the problems of the continent. Additionally, we fail to accept our responsibility for the development we have been working so hard to bring about because we keep emphasising the blame culture. We also keep making the same errors. Kofi Awoonor specifically criticises this blame culture in his poem. Second, in a civilised Ghana, Trokosi – the ritual servitude of virgin girls as young as six years to Troxovi (deities) shrines as a form of appeasement offenses their relatives may have committed – is being vehemently promoted by Kofi Awoonor and his cohort (Africana Mission) due to their misguided adoration for purported Ewe tradition. What should we expect if everything works out by God’s grace? Since the Fourth Republic Constitution entered into force in 1992, the Afrikania Mission has posed a significant obstacle to the state’s attempts to eradicate the practice of Trokosi. 411 Because of the atavism and uncritical romanticization of “The Cathedral,” Afrikania Mission has steadfastly supported cultural practises that hinder our development – an atavistic position that has rightly been condemned. 412 Third, Rawlings illegally prohibited the broadcasting of all Christian religious programmes on the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation between 1982 and 1985. He passed the Religious Bodies (Registration) Law around the same time (1989), enabling him to oversee Christian 410 Kofi Awoonor, The Ghana revolution: Background Account from a Personal Perspective (New York: Oasis Publishers, 1984). 411 GNA (29 May 2012), “Afrikania mission straightens record on Trokosi,” https://www.modernghana.com/news/398477/afrikania-mission-straightensrecord-on-trokosi.html; Amuasi Abigail Petrolina, “Trokosi as a gender-based sociocultural practices and discrimination against girls (women) in Ghana,” https://ovd.unimi.it/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2021/04/Petrolina_OVD-1.pdf; Danille Agyemang, “Ghana’s Trokosi case: Contestations between cultural revivalism and universalism,” Language, Literature, and Interdisciplinary Studies, 4.1 (2020): 33-49. 412 Ghanaweb (18 January 1999), “Two organisations condemn Afrikania Mission,” https://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/Twoorganisations-condemn-Afrikania-Mission-4678.

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activities in Ghana as the country’s religious policeman. 413 However, in the midst of all of this, Afrikania flooded and overflowed the airwaves with their message, which was not only blasphemous towards Christianity but also stoked public hostility towards it. Members of the mission were unaware that Ghana was a “secular” state at the time. With their tirades against Christianity, they also believed they could put an end to the religion. Kofi Awoonor’s outbursts were a component of a larger plan to disparage Christianity. It is understandable why people turned to Awoonor’s poem for solace in their haste to criticise the building of a national cathedral. In conclusion, creating knowledge is a political endeavour. No information is impartial. Kofi Awoonor’s poem was, therefore, not worthless. It must not be used carelessly to denigrate the national cathedral. We also reserve the right to criticise it if you use it against Christians. Not only has Kofi Awoonor’s poem legitimised criticism of Ghana’s national cathedral, but The demise of Christianity was also predicted by some influential members of the Afrikania Missions. In the section after this, I address this. Christianity will be extinct soon: A reply At the National Youth Congress of the Association in Dzodze, in the Volta Region of Ghana, the leader of the Afrikania Mission, His Holiness Atsu Kove, predicted that Christianity would soon become extinct. He further asserted that the majority of miracles performed by pastors are propelled by the deities of traditional African religion. His presumption is based on the idea that the Bible cannot perform miracles. The founder of the Afrikania Mission acknowledged the decline of traditional African religion since the arrival of Christianity and Islam with this outlandish prediction. The fact that the mission itself lost ground in the 1980s, when it was led by its founder, Osofo Okomfo Vincent Kwabena Damuah, a former Catholic priest and member of the National Provisional Defence Council, and is still losing ground today, may have been a better example of how they are losing and are continuing to lose ground. The Afrikania Mission leader’s confusion or denial that other religions have replaced African traditional religion is immediately apparent from the narrative, and we can infer that any attempts to revive the religion will only result in fleeting illusions. Some of the leaders of Afrikania Mission have taken the lead in preserving outmoded practises like Trokosi as a result of the 413 Elom Dovlo, “Religion in the public sphere: Challenges and opportunities in Ghanaian lawmaking, 1989-2004,” BYU Law Review, 3 (2005): 629-658.

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effort to restore African traditional religion. Trokosi is not only outdated; it also violates the rights of “virgin” girls. Young girls are denied basic rights like education in the name of reviving outdated and moribund traditions. In some cases, ritual functionaries may even sexually assault them. Trokosi is a new form of slavery. Shamefully, Afrikania Mission is leading the defence of this heinous act! His Holiness did not offer proof that Christianity would vanish from the face of the earth. Indeed, some atheists and deists of a few centuries ago, including Voltaire [the French philosopher], predicted the demise of Christianity. Voltaire even predicted that people would stop using the Bible. The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche made the audacious claim that God is dead. 414 Nietzsche’s speculation on God’s death did not advance Christian theology of Jesus Christ’s vicarious death as saviour of the elect. He was more or less arguing that man (used in the generic sense) no longer required God. As previous stated, Karl Marx, a Jewish-German philosopher, claimed once more that religion was the opium of the people who lived off of their false perceptions of life. 415 Marx believed that class conflict would be stifled because religion dulled people’s awareness of bourgeois oppression. The founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, asserted that the idea of God is merely a construct of human thought and that belief in God will become less common as science advances. According to Freud, God is a made-up concept. He turned the biblical account of God creating man on its head. I have also discussed the episodic moment of the nineteenth century, when many scholars, including Max Weber, James Frazer, Emile Durkheim, and Herbert Spencer, predicted the demise of religion. 416 They argued that religion will become irrelevant and defunct as scientific knowledge advances. It must be stated that all these social thinkers targeted Christianity. Their predictions were against Christianity in particular and against religion in general. By the middle of the twentieth century, most of the disciples of these social thinkers had begun revising their notes. The theologian and Harvard academic, Harvey Cox, and the sociologist, Peter Berger, who had all predicted the decline in religion, revised their positions. They recently argued that 414 Friedrich Nietzsche, The gay science with a prelude in rhymes and an appendix of songs (trans. Walter Kaufman) (New York: Vintage Books, 1974), p. 168. 415 Marx, Critique of Hegel’s, p. 131. 416 Sigmund Freud, The future of illusion (Trans/edited by James Strachey) (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1961); Herbert Spencer, The principles of sociology Vol. I (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1899); James G. Frazer, The golden bough: A study in magic and religion (London: Macmillan, 1900); Sigmund Freud, The future of illusion (London: Hogarth Press, 1962).

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the idea of a religious recession was the greatest myth of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The resurgence of religion has exposed the lies in the predictions of the naysayers of Christianity (and other religions). As I have stated, the leader of Afrikania Mission did not adduce any evidence to support his assertion. Obviously, he was on a religious platform and needed to assure the adherents of African traditional religion that all hope was not lost in their efforts to consolidate African traditional religion. However, we can use his claim that the Bible is incapable of engineering miracles and that most miracles are performed in the name of African traditional gods to analyse his prediction. In response to this assertion, I want to say a few things about miracles. First, miracles are important, but Christianity is not necessarily defined by miracles. The linchpin of Christianity is the person and work of Jesus Christ. Who Jesus was or is, and what He did or does, define the Christian faith. In other words, Christianity thrives on Christology and the vicarious death of Christ. Christians believe that Jesus is God, who took upon Himself the human nature (hypostasis union; Philippians 2:6–11) and died on the cross to save the elect of God. If you take this teaching out of Christianity, the whole edifice of the Christian faith will crumble. It is interesting that all the enemies of Christianity, including other religions, have attacked this centrality of the Christian faith in order to undermine or discredit the faith. The second thing about miracles is that they do not necessarily prove the credibility of Christianity. Indeed, throughout the history of the church, Christians have used a variety of means, including miracles, to demonstrate the credibility of their faith. But Christians have not made a fetish of miracles. Jesus told His disciples that they should be proud of their salvation rather than the miracles they performed (a sinner becoming a friend of God is Christianity’s greatest miracle) [Luke 10:2]. But that said, I do not want to wade into the debate over the continuity or cessation of miracles. I reserve that for another article. But suffice it to say that while Christianity is not bereft of miracles, miracles do not constitute the centrality of the Christian faith. I must point out that in African traditional religion, the deities are not existentially important. In fact, traditionalists are pragmatic and utilitarian in offering cultic attention to the deities. 417 A deity who fails to serve the needs of devotees is thrown away. It is for this reason that many deities in traditional African societies have ceased to be important 417 Okot p’Bitek, African religions in Western scholarship (Nairobi: East African Literature Bureau, 1971); Kwasi Wiredu, “Toward decolonizing African philosophy and religion,” African Studies Quarterly, 1, 4 (1998): 17-46.

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in the religious sphere of traditionalists. Decades ago, some deities like Tigari and Antoa were very important in the Ghanaian religious sphere. Today, these deities have lost their stint. They are not as popular as they used to be. They have either lost their ability to manage men’s affairs or have become completely irrelevant in the schemes of the modern world. In my village, Assin Bosomadwe, the tutelary deity, Bosomadwe Akwasi, once powerful, has lost his prowess. He has actually been forced out of the village. Whatever it is, deities in African traditional religions depend on their devotees to survive. On the contrary, Christ remains the fount and foundation of Christianity. The power of Christ remains as efficacious as it was over 2000 years ago. Many people, including myself, continue to attest to the saving and ever-abiding power of Jesus Christ. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Hebrews 13:8). The last issue I want to address is the supposed “foreignness” of Christianity in Africa. I have addressed this issue elsewhere, but for the purposes of some of my readers, I will just scratch the surface of it. First, Christianity is foreign to all cultures, including the Jewish culture. There is no denying that Christianity used Jewish cultural ethos to present the message of Christ, but the centrality of Christianity—which is the virgin birth (the incarnation of God), death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus—was foreign to the Jews. It should come as no surprise that the Jews persecuted Jesus Christ and His disciples. Many Jews still find the central message of Jesus Christ strange. The Greeks thought the Christian message was ridiculous. Christianity was alien to European culture then. From this angle, Africans also did not quite understand Christianity. However, to claim that Christianity is foreign to Africans would be incorrect and ahistorical given the historicity of the development of the faith. In fact, Jesus himself was in Africa. He was salvaged by Africa when His life as a child was under threat (I guess God the Father was communicating to Africa); the person who carried the cross of Christ, as Christ headed to the place of crucifixion, was Simon from Cyrenaica (present-day Libya); on the day of Pentecost, when the Church was formally birthed, there were Africans around; and finally, the Ethiopian eunuch had a stint with the gospel in the first century. The Old Testament, which forms the first part of the Christian scripture, was first translated from Hebrew to Greek in Egypt (Alexandria, Africa). Many of the early “doctors” and theologians of the Christian faith, who shaped Christian dogmas, were Africans. The names of Augustine, Tertullian, Clement, Athanasius, and Origen readily come to mind. Christianity, in short, was in Africa before it was in many European countries. It was in the fifteenth century that 161

European missionaries decided to carry the gospel to the hinterlands of Africa. But it was in the nineteenth century that they made a major impact. Even so, Africans were not passive recipients of the faith. Historians of the Church in Africa, including Sundkler Bengt G.M., Kalu Ogbu, Adrian Hastings, John Kofi Agbeti, John Samuel Pobee, Elizabeth Isichei, Lamin Sanneh, and Kwame Bediako, have rightly pointed out the instrumentality of Africans in planting the Gospel in Africa. 418 Where the missionaries failed to make any impact, Africans succeeded. The works of Simon Kimbangu, William Wade Harris, Sampson Oppong, and John Swatson made Christianity more relevant to the African religio-cultural milieu than the European missionaries. 419 The contributions of these Africans to the missionary enterprise have been acknowledged by many other scholars in church history. But for these Africans, Christianity would not have survived in the hinterlands of Africa. The case of the so-called demise of Christianity in the Global North has been used as evidence to support the supposed decline or future death of Christianity. Yes, it is true that institutional religious practices, such as church attendance, are in decline, but it is not true that Christianity has lost its value in the Global North. The idea that Christianity has lost its influence on many Euro-Americans was part of the package of propaganda that predicted the demise of Christianity. But many Euro-Americans, though they may not belong to an institutionalised church, do claim that they owe their values to the Christian faith. I will argue that secular ethics is nothing but the deChristianization of Christian ethics. I must also state that Christianity has never had a successful Christendom. There has never been a time in history when 90 percent of the members of a particular country accepted Christianity. Even in the early nineteenth century, when Christianity was said to be the predominant religion in Western Europe, 418 Bengt Sundkler & Christopher Steed, A history of the church in Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Ogbu Kalu, African Christianity: An African story (Pretoria: Department of Church History, University of Pretoria, 2005); Adrian Hastings, The church in Africa, 1450-1950 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994); John Kofi Agbeti, West African church history: Christian missions and church foundation, 14821919 (Leiden: Brill, 1986); John S. Pobee, West Africa: Christ would be an African too (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1996); Elizabeth Isichei, A history of Christianity: From antiquity to the present (Grand Rapids, Mich.: W.B. Eerdmans Pub., Co., 1995); Lamin O. Sanneh, West African Christianity: The religious impact (London: Hurst, 1983); Kwame Bediako, Theology and identity: The impact of culture upon Christian thought in the second century and in modern Africa (Oxford: Regnum Books, 1992). 419 Allan H. Anderson, African reformation: African initiated Christianity in the 20th century (Trenton, N.J.: Africa World Press, 2001).

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the assertion revolved around quantitative statistics as opposed to qualitative analysis. I do not think that Christianity is really in decline in the North. I must also point out that Christianity grows when the faith is in a recession! From my analysis, it is clear that Christianity will never cease to make an impact on the lives of people until the second advent of Christ. Christendom is a myth that, when relied upon, would make us oblivious to the nature of the Christian faith. The assumption that Christianity was in decline was part of Christian propaganda in the Global North to inspire religious revivalism. The Church of Jesus Christ will march on, and the gate of hell shall not prevail against it! A Response: Why are black people obsessed with the Bible that was used to enslave them? The Bible has been attacked by atheists, agnostics, sceptics, and “fake Christians” for hundreds of years, but it is still a strong and powerful anvil that bends all hammers of criticism. I read an article by Jean Gasho for Modernghana with the above title. It was a piece of journalism that tried to blame Africans for holding on to a book that was used to make them slaves. Indeed, pro-slavery campaigners developed a kind of hermeneutics that was appropriated to support and rationalise the enslavement of Africans. It must be stated that slavery and servitude have existed in all known human societies. The logic of slavery was anchored in the fact that civilization and development always came at a cost. Someone must always pay the cost of development. As a result, some people are reduced to servitude status in both ancient and modern times in order to bring about development and progress. This explains why some of us are convinced that slavery was theoretically abolished, but the practise continues in the contemporary world. 420 The contemporary manifestation and persistence of slavery in the twenty-first century world—forced labour, abaawa, forced marriage, prostitution, human trafficking, female circumcision, honour killing, killing for human organs, and pornography—gives new life to the debate over the appropriate definition of slavery. 421 Susanne Miers, in her article, “Slavery: A Definition,” has ably demonstrated the futility of attempts in 420 John Lloyd & John Mitchinson, The second book of general ignorance: A quite interesting book (London: Faber, 2010). 421 Kwabena O. Akurang-Parry, “Transformations in the feminization of unfree domestic labour: A study of abaawa or prepubescent female servitude in modern Ghana,” International Labour and Working-Class History, 78 (2010): 28-47.

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scholarship to provide a universally acceptable definition for slavery. Thus, to be fair to the nature of slavery in Biblical times, I use the word “servitude,” which I am convinced conveys the exact meaning and cultural manifestation of the institution at the time. My response to Gasho is markedly influenced by my knowledge of the Bible. I make recourse to the Bible to respond to Gasho for three reasons: First, the Bible is the standard bar against which all practises and beliefs must be measured. In other words, the Bible is the barometer for the evaluation of moral values. Second, the Bible provides a clear understanding of how Christians should relate with others, especially in the area of economic relations. Thirdly, the Bible provides us with an accurate account, as opposed to speculation, of how the patriarchs related with their servants. Having said that, I must say that throughout the ages, some individuals have twisted the Bible to support their anti-biblical practices. A classic example is how the Dutch Reformed Church wrongly deployed the Bible to support the apartheid system in South Africa. This situation, however, does not mean that the Bible condones racism. It also does not mean that the Bible undermines justice. In fact, for centuries, the Bible has and continues to inspire human rights activists across the globe. Most crusaders against injustice and inhuman treatment in our world have had the Bible as their source of inspiration. The major issue that occupies the minds of many thinkers is whether the Bible condones slavery. It must be unequivocally stated that the Bible is roundly against slavery. The Bible categorically condemns slavery since the epiphenomenon of the institution is such that it contravenes justice and undermines human dignity. The Bible refers to slavery as criminal and a subversion of God’s rule concerning interpersonal relationships. Here, I will refer to two biblical texts that support my assertion. The first is Exodus 21:16, and the second is I Timothy 1:8–10. In Exodus 21:16, we read that: “Anyone who kidnaps another and either sells him or still has him when he is caught must be put to death.” In I Timothy 1:8–10, we read: “We know that the law is good if one uses it properly.” We also know that law is made not for the righteous but for lawbreakers and rebels, the ungodly and sinful, the unholy and irreligious: for those who murder their fathers or mothers, for murderers, for adulterers and perverts, for slave traders, liars, and perjurers, and for anything else that is contrary to sound doctrine (emphasis mine). From the above texts, it is obvious that the Bible considers slavery a criminal, beastly, and inhuman endeavour that God frowns on. The Bible’s uncompromising disposition towards slavery stems from the fact that the ancient Israelites had their liberation from slavery in Egypt as a lasting 164

memorial that is engrained in their memory. The freedom the Israelites got from Egypt was emblematic of how God disapproved of slavery. The Hebrew word for slavery is more akin to a servant, which was an expression of pre-modern slavery rather than the modern slavery introduced in Africa by Muslims, Arabs, and Europeans. Given that, I will hereby provide some of the distinctive features of pre-modern servitude in ancient Israel. My conviction is that that approach would help clarify the haziness, lusciousness, and misunderstanding of the Bible’s conceptualization of servitude. For the purposes of space, I would provide the following features of pre-modern servitude in ancient Israel: Servitude in ancient Israel was voluntary: a person sold himself to servitude as a security against poverty and despondence (Exodus 21:2– 6, Leviticus 25:39–43, Deuteronomy 15:12). 2. A servant could be redeemed at any time by a next of kin who puts up the money for him (Leviticus 25:47-52). 3. In the seventh year, the sabbatical, and in the jubilee year, all servants were automatically free (Exodus 21:2–6, Leviticus 25:10). The liberation of servants was so crucial to God that Israel was to suffer exile because they failed to implement God’s law on the redemption of servants (Jeremiah 34:8–20). 4. Servants took part in religious ceremonies (Exodus 20:10; 23:12; Deuteronomy 16:9–14; 31:10–13). 5. Servants were engrafted into the covenant God had with the people of Israel (Genesis 17:12; Deuteronomy 16:9-14; 31:10-13). 6. Servants were entitled to the same civil and religious rights as their masters (Leviticus 24:22; Numbers 15:15-16; 29; 9:14; Deuteronomy 1:16-17) and had equal legal protection (Leviticus 19:15; 24:22). 7. Runaway servants were not to be returned (Deuteronomy 23:15–16). According to Orlando Patterson’s definition, the aforementioned aspects of pre-modern servitude in ancient Israel indicate that slaves did not experience social death. 422 In other words, servants were not culturally or personally dehumanized. They were an integral part of the host culture. They were entitled to all the fundamental liberties expected of a “free” individual. A servant could not be bought and sold as property. There was no attempt to use a servant as a commodity. These qualities contrast with modern slavery, which treats a slave like a product that can be bought and sold. Pre-Arab/pre-European slavery in Africa may have been related to pre-modern servitude in ancient Israel, as, Paul Lovejoy, Suzanne Miers and Igor Kopytoff, AkurangParry and Frederick Cooper show in their insightful scholarship on

422 Orlando Patterson, Slavery and social death: A comparative study (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982).

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indigenous slavery. 423 In fact, a form of slavery that was explicitly against God’s laws governing servitude in ancient Israel was introduced by the Arabs and Europeans. Let me conclude by referring to a popular text that anti-Bible writers, including Jean Gasho, use to make God complicit in slavery. The text is Colossians 4:22, which reads: “Bondservants, obey in everything those who are your earthly masters, not by way of eye service, as peoplepleasers, but with sincerity of heart, fearing and obeying the Lord.” What these anti-Bible writers do is pick and choose which texts appear to favour their stance. They usually do not add the first verse of the next chapter (chapter 4), which reads, “Masters, treat your bondservants justly and fairly, knowing that you also have a Master in heaven.” If the master of the bondservant were to Christianity is Un-Africa, homosexuality isn’t: An assessment When people presents Gnosticism which teaches that Christianity is both culturally and theologically alien to Africans, it becomes imperative to provide a response. I read an article written by N. Nyamewaa, and subsequently published by City FM online, under the title captioned above, on Wednesday, July 15, 2015. 424 As an academic interested in religion, I have always followed the dictum that “the believer is always right.” This is not to deny the fact that I have sometimes grudgingly challenged this principle underlying the study of religion. But regardless of the problematic nature of this principle, we 423 Paul E. Lovejoy, Slavery in the global diaspora of Africa (London: Routledge, 2019); Suzanne Miers & Ignor Kopytoff (eds.), Slavery in Africa: Historical and anthropological perspectives (Madison: University of Wisconsin, 1977); Kwabena Akurang-Parry, “Slavery and Abolition in Ghana: Modes of Emancipation and African Initiatives” in Kwasi Konadu (ed.), Akan Peoples in Africa and the Diaspora: A Historical Study (Princeton, NJ. Markus Weiner, 2015), 210-229; Kwabena AkurangParry, “I often shed my tears about this”: Freed slave children, apprenticeship policy, and Africa responses in the Gold Coast (Colonial Ghana), ca.1890-ca.1930,” in Paul Landau (ed.), Power of doubt: Essays in honor of David Henige (Madison: Parallel Press, 2011), 147-169; Kwabena Akurang-Parry, “Transformations in the feminization of unfree domestic labor: A study of abaawa or prepubescent female servitude in modern Ghana,” International Working-Class and Labor History, 78, (2010): 28-47; Kwabena Akurang-Parry, “Remembering the unforgotten: Histories of enslavement and rransformation of the African continent,” in Peyi Soyinka-Airwele and Rita Kiki Edozie (eds.), Reframing Contemporary Africa: Politics, culture, and society in the global Era (CQ Press, Washington DC: CQ Press, 2010), 82-99. 424 Nnyamewaa.com/Ghana (15 July 2015), “Christianity is un-African, homosexuality isn’t,” https://citifmonline.com/2015/07/christianity-is-un-africanhomosexuality-isnt/.

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still need to respect the rights of the believers to represent their religion. But that is not to say that what they say cannot be subjected to empirical scrutiny. Two factors have compelled me to write a rejoinder to the topic: first, as a Christian, I am obliged by the injunction in 1 Peter 3:15 to provide answers to whoever questions the validity of my faith as a Christian. Second, as an academic, I feel challenged to share with the reading public what I know about homosexuality and Christianity in Africa. These two reasons coincide with my quest to set the records straight. First of all, it is about time we deconstructed the false notion and myth that Christianity is un-African. Any casual student of history will conclude that Christianity has been in Africa since the 1st century. The book of Acts, a book that provides the historicity of early Christian missionary activities, alludes to the fact that there were Africans among the first-century Christians. Church history, authored by secular historians, also admits that there were Africans among the first-century Christians. The gospel accounts provide us with evidence that the man who was called to assist Christ in continuing the journey to Calvary was Simon of Cyrene, an African. It must be stated that the relationship between Africans and the Judeo-Christian culture dates back to the preChristian days. Before modern history, Africans interacted with the patriarchs on several occasions. Africa has always been the place God used to redeem His chosen people, the Israelites, from extinction. A clear example is how God used Egypt as the rightful place to resolve the famine, which was a potential threat to the survival of the Israelites. When Herod was after Jesus’ life as a child, Africans saved Him. 425 We should note that most of the historical doctors of Christianity who formulated the dogmas of the Christian faith were Africans. Suffice it to mention a few of them: Augustine, Tertullian, and Origen. These great thinkers of the Christian faith were all Africans. These individuals are widely celebrated because of the roles they played in the formulation of fundamental Christian doctrines such as the Trinity, the deity and humanity of Jesus, the personality of the Holy Spirit, and the original sin (the total depravity of man after the episode of the Garden of Eden). Is Christianity foreign to African culture? Usually, those who ask these questions have some very flawed assumptions. Among these assumptions are the claims that Christianity is alien to African culture, that Christianity destroyed African culture, and so on. What I think 425 For me on this: See: Thomas C. Oden, How Africa shaped the Christian mind: Rediscovering the African seedbed of Western Christianity (Downers Grove, Ill.: IVP Books, 2007).

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should be the right question is: “Is Christianity foreign to any human culture?” If we frame the question this way, we can properly ascertain whether the Christian message is foreign to any culture. Here, I want to state that Christianity is foreign to all cultures. No culture is inherently consistent with that of Christianity. All cultures, since the fall of our progenitors, have deviated from the core culture of God. The fall of man, recorded in the book of Genesis, had a complex and comprehensive effect on every facet of man, including culture. The fall also tainted our biological disposition, which has corrupted some aspects of our instincts. Following the fall of Man (in the generic sense), we all deviated from the culture of God and had our genes badly tainted with evil, hence homosexuality. So, Christianity has always been proven to pre-exist in every culture. What cultures have done is adapt to the Christian faith. There is no human culture that is distinctively Christian. All cultures stink of corruption. So, every culture that encountered Christianity had to make some adjustments to accommodate the Christian culture. This explains why Jesus was very critical of the Jewish culture, which had suffered from deep-seated corruption prior to His incarnation. Similarly, when Christianity was introduced to Rome, the Roman culture had to make some changes, especially when the church became a state religion in the 4th century. Yes, Christianity was introduced to some parts of Africa in the 15th century, but if we are to follow the sequential logic of events, we will conclude that Christianity was in Africa before the birth of the United States of America, the perceived Christian nation on earth. In the 15th century, Christianity did not thrive for complex and diversified reasons, and so there was a resurgence of missionary activities in the early part of the 19th century. Again, if we are to follow the logic of history, it will be clear that Christianity was in Elmina, for example, before the birth of the United States of America. Again, to sneer at Christianity because of the political morass and morality that have taken a nosedive, including homosexuality, is a weak argument. Corruption is not the predicament of only Africans. The recent scandal that rocked FIFA, leading to the resignation of Sepp Blatter, is an exemplification of the universality of corruption and also shows how the sinful nature of man manifests in all societies. Yes, Africa is underdeveloped, but to blame Christianity for the continent’s shortcomings is to ignore history. It is clear that the causes of Africa’s underachievement are very complex. But we need to situate Africa’s challenge within the context of history. First, the twin evils of slavery and colonialism (I know some scholars, including Adu A. Boahen, provide a balanced account of colonialism) contributed greatly to 168

Africa’s predicament. 426 To show how much colonialism and slavery undermined Africa’s progress, Marxist scholars, including Walter Rodney, have argued that colonialism did nothing good for Africans. 427 Rodney actually states, “Africans entered colonialism with a hoe and came out with a hoe.” 428 Related to this point is the myth that Christianity was the brainchild of these two evils. From history, we know that there were three distinct Europeans who came to Africa with three distinct interests. Though interests overlapped and were conflated at times, it is clear from history that missionaries, merchants, and mercenaries had distinct interests. This explained why there were occasional conflicts among Europeans over the slavery and colonisation of Africa. Again, usually, we tend to homogenise all Europeans as far as slavery and colonialism are concerned. This mistake is a misreading of history and a fallacy. Burbank Jane and Frederick Cooper show in their book, Empires in World History: Power and the Politics of Difference, how in Europe, many Europeans contested slavery and colonialism. 429 In Britain, Paul B. Rich shows in his book, Race and Empire in British Politics, how differences in opinion on colonialism polarised the British. In the book, Rich argues that the two major political parties in Britain at the time had no uniform ideas about colonialism. 430 International politics may also explain Africa’s underdevelopment in postcolonial Africa. The West has become increasingly secular, yet they are the brains behind Africa’s challenges. Most of the brains behind the looting and pillaging of Africans are simply not Christians. What is more, to link moral degeneration to Christianity is also a feeble argument: Was Hitler a Christian? Was Mussolini a Christian? 431 Usually, some people refer to the crusades to chastise and attack the credibility of Christians when discussing social and political issues. But a superficial reading of history will reveal that the so-called Christians 426 Adu A. Boahen, African perspective on colonialism (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1987). 427 Walter Rodney, How Europe underdeveloped Africa (London: Bogle-L’Ouverture Publications, 1972). 428 Ibid. 429 Jane Burbank & Frederick Cooper, Empires in world history: Power and the politics of difference (Princeton, NJ.: Princeton University Press, 2010). 430 Paul B. Rich, Race and empire in British politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). 431 Nathan Johnstone, The new atheism, myth and history: The black legends of contemporary anti-religion (Cham/Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018); Hans Maier & Michael Schäfer, Totalitarianism and political religions: Concepts for the comparison of dictatorship, Vol. II (trans. Jodi Bruhn) (London: Routledge, 1996).

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used Christianity as a charade to achieve a political goal. To show that the crusades, the inquisitions, and slavery were all motivated by political interest, the late Pope John Paul II, in several speeches in the 1990s, apologised to the world for all the atrocities that we committed in the name of the church and God. We have yet to read about other religions that participated in slavery apologising to the world. Now, is homosexuality African? This question is lame. The question should be, “Are we right to romanticise the African past?” Or is homosexuality alien to any culture? And what do Africans mean when they say homosexuality is un-American? There is an attempt by most people to attribute the perverse sexual practise to an external source. I have argued in several of my journalistic articles on homosexuality that homosexuality, as a depraved sexual orientation, is not un-African. Several pro-homosexual scholars have proven beyond doubt that traces of homosexual practises existed in some societies in pre-colonial Africa. So, yes, some cultures had homosexual practices. But to argue unexpectedly without any evidence that there were homosexuals among the Asante, to the extent that some of the Asantehene(s) might have been gay, is inane. Again, while I was studying in Uganda, and most of my Ugandan friends, some of whom are simply not Christians and are usually critics of Christianity, have contested the assertion that one of the Kabakas, usually Mwenga II, was a homosexual. This allegation is seriously contested among Baganda people in Uganda. 432 Now, to the main issue: what do Africans mean when they say homosexuality is un-African? First, homosexuality is un-African because the practise was never in the public domain; there was never an attempt to transpose the practise from the private space into the private space. It was never celebrated as the norm. In the few instances where homosexuality has been cited in Africa, a close reading will reveal that the practise was the exception rather than the norm. And usually, they were limited to the metaphysical world. I know of the Sangoma, for example, in South Africa. But the rites associated with homosexuality were excluded from the public domain. 433 One feature of rituals is that they defy logic; that is why they belong to the metaphysical world. So, in the realm of rituals, what is unacceptable in public life or normative life is acceptable. Have you not read about the bizarre rituals undertaken by Sakawa boys? 434 Satanic activities usually encroach on 432 I have extensively discussed homosexuality in my recent book: Charles Prempeh, Gender, Sexuality and Decolonisation in Postcolonial Ghana: A socio-philosophical engagement (Bamenda/Cameroon: Langaa RPCIG, 2023). 433 Ibid. 434 Ibid.

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aberrations. What is foreign again about homosexuality is the attempt by the West to shove down the throat of Africans a sexually perverse practise in the public space—the attempt to legalise what is supposed to be private. Lastly, is the Christian Council of Ghana caught in a state of homophobia? I don’t think the Christian Council is homophobic. The Christian Council is not asking for the lynching of homosexuals, nor are they demanding discrimination against them. What the Christian Council is asking is that the state not go the way of the United States. We should not legalise immorality. In conclusion, I would like to add my voice to the call of the Christian Council for the government of Ghana to come clean on the homosexual issue. It is obvious that the Americans, the so-called superpowers of the world, would want to spread this satanic practice. So, Mr. President, you have precedence: Mr. John Kufour forbade the holding of a homosexual conference in Ghana in 2006, and the late John Evans Atta Mills made clear his disapproval of homosexuality in Ghana in 2011. Therefore, we are asking you to follow suit. I oppose both legalising homosexuality as well as lynchings and other forms of discrimination against homosexuals. St. Augustine’s “City of God” and Christian citizenship in the modern state I have previously discussed that the idea of the modern nation is a social construct. It is not just a social construct; it is also a deliberate sacralisation of the state to curate the loyalty of everyone towards it. I have demonstrated several instances where, through sacralising mundane symbols as national symbols, citizenship was constructed. The idea of citizenship has also evolved from the early decades of independence in the 1960s in Africa, when individuals held loyalty to just one nation, to multiple forms of citizenship. This section discusses citizenship in the modern world, where the social and geographically bound construction of citizenship is under attack. The world of technology has produced individuals who are not limited to a single geo-cultural space—this evolution has informed Nyamnjoh’s insightful observation of recent ideas of citizenship as more flexible, negotiated, and cosmopolitan, with an emphasis on inclusion, conviviality, and the celebration of difference. All of this complicates national citizenship,

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which is built on a large scale, is assimilationist, and is defined by belonging. 435 The issue of citizenship is very complex because its construction is a vortex of history—real and imagined—and the state’s legitimate use of power. I have discussed the importance of religion in state formation in pre-colonial Ghana. As part of my discussion of Christian nationalism, I turn my attention to how precolonial Asante society constructed citizenship. Before colonialism, in several societies in Africa, the idea of citizenship was constructed around the idea of a real or putative ancestor or ancestress. Usually, the mystification of the origin of a group becomes the valve around which political mobilisation for indigenous state formation is established. An autonomous group merged in the 17th century among the Asante, which comes from “as anti,” wit: because of war, as part of a struggle against Denkyira hemogenic control. This concatenation of formerly independent groups needed to consolidate their unity after their collective success against the Denkyira. 436 Through the spiritual architect, Komfo Anokye, the Asante lay claim to a Golden Stool that is believed to have been commanded from the skies through the mediation of Anokye. The Stool is considered the soul of Asante, and through its visible presence, loyalty is elicited towards its occupant. 437 The force of the Golden Stool is that, because it is believed to have originated from the skies, it holds a vertical authority above every human creation. Beyond that, when the idea of Nyame (God) became part of Asante’s cosmogony, the Asantehene monopolised it to concretize his authority. It was forbidden for anyone to say, “Me Nyame,” to wit: “My God.” One had to say, “Osei Nyame,” to wit, “Osei’s God.” 438 Much as the Asante religious milieu was quite liberal and democratic, affording everyone, including women, the opportunity to tap into the realm of the spirit for their own good, the spirit world was also under the scrutiny and control of the overlord of the Asantehene. Holding a non-binary cosmogony, the Asantehene served as a link between the spirit world and the material world. This was also because, among the Asante and several other Akan and African groups, the walls between 435 Francis B. Nyamnjoh, “From bounded to flexible citizenship: lessons from Africa,” Citizenship Studies, 11, 1 (2007): 73-82. 436 Ivor Wilks, Forest of Gold: Essays on the Akan and the Kingdom of Asante (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1993). 437 Ibid. 438 Emmanuel Akyeampong & Pashington Obeng, “Spirituality, gender and power in Asante history,” The International Journal of African Historical Studies, 28, 3 (1995): 481-508.

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the spiritual and material are so porous and impenetrable that both realms exert an evidential effect on each other. It was the Asantehene who stood in as the spiritual “man on the bridge” to establish cordiality between the two worlds for human flourishing. 439 Nevertheless, given that Asante was a significantly socially inclusive society, there was a need to frame citizenship against all forms of othering. Thus, part of the taboos of the Asante Golden Stool, treated as the soul of Asante, is the non-disclosure of another person’s ancestry. Asante citizenship was, therefore, very fluid, flexible, and assimilative. 440 Meanwhile, through the myth of the Golden Stool, the idea of “we,” the Asante, and the stories that are told tend to separate others as outsiders. It creates the issue of “in-group” and “out-group”—a situation that has burdened the idea of nationalism since the decolonization project of the 1950s. Historically, Ghana’s independence could have occurred in 1954, as the end of the World Wars had rendered colonialism imprudent and financially costly. But the Gold Coast’s struggle against colonialism was burdened by ethnicity. The first, which I will not talk much about, was the incorporation of so-called “cross-border” citizens in the Voltaic Region. But the second major issue was the Asante question. I have already talked about the centrality of the Golden Stool in framing Asante citizenship. The Golden Stool undermines Asante’s loyalty to non-Asante royals—a situation that complicated Nkrumah, a non-Asante who had a zest for leading the nation. Leveraging the increasing price of cocoa, the Asante united around the Golden Stool in the formation of a quasi-political pressure group, the National Liberation Movement (NLM). Formed in 1954, the NLM drew inspiration from and directed its loyalty simultaneously towards the Golden Stool. The established presence of the Golden Stool was, to say the least, highly challenging to national integration towards decolonization. 441 Finally, at independence, Nkrumah deployed symbolism, legislative instruments and state institutions to structure citizenship towards national cohesion. 442 Postcolonial Ghana as an imagined community required international efforts on the part of Nkrumah and his political 439 K.A. Busia, The Position of the Chief in Modern Political System of Ashanti: A Study of the Influence of Contemporary Social Change in Ashanti Political Institutions (London: Oxford University Press, 1951). 440 Wilks, One Nation. 441 Jean M. Allman, The quills of the porcupine: Asante nationalism in an emergent Ghana (Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin, 1993). 442 Harcourt Fuller, Building the Ghanaian nation-state: Kwame Nkrumah’s symbolic nationalism (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).

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alliances, which cast the image of the state as both natural and sacred— a trend that is quite common with nationalism. Through symbolism such as the colours of Ghana’s flag, previously discussed, Nkrumah invested nationhood with an imagined transcendental legitimation. Similarly, he invested in ideological education mediated through the Nkrumah Ideological Institute and the Young Pioneer Movement to choreograph the attitude of Ghanaians towards nationhood. 443 All this came in the background of his independence speech, which included, “Henceforth, we are no longer under colonialism; let’s have a change of mind.” This was necessary to eradicate the enduring mental effects of colonialism. Religion, particularly Islam and Christianity, posed a major challenge to Nkrumah. These two religions, which emerged as enduring legacies of Africa’s encounters with Europeans, Arabs, and Europeans in the 7th and 15th centuries, respectively, have a proclivity to devote ultimate cultic attention to God. The two religions, therefore, form an imagined community that tends to take a priori significance over both the family and the secular state. In the case of Islam, the ummah, or non-territorial Muslim community, 444 founded when Mohammed, the Prophet of Islam, migrated from Mecca to Medina in 622 AD and formed a political community, is expected to be the ultimate source of Islamic life. The ummah is expected to model the ideal life of Islam as a comprehensive way of life. Established on a Constitution that was drafted by Mohammed to mediate the intra-Muslim and inter-Muslim horizontal relations and vertical relations between Muslims and Allah, the ummah was treated as inviolable to the secular world. Muslims were to be loyal to one another against outsiders while respecting the rights of those who live under their protection. 445 The ummah also treats Muslims as first-class citizens who demand taxes from non-Muslims to both govern and ensure the smooth running of the Islamic community. The idea of the ummah of 1st century Islam may have influenced the Muslim migrants’ establishment of Islamic enclaves, known as Zongos and Sabon Gari in Ghana and Nigeria, respectively. In Maamobi and Nima Muslim inner-cities in Accra, where I have spent nearly all four decades of my life, the basic greetings of conviviality among Muslims are “Allah ye rufa asiri,” to wit: “May Allah cover up the secret.” While this should not be hurriedly read as 443 Jeffrey Ahlman, Living with Nkrumahism: Nation, state, and Pan-Africanism in Ghana (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2017). 444 John L. Esposito, What everyone needs to know about Islam (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 16. 445 Qur’an 9:71.

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implying clandestine criminal activities in the Zongos, one could read it as part of Muslims ensuring that all matters bordering on Islam remain within the juridical authority of Islam. This social disposition of the Muslim community has yielded both negative and positive results. Negatively, sometimes a few cases of criminality are not reported. It also enhances the perpetuation of early marriages among girls, whose education, against state expectations, is curtailed. Positively, it sustains the resolve of Muslims to unite against social challenges. This was clearly demonstrated in Ghana’s economic challenges in the 1980s. During the 1980s, several Muslims fostered strong social conviviality that benefited the community. Nonetheless, while the ummah transcends racial and ethnic categories, it will be absurd to believe that the concept of the ummah has brought Muslims together. Internal fragmentation within the Muslim communities along doctrinal lines has burdened their development. Since colonial times in the 1920s, the so-called Orthodox Muslims have hardly agreed with the Ahmadiyya Muslims. Also, since the beginning of the 1950s and crystallising in the 1980s with the fragmentation of the Sunni Muslims, the low-intensity conflict between the Tijaniyya and the Ahlu Sunna has robbed the Muslim communities across Ghana of the needed unity for human flourishing. Two Muslim scholars, Ousman Kobo and Yunus Dumbe, have divided over their analysis of whether the Muslims are uniting their front or further polarising it, respectively. 446 Tracing the idea of Islamic unity back to Nkrumah’s regime, he struggled to win the total support of the Muslims. Nevertheless, through Nkrumah’s friendship with a Tijaniyya spiritual functionary, most notably Ibrahim Niass, whose help Nkrumah solicited to construct the Akosombo Dam, the Tijaniyya assumed political influence over the Sunni. 447 Nkrumah also played Muslims off against themselves, dividing their loyalty. Not only that, but he also politicised citizenship through legislation to deport Hausa Muslims, whose overwhelming influence in the Muslim community he considered disabling to Ghanaian nationhood. 448 By far, Christianity posed an enduring challenge to Nkrumah who, at one point in his life, is believed to have aspired to the office of a 446 Ousman M. Kobo, “Shifting trajectories of Salafi/Ahl-Sunna reformism in Ghana,” Islamic Africa, 6, 1-2 (2015): 60-81; Yunus Dumbe, “Islamic polarisation and the politics of exclusion in Ghana,” Islamic Africa, 10, 1-2 (2019): 153-180. 447 Charles Prempeh, Nima-Maamobi in Ghana’s Postcolonial Development: Migration, Islam and Social Transformation (Bamenda/Cameroon: Langaa RPCIG, 2022), p. 167. 448 Ibid., 87.

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Catholic priest, Nkrumah leveraged his Christian education to use the Bible invertedly to advance his political career. Through his inversion of Jesus’ statements, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and its righteousness,” to “Seek ye first the political kingdom,” Nkrumah put himself across as the major force in the Christian community. Knowing the historic church’s fractious relationships and the potential for spillover into politics, Nkrumah passed a law prohibiting the formation of political parties under the umbrella or inspiration of religion. When Nkrumah’s political kingdom failed to produce the economic prosperity he envisioned and expected from Ghanaians, he used every state-formation rhetoric in several of his books, including threats to his life, to pass draconian laws that silenced his political dissenters while also making him the only viable, unopposed leader of the postcolonial nascent state. 449 Nkrumah also interfered with the Pentecostal movement, which was also struggling to identify with Nkrumah’s Africanization agenda and indigenous leadership of churches. For example, Nkrumah nearly deported James McKeown, an Irish missionary who visited the Gold Coast in 1937 and founded the Church of Pentecost, over church internal leadership struggles in the late 1950s. 450 Nkrumah’s deployment of the Younger Pioneer Movement, considered by the Christian community as subversive to both parental authority and godliness, incurred the opposition of some of the historic churches. Gagging freedom of expression and framing himself as the only leader of Ghana in 1964, the historic churches, particularly the Catholic Church, launched a formidable challenge to Nkrumah’s regime. 451 In the process, in 1962 Nkrumah fought back and even deported other leaders of the historic church, including Richard Roseveare, an Anglican priest who was a firm critic of the Young Pioneer Movement. 452 The challenge Nkrumah faced with the religious community stems from religious people’s social ontological disposition. I have already 449 Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana: The autobiography of Kwame Nkrumah (Edinburgh/London: T. Nelson, 1957); I speak of freedom (London: Heinemann, 1961); Africa must unite (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1963); Consciencism: Philosophy and ideology for decolonization and development (London: Heinemann, 1964); Neo-colonialism; The last stage of imperialism (London: Nelson, 1965). 450 Charles Prempeh, Christianity, Culture, and Pentecostalism in Ghana: An Ethnographic Study of Pentecostal Traditional Authorities in Contemporary Akan Society (1990s – Present) (Unpublished PhD Dissertation submitted to the University of Cambridge, 2021). 451 Baba G. Jallow, “A sign of the times: Catholic advocacy for social justice in Nkrumah’s Ghana,” Journal of Religion & Society, 16 (2014): 1-13. 452 Ibid., p. 3.

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talked about how the socio-theocentric constitution of the Islamic ummah is a challenge to “secular” governance. So, I now turn my attention to the Christian community. The test of Christian loyalty to Christ is Christian unity. But since the 1st century, unity has eluded the church, as church leaders are often involved in contesting heretical teaching or hereticating dissenting voices. Nonetheless, Christians have taken care to ensure their ultimate loyalty to Christ. From the perspective of St. Augustine’s “City of God,” Christians are to consider the heavenly city as their ultimate source of authority, rule, and command. Christians are to love their families, neighbours, and the state, but never to love any of these above God—the infraction of which constitutes disorderly love. It is, therefore, gratifying to note that part of the reason for Augustine’s “City of God” was his response to the pagan charge of Christian complicity in the collapse of the Roman Empire. Much as Augustine admitted that Christians have a duty to the earthly city, Christians could not obey the state at the expense of God. Augustine’s work brings clarity to Paul’s command for Christians to obey the leadership of the state in Romans 13. My interest is not to venture or make any theological forays into the text, but rather to argue that when the state makes any counter-faith demands, Christians often obey God rather than men or the state. 453 Christian citizenship is ultimately heavenly and secondarily earthly. The celestial ultimate citizenship of Christians also raises yet another challenge about the purpose of the church in terrestrial space. Many academics have already spilled ink in this area, especially with the idea of the social gospel or the prosperity gospel. 454 Well, again, I will not make any major contribution to that question since it is not the main focus of my book. Suffice it to say, however, that the church’s primary duty is to spread the good news of Christ—the message of salvation. The message of salvation is about sharing the core dogma of the Philippians 3:20. John MacArthur, Charismatic chaos (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan Publishing House, 1992); Karen Lauterbach, “Fakery and wealth in African Charismatic Christianity: Moving beyond the prosperity gospel as script,” in Karen Lauterbach & Mika Vähäkangas (eds), Faith in African lived Christianity: Bridging anthropological and theological perspectives, 111-132 (Leiden: Brill, 2020); Francis Benyah, “Commodification of the gospel and the socio-economics of neoPentecostal/Charismatic Christianity in Ghana,” Legon Journal of the Humanities, 29.2 (2018): 116-145; James Kwateng-Yeboah, ‘I wish you prosperity!’ Analysing the social effect of the prosperity gospel on poverty alleviation in neo-Pentecostal Accra, Ghana (MPhil thesis submitted to the Faculty of Theology, University of Oslo, Norway, 2016). 453 454

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Christian faith: that nothing material could satisfy the human quest for meaning or answer all the problems of the human race. It is only faith in Christ, God’s Son, and redemption in Him that bring peace, stability, and meaning to the human race. For Christians, therefore, the Kingdom of God is both present and futuristic. It is present because Christians represent it on earth through the calmness and peace, they exude wherever they are, all morphing into the disciplined lives they live by observing God’s ethical and ontological boundaries, more so in their interpersonal relations on the terrestrial front (I shall return to this in my discussion of prophecy). Now that the kingdom is presently here on earth, several Christians feel inspired and encouraged to protect the boundaries of God’s creation. I relate this to the vexatious conversation on LGBTQ+. The whole discussion on Christian nationalism is primarily centred on the general Christian (particularly evangelical Christian) opposition to same-sex rights, abortion, and euthanasia. These ethical issues have elicited several opposing responses in both public and academic discourse. Several Christian theologians have also contributed significantly to the debate by writing extensively. Nonetheless, it appears that, of all these ethical issues, it is the LGBTQ+ community that drives and polarises the world’s passion and emotion, making Christians homophobic and liberals heterophobic. Ordinarily, one’s freedom to do with their body as they see fit should not concern others, at least from the perspective of libertarians such as the 19th-century British philosopher, John Stuart Mill. 455 However, the issue is much deeper than that. As I have already mentioned, for Christians, marriage is not just a matter of one’s freedom to use one’s body for what one desires. Marriage is a covenant to support creation (procreation). Impliedly, whereas not every marriage may recreate, Christians consider marriage and childbirth as part of the package of God’s divine cultural mandate given at creation. Additionally, marriage in a social context creates the family, which is the fundamental unit of society. From the perspective of Christian subsidiarity theology, the state should not interfere with the family’s performance of its ontological duties. Given the above as a context and Christians considering marriage and procreation as intertwined packages of God’s divine-cultural 455 John Stewart Mill, On liberty (ed. David Bromwich & George Kateb) (New Haven/Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2003); John Stewart Mill, Utilitarianism and on liberty: Including Mill’s ‘Essay on Bentham’ and selections from the writings of Jeremy Bentham and John Austin (2nd edition ed. Mary Warnock) (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2003).

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mandate, they may hardly retreat or surrender their Christian conscience on same-sex issues. More importantly, the perceived persecution of Christians who choose to retain their private conscience about marriage and similarly publicise it in the public sphere may embolden Christians to go all out in defence of the family. As far as Christians are concerned, the question about marriage and what they read as its ontological violation by LGBTQ+ rights would certainly reify an understanding of Christian nationalism as both cultural and political. This means that much as adultery and other forms of sexual offences are an affront to the purity of marriage, same-sex relationships are a repudiation of the natural constitution of marriage as heterosexual. All of this begs the question of whether it is sufficient to use Christian opposition to minority sexual rights as a symbol of Christian nationalism’s destructive impact. In a Christian-dominated country like Ghana, Christian opposition to minority claims to homosexual rights is read as a threat to every other minority right, particularly Muslims. But this kind of conflation of the minority is deliberate intellectual dishonesty. Because as far as minority sexual rights are concerned in Ghana, both Muslims and Christians, the majority religions, are together in their defence of the Proper Family Bill, which is currently under consideration. Overstretching Christian opposition to minority sexual rights as a Christian threat to liberal democracy is also an overstretch. Christians, particularly Protestants, have traditionally been at the forefront of defending and promoting the ideals of democracy—freedom. Knowing the importance of freedom in the rise and emergence of Protestantism, Protestant Christians have a record of protecting the frontiers of human rights and freedom—albeit within God’s defined ethical and ontological boundaries, which are clearly stated in the Bible. 456 In Ghana, Catholic Christians, as I have already mentioned, have been very vocal in defending the rights of Ghanaians against any military or dictatorial regimes, including those of Nkrumah, Acheampong, and Rawlings. 457 The Ghana Christian Council, an ecumenical Christian community established in 1929, has also distinguished itself as a liberator of Ghanaians from political repression. In his analysis of the dual role of religion, focusing more on Christianity, as a force for legitimating both the status quo and protest, Kwasi Yirekyi concluded as follows: 456 The Decalogue which are all repeated in the New Testament, apart from the Sabbath observation. 457 Baba G. Jallow, “Catholic advocacy for social justice in Nkrumah’s Ghana,” Journal of Religion & Society, 16 (2014): 1-13.

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According to the church, Ghanaian civil liberties such as the protection of human rights, concern for the poor and oppressed, and freedom of the press had been seriously jeopardised by the military. Therefore, the church undertook a dual responsibility. First, it insisted on its prophetic role (i.e., as a social critic) in the political arena and challenged unparalleled military violence. Second, the church educated Christians about their civil rights and motivated them to participate in the democratic process. 458

While it is not the case that every church in Ghana, particularly the so-called one-man churches, has been supportive of human rights, the church and various religious groups have been instrumental in advancing human rights. From the perspective of Christianity, as I shall discuss in detail in the concluding chapter of this book, the fact that every human being carries the image of God qualifies every human being for protection against violation. At the same time, the church protests against the state when it appears to stray with the legislative instrument to control areas, such as the family, that religions consider pre-political or predating the state. As far as Muslims and Christians are concerned, the family is not part of what they cede to the state as part of the social contract. Christians and Muslims may appeal to the state to protect their families with laws, but not to redefine the nature of the family. As I have said, Muslims, in particular, have been wary, since the colonial era, of the state intruding on Islamic family law. The discussion leads us to the idea of the celestial dimension of the Kingdom of God or Christian citizenship. Much as Christians have earthly citizenship, Christians are futuristic about their lives. They believe that their hereafter is dependent on what they do at the Kingdom of God or Christian citizenship. Much as Christians have earthly citizenship, Christians are futuristic about their lives. They believe that their hereafter is dependent on what they do here. What they are here for on earth is to keep God’s Garden from further collapsing, or, to use Jesus’ expression, “occupy till I come.” 459 Issues may be raised about what Christians are to occupy, but there can hardly be any splitting of hairs over the fact that Christians, especially those with a traditional view of the constitution of the human family, would hardly retreat or privatise their belief about it. Because Christianity occupies both the temporal and eternal structures of their understanding of history and time construction, the 458 Kwasi Yirenkyi, “The role of Christian churches in national politics: Reflections from laity and clergy in Ghana,” Sociology of Religion, 61, 3 (2000): 325338, p. 335. 459 Luke 19:13.

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sexual revolution is based on morality as progressive. They believe that what is good and bad can be historically and contextually determined. Just like the case advanced by the defenders of minority sexual rights in Ghana, slavery was not always considered evil. So, if the same-sex practise was once read as sinful and evil, such a profile cannot stand the test of time. Advocates for minority sexual rights accuse religious people who oppose sexual and moral progress agendas of being “conservative” and “frozen in time,” which runs counter to the idea of moral and cultural progressivism. This is exactly what LGBTQ+ activists have been saying all along, and Barack Obama aptly captured it for them. On October 20, 2021, while canvassing support for Terry McAuliffe to continue to serve for the second time as Governor of Virginia, Barack Obama was squirmed by people who still oppose same-sex rights. Framing morality as progressive and in sync with LGBTQ issues, he said as follows: I mean, I understand why people just feel like, “When’s this going to end?” And sometimes politics in Washington feels that way, right? It’s like, “Oh, are we still arguing about gay marriage?” Really? I thought that ship had sailed. I thought that was pretty clearly the right thing to do. We got Republicans across the country who said, “Yeah, of course.” And we’re going to reopen that can? What? So, I understand why sometimes people get tired. 460

Speaking as a key representative of the leftists, Barack Obama considered Christians with traditional views that sustain heterosexual marriage as the only normative as backward and primitive. From the perspective of Obama, it is about time such Christians progressed morally from their parochial and dated morality to the world of moral disenchantment and embracement of inclusivity. But for Christians, the past is not there. The past is there to govern the present and prepare it for the future. The Bible is full of “remember” to remind Christians to trace tapestries and patterns in history. Not only that, but the Bible also affords Christians wisdom to live through the times. As far as my understanding of the Bible is concerned, God’s work through human beings (which creates history or the past) is understood and employed as a didactic lesson for the present and future through the Word of God, which is unchanging. For this reason, the past, as someone said, is not forgotten; it isn’t even past. Our past shackles us, especially when 460 The Independent (23 October 2021), “Live: Obama campaigns with Virginia gubernatorial candidate McAuliffe,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgvWp4AqhTY.

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we don’t realise it. But it can also liberate us. Understanding our past can reopen doors that were previously closed. 461 The logical conclusion of the discussion so far is that for Christians, the moral principles of God are timeless and socio-culturally relevant. This disposition of the enduring ethics of God sheds important wisdom in Harvey Cox’s observation that the Christian Movement since its history, see their movement as a self-conscious alternative to the empire that tyrannized them (emphasis, author’s).” 462 My discussion also chimes with Reinhold Niebuhr’s suggestion to Christians that: For Christianity beware, particularly radical Protestantism, that it does not accept the habits of a sinful world as the norms of Christian collective life. For Christians, only the law of love is normative. He would do well to remember that he is a sinner who has never perfectly kept the law of God. But neither must he forget that he is a child of God who stands under that law. 463

Concluding on the discussion so far, I argue that western scholars and their allies in Ghana tend to transpose and transplant western concepts into the Ghanaian public sphere or religious space without taking the liberty to explain what the term implies. The concept of “Christian nationalism” could mean several things. First, it could mean Christians seeking to take over the reins of Ghana’s public sphere with narrow Christian dogmatic values, seeking to impose on every Ghanaian citizen. This is far from the case, as my argument remains that, even when some Christians refer to Ghana as a Christian nation what they possibly have in mind is cultural rather than political. The second understanding of “Christian nationalism” is when Christians think their ethical values, primarily on the family, are under threat from both local and external forces. Relating the above to citizenship, it also means that Christian citizenship is terrestrially diverse, yet all Christians find a common ground in yielding to the teaching and work of Jesus. Indeed, Christians may disagree on how to interpret God’s Word or their scripture, but those who hold traditional views on marriage would hardly disagree on what God allows as marriage. More importantly, it invests Christian citizenship with flexibility and makes it highly mobile and transnational. Christians in Ghana who share the idea of marriage as a divine-cultural Cox, The future, p. 57. Ibid., p. 58. 463 Reinhold Niebuhr, Christianity and power politics (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1952), p. 215. 461 462

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mandate between a biological man and woman in a social context for potential procreation would mostly unite to advance their transnational objective of protecting marriage. It is also simplistic to assume that Christian groups in the West are supporting Christian groups in Ghana without reference to the fact that Christians and Muslims also accuse pro-LGBTQ rights groups of getting support from the leftist government of America’s Joe Biden. It is simplistic to assume that those protecting minority sexual rights do not also have their own interests to advance. As Henriette Gunkel observed, LGBTQ politics need to acknowledge “the fact that there are several people who have joined this [LGBTQ agenda in Africa; mine emphasis based on context] and other transnational campaigns because they are seriously concerned about and invested in LGBTI politics within a transnational, and not only national, context.” And some of them do position themselves politically and transnationally, frequently in relation to “their own” national context” (author’s emphasis). 464 Those who accuse Christians of advancing Christian nationalism in Ghana could also read the various report to know that what is triggering the LGBTQ debate is, inter alia, because of what several Ghanaians read as the western imposition of its culture on them. Continuing from the above, the Western government has demonstrated direct interest in what the religious constituency considers an imposition of western sexual ethics. Since 2011, beginning with UK’s Prime Minister, David Cameron, the west has attempted to tie “aid” to sexual liberalisation. The author could read Biden’s “Democracy Summit” to understand how the religious constituency feels about leftist politics and its cascading effect in Ghana. Second, did Jeffrey Haynes find out what triggered the current Family Value Bill in Parliament? Western foreign diplomats were directly involved in the country’s internal affairs, assisting and publicising their support for an LGBTQ centre in Accra on social media. Where in the western world would a Ghanaian diplomat master the courage to advocate for and publicise a mobilisation for the rights of polygynists?

464 Henriette Gunkel, “Some reflections on postcolonial homophobia, local interventions, and online: The politics of global petitions,” African Studies Review, 56, 2 (2013): 67-81, p. 77.

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Do We Need A National Cathedral? The national cathedral saga: Why we need it and why I support it I have no difficulty in admitting that the debate over the proposed national cathedral is cast along religious and political lines. Some hardliners are beginning to shift position and say that instead of a cathedral, we should have an interfaith dialogue centre. That is not a bad idea. Others are also invoking the existential reality of poverty to cast a slur on the intelligence of our president and, by extension, Christians. To sum up this argument, it is better to solve the ravaging effects of poverty and lack than to build a cathedral. Indeed, those who think along this line have a utopian Marxist idea that poverty is framed around class conflict. The only way to kill poverty is to defeat class differentiation. I must state that I engage the discussion with my predilection as a Christian. I, therefore, speak as a Christian. My views are heavily tainted by my Christian assumptions. I must also state that I have no worries about the importance of a national cathedral. But in the following paragraphs, I will flesh out the issues that have informed the debate over the construction of a national cathedral as a commemoration of our sixty-first anniversary of independence by my Christian assumptions. I must also state that I have no worries about the importance of a national cathedral. But in the following paragraphs, I will flesh out the issues that have informed the debate over the construction of a national cathedral as a commemoration of our sixtyfirst anniversary of independence. It is indeed to the glory of God that we have such an edifice to signal our appreciation of God’s grace. Though we have not reached where we want to get to, we are confident that eventually the Lord we seek to honour will graciously take us there. First, I must put on record that Christianity is a precipitator of progress – which though may not be acceptable to all and at all times, remains valid. I have read the histories of England and the United States and have come to the same conclusion as many eminent scholars: that Christianity actually provided the fount and foundation of these countries. In the book, Rulers, religion, and riches: Why the West got Rich and the Middle East did not, the author, Rubin Jared, underscored the cardinal role Christianity played in birthing the civilisation of the West. 465 He stressed the fact that Christianity was a deciding factor in separating the West from the Middle East in terms of development. The same 465 Jared Rubin, Rulers, religion, and riches : why the West got rich and the Middle East did not (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017).

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argument has been advanced by Max Weber, who argued that the Protestant work ethic laid the foundation for Western capitalism. Indeed, capitalism had multiple sources in the history of the West, but the Protestant Christian logic of working hard, spending less, and investing more was key in propelling the industrialisation of the West. In Ghana, the early missionaries of the nineteenth century—not necessarily the mercenaries or merchants—were very instrumental in bringing development to the country. They built schools and hospitals and brought important crops, like cocoa, to us – later popularized by Tetteh Quarshie, a Ghanaian/Gold Coast agriculturalist. 466 It is important to note that, to date, the best schools in Ghana are those built by missionaries. The cocoa they introduced remains the mainstay of the country’s economy. This is not to say that the missionaries, as human beings, did not have their shortfalls. It is important to point out that the missionaries helped shape the destiny of our country, Ghana. Islam was in Ghana for about one hundred years before Christianity, 467 but the religion of Islam can in no way be compared to the contributions Christianity has made to Ghana’s development. Even at a time when Ghanaian Christians, at least the Church of Pentecost, do not solicit funding from anywhere other than the Church, the contribution of the Church cannot be compared with Islam, which continues to receive the inflow of funds from oil-rich countries in the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia, Iran, Libya (until the fall of Muammar Muhammad Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi), and so on! In conclusion, it is myopic, if not crass ignorance, to assume that Christianity is a drawback to Ghana’s development. In the same way, given the contributions of the church to Ghana’s progress, there is absolutely nothing wrong with having a national cathedral to honour the triune God. Second, the idea that Ghana is a secular state, Second, the idea that Ghana is a secular state, as stated by Kofi Amenyo in his journalistic article to disavow the construction of national cathedral, 468 betrays our knowledge of “secularism.” Also, Kwasi Pratt Jr’s, (one of Ghana’s seasoned journalists) claim that “Constitution says Ghana is a secular 466 Polly Hill, “The history of the migration of Ghana cocoa farmers,” Transactions of the Historical Society of Ghana, 4, 1 (1959): 14-28. 467 John Azumah, “Controversy and restraints in Ghana,” Transformation, 17, 1 (2000): 23-26. 468 Kofi Amenyo (14 June 2022), “Ghana is a secular state where governments should not be building cathedrals or mosques,” https://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/features/Ghana-is-a-secular-statewhere-governments-should-not-be-building-cathedrals-or-mosques-1560521.

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nation” is legally, historically and politically/legally not factual. 469 The Constitution nowhere says so or even implies it, if secularism is used to mean the absence of religion in the public sphere. This means that while Ghanaians have every legitimate reason to be concerned about creeping religious intolerance in the country’s public sphere, which has burgeoned since the 1990s, the appeal to a secular constitution does not make the case any better. Indeed, since the re-democratisation and liberalisation of the media landscape, the various religious groups have leveraged the media to proselytise. The failure of some religious figure to apply tact, wisdom and dialogue in their use of the media has occasionally generated low intensity intra and inter-religious violence, often between Pentecostals and the Ga indigenous political leaders. 470 As I said, the ever-increasing religious tension and sometimes the state’s unwise deployment of religion has caused Ghanaians to be concerned about religious tolerance and peaceful interfaith interaction. Nevertheless, most of those invoking the secular argument have no understanding of what it means to call a nation secular. To save space, I will simply state that Ghana is not a secular quintessential secular state. Historically, the word “secular” became a catchword for separating religion and politics. Partly, the Christian Reformation contributed to sustaining the secular debate. The conventional knowledge of secularism is that religion should be banned from the public square. In other words, we need to have what has been described as a “naked public square.” Religion was to be a private affair. The state was to stay away from religious issues. Let me outline the problems with this justification. First, atheism and theism both remain prevalent in society. We all always bring our worldview, which is influenced by whether or not we believe in God, into the public sphere. Our beliefs influence how we use resources and interact with others. Therefore, it is impossible to restrict religion to the home. Second, if you remove religion from the public sphere, what do you replace it with? For instance, creationism is not covered in public 469 Ghanaweb (14 May 2021), “Is that how you run a secular state? – Kwasi Pratt asks Ghanaian leaders over religious tolerance,” https://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/Is-that-how-yourun-a-secular-state-Kwesi-Pratt-asks-Ghanaian-leaders-over-religious-tolerance1261513. 470 Seth Tweneboah, Yunus Dumbe and Victor Selorme Gedzi, “Pentecostalism, the media, and the state: Politicization of indigenous customary systems in Ghana,” Politics, Religion & Ideology, 20, 3 (2019): 322-339; J. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu, “African traditional religion, Pentecostalism and the clash of spiritualities in Ghana,” in Stewart M. Hoover and Nadia Kaneva (eds), Fundamentalism and media, 161-178 (New York: Continuum, 2009).

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education in the United States. However, they replaced that with evolution, which is a belief system in its own right. In the end, we switch out one religion for another. The public sphere is never neutral. Related to the above is the inconsistency of some of some Muslim commentators, particularly in relation to the veil. In France, the veil was pushed out of the public sphere because of secularism, but in Ghana, the veil is forced into the public sphere because of secularism. In the end, we see the arbitrariness and inconsistency of the secular debate. Ghana is not a strictly secular state. At best, Ghana is a religious plural state, as I have already stated. In other words, Ghana is a deeply religious state that requires political actors to mediate the interactions of Ghana’s multi-religious groups. The state’s role is not to stifle innocuous religious activities. In the end, Ghana is not an atheistic state. It is a religious state that recognises the centrality of religion. This explains the reason for beginning every state function with a religious ritual. In the end, building a cathedral for the nation is not against the “secular” status of Ghana. Third, Muslims are saying that they built the biggest mosque in Ghana without the support of the state. This argument overlooks the fact that over the years, the state has been, rightly or wrongly, sponsoring the annual hajj of some Muslims—barring all attempts at politicising this issue of state sponsorship. But because of their hatred for the national cathedral, some of them are now kicking against state sponsorship of the hajj. Here, I am specifically referring to the Coalition of Muslim Organizations in Ghana (COMOG), which is arguing that the state should refrain from sponsoring the hajj. This could be read as problematic. When did COMOG realise that the state has to stay away from hajj activities? Could this be a similitude the two “warring” Jewish factions—Sadducees and Pharisees—uniting to have Christ crucified? The argument that Muslims are building their largest mosque on a self-funded basis is not true. It is known that the Turkish government, as part of its effort to resuscitate (if possible) the Ottoman Empire ideology, is sponsoring Islamic activities in Third World countries. Turkey, which was ‘secularised’ by Mustafa Kamal Ataturk, 471 is relapsing into its religious fever, promoting Islam both at home and abroad—through the building of mosques. 472 Aside from that, since the resurgence of Islamic activities in Ghana in the 1950s and the

471 Hakan Özoğlu, From caliphate to secular state: Power struggle in the early Turkish Republic (California: Praeger, 2011). 472 Jeffrey Haynes, “Religious and economic soft power in Ghana-Turkey relations.” Religions, 13, 11 (2022): 1-12.

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emergence of Salafism in the 1990s, 473 money from oil-rich Islamic countries in the Middle East has been pouring in to support Muslims in Ghana. In contrast, in the 1950s, many Christian groups in Ghana became self-sponsoring in their activities. 474 This self-sufficiency of Christianity in Ghana has continued to date. The Church of Pentecost has never, since its establishment in the 1950s, depended on external financial help from any “secular” organisation. But the achievement of the Church in all fields of life in Ghana is glaring enough for all to see and well documented. 475 In relation to this, we are not sure whether the state is fully funding the construction of the cathedral. I have heard from a credible source that Christians are going to contribute by providing resources (human and material) to construct the cathedral. In any case, the state would have to account for every pesewa that has been used in the construction of the cathedral. The other argument against the construction of the cathedral is poverty. The argument runs simplistically as follows: Ghana is poor. We must use the money for the cathedral to reverse poverty. This argument, at face value, looks appealing and rational. But, as I will show, it is simplistic and not nuanced. First, poverty will hardly end in our world. This is not a prophecy of doom or to discourage us from fighting it. It is stating the obvious. Karl Marx and his followers believe in a delusory utopia in which poverty does not exist. From the Marxist point of view, poverty will end when the proletariat rises to challenge the privileges enjoyed by the bourgeoisie. This argument is so illogical and unconvincing. When I first read George Orwell’s Animal Farm in secondary school in 1999, I had a hint right away that socialism, advancing to communism, is a daydreaming idea. It looks appealing but is very unrealistic. Throughout the history of the world, no nation has succeeded in reversing poverty (however we define it). In fact, despite all the trappings of scientism—with its outlandish claim to utopianism through only scientific and AI mediation, the Covid-19 pandemic reversed all the gains the world in the fight against poverty, which as one journalist, Kaamil Ahmed reported, “has turned back the clock 30 473 Nathan Samwini, The Muslim resurgence in Ghana since 1950: Its effects upon Muslims and Muslim-Christian relations (LIT Verlag Münster, 2006). 474 David E. Skinner, “Da`wa and Politics in West Africa: Muslim Jama`at and Non-Governmental Organizations in Ghana, Sierre Leone and The Gambia,” In Barbar Bompani and Maria Frahm-Arp (eds), Development and political form below: Exploring religious spaces in the African state, 99-130 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). 475 Samuel Y. Antwi, “COP’s impact on the economic and Socio-political life of Ghana,” In Opoku Onyinah & Michael Ntumy. God’s faithfulness to the Church of Pentecost (Accra: The Church of Pentecost, 2020).

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years on global poverty.” 476 Meanwhile, Oxfam reported that: “The world’s ten richest men more than doubled their fortunes from $700 billion to $1.5 trillion—at a rate of $1.3 billion a day—during the pandemic while the incomes of 99 per cent of humanity have fallen with over 160 million people forced into poverty and inequality contributing to the death of one person every four seconds, an Oxfam report reveals today.” 477 It is not the building of a cathedral that would sap Ghana’s resolve to overcome poverty. Let me use the example of James McKeown, the Scottish missionary who founded the Church of Pentecost, to demonstrate how the Church actually works to alleviate poverty. McKeown was strongly Pentecostal in orientation when he arrived in Ghana in 1937 to start his missionary work, and his primary objective was the mission. The other missionaries before him had built hospitals and schools and even brought cash crops, but he had no particular interest in doing any of those things. When he was asked by the District Commissioner (in Kibi?) why he was not engaging in building social infrastructure, his answer was, “When Ghanaians get rooted in the Christian faith, all other things will follow.” 478 Since many Akan people accepted his message, the Church of Pentecost has become one of the richest Christian organisations in Ghana. The Pentecost Convention Center in Gomoah-Feteh, Central Region, is arguably the biggest and most beautiful edifice in Ghana. Recently in 2018, during the 43rd General Council Meeting of the Church of Pentecost at the Pentecost Convention Centre at Gomoa Fetteh in the Central Region of Ghana, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, the vice president suggested that the state learn from the managerial skills and prudence of the Church for the country to achieve its national ambition of Ghana subsisting beyond aid. 479

476 Kaamil Ahmed (9 April 2020), “Coronavirus could turn back the clock 30 years on global poverty,” https://www.theguardian.com/globaldevelopment/2020/apr/09/coronavirus-could-turn-back-the-clock-30-years-onglobal-poverty. 477 Oxfam (17 January 2022), “Ten richest men double their fortunes in pandemic, while incomes of 99 per cent of humanity fall,” https://www.oxfam.org.uk/media/press-releases/ten-richest-men-double-theirfortunes-in-pandemic-while-incomes-of-99-per-cent-of-humanity-fall/. 478 Hans W. Debrunner, A History of Christianity in Ghana (Accra: Waterville Publishing House, 1967). 479 Emelia Ennin Abbey (3 May 2018), “Dr Bawumia lauds Pentecost church for growth,” https://www.graphic.com.gh/news/general-news/veep-lauds-pentecostchurch-for-growth.html.

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The Church has produced some of the richest men and women in Ghana and Africa. The secret, from the church’s perspective, is giving God priority. The basis for this was, inter alia, because the founder of the Church, McKeown, influenced by Calvinistic work ethic from his parents who were strictly Presbyterians, and certainly 19th century Pentecostal holiness ethic, insisted on holiness as the fundamental qualification for ministry and work with the Church of Pentecost. 480 For this reason, it is reported that that anyone who worked as a church employee whether as a clergy or a non-clerical person must demonstrate a strong moral aptitude in both inter-personal relations and engagement with God. This was to be demonstrated through the baptism of the Holy Spirit, evidenced by the speaking in tongues as initial evidence. Bringing all this to the interface between social service and moral transformation of Christians, McKeown is also reported to have told church members during the church’s General Council Meeting in 1977 as follows: The church is growing numerically and financially, but if the secret place of waiting on the Lord is neglected, the Church will decline and decay will set in. at the commencement of the work some forty years ago, there was prayer and yet more prayer. If we follow education, we will get what education gives. If we follow material things, we will get what these give. We will have to seek the Lord and wait on Him; this is the secret of the Church’s success and expansion. 481

It is, therefore, true that there are men and women who are rich without religion; while China for example is said to have millionaires who are not religious. But in the CoP’s metanarrative, McKewon planted the seed of building the church’s foundation after focusing on building the kingdom. The church, which is less than a century old in Ghana, has a university, a hospital, clinics, and many primary and senior high schools. The population of the church is about 9.1 percent of the entire population of Ghana. The Church is also involved in missions in more than one hundred countries in the world, including Ukraine, Pakistan, and India! The secret is: if you attend to God, He comes in for you. Let us compare McKeown’s logic with that of Nkrumah, Ghana’s first president. Inverting the Christian message with his “seek first the 480 Christian Tsekpoe, Intergenerational missiology: An African Pentecostal-charismatic perspective (Oxford: Regnum Books International, 2022), pp. 22-23. 481 General Council Meeting Minutes (31 March 1977), cited in Tsekpoe, Intergenerational, p. 99.

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political kingdom, and all other things shall follow,” he renounced God and became hostile to Christianity. He is considered to have failed miserably, became a ruthless dictator, and ransacked the resources the nation had. Most of his ministers became deeply corrupt and selfserving. 482 He presided over a country that was running into a ditch. The secret is that he renounced God and allegedly made Kankan Nyame his deity. He served the atheistic gods of Marx and Lenin. Like his communist forebears, he thought religion was a bane to development, as it generated and invested fear and cowardice in people. 483 In the end, he failed Ghana—failed not simply because he renounced God or Christianity, but he touched religion in way that polarise the Ghanaian front. To be fair, I admit that this is not to say that Christian leaders would or have always done any better. For example, Frederick Chiluba of Zambia claimed to be a born again Christian, but is considered by some Zambians to have failed; 484 Lazarus McCarthy Chakwera president of Malawi is a theologian of the Seventh-day Adventist Church and yet is a section of Zambian have accused him of having failed to end nepotism. 485 From the above, I state that there is no correlation between the building of a national cathedral and poverty reduction. In any case, which religious organisation has been involved in alleviating poverty more than Christians? Which organisation embarks on robust rural development more than Christians? Finally, the argument that we need a national shrine is a show of ignorance of “traditional” religion. Unlike Christianity and Islam, which have specific buildings for worship, in Akan Traditional Religion, for example, there is no need for a special house for the deities. 486 And also, devotees of traditional religions rarely have a history of building shrines, 482 Peter T. Omari, Kwame Nkrumah: The anatomy of an African dictatorship (London: C. Hurst, 1970). 483 Kwame Nkrumah, Consciencism: Philosophy and ideology for de-colonization (New York: Monthly Review, 1964), p. 14. 484 Jan Kwan Donge, “The plundering of Zambian resources by Frederick Chiluba and his friends: A case study of the interaction between national politics and international drive towards good governance,” African Affairs, 108, 430 (2009): 69-90. 485 Nyasa times (28 July 2021), “Malawi President Chakwera fails to impress on 1 million jobs, nepotism, blames predecessor in HARDtalk interview,” https://www.nyasatimes.com/malawi-president-chakwera-fails-to-impress-on-1million-jobs-nepotism-blames-predecessor-in-hardtalk-interview/. 486 Charles Prempeh, “Decolonising African divine episteme: A critical analysis of the Akan divine name of God (Twereduampon Kwame),” Journal of Religion in Africa 52 (2022): 269-291.

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like Christians and Muslims. Neo-traditional groups like the Afrikannia that are seeking to place an injunction on the state over the cathedral issue do not worship in a “shrine.” Also, Muslims already have the state facilitating their building their “national” mosque, which is right in my community in Accra. The land on which the mosque is located used to be called “Montreal,” where my generation in the late 1980s used to play football. Following the destruction of the Makola mosque, Rawlings gave them that land to rebuild the mosque. 487 At any rate, Christians are hardly in opposition to the state building of a national shrine for Ghanaians who identify with ancestral cult. In 2019, the Minister of Chieftaincy and Religious Affair, Samuel Kofi Dzamesi hinted the possibility of the Government of Ghana constructing a national shrine for traditionalists in the country. 488 In response, the General Secretary of the Christian Council of Ghana, Rev. Dr. Cyril G.K. Fayose, said that: Ghana is largely a Christian country. It is also a multi-religious country, so we do not have any Christians, we have Muslims, and traditional religions. So, if we have a national mosque and a national cathedral, I don’t think it’s a misplaced priority to have a national shrine. They have the right to ask. They are all evangelistic religions and they all want to convert people into their religions. For us as Christians, our goal is [sic] evangelize the whole world so as the Muslims and may be traditional religions. 489

Yes, it appears there is some sense that Ghana does not need additional church. But this is not just an additional church. For heaven’s sake, it is a national cathedral. We cannot also confuse a cathedral with an edifice for interfaith dialogue, as Sheikh Aremeyaw Shuaib is suggesting. 490 We simply need a national cathedral, which is necessary for constructing a national unity that is based on an idea of a socially constituted state. As a social construct, constructing national unity in Prempeh, Nima-Maamobi, p. 70. Ghanaweb (20 November 2019), “National shrine a possibility—Chieftaincy minister reveals,” https://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/National-shrine-apossibility-Chieftaincy-minister-reveals-800877. 489 Radio Angelus (21 November 2019), “Building a national shrine for Ghana not a misplaced priority—Christian Council,” https://radioangelus.com/christiancouncil-welcomes-national-shrine-idea/. 490 Masahudu Ankilu (29 August 2018), “Sheikh Aremeyaw: An inter-faith edifice would have been better than national cathedral,” https://africaneyereport.com/sheikh-aremeyaw-an-inter-faith-edifice-would-havebeen-better-than-national-cathedral/. 487 488

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the country cannot be done at the expense of neglecting the religious constituency, particularly Christians who are more than 70 percent of the country’s population and whose socio-politically and economic history has impacted and continues to shape the contours of the country. The national cathedral, antinomies of life and the religious insane Under this section I aim to discuss how cognitive dissonance over life’s inherent contradictions could be significantly addressed, making specific reference to our need for a religiously insane person. In Ghana, there is an awareness that much of what the political elites and other stakeholders do to make people behave rationally ends, indeed, in much ado about nothing. I have several examples to give to support my claim. But for the sake of space, I will just limit my submission to the most common one: road “accidents.” I put “accident” in quotation marks because the carnage on the roads, as I shall discuss, is hardly accidental. They are the result of a deficit of religiously insane drivers on the road. In Ghana, it is hardly disputed that when roads are simply unusable with all the irrational gapping manholes, death holes, etc., death holes are simply dead. Road injury remains one of the 10 causes of nondisease-related phenomenon. The World Health Organization reported that every year, the lives of approximately 1.3 million people are cut short as a result of road traffic crash. Between 20 and 50 million more people suffer non-fatal injuries, with many incurring a disability as a result of their injury. 491 Ghana had a troubling record of 72 persons out of every 100 000 population, suffered from grievous bodily injury, and close to 8 of the same population died from Road Traffic Accidents (RTAs) over the past decade. 492 The National Road Safety Authority (NRSA) reported that 1,985 persons were killed in road crashes in Ghana between January 2022 to October, while 13,109 were injured, out of the 12,565 road accidents documented in 2022. The Authority reported that 80 percent of road crashes were as a result of human errors such as wrong overtaking,

491 WHO (20 June 2022), “Road traffic injuries,” https://www.who.int/newsroom/fact-sheets/detail/road-traffic-injuries. 492 Paa Kwesi Blankson & Margaret Lartey, “Road traffic accidents in Ghana: Contributing factors and economic consequences,” Ghana Med J, 54, 3 (2020), https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8042801/pdf/GMJ54030131.pdf.

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excessing speed, fatigue driving, and poor maintenance. 493 Other analysts have observed that the ineffective public transportation systems and the focus on constructing more expensive roads, which encourage importation of more old cars, and a high dependence on privately run, deregulated commercial passenger transport sectors that are structurally embedded in driver exploitation. 494 Nevertheless, Festival Boateng has suggested that, instead of the usual punishing and threats of punishment, there is a need for addressing the broader societal systems whose effects manifest in the road transport sector. According Boateng, these societal systems, which are engineered by state’s enforcement of international neoliberal policies include: lack of viable public transportation systems, high level of unemployment, exploitative labour relations between drivers and transport companies or car owners and police corruption. 495 Until these issues of structure social injustice are adequately addressed, Festival Godwin Boateng asserts that the country can hardly stem the tide against road accidents. Nathaniel Gyimah has also observed that the major causes of road accidents are poor nature of roads, carelessness of road users, faulty vehicles, stress, unskilled drivers, inadequate road signs, inefficient MTTU personal, speeding, lack of education, drunkenness, and gross indiscipline. As a solution, Gyimah recommended education, provision of road signs, enforcement of traffic and road safety regulations, avoidance of attitudes/distractions leading road accidents, availability of logics, construction of good roads, maintenance of roads and vehicles and positive development. 496 All the established causes and preventions of road accidents are very insightful. Nevertheless, I maintain that deaths hardly happen on such roads because of the near absence of the main causes of accidents: 1. Over speeding 2. Overtaking 3. Overloading 4. Over rationality (hurry up to return for more money) 493 Janet Owusuaa Ansah (23 November 2022), “NRSA leads 2022 road safety campaign launch,” https://gna.org.gh/2022/11/nrsa-leads-2022-road-safetycampaign-launch/. 494 Festival Godwin Boateng, “Why African cannot prosecute (or even educate) its way out of road accidents: Insights from Ghana,” Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 8, 13 (2021): 1-11, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-02000695-5.pdf. 495 Ibid., p. 9. 496 Nathaniel Gyimah, “Contributing factors to road accidents in Ghana,” Matthew J. Emergency Med, 8, 1(2023): 1-14.

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So, when any of these merge with inducements such as drugs, superstition, and alcohol, citizens become victims of what is considered as a road accident. But as I said, the “accident” in the road accident becomes human beings rationalising to worry about what tomorrow has for them—the quest for survival. The pinnacle of Western Enlightenment was or is the deification of the human capacity for rational decision-making. Concurrently, when politicised religion was discarded in favour of rationalism in the seventeenth century, the major concern for thinkers like Immanuel Kant was how to leverage sanctified human rationality to rationalise the moral role of religion. The preceding was because politicians, clergy, and merchants relied on religion, even if they did not like it, to create social and cosmic order for control. That was, however, resented by those who wanted to be free, because freedom eventually becomes “my freedom,” not “everyone’s freedom.” As a result, when religion was abolished, the “unified” superstructure of social and cosmic order was significantly undermined. 497 In reflecting on the impact of Western enlightenment, Pope Benedict said as follows: And in the wake of this form of rationality, Europe has developed a culture that, in a manner unknown to humanity before now, excludes God from the public conscience, either by denying him altogether or by judging that his existence is not demonstrable, uncertain, and therefore belongs to the realm of subjective choices—something, in any case, irrelevant to public life. This purely functional rationality, so to speak, has implied a disorder of the moral conscience altogether unknown in cultures existing up to now, as it deems rational only that which can be proved with experiments. As morality belongs to an altogether different sphere, it disappears as a category unto itself and must be identified in another way, inasmuch as it must be admitted, in any case, that morality is essential.

Thus, subjectivity rationality alone proves difficult because “whose rationality is rational enough for everyone?” Meanwhile, religion referred to one source: God, with a promise of an ultimate benefit in heaven for keeping ethical and ontological boundaries—making extremists have their day. But in the case of rationality, how would anyone convince someone that reason is beneficial? The best reasons give us war, genocide, human sacrifices, organ harvesting, and senseless mass shootings—which have all been sometimes justified by politicised religion. 497 John F. Thornton and Susan B. Varene (eds), The essential Pope Benedict: His central writings and speeches (New York: HarperCollins [e-books], 2008), p. 327.

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To be sure, citizens need hospitals, schools, good roads, clean water, etc. But how would the political elites rationally reason with a rational being with a protective subjective reason to stick to the rules of education and health? Unfortunately, after years of education, several citizens still do things that the supposedly uneducated [or better state: the unschooled in western system of education] do, ruining everything we desire with rationality. On the country’s university campuses, the more rational students eat Fufu and drink Coke at the same time. The poorer a section of citizens are, the better food they eat (kooko and koose for breakfast). The richer they become, the more junk food they consume—creating a nemesis that overstretching the country’s health facilities. How would the country address this—rationally? An outrageous national cathedral will do. The sages of Akan once said: “The game of life ends the day we all become wise.” Must citizens blow ourselves up in yet another coups and revolutions? If the nation goes the pathways of revolution, who will live to enjoy the fruits of such rationality? Indeed, after every rationalistic approach to getting over the scourge of road “accidents” in Ghana, the NRSC comes close finding an answer when it uses the hastag: #GyaeObonsamAdwumaNO—to which #StopTheWorkofSatan. This for me, indicates that road accidents are a violation of both ethical and ontological boundaries of life—which seamlessly feeds the idea that the major reasons for road accidents are human antipathy to the voice of God. All the reasons for road accidents are because the human agent—the driver—is privileging money or material results over and above human beings. It, therefore, calls for a moral revolution – as road “accidents” is indeed Obonsam Adwuma! The suffering, needy God who begs for a home The above implies several things—especially a relook at humankind’s relationship with God. It also means when it comes to matters of God and man, we must all have a say—in support of one party, but hardly both. This is usually the case with a liberalised media that continues to tilt towards the left in support of anything that generates public sentiment against Christianity. The illusion of democratised channels of communication, mediated by social media, similarly creates the illusion that “we are all experts on every issue.” The worst of it all is when religion is politicised and weaponized against God and His devotees. In all this, what I have come to appreciate is that religion is countercultural and hardly makes sense to the senses, so matters of religion necessarily divide. How can the crucifixion of Jesus Christ have any salvific power? 196

I have had this question several times as a young man in a Muslimdominated community since the late 1980s. No matter how logical one’s answers are to this question, confirmation biases are as real as the spirit of the world that blinds us to making every answer senseless. Impliedly, the idea that religion is countercultural is more than a cliché; it is a fact. Many “sensible” people are turned off by the Bible’s narratives because of their anti-cultural perspective. It makes sense that the Greeks would have overlooked Christ’s unusually salvific solution to the human ontological conundrum. It is also senseless of the Christian faith to make the narratives of Jesus Christ highly offensive to “sensible” people, but the power of salvation remains for those of us who are graciously striving in faith. In virtually all secular and non-conservative evangelical Christian institutions of higher learning, Jesus Christ remains the whipping boy while the Bible is taken as a collection of myths. There is, however, something that confounds critics: the more Jesus Christ they reject, the more Jesus Christ they need. Gamaliel was/is correct in cautioning Jewish authorities against persecuting the Apostles of Jesus Christ and the truth of His teaching. When as Christians we talk about the story of Jesus Christ and what He requires of us, we know the story remains about Jesus, while everyone else remains on the periphery. After pretending to be God, we know what is left of ancient Egypt are the pyramids, while the gods and pharaohs are long since buried. But we have the Jews still with us, and we still talk about the same God of redemption. Whenever the national cathedral comes up for discussion, a section of the citizens in Ghana begin to show the dexterity of economic management and wit. The cathedral issue merges both capitalists and socialists in an uncommon union; after all, when it is about Christ, enemies must necessarily be friends to “succeed.” The socialists claim the illusive God doesn’t need a home; the capitalists claim the money for the project could be used for something more useful to solve “real” needs. Either way, for the socialists and capitalists, the cathedral is a waste of time and resources. The strange thing, however, is that Judas Iscariot, who was in charge of Jesus Christ’s finances, was a combination of both. When a poor woman gave her all to honour Jesus—recorded in the Gospel of John chapter 12—Judas was angry and felt that the woman’s generosity was wasteful. Judas berated the woman and nearly called Christ unwise and inconsiderate about the impoverished—exactly as we do today. Nevertheless, it was the same Judas who sold Jesus Christ for just a few coins that he couldn’t even enjoy. My observation is that those who cry 197

the loudest against the national cathedral are the compradors of different shades of western cultural wars. While churches like the Church of Pentecost provided necessary aid during the coronavirus pandemic, the perceived crusaders against poverty were, as usual, talking cheap. Kwagyir Aggrey wasn’t wrong: “Talk is cheap.” Today, much of what we know about Judas, like the pharaohs, is his betrayal of Jesus Christ, while the Alabaster story remains sobering and apt in the world’s didactic lessons. Meanwhile, Jesus’ words to Judas were and continue to be true: “The poor will always be with you,” as they were over 2000 years ago. Unless He disproves Himself, Jesus’ claim from the above statement cannot be disproven and has never been and will never be untrue. If any disagrees, at least, I tend to suggest two novels George Orwell’s Animal Farm and Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s The Devil on the Cross that aptly bring out the ontological human quest for self that tends to serve as the aporia of anything good that one could have driven from both socialism and capitalism, respectively. 498 For more than 2000 years, no shrewd economist, no master manager, has wiped the world clean of poverty— I have already referred to how the Covid-19 pandemic reversed the human quest for a poverty-free world for another 30 years. It is the truism of Jesus’s declaration on poverty that, I assert that much as Yuval Noah Harari claim Jesus was ignorant about human cognitive ability to use technology to overturn the grim effect of poverty, 499 the World Bank reports that the global progress in reducing extreme poverty has come to a halt. 500 This was a result of the pandemic—a clear demonstration of human vulnerability. Again, as I said, the problem is not that there is a deficit of what it takes to provide for the poor, as it is about human penchant towards selfishness, which left uncontrolled would ruin the world. Adam Smith, the famed 18th century Scottish economist/or better profiled by Peter Burke as a social scientist—who sought to understand civil society in a systematic way— was apt when he said, 501 “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their 498 George Orwell, Animal farm: A fairy story (London: Penguin, 1951); Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s The Devil on the Cross (London: Heinemann, 1987). 499 Yuval Noah Harari, Species: A brief history of humankind (London: Vintage, 2014), p. 452. 500 Press Release (5 October 2022), “Global progress in reducing extreme poverty grinds to a halt,” https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/pressrelease/2022/10/05/global-progress-in-reducing-extreme-poverty-grinds-to-a-halt. 501 Peter Burke, History and social theory (New York: Cornell University Press, 1992), p. 4.

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regard to their own interest.” 502 Meanwhile, in teasing out the importance of the humanities—which lies as the heartland of religion and faith--Kwesi Yankah argued with his usual peerless use of language as a linguist said as follows about how the market indexes the sociality of the human person. At the African market, Negotiation is not simply a win or lose; it is the type of interaction where there are no winners and there are no losers. Otherwise, why would a young boy selling snails on a highway Konongo in Ghana plead with you to buy the burden off his head because he has to pay his school fees, and buying his stuff is the only way he can fund his education? And that simple plea, eloquently conveyed, turns on your generosity, and you probably dispensed with five cedis in the Ghanaian currency. Thus, when art and creativity are woven into human experience, an entire transaction takes on a different character, and human ties are negotiated, reinforced, or even severed. Experience here then tends to appeal to the soul. 503

Fundamentally, human abilities and choices are as diverse as our understanding of life and our quest for meaning. For this reason, much as I appreciate western socialists who sought to make sense of the world, the various theories that several of them, including Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Charles Darwin, and Michel Foucault were meant to satisfy themselves—self-glorification and/or achieve national glories for their respective nations. That partly explains the cyclical nature of our human challenges. We keep running in circles, pretentiously resolving inequalities, when we should be fixing ourselves, re-centring ourselves as we degrade everyone else. In any case, human existential selfishness is the countercultural response to the existential reality of existential poverty. We are all pretentiously caring and incorruptible until it comes to our true instinct for self-preservation. Darwin was right that selfishness or selfpreservation is the basic factor for human survival and that altruism, though necessary for group living, is possible only through a miracle. 504 No wonder the French political scientist Alexis de Tocqueville, a contemporary of Darwin searching for the same answer to Darwin’s question, concluded that Christian altruism made civil society 502 Adam Smith, An enquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations Vol. I (Indianapolis: LIbertyClassics, 1981), 27. 503 Kwesi Yankah, Beyond the political spider: Critical issues in African humanities (Makhanda, South Africa: African Humanities Association, 2021), p. 9. 504 Charles Darwin, On the origin of species (Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University, 2001), p. 70.

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possible—religion produces healthy capable individuals for strengthening community. 505 In the Akan oral narratives of sagacious sagacity, often called Anansesem—tales about Ananse—we have multiple insights into how the Akan ancestors construed the ontological selfishness of human beings. Ananse story comes across to any Akan child as stories about how to be wise, wit, and diligent in life. It is about the need for one to guard against being swindled as a result of one thinking human beings are ontologically good. The very opening of Anansesem indexes its didactic lessons. All Anansesem opens with the narrator starting with the following opening remarks: “Ananse sɛm ɛyɛ ɛsisie” (to wit: Ananse story is about cheating and wits) and the audience’s response, “sɛ ɛyɛ ɛsisiem a, yɛ se sa sua wo ara” (to wit: “If it is about cheating and wits, then we revert it to you). Indeed, the very aetiological origin of Ananse sem as a major collection of Akan tales is about Ananse, the Spider, seeking to outwit God – the Creator. Somehow, Ananse succeeded in winning a duet against God – which brings out a didactic lesson for human beings to have a level of wits that can even compete with the deities. Unfortunately, some have reduced Ananse sem to nothing short of a collection of primitive idiocy of a primitive people. On 16 November 2022, the Baraka Policy Institute organized a biannual lecture on the theme: “Towards achieving the SDGs on education: Tackling socioeconomic forces against progress in Ghana,” at the British Council, Accra. The Baraka Policy Institute is a civil society advocacy and research organization that was established in January 2014 to promote social justice and national development. Given the objective of the Institute, I readily accepted an invitation from their Executive Director, Dr Haruna Zagoon-Sayeed, who is also my friend. It was at the programme that I understood the deficit of even elite knowledge about Anansem. During Baraka Institute’s programme which was titled, Towards achieving the millennial goals in education: Tackling socio-economic forces against progress in Ghana, the special guest of Honor, Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum, in his unfettered adulation of technical education remarked derogatively about Anansesem—claiming that Ghana’s education is shifting from the banality of Ananse stories. Against the context of his spiteful profiling of Anansesem, during the question and answers time, I asked the basic question about what Ghana’s philosophy of education about the “why” and “how” of life in the face of accelerated technical education, was. To my disappointment and obviously to some of the audience, he said they were still developing it. 505 Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (trans. Harvey C. Mansfield & Delba Winthrop) (Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press, 2002), p. 32.

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Sadly, and regrettably, the same person, trained and worked in the US, is more familiar about Western theories and it technophilia, than the African’s approach to education. Sad, indeed—given that the Ananse sem is not to be taken as ideal story of ideal people in an ideal. And yet, the same Minister of Education is saddled with school children at the second cycle level of education, who despite receiving free secondary and technical education would deploy the overreaching scope of social media, backed by partisan politics, to insult the country’s president. Similarly, at the same event, the Minister was shown demonstrable evidence of a grim reality of school children who play truancy by engaging in sport betting—an increasing social challenge in Ghana. 506 The issue is not only about students verbally abusing the president or the older generation as part of both expressing frustration and reneging personal and moral responsibility in life. It is also about teachers who would profile Dr Eric Nkansah, government appointee as the Director General of Ghana Education Service, as “Goro Boy” and a misfit. 507 If only this Minister had reflected even in passing on Akan Ananse sɛm, he would have helped reform Ghana’s education to keep both science and philosophy afloat in advancing human flourishing. Indeed, Joseph Agbenyega, Deborah E. Tamakloe and Sunanta Klibthong concluded their study on the importance of oral traditions, focusing on Ananse sɛm, in education as necessary in helping children’s reflective thinking and social life. 508 This is also true because the Ananse is far from being a trickster, instead, he represents a real philosopher and cultural hero. 509 The stories come to as struggles that are part and parcel of life and the lessons that could be derived from them. Also, the fact that Ananse sɛm is as critical in understanding the complex human ontology is because it indexes a delight achieved through cunning, trickery, humour, and

506 Haruna Zagoon-Sayeed (2022), “Sport betting in Ghana – The dangers on child education,” https://barakapolicy.org/sport-betting-in-ghana-the-dangers-onchild-education/. 507 Maxwell Maundy (26 October 2022), “Open letter to President Akufu-Addo to decline NAGRAT’s demand over Dr Nkansah’s appointment,” https://www.graphic.com.gh/features/opinion/open-letter-to-president-akufoaddo-to-decline-nagrat-s-demand-over-dr-eric-nkansah-s-appointment.html. 508 Joseph S. Agbenyega, Deborah E. Tamakloe & Sunanta Klibthong, “Folklore epistemology: How does traditional folklore contribute to children’s thinking and concept development?” International Journal of Early Years Education, 25, 2 (2017): 112126. 509 Peter Arthur, “Philosophy and heroism: The literary perspective of Yaw Asare’s Ananse in the land of idiots,” E-Journal of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, 1, 5 (2020): 152-164.

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the outwitting of physically superior adversaries. 510 This is exactly how the neoliberal, capitalist and socialist world operate—it is about selfserving and self-glorification through the application of wits and charades. It is also about knowledge for economic value, not for furthering human capacity for social conviviality. Indeed, as Martha Nussbaum rightly cautioned about technophelia—modern human flirtation with technological education (or a search for “how” answers at the total neglect of the “why” answers): Thirsty for national profit, nations, and their systems of education, are heedlessly discarding skills that are needed to keep democracies alive. If this trend continues, nations all over the world would soon be producing generations of useful machines, rather than complete citizens who can think for themselves, criticize traditions, and understand the significance of another person’s suffering and achievements. The future of the world’s democracies hangs in the balance. 511

I must also say that the idea of building specialist secondary school for science and technological education, which the Minister is promoting, is not new. Since the 19th century, the Western world has fetishized science education—to the point of instituting scientism as a cult and the only means of human flourishing. And yet, the 19th century European wanton colonization and mass destruction of “othered” human beings around the world was never shot of a huge blot on scientism. The outbreak of European wars, universalised and profiled as World Wars in the 20th century, including the historic role of it intellectual epicentre—Germany, testifies to the fault lines in narrowcasting on science and technology education at the expense of philosophy—or the Humanities. Already, there is enough evidence of the enormous social and economic inequality that trained scientists and technologists without character generate. Martha Nussbaum has overly demonstrated to the world, through her research in India, the impoverishment that education for economic enrichment without social skills brings to humanity. 512 It, therefore, comes as no surprise at all when a technically-oriented secondary cycle institution, Aston University Engineering Academy— 510 Kwesi Yankah, “Folktales,” in Philip M. Peek & Kwesi Yankah (eds), African folklore: An enclopedia, 268-271 (New York: Routledge, 2004), p. 269. 511 Martha Nussbaum, Not for profit: Why democracy needs the humanities (Princeton: Princetown University Press, 2010), p. 2. 512 Martha C. Nussbaum, The human development approach (Cambridge, MA.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011); Not for profit education: Why democracy needs the humanities (Princeton: Princetown University Press, 2010).

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established in September 2012 and located at the Gosta Green area of Birmingham—is intentionally instilling virtues into its students. The school’s motto, which is “Knowledge for life. Skills for the future, is revealing enough” is revealing enough. beyond that the various classrooms are littered and visibly decorated with statements that enjoin students to always creatively combine skills and attitude in their lives and world of work as future scientists. One such statements, attributed to Albert Einstein reads as follows: “Most people may say that it is the intellect that makes a great scientist. They are wrong: it is character.” The issue of character formation as central to education was also observed by Martin Luther King Jnr, as follows: We must remember that intelligence is not enough. Intelligence plus character-that is the goal of true education. The complete education gives one not only power of concentration but worthy objectives upon which to concentrate. The broad education will, therefore, transmit to one not only the accumulated knowledge of the race but also the accumulated experience of social living. 513

His verdict was that: “The most dangerous criminal may be the man gifted with reason but no morals.” 514

Figure 6: Albert Einstein statement: Picture taken by the author with permission from Mr David Chapman, Head of school – Deputy DSL. 513 Coretta Scott King, The words of Martin Luther King, Jr: Selected by Coretta Scott King (New York: Newmarket Press, 1958), p. 27. 514 Ibid., p. 27.

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Concurrently, the idea that doing good for the sake of doing good is as ridiculous as the idea that putting the money for the national cathedral into social services will end poverty. Back to the senselessness of the national cathedral and religion as counter-cultural. When we begin an argument with “even common sense tells us,” the question is what is “common” and what is “sense” in common sense—especially in a world where words are used to alter reality through poststructuralism. The above question is as troubling as talking about the illusion of the common good. I resort of my own personal experiences to make my point clear. Recently, I had to relocate from one place to another, and in the course of packing, I noticed the money I had spent on books alone could have been used to build a house for a house in Ghana. I immediately recalled one of my professors telling me that when he returned to Ghana after his doctoral studies at McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada, he went with nothing but books. His family burst into an incontrollable tearing party, claiming he had wasted his time and resources abroad. Certainly, this is expected, particularly in a materialistic culture where what is of value, as identified by Marx, is more about the value of money than the value of the human person— which is the quality of the human condition. As an early academic, I tend to consider any investment in the acquisition of knowledge as priceless. I therefore, agree with a statement attributed to Benjamin Franklin that “An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.” Similarly, in reflecting on how human beings could pre-empt and foretell the surprises or disappointment that future has in store, I partly agree with H.G. Well, that “Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.” 515 It is now fairly clear that the colonial enterprise that saw the late 19th century Europeans overpowering Africa was largely as a result of the kind of knowledge the European world possessed. Colonialism was, therefore, not only about physical violence, which was certainly very disturbing, but it was more about epistemicide—death of the knowledge base of the colonised—which enslaved the minds of the colonised to the coloniser. 516 For this reason, most African academics have highlighted the importance for Africans to free themselves from what Akurang-Parry, reflecting on Adu Boahen’s assessment of colonial impact, referred to as “colonial 515 H.G. Wells, The outline of history: Being a plain history of life and mankind (London: The Macmillan Company, 1921), p. 1100. 516 Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatseni, Epistemic freedom in Africa: Deprovincialization and decolonization (London: Routledge, 2018); Kofi Asare Opoku, “Independence of the mind,” Journal of Black Studies, 1, 2 (1970): 179-186.

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mentality”, that is a mind captured by Europeans, described by Steve Biko as “the greatest weapon in the hands of the oppressor.” 517 K.A. Busia beautifully stated the impact of western epistemic impact on Africans as follows: Physical enslavement is tragic enough; but the mental and spiritual bondage that makes people despise their own culture is much worse, for it makes them lose their self-respect and, with it, faith in themselves. 518

Undoubtedly, the epistemic base of colonialism is also because getting a people to change their minds about what they think about themselves primarily answer the “why” the people must accept docility and imperialist control. For all this reason, postcolonial development in Africa as identified by Kwame Gyekye is identifiable with westernisation and modernisation—which encourage apism among Africans. 519 Concomitantly, Africa’s quest for development has been described as a dependency syndrome—marked by Africa’s using the erstwhile colonial powers as the canon for its economic progress. 520 It is my epistemic love for education as a mutual inclusivity between the “why” and the “how” that causes me to associate with a statement attributed to Lao Tsu that, “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed for a lifetime”, even if one considers investing in education as fleeting. So, the idea of common sense is as common as thinking, which reduces faith in God for commoners. Concurrently, opium was as useful to the French academics in giving them a sigh as faith in God was or is useful in giving a religious person a sigh. 521 We all need a sigh of sort in a world that is never short of crises—especially, world of ideological contradictions and nemesis. For example, John Frederick Logan argues that “Marxist ideology, as soon as a State has built it up into an orthodoxy, lays itself open to the same criticism: it also teaches the masses obedience and 517 Kwabena Akurang-Parry, “Obama’s visit as a signifier of Ghanaian ‘Colonial mentality’” in Kwasi Konadu and Clifford C. Campbell (eds), The Ghana reader: History, culture and politics, 440-446 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2016); Steve Biko, I write what I like. Ibadan/Oxford: Heinemann Educational Books Ltd, 1978), p. 92. 518 K.A. Busia, The challenge of Africa (London: Pall Mall Press, 1962), p. 7. 519 Kwame Gyekye, Tradition and modernity: Philosophical reflections on the African experience (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997). 520 Samir Amin, Capitalism in the age of globalization: The management of contemporary society (London: Zed Books, 2014/1997). 521 John Frederick Logan, “The age of intoxication,” Yale French Studies, 50 (1974): 81-94.

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confirms the authority of the rulers.” 522 So, whenever both academics and general commentators quote Karl Marx against religion, it is imperative to reckon with the fact that the common sense is limited to only our common individual quest for survival; selfish genes are as real as our daily selfish needs. The human quest for self has affected both the practice of religion and Marxism. Much as the history of religion is also about the history of people undertaking violence in God’s name, the translation of Marxist philosophy into state formation bequeathed the world of atrocities. 523 How do we, then, solve human selfishness that makes us see others as foolishly supporting a national cathedral? Surprisingly, but truly, the answer is to see God as needy, homeless, and begging for a place to live. 524 In other words, it is about laying down our crown of common sense to cling to the priceless beauty of the Old Rugged cross. This is because both biological reciprocity and transactional altruism when plied on rationality alone would lead to exploitation as Adam Smith noted, the bread baker and wine brewer are rationally informed by self-preservation not just production as altruism. 525 For all this reason, Susan Wolf has argued that human motives do not neatly fit into the two categories: the egoistic or the altruistic. Instead, she argued that people act out of love for objects they perceive as worthy of their love—which then gives them meaning. 526 Wolf’s thesis is insightful, except that love itself is highly complex in application to human relations. Whether we act out of egoism or altruism what we love is about what makes us “happy.” The “us” is, indeed, “us,” not the other who is loved. I have pondered over why people readily say, “I love you” and yet readily descend into belligerent actions, including battery and murder upon sometimes the least provocation. Could the loose application of love for one’s object of 522 Raymond Aron, The opium of the intellectuals (trans. Terence Kilmartin) (New York: W.W. Northern & Company, Inc., 1962/1957), 291. 523 A. James Gregor, A place in the sun: Marxism and fascism in China’s long revolution (Oxford: Westview Press, 2000); The faces of Janus: Marxism and fascism in the twentieth century (New Haven, CT.: Yale University Press, 2000). 524 For a theological analysis of the Christian God who freely chooses to take a subordinate position to redeem humanity, see: Paul Fiddes, The creative suffering of God (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992); For Biblical references, see: Isaiah 53; Philippians 2. 525 Charles Darwin, On the origin of species (Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University, 2001), p. 70. and Adam Smith, An inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations, Vol. I (Indianapolis: LibertyClassics, 1981). 526 Susan Wolf, Meaning in life and why it matters (Princeton University Press, 2020).

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concern as a measure of happiness, which as I said also produce its own nemesis of violence, be as a result of the “I” coming before the “you”? Christianity, based on the example of a God who suffered, manifested in the life of Christ who condescended so low to save the elect of God the Father, enjoins Christians to consider others higher than themselves. 527 This is yet for me another countercultural aspect of Christianity that is beneficial for governance. The public sector service is marked by workers whose aim is to pursue upward mobility that often comes with increment in salary. The pathways to that makes public service a true reflection of Henry Brookes Adams’ observation that “politics, as a practice, whatever its professions, has always been the systematic organization of hatreds.” 528 Research has shown that Ghana’s public sector is filled with malicious envy that arouses the urge to destroy the good fortune of someone simply because one lacks what the envied has—leading to what is called in Ghana as the “pull him/her down” or “PhD” syndrome. 529 The saturation of the public service with competition and hatred leads to several public service persons investing in spiritual protection from religious functionaries. 530 As part of responding to the toxic working atmosphere that envy generates at the workplace, Kyei suggested that at the individual level, individuals need to be generous, grow in emotional intelligence and own their envy in order to modify it. She also argued for the incorporation of supernatural assistance through intercessory prayers. 531 I agree with Kyei that the answer lies in individuals taking responsibility for their public behaviour. Since the tension in the public service is an aporia to religion, with majority professing Christianity, it could be argued that several of the corrupt public officials are Christians and Muslims—reinforcing research finding that Christianity and Islam do not significantly contribute to the

Cf. Philippians 2. Henry Adams, The education of Henry Adams (ed. Ira A. Nadel) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 12. 529 Joana J. Kyei, “Unravelling the Ghana’s ‘pull him/her down (PhD) syndrome’ of malicious envy,” International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies, 19, 4 (2022): 483-498. 530 J. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu, “‘Christ is the answer’: What is the question?’ A Ghana airways prayer vigil and its implications for religious evil and public sphere,” Journal of Religion in Africa, 35.1 (2005): 93-117. 531 Joana J. Kyei, “Unravelling the Ghana’s ‘pull him/her down (PhD) syndrome’ of malicious envy,” International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies, 19, 4 (2022), p. 494. 527 528

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fight against corruption. 532 The answer lies in individuals sublimating their self-serving crowns. To give an example, while in worship at a church in front of my office at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, I couldn’t help but bow to Christ when the choir sang the refrain of Nana Yaw Boakye’s (known on stage as MOG) “Be lifted”: “We lay down our crowns and worship you.”

Much as I have no entitlement to claim holiness and rely on the Lord’s gratuitous love, my goal is not to dent the image of my Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ in both my private and public lives. The University of Cambridge, where I got my perishable PhD crown, was built because of those who laid their human crowns of common sense at the feet of the imperishable Cross of Christ for an imperishable crown! 533 Charles Spurgeon, that famed preacher of Baptist tradition, said, “There’s no crown-wearers in heaven who were not cross-bearers here below.” 534 So, we begin with Abraham. Abraham lived in the city of cities with his family. He had everything he needed. But God called Abraham to leave everything he knew to follow God. God promised everything to Abraham, but we know that Abraham died with only a parcel of land he bought and a few children. What happened to all the promises of land and children that God made to Abraham? As I reserve that answer for another essay, suffice it to say that Abraham is the centre of all the Middle Eastern religions, such that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are called Abrahamic religions. 535 The countercultural aspect of Abraham’s historic narrative is that he defied Marx, Darwin, and Freud. In order to survive in God and humanity, he went counterculturally against land, family, and self (the foundations of human survival). The foolishness of faith is that even when you are dead and gone, you continue to live on. Yours sincerely, I want to be a fool for God by supporting and contributing to the national cathedral. The second countercultural narrative is about the Israelites and God in the wilderness. To begin with, God called Abraham from the city to 532 Lord Abraham Elorm-Donkor, Christian morality in Ghanaian Pentecostalism (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stock, 2017).

533 Walter Rüegg (Gen. ed), A history of the university in Europe, Vol. I: Universities in the middle ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).

534 Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Gleaning among the sheaves (London: Passmore, 1869), p. 57. 535 Charles L. Cohen, The Abrahamic religions: A very short introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020).

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an unknown location (to actually becoming a Habiru – a wanderer). 536 This is usually not the case with migration which is from the countryside to the city. Next, Abraham and his wife struggled to have a child and yet when they had Isaac, who according to Judeo-Christian tradition is the son of covenant, instead of Abraham’s son with Haggar, God asked Abraham to sacrifice Isaac to Him. Third, while Abraham was promised everything by God; Abraham died without realising the full material blessings God had promised him. But all these countercultural events signals Christianity’s demand on those who profess faith in God. The countercultural stories of Abraham could suggest that people of faith must empty themselves of all pretensions of self-sufficiency to rely on God – gesturing human beings’ dependent on God for sustenance. The narrative about Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac could also suggest that Abraham admitted that his son was not his and that if God, the ultimate owner needed his son, Abraham had to oblige. For me, this means that whatever we have, as human beings, we don’t have it by right or might – We owe everything ultimately to God. There is enough didactic lesson we could derive from Abraham’s encounters with God to reflect on the interface between religion and politics. Politics, specifically public governance through competitive elections in a democratic country like Ghana, has become very vicious. Politicians, including those who profess Christianity deploy lies, such as lies about electoral petition in the case of the NDC in the post-2020 election petition, to deceive the public. Trust, a major ingredient in state governance is also on the nosedive. Research continues to show that public trust for politicians has significantly declined. The issue for me, in all this is that politicians compromise on the truth and betray public trust because of fear – fear of losing far from their electoral constituency. It is also because politicians tend to think that they are sufficient to deploy whatever they can and have, including lies, to stay afloat in politics. But from Abraham’s stories, we can glean the importance of sublating ourselves in exercising faith in God – who alone is self-sufficient to provide our needs. Like Abraham, if politicians would trust the Lord and sublate themselves (one of the themes of Nkrumah’s consciencism) corruption should be on the decline in Ghana’s political economy. 537 The didactic lessons from Abraham’s stories are related to public sector governance, where scholars have 536 Gary Arthur Thomson, Habiru: The rise of earliest Israel (Bloomington: iUniverse, Inc., 2011). 537 Kwame Nkrumah, Consciencism: Philosophy and ideology for decolonization and development (London: Heinemann, 1964).

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identified self-aggrandisement, more than anything else as a major obstacle in the fight against corruption. 538 The Israelites were enslaved for four centuries (for what reasons, the Bible hardly tells us). They vainly tried to redeem themselves but failed. God redeemed them and became decidedly and deservedly their saviour. As their saviour, God provided all the Israelites needed. But the Israelites never stop complaining about minor issues. They complained about water and food (necessary for survival) and wanted to go back to enslavement until the humble Moses missed out on the promised land. Is it not an irony that the Israelites never stopped complaining, even when they knew God supplied their needs? It doesn’t make sense, it really doesn’t., we are all Israelites complaining. We all complain and act in no different ways than the Israelites. We are all Israelites, complaining about bread-and-butter issues as if God has never provided for us. We have a self-imposed short memory. We thank God when something good happens to us—in fact, when He gives us what we need. But when we have a desire (or a need), we complain and condemn Him. It is not a matter of having common sense and intelligence—I do— for some of us to have received our education at the prestigious University of Cambridge. Dr. Sabastine Eugene Arthur, a Cambridgetrained virologist, and I frequently remark that we are still unsure of the true “why” we both chose and got selected to attend Cambridge. Because I come from a low family in Maamobi urban slum and the first to have attend university, and he, from Ashaiman—another urban slum in Accra. Even with my poor academic performance, I had to rely on God and the modesty of prayer and fasting (a countercultural rite) in order to graciously receive two offers to Oxbridge in a single year (Oxford and Cambridge) in 2017. Were these two top universities accepting my offers with full funding as a result of my prayers? Well, the answer may vary, depending on one’ theology on prayer—whether we pray to change God’s mind or to change our mind to accept God as one who answers our prayer according to His own will and time. 539 On the day of my graduation, I explained to the president of my colleagues that it was my responsibility to write in defence of the national cathedral, which represents the Triune God. My goal was to 538 Emmanuel Yeboah-Assiamah, Kwame Asamoah, Justice Nyigmah Bawole and Issash Justice Musah-Surugu, “A socio-cultural approach to public sector corruption in Africa: Key pointers for reflection,” Journal of Public Affairs, 3 (2016): 279-293. 539 For me on prayer: See Ashley Cocksworth, Karl Barth on prayer (New York: T&T Clark, 2015); Calvin on prayer from Institute of the Christian Religion

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keep teaching without expecting anything in return. It was for me to assist students in a selfless manner. Additionally, I should be modest and offer my greatest assistance for two reasons: “I have nothing by right or by might. Much is expected of those who are given much.” In a neoliberal world where money is considered a priority over social relations, I may be read as lacking in both economic and epicurean wisdom. 540 Nevertheless, my concern is not about materialism, since not everyone gets the chance to go to the Oxbridge—even if they were materially wealthy. And since, at the end of the climax of my physical life on earth, if I am fortunate and don’t get drown or burnt to ashes in flames, I would only need a piece of hole that is big enough to contain my remains only—not any of my certificates and/or any other material accomplishments and acquisitions. Also, with my experience as a poor urban slum boy from Maamobi with no support from anyone other than my parents and selling on the streets at the age of eight, my support for the national cathedral is not to spite the impoverished, but rather to see life from another perspective other than material satisfaction of human needs. On this note, I lean towards Jonathan Haidt thesis that happiness could be driven from the sagacity of my pre-modern (however we define it) ancestors—in my case the Abrahamic tradition. 541 Back to the Israelites Ironically, they didn’t stop whining even as God continued to provide for them. Even though they were aware that God was or is Jehovah Jireh, they continued to gripe. But eventually, they stopped ranting and raving. However, how did a nigh-incurable whiner stop whining? Because of bread and butter, they abandoned their common sense about why they should complain. Their instincts compelled them to grumble when logic indicated that they had a need. But it all ended, and they knew God had a need. They ended up complaining when they knew God was or is homeless and needed a small home they could carry. In other words, when God complained that He needed their assistance to build a sanctuary, the Israelites learned about their ontological purpose in life - returning to God what was or is His. They re-lived and re-enacted Abraham’s giving back to God his only son, Isaac, to have nothing on earth but everything from God. They realised the God of their father Abraham also had a need. 540 For a discussion on Epicureanism, which is about pleasure, see: Catherine Wilson, Epicureanism: A very short introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). 541 On the continuing relevance of ancient wisdom, see: Jonathan Haidt, The happiness hypothesis: Putting ancient wisdom and philosophy to the test of modern science (London: Arrow Books, 2006).

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By giving, they found their worth in life. In psychology, happy people are those who give rather than those who always receive. If we give freely, we gain more in return. When we give money, we lose money; when we share power, we lose control—because economics and politics are the domains of human ontological selfishness. But when we give love, knowing God also has a need, we gain more in return, and we are happy even amid poverty. Adam was given the Garden of Eden, but he lost it because it was given to him for free. When the Israelites built an Ark for God in the wilderness (not in the promised land flowing with milk), they stopped complaining. Indeed, children value and appreciate their parents and stop complaining once they know and begin to give to them. So, going by Kyei’s recommendation of generosity, being altruistic is fundamental to quelling envy and its associated complications in public governance. But being altruistic without appreciating the ultimate altruistic creator who would recompensate for kindness would turn kindness into transactional and biological reciprocity. Research continues to indicate that kindness makes human beings happy, particularly kindness to a superior being. 542 From the narratives, the only time the Hebrew people stopped complaining was when they started giving—that was when they realised the Lord had given them enough. The account says that they gave excessively to the point that God had to ask Moses to stop them. From the Christian perspective human dignity is independent of the work they do; human value is immeasurably more than their vocation. And yet, work is a divine-cultural mandate, 543 and so, individuals feel psychologically well when they know they are contributing productively to human flourishing. This may explain why the Bible enjoins Christians to work without being men pleasers; it may also be the reason Christians are to do all things to God’s glory. Bringing all this together on religion and politics, rationality alone would not suffice in compelling people to give off their best at the workplace. Materialism and epicurean thinking would also hardly help in curing the workplace of the usual envy that tends to drag productivity low. What would help is for people to know that their work and what they do, much as it is material would have eternal implication and that work is a divine-cultural mandate. There is no need for competition, but rather complementarity since God created diversity in creation to foster conviviality and inter-dependence. Knowing that one has 542 Matthieu Ricard, Altruism: The science and psychology of kindness (London: Atlantic Books, 2018). 543 Elizabeth Ellen Ostring, Be a blessing: The theology of work in narrative of Genesis (Eugene, OR.: Wipf & Stock, 2016).

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ontological worth and thinking, consciously imagining it and mainstreaming it as philosophy would help in sanitising public governance. Assuming everyone were to know that God immeasurably cherishes them because they bear His image, and not because they work to be better than the other, public governance may change for the better.

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Chapter 3 Prophecies, Prophets and Politicians in Ghana Introduction When I completed secondary school in 2001, it took me three years before I gained admission to the university—this was against the fact that I qualified to have had my tertiary education soon after secondary school education. Nevertheless, since I had no re-sit, I decided to while away time by pursuing self-study on some of the subjects I had read in my General Arts class, particularly the history of Ghana and Egyptian civilization. Fortunately, in 2003, Dr Maulana, an Egyptologist (as my friends and I knew him) run a course on Egyptian civilization at the Du Bois Centre in Accra. Du Bois Centre was a Centre that had been designed and developed since the 1960s in honour of W.E.B. Du Bois, a foremost Pan-Africanist, who relocated to Ghana in October 1961. As part of Nkrumah’s re-membering of Africans in Ghana, Du Bois, was among several returnee African diasporans, who took up Ghanaian citizenship on 17 February 1963, began an intellectual project on the history of Africa; and eventually died in 1963. 544 At the Du Bois Centre, Dr Maulana was later joined by Mr Kwame Osei who both taught my friends and I about the history of Ghana. I re-read and much more, some of the account I had read in secondary school about the Egyptian civilization. This time, the focus was also very deliberately partisan, in the sense that Egypt was presented to us as the birthplace of human civilization. Much as I had several questions to ask, particularly reflecting on Africa’s developmental challenges, my interest to go to the university and read more peaked. Fortunately, in 2003, the University of Cope Coast (UCC), established in 1962 by Kwame Nkrumah with the mandate to train science teachers for secondary cycle schools, had introduced an undergraduate degree programme in African Studies. 545 This meant that while the University of Ghana had similarly, under the encouragement of Kwame Nkrumah, established the Institute of African Studies(IAS) in 1961 to centre the 544 Kevin K. Gaines, American Africans in Ghana (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2006); Kwadwo Afari-Gyan, “Kwame Nkrumah, George Padmore and W.E.B. Du Bois,” Research Review NS, 7, 1 & 2 (1991): 1-11. 545 Kwame Osei Kwarteng, S.Y. Boadi-Siaw and D.A. Dwarko, A history of the University of Cape Coast: Fifty years of excellence in tertiary education (1962-2012) (Cape Coast, Ghana: University of Cape Coast Press, 2012).

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study of African cultures and history, 546 it was the UCC that set the pace for introducing a degree programme in African Studies. The IAS runs postgraduate degree in African studies, allowing students to acquire up to a terminal degree in different areas in African Studies. The Institute, dedicated to conducting research and postgraduate teaching, also runs the UG-liberal courses—introducing students to aspects of African Studies. My interest in African Studies also comes as part of my childhood experiences since the late 1980s and reading of the African predicament. Thus, to put the subject of the interface between prophecies and politics in Ghana in context, I begin with the 1990s. My aim is to demonstrate that prophets who emerge in times of crisis seek to offer solutions by moralising the cause of crisis—all reinforcing a need to realign with the conservative religious ethos, often retaining religion in public governance. In the 1990s, the HIV pandemic, which Ghana had had a first recording of it in the 1980s and which was moralised energised itinerant religious preachers, both from Islam and Christianity to delve into religious eschatology. 547 Following the mystification of the HIV pandemic, a renewed conversation emerged in public discourse about an alleged curse on Africans—especially among those who speculated that the HIV was part of America’s strategy to depopulate the continent. This was against academic publications on the subject that flooded the country and the rest of Africa. 548 In the late 1980s, for example, it was quite common in some areas in Accra to hear young men who deconstructed the mystification of AIDS as “America’s I mproved way of Discouraging S ex”. Coming against a country that was struggling under an economy that had taken a nosedive, worsened by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund’s imposition of neoliberalism, the contradictory public understanding of the HIV/AIDS could be understood. This was more because as part of the restricting of Ghana’s economy, the international financial institutions had compelled the state to remove subsidies on 546 Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana, Legon, https://ias.ug.edu.gh/content/about-ias. 547 Benjamin Kobina Kwansa, “Complex negotiations: ‘Spiritual’ therapy and living with HIV in Ghana,” African Journal of AIDS Research, 9, 4 (2010): 449-458. 548 Marian Burchardt, Faith in the time of AIDS: Religion, biopolitics and modernity in South Africa (Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015); Benjamin Kobina Kwansa, Safety in the midst of stigma: Experiencing HIV/AIDS in two Ghanaian communities (Leiden: African Studies Centre, 2013); Christine Oppong, Yaa P.A. Oppong and Irene K. Odotei (eds), Sex and gender in an era of AIDS: Ghana at the turn of the millennium (Legon, Accra: Sub-Saharan Publishers, 2006); John Illiffe, The African AIDS epidemic: A history (Oxford: James Currey, 2006).

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critical sectors of the economy, including health. The removal of subsidy created the phenomenon known as “Cash-and-Carry,” where patients had to pay for the healthcare upfront or risk death. 549 Considering that the crisis of Ghana and the rest of the African continent which had lingered on from the 1960s’ independence decade had inspired several intellectuals to take up the case of the continent— it was also the period for the rise of African-centred scholarship. 550 Already, the myth of the Hamitic curse had streamed the enslavement of Africans in the 16th century. 551 Similarly, the Hamitic hypothesis had been part of western maelstroms to deny Africans of having contributed meaningfully to the so-named world civilization. 552 In the face of what appeared to be Africa’s intractable challenges that appeared to have justified the spectrums of the Hamitic hypothesis, the Senegalese Cheikh Anta Diop began his African renaissance project, having published important works—indexing that Egyptian civilization was a black civilization. 553 Other scholars, particularly Martin Bernal took the debate to a different level—arguing that western civilization owes its origin to ancient Egypt. This incurred the ire of Mary Lefkowitz who responded with her book, Not out of Africa. 554 The debate, however, hardly affected directly non-academics, who still had to deal with bread-and-butter issues. The international community was concerned about the African paradox—Ali Mazrui’s observation of a continent that is resource-wise rich and yet poor in advancing human flourishing. Considering that the international financial bailout in the 1980s had not impacted Africans significantly, 549 Kojo Senah, “In sickness and in health: Globalization and health care delivery in Ghana,” Research Review NS, 17.1 (2001): 83-89. 550 Toyin Falola and Christian Jennings (eds), Africanizing knowledge: African Studies across disciplines (New Jersey: Transaction Publishers, 2002). 551 David M. Goldenberg, Black and slave: The origins and history of the curse of Ham (Leck, Germany: de Gruyter, 2017); David M. Goldenberg, The curse of Ham: Race and slavery in early Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2003); Sylvester A. Johnson, The myth of Ham in nineteenth-century American Christianity: Race, heathen and the people of God (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004). 552 Edith R. Sanders, “The Hamitic hypothesis: Its origin and functions in time perspective,” The Journal of African History, 10, 4 (1969): 521-532. 553 Cheikh Anta Diop, The African origin of civilization (myth or reality) (trans. Mercer Cook) (New York: Lawrence Hill & Company, 1974). 554 Martin Bernal, Black Athena: The Afroasiatic roots of classical civilization, Vol. I, The fabrication of ancient Greece, 1785-1985 (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1987); The Afroasiatic roots of classical civilization, Vol. II, The archaeological and documentary evidence (London: Free Association, 1991); Mary R. Lefkowitz, Not out of Africa: How Afrocentrism became an excuse to teach myth as history (New York: Basic Books, 1996).

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by the 1990s, the approach to Africa’s development took a different turn. The United Nations decided to routinise Africa’s development on cultural grounds—hence, declaring the decade as celebrating indigenous cultures. It was against this background that Thabo Mbeki, former president of South Africa, re-energised the idea of African renaissance. The plurality of perspective on the Africa’s development challenges was not and could not be limited to the academics. A few religious figures also participated in the discussion. For these religious figures, their task was more about responding to the allegation of Africa as a cursed continent. Personally, having made recourse to Christ towards the end of 2003, soon after which I went to the UCC, my interest was the religious explanation to what Kofi Awoonor titled in his book as The African predicament. 555 I wrote to a few religious figures whose contact I had from either their radio and television evangelism or through recommendation from friends. These introduced me to books they thought might help with my questions. One of them rather discouraged me from reading African Studies, arguing that it was African Studies that had caused Nkrumah to have supposedly apostatised as a Christian who aspired the work of a Catholic priest. 556 Whatever it was, I did not stop reading African Studies, but rather secured two books that shed some light on my understanding of not just Africa, but Ghana – particularly the place of prophecy in the country’s political regime, since the 1990s. The first Christian leader, whose journalistic writings introduced me to the mystification of Ghana was Bro. Divine Philip Yao Kumah. He was born at Vakpo in the Volta Region of Ghana on 29 May 1959 to Mr Michael Yao Emenyo Kuma and Madam Renate Adzoa Denutsui. He attended the Peki Secondary School and completed in 1977. Later he studied accountancy and management at the Institute of Professional Studies, now University of Professional Studies, established by Nana J.K. Opoku Amponsah as a private business professional institute in 1965. 557 After his tertiary education, he felt the call of God to go into Christian ministry. Thereafter, he undertook several courses, including a post-graduate course in Publishing and Management from the Cook Publishing Institute, Colorado Springs, US in 2006. He served the Ghana Evangelical Society (GES), a para-church 555 Kofi Awoonor, The African predicament: Collected essays (Accra: Sub-Saharan Publishers, 2006). 556 See: Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana: The autobiography of Kwame Nkrumah (Edinburg: T. Nelson, 1957). 557 UPSA, History https://upsa.edu.gh/about/history-upsa/.

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organisation that was established by one of Ghana’s leading Evangelists, Enoch Agbozo in 1972. 558 Divine Kumah joined the Calvary Baptist Church in Accra and later founded The Watchman Christian magazine to publicise the global persecution of Christians. 559 Divine Kumah was prolific writer of Christian devotional texts. One of his books that first taught about God’s relationship with Ghana is: Is Ghana under a curse? 560As I have said, the eve of 2000 and the immediate years that followed marked a watershed in prophecies about Jesus’ second coming. On the streets of Accra and in Christian bookshop, Tim Lahaye’s Left behind series had received attention from several curious religious persons. It was on one such occasion when I had gone to the Presbyterian Book Depot in Accra Central that I found a copy of Kumah’s book. The book, I imagine was written against the background of the uncertainty that had characterised Ghana’s transition into the millennial, a subject I later discovered in my archival work at Public Record and Archives Administration (PRAAD—Accra) in September 2022, that it had captured the attention of journalists and academics. In all the newspaper reports, alongside the various academic works, questions were raised about the prospects of Ghana and Africa –would the continent be any better? There was so much anxiety among citizens as well, particularly as the country headed towards an unprecedented election since its redemocratisation in 1992. The election was to see the end of Jerry John Rawlings’ regime who led Ghana first as a military leader in 1982 and later as a civilian leader from 1992. The questions were raised about whether he would hand over power that the 1992 Constitution offered only two terms concurrently for any President to serve. Rawlings handpicked his successor, John Evans Atta Mills to contest the elections on the ticket of Rawlings party, the National Democratic Congress (NDC) against John Agyekum Kufour of the New Patriotic Party (NPP). Amidst all the uncertainties, Mr Kumah wrote a book on Ghana, repudiated all allegations that Ghana was under a curse. Instead, he suggested that God has a special covenant with the country—turning upside down all speculations in some quarters of the public that the 558 Samuel Brefo Adubofuor, Evangelical parachurch movements in Ghanaian Christianity: c. 1950—early 1990s (PhD thesis submitted to the University of Edinburgh, 1994). 559 Information about Divine P. Kumah could be found from his funeral brochure, chromeextension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://dacb.org/resources/memo ries/kumah-funeralbrochure.pdf. 560 Divine Philip Kumah, Is Ghana under a curse? (Accra: SonLife, 2000).

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country’s lingering postcolonial economic challenges were marks of a cursed nation. From Mr Kumah I became aware that several Evangelical Christians held the opinion that God had a covenant with the country that was formalised in the 1970s during a prayer gathering of Christian students and their mentors. Having read Mr Kumah, I read Evangelist Sampson Joe Banning’s The African renaissance in which he also debunked the idea of Ghana as a cursed country. As the founder and president of the Black Lineage Reality Research Centre (BLRRC), Pastor Banning mystified the problems that had confronted the African race was a result of God’s punishment of the continent’s ancestors in Egypt for surrendering power to the Nephilim or superhuman who tapped their God-given talents to be world leaders. Pastor Banning referred to this protracted curse, which he said is over, as the Spirit of dizziness. 561 Another Ghanaian Christian religious figure, Prophetess Deborah Koranteng also rejected the curse thesis in her book, The generation of the races. She said something a bit different from what the authors had said—while all the others denied the Hamitic curse, Koranteng said that Noah did not bless Ham nor curse him. By the time I went to the UCC in 2004, I had added religious interest to my queries about Africa. Consequently, beyond taking all my courses serious, I exchanged letters with pastors and theologians whom I thought could provide insight into the question: Where is the place of Africa in biblical prophecy? This question was also borne out of the fact that around 2003, Rev. Gabriel Ansah, one of Ghana’s radio evangelists, used to organise annual Biblical seminars, dubbed Endtime prophecies at the Accra Technical Training Centre (ATTC), established in the 1960s to provide theoretical and practical instruction for occupations. 562 Rev Gabriel Ansah wrote two devotional books about prophecies, Verse for the end time and Satan’s crusade, that reinforced my resolve to know more about Africa in the Bible. Rev. Ansah’s books were very insightful, but he did not provide enough information about Africa in Christian eschatology. Also, the early 2000s was marked by several eschatological sermons on radio and television, most likely because, on the eve of 2000, there were speculations that a huge stone was going to descend from the skies to end the world. This was similar to the eve of 561 Ghanaweb (30 October 2007), “Ghana will lead black renaissance—Pastor,” https://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/Ghana-will-leadblack-renaissance-Pastor-133218. 562 Accra Technical Training Centre, https://attcghana.com/index.php/schoolhistory/.

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1990 when as a child, I was frustrated by predictions that the entire world was on the verge of collapse, as Christ was on His way. With an already established passion for African Studies, I was glad when a friend—to whom I remain grateful, Mr Moomin Umar Farouk, then a staff of the UCC at the university’s guesthouse at Tesano, introduced me to the programme. In 2004, therefore, I was admitted to read African Studies at the Department of African Studies, now Centre for Cultural and African Studies. At the UCC, my search for a religious explanation to the African predicament was hardly satisfied. But an incident happened that caused me to squirm about the place of history in prophecy—I am particularly referring to historical parallelism or what is commonly referred to as “history repeats itself.” In my second year at the UCC in 2005, Ghana’s neighbour to the East, Togo, became part of the political discussions on Ghana’s radio. Rumours were that Gnassingbé Eyadéma, who had led Togo since 1967 was ill and had plans of handing over power to his son. Already, Ghana had had a handful of Togolese, including some of the political opponents of Eyadéma. The situation was such that Rawlings and Eyadéma were rumoured to be on bad terms. Consequently, as a student, I was interested in what would happen in post- Eyadéma Togo. It was in quest for prediction or should I say prophecy about the future of Togo that my former history lecturer, Mr Asamoah, introduced me to another way of looking at prophecy. Instead of Mr Asamoah appealing to religion or even prayers, he deployed historical parallelism, bringing histories of dictatorial regimes replete in history to inform us that the death of Eyadéma would cause a political stalemate in Togo. This was a few months before it was announced on Ghana’s radio on 5 February 2005 that Eyadéma had died while receiving treatment in Tunisia. Since then, I became more interested in understanding history and prophecy. It is against the above context that I broadly discuss the place of prophecy in Ghana’s politics, especially since the country’s postRawlings regime. Prophecy and prophets in Pentecostal Christianity has received extensive academic attention. 563 The discussion on the subject has focused on several things, including serving as Pentecostals’ entry into politics in Africa. With such a huge body of literature on the 563 Opoku Onyinah, Apostles and prophets: The ministry of Apostles and Prophets throughout the generations (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stock, 2022); Mookgo Solomon Kgatle, Pentecostal theology: The peculiarity of prophetic Pentecostalism in South Africa (New York: Peter Lang., International Academic Publishers, 2022); Dennis Lum, The practice of prophecy: An empirical-theological study of Pentecostals in Singapore (Eugene, Oregon: Pickwick Publications, 2018).

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subject, which I will refer to in the course of this chapter, I will here concentrate on the anthropology of prophecy which, as far as I can tell, has not received adequate research attention. This section will, therefore, discuss the complementary role of prophets and monarchs in the state governance of ancient Israel; a summary of prophecy in Europe during the Middle Ages and why the pneumatic practice appeared to have lost its stint in European politics. Prophets consider themselves as persons who receive or interpret divine messages and convey them to their surroundings. 564 I will summarise Don Benjamin’s article that focused on the anthropological analysis of ancient Israel’s prophets—from which one could understand the place of politics in Ghana’s politics. In ancient Israel, prophets and monarchs worked in tandem mutually inclusive institutions to ensure checks and balances in the elites’ use of power. 565 The centrality of prophets in ancient Israel particularly focused on the idea of God’s covenant with Israel. 566 As a covenanted state, governance of ancient Israel centred around the monarch’s ability to both feed and protect the people of God—which often brought the classical prophets into conflict with the monarchs. The conflict stemmed from the prophets’ articulation of God’s sovereignty to both feed and protect Israel with the monarch only serving as a vanguard of fostering law and order within. The right behaviour of the monarch, measured against their faithfulness to God’s sovereignty in keeping His covenant with Israel was the basis of charging whether a monarch served well or not. The monarchs saw themselves as stewards of God’s covenant who must deploy every creative means, including establishing diplomatic ties to fulfil God’s covenant. The monarch’s framing of themselves as agencies in bringing God’s covenant into pass, which included signing treaties with surrounding nations, was a source of conflict they had with the prophets. This was also because whereas the prophets saw themselves as vanguards of the ethical conditions undergirding God’s covenant with Israel, the monarchs considered themselves as earthly kings with discursive role to perform in fostering the fulfilment of God’s covenant. This means that apart from the classical prophets who wanted to keep the frontiers of God’s covenant from any change, there were professional prophets who readily aligned with the monarchs to 564 Jan N. Bremmer, “Prophets, seers, and politics in Greece, Israel, and early modern Europe,” Numen, 40, 2 (1993): 150-183. 565 Don C. Benjamin, “An anthropology of prophecy,” Biblical Theology Bulletin, 21 (1991): 135-144. 566 Onyinah, Apostles, p. 95.

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make sense of current events that affected God’s covenant. In spite of the differences, the prophets and monarchs were institutions that fostered law and order—gesturing the role of religion as a means of social control. As a covenanted state, the prophets were therefore the channel through which God communicated issues of injustice that marred His covenant with the Israelites. 567 The surge in prophecy and prophets in Ghana since the 2000s could partly be read in the light of the idea of covenant. As I have said, since the 1970s, a section of Ghanaian Christians had considered Ghana a nation with a special covenant with God. The covenant considers Ghana as specially positioned to advance human flourishing and the course of Africa. Meanwhile, the fulfilment of the prophecy is not dependent on politicians, but rather God—who would provide for the nation. The country is only to remain faithful to God alone. As Enoch Agbozo, founder of GES is reported to have said: “The marriage between God and Ghana is not between political parties and their leaders, churches or individuals and anybody who establishes another covenant with other gods has not only sinned against Jehovah but Ghana.” 568 Since the 1960s, the Church of Pentecost (CoP), Ghana’s largest Pentecostal denomination has held the view in its narrative of origin and growth that God has a special covenant with the country— for which reason the country is to remain faithful to the course of God. The CoP has routinised this in one of its songs: A nation, a nation, a Holy Nation Jehovah’s nation, where sin will not dwell This is a holy nation This is my word That you should abide in it

ɔman, ɔman, ɔman krɔnkrɔn Yehowa ne man bɔn rentena mu ɔman krɔnkrɔn, nye eyi M’asεm nye eyi De hom ndzi mu

A church, a church, a holy church Asɔr, Asɔr, Asɔr, krɔnkrɔn Jehovah’s church, where sin will not dwell Yehowa n’asɔr bɔn rentena mu This is a holy church Asɔr krɔnkrɔn nye eyi This is my word M’asεm nye eyi That you should abide in it De hom ndzi mu A church, a church, a holy church Asɔr, Asɔr, Asɔr krɔnkrɔn 569

Jeremiah 11:6-10; Isaiah 42: 24-25; Amos 5:21-25. Modernghana (16 October 2011), “Ghana has marriage covenant with God—Bro Agbozo,” https://www.modernghana.com/sports/356160/ghana-hasmarriage-covenant-with-god-bro-agbozo.html. 569 2020 CoP theme song (Twi version): 4man kronkron, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBVPzOaUK4A. 567 568

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It could be gleaned from the song that the CoP considers itself as a prophetic voice of the nation, which similar to the ancient Hebrew prophet, implies their critique and admonition of government, usually in times of crisis. For example, the current international head of the CoP, Apostle Eric Nyamekye has admonished the political elites not to panic, in the face of an ongoing local and international economic crisis. It is also against this background that we could understand some of the projects the church undertakes, such as building prison facilities and short-distance roads. Finally, we could read the church’s offering of its facility, such as its ultra-modern convention centre as quarantining space to the country in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. Already, the church in Ghana considers itself as the moral conscience of the nation—an understanding that sometimes brought the church and the political elites into conflicts; it also fragmented the relationship between the church and indigenous cultures into conflicts, particularly in Accra’s religious plurality. As I shall discuss, it is against this parallel between the prophetic voice of the church and the Hebrew prophets that I engage the discourse on prophecies and politics. Nevertheless, the decline in prophecy in much of the world’s itinerary has hardly been answered by theologians. Theologians, other than those who add the social science to their repertoire of scholarship, are interested in reflecting on conventions more than reflecting on how the conventions are mediated and practised. It is for this reason that I reflect on prophecy and why it has lost significant relevance in the developed world and some parts of the developing world. To undertake this exercise, I repeat the insightful questions that Jan Bremmer asked, which allowed him to answer the question of religion as history—using prophecy as an example. Bremmer about prophecy: Do seers/prophets act independently of political rulers? Secondly, does the influence of prophets change when the political structure changes? Third, does the medium of prophecy remain constant or does it change over time? At the end of his analysis, deploying examples to which prophecy was put to use in ancient Greece, Israel and early modern Europe, Bremmer concluded that prophecy when read as history would indicate that it gave way as innovativeness in human history, when power was centralised; when printing press (in the case Europe) and the changing intellectual climate provided alternative functional response to prophecy. From the discussion, we could argue that the idea of life as progression in knowledge about the world and technology to answer the how questions of life would impact the role of prophecy in society. Prophecy tends to thrive in an atmosphere of uncertainty: This uncertainty could be as a result of the human inability to peep into the 224

future to know what lies ahead. Would there be constant rain to foster famine; would there be war or continuous peace with our neighbours and how do we remember the past to make sense of the present to predict the future? There is hardly any equivocation that human history has progressed in pushing back some of the vicissitudes of life— hunger, wars, and disease. Obviously, I am not arguing that we no longer have these challenges; as I tend to argue that human beings have made significant progress in overcoming these challenges. The issue then is whether prophecy, often those of doom, were meant to be fulfilled? For example, did the prophets in Israel who prophesied doom excite themselves whenever their prophecies were fulfilled? If God does not take pleasure in the destruction of even those who are sinners before Him, why would he reveal the possibility of harm to human beings? Could it not be the prophecies were part of God, speaking to His elected ones, to caution human beings about the negative impact of all shades of injustice? Jonathan Sacks, for example, maintained that the prophets of ancient Israel were never tired of insisting that the fate of society rested on the practice of justice and compassion—caring for the weak, the poor, and the marginalised. Prophets were to unmitigably speak truth to power, as opposed to seeking to appease those in power. For this reason, I agree with Sacks’ conclusion that when prophecy, unlike prediction comes to pass, then the prophet feels distressed. 570 For all this, a close reading of prophecies of doom in the Bible would bring to one’s attention that nearly all such prophecies were attended by instructions and commands on what to do to right the wrongs of society. Judging from recent furore about prophecies in Ghana, I posit the following questions to guide the debate over phenomenon: Could it be said that prophets take delight when their prophecies of doom happen—at least indexed by the counter-claim over whose prophecies of doom were fulfilled? Second, is it not possible that the commercialising of prophecy, where what should have been instructions to stem the prophecies of doom from happening—known as akwankyire (direction)—has become the nemesis of prophecies? Gleaning from Don C. Benjamin’s assessment of ancient prophecy, could we argue that majority of the Ghanaian prophets are professional prophets—who say what they may have received for more of personal enrichment—fame, wealth etc.—than for collective interest? There is also about who benefits from such prophecies—after all, if the prophecy is specifically about a person, in what is known as directive 570 Jonathan Sacks, Morality: restoring the common good in divided times (New York: Basic Books, 2020).

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prophecies, is the recipient obliged to hear and take action? If it is about the nation, must the prophets hold themselves as “national prophets” since what they do is not part of the social contract Ghanaian citizens have with the nation? Also, do the prophets speak to power to correct power or speak for and with power to, as I said, enrich themselves? One may think it is only contemporary Pentecostal prophets who are a problem to Ghana. Could we also reflect on the impact of 19th century American prophets on the lives of contemporary Ghanaian Christians in public governance? For example, would Ellen G. White’s over-emphasis on Sabbath observation as a mark of faithfulness to God allow Adventists to participate in civic service on Saturdays—since there was a time several Adventists may not vote on a Saturday. For example, if it is the case that for the SDA, about 70 percent of Adventists would not vote in Ghana’s 2024 general elections because it will fall on a Saturday 571 have an overwhelming impact on who becomes the president of Ghana? How would Adventists take it if, because an overwhelming percentage of them refuse to vote and the rest of the population vote for someone who would insist that citizens undertake some tasks on Saturday, how would the SDA church take it? Would it fulfil E.G. White’s peculiar prophecy, mainstreaming into the doctrine of a Sunday Law that would result in the persecution of SDA members—won’t this also foster paranoia mentality among them? 572 To be sure, there are some Adventist theologians who do not think E.G. White’s National Sunday law prophecy can be fulfilled, taken into consideration the socio-political contextual differences between the 19th century and the contemporary world. 573 Just as the 19th century prophecy of E.G. White continues to mainstream the role of several Adventists in public governance, the same could be said about the Jehovah’s Witnesses (JWs). The 19th century person who supposedly had a prophetic insight, Charles Taze Russell predicted the possibility of the First World War (1914-1918) leading to Armageddon, an eschatological cosmic war, to birth the 571 Ghanaweb (22 April 2023), “Elections 2024: D-day is on Saturday, what’s your plan for The Seventh-day Adventists? —NDC, NPP, others asked,” https://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/Election-2024-Dday-is-on-Saturday-what-s-your-plan-for-The-Seventh-day-Adventists-NDC-NPPothers-asked-1753565. 572 For reading on the SDA and National Sunday Law, see: E.G. White, The great controversy between Christ and Satan (Leicester: Remnant Publications Inc., 1999); 573 Jon Paulien, Sunday law and Bible prophecy, http://www.pineknoll.org/phputil/forceupload.php?file=resources/written/jon/Su nday_Laws_and_Prophecy_September_5_2021.pdf.

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millennial reign of Jesus Christ. 574 Much as Russell did not live to see the fulfilment of his prediction, the second elected president of the JWs, J.F. Rutherford, determined to build a new nation for Jehovah’s Witnesses as a form of theocracy—under his firm leadership. For all this, inter alia, the JWs do not participate directly in the political governance of wherever they find themselves. They do not, as an organisation, join an established state security institution; they pay no homage to national emblems etc.—which has unfortunately resulted in their history being enmeshed in persecution globally, including Ghana where Rawlings banned them from operating in the country in 1989. 575 The question I often think about the JWs is: if they do not join any of the security services in a world that is far from the ideals of theocracy, who should join these state institutions to protect them so they could go about with witnessing? Admittedly, I may not have an answer to my own questions or those that others may also add or even take out. What I am also concerned about is what I may read as the fault line of Bremmer’s article. My understanding of Bremmer, who wrote as a professor of history, is that he looks at history as progression with time—marked by moving from one stage to the other. This linearity in the philosophy of history makes his argument strong, when he talked about the impact of printing press on prophecy. Printing press in Europe in the 16th century was an enabler for the Christian Reformation—for, it helped in the democratisation of knowledge. Specifically, to prophecy, printing helped in canonising the memories about the past—out of which patterns would be developed to guide the future. This is one of the importance of history. Thus, the retention of the past and the democratisation of knowledge would help human beings—as it has— to invest cultural creativity and eclecticism in dealing with life’s challenges. The question for me is about whether our knowledge and what we do with it is enough to stem the injustices that prophecies were directed at? For example, much as considerable progress has been made in overcoming the various technical problems of life—transportation and communication, housing etc.—it may be difficult to say the same with 574 M. James Penton, Apocalypse delayed: The story of Jehovah’s Witnesses (3rd ed. Toronto: University of Toronto, 2013/1985); Zoe Knox, Jehovah’s Witnesses and the secular world: From 1870s to the present (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018) 575 M. James Penton, Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Third Reich: Sectarian politics under persecution (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004); Smith Oduro-Marfo, “Eyes on you while your eyes are on God: State surveillance of religion in Ghana under the Provisional National Defence Council regime,” Surveillance & Society, 16,4 (2018): 399-409.

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social injustice. As I shall discuss in the course of this book, improvement in technology, such as digital culture has made life quite easy in many ways, including the generation and circulation of information. But it has also resulted in the proliferation of fake news and digitalised dictatorship, which I think is more pernicious than premodern dictatorship, where production as largely human-intensive fostered a degree of social conviviality. So, do we still need the voice of prophets who would speak to power, without fear or favour, but in obedience to God and in support of human flourishing? Have the various prophets in Ghana fostered moral revivalism in terms of stemming the tide against all shades of corruption? Prophecies, prophets and politicians in Ghana Religion is such a formidable force that it permeates every aspect of life in human society. This is to the extent that, even among atheists, religion lurks in the background of their activities. The centrality of religion has convinced scholars like Louis Berkhof, John S. Mbiti, John S. Pobee, and Geoffrey Parrinder to conclude that human beings (sometimes focusing strongly on Africans) are incurably religious. Certainly, some scholars, notably Okot p’Bitek and Kwasi Wiredu, have challenged the idea that Africans are notoriously religious. They maintain that Africans are pragmatic in their pursuit of religion. While there is some truth in the assertion that Africans are religiously pragmatic, there is no equivocation that religion still holds sway in the lives of human beings. It is also important to bring some clarity to the religiosity of human beings. Those who deny the inherent religious proclivity of human beings have a narrow understanding of religion. They usually limit religion to its esoteric aspects. They hardly look at religion as a superstructure or philosophy (a “worldview,” if you will) that shapes the lives of people. Thus, while religion has a supernatural bent, it is equally a force that shapes people’s worldviews (how they view the world). The idea that religion is only about the supernatural is a product of the nineteenth century. It was a century that saw radical (humanist and atheist) scholars seeking to discredit religion (particularly Christianity). The fruits of their scholarship contributed to foregrounding secularism in theory. The attempt to separate religion from politics (secularism) and to situate human beings in a straitjacket dichotomy of religion and nonreligion marked the beginning of the crisis in terms of the role religion plays in the public sphere. By the 1960s, religion had progressively lost its stronghold in shaping the moral landscape of life. The mid-twentieth 228

century was unique in decentralising religion from the public sphere. But regardless of the extent to which religion has been mortgaged from the public sphere, there is no vagueness that the stakes are high when issues of religion stray into public discussion. And it is to refute the compartmentalisation of life into sacred and profane that informed Karl Barth’s assertion that Christianity is a relationship with God, not a religion. Since the efforts by Christians (with some form of support from the state) to construct a national cathedral, issues of religion in the public sphere have gained unprecedented attention. Many people continue to harp on Ghana’s supposed secular constitution to demand that the state disengage from matters of religion. It is important to state that as early as the 1950s, Nkrumah, as part of nation-building, proposed to construct Ghana as a “secular” state. Indeed, this was against the backdrop of the fact that the Anglican Church (because of Ghana’s historical connection with England) was to be the officiating church at all state functions. Nonetheless, Nkrumah’s use of secular rhetoric was part of his eccentricities in attempting to build national unity in the face of religious plurality. His most philosophical book, Consciencism, was one of his creative efforts at synthesising Ghana’s triple religious heritage— Islam, Christianity, and indigenous religions. Given the centrality of conscience in Kwame Nkrumah’s philosophical outlook and his appropriation (and parodying of the Christian Bible) of religion, it is clear that the idea of “secularism” was part of the nebulous concepts that burdened post-colonial states in Africa. It must be pointed out that since the time of Kwame Nkrumah, virtually every president of Ghana has consulted one religious leader or another. Nkrumah was eclectic in his appropriation of religion; he consulted spiritualists, Muslims, Christians, and indigenous practitioners. There were times he was engaged in the service of Nana Akua Oparebea (b. 1900–d. 1995), the priestess of Akonnedi at Larteh. 576 Kofi Abrefa Busia was a lay preacher with the Methodist Church who was also deeply religious. There are accounts of his high level of spirituality, which made it possible for him to survive multiple assassination attempts on his life by Kwame Nkrumah. Ignatius Kutu Acheampong, like Nkrumah, was eclectic in his religious appropriation. General Kutu Acheampong, who ruled from 1972 to 1978, was noted for his involvement with different religious traditions. He is said to have held allegiance to the Sri Sathya Sai Baba organisation and similarly 576 Okomfo Ama Boakyewa, Nana Oparebea and the Akonnedi shrine: Culture, religious and global agents (PhD thesis submitted to the University Graduate School, Indiana University, 2014).

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contacted the Indian godman to help him remain in power and solve Ghana’s problems. 577 Hilla Limann also had religious functionaries supporting him (even though some felt he was a humanist). Jerry John Rawlings favoured the Afrikania (Africa kanea – Africa’s light). Rawlings supported the Afrikania Mission, founded by Vincent Damuah. This was because of two main reasons: First, Damuah supported the Rawlings’ revolution and second, the Afrikania of the 1980s had PanAfrican rhetoric as a revitalised indigenous religion, similar to Rawlings’ Pan-African rhetoric. In the 1980s, it was only the leader of the Afrikania Mission, Osofo Vincent Kwabena Damuah, who had a monopoly over the national radio station to propagate his religion, which was nothing short of reviving an ancestral cult. J.A. Kufour deployed religion to win the 2000 elections. During the 2000 elections, he was presented as a humble and God-fearing man with a vision to save Ghana from oppression and suppression. John E.A. Mills was noted for his engagement with Pentecostal Christians. He was advertised as a man of peace. He is on record as having almost converted the seat of government to a prayer shrine. John Dramani Mahama (John 3:16 was his teaser) and Akufu Addo (I Samuel 17:47, “The battle is the Lord’s”) have also used religion to achieve a political end. All this reinforced the pragmatic and political use of religion in Ghana, which may not reflect in the ethics of public governance. The functional role of religion in Ghana is such that it gives people hope in the face of perplexity and grinning poverty. But the most important role of religion is seen on the eve of every new year. Since the 1990s, new year prophecies have played a significant role in Ghanaian religious cosmogony. On the 31st night, most Ghanaians, Christians and non-Christians, thronged the church space with the hope of transitioning into the new year. There are many reasons why December 31 is such an important day in the lives of Ghanaians. This is because it is the penultimate day of a new year, and people are certainly unsure of what the new year holds to offer them. As one of my interlocutors told me, “As a kid in rural Ghana and a teenager in the city, no matter where you were on the night of 31 December, you made sure you were in a house of God by midnight to welcome the new year there. We had even drunkards from nightclubs and drinking bars arriving in churches just before midnight.” 578 In addition to that, humans have a penchant to peep into the future. The fear of the unknown future is one of the reasons why human beings have devised 577 578

J. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu, “‘Christ is the answer,,” p. 113. Personal conversation with Mr Kofi Ata (Samuel Budu) on 5 March 2023).

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all sorts of antics and strategies to know what lies ahead in life. Could the flirtation with December 31 be remotely linked to the December 31, 1981, coup in Ghana, staged against Dr. Hilla Limann by Jerry John Rawlings and his comrades? Could it be we have developed paranoia as a result of the coup, and in the process, fetishized December 31? Machiavelli said that human beings desire to know the future, yet when they are in the future, they desire the past. In other words, the concept of time—past, present, and future—remains one of the defining limitations of human beings. Human beings have solipsism, which traps them in the present. The past cannot be relived, but it is relied upon to reflect the present and also peep into the future. While the past is part of the storehouse of time and the present is an existential reality, the future is simply unknown. It is known only to God. In fact, in Isaiah 44:7, God defines his divinity by appealing to many things (his creation) and also his control over time. His control over time shows that He and human beings do not occupy the same space (to cite the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas). God lives in and out of time simultaneously. Man lives only in time. But because human beings only live in the present, the desire to know the future increases their anxiety level. As a result, divination— as occultism and cultic practice—is present in almost every aspect of human society. When I was growing up in Maamobi (Accra) in the 1980s, we had a Muslim spiritual functionary living right behind our compound house. And his alleged spiritual prowess saw politicians, high-ranking state officials, and businessmen and women moving in and out of his “shrine” in search of spiritual answers. Politicians, businessmen, and women consulted him to know what lay ahead of them. These religious seekers made it possible for us, the children, to eat massa and deep-fried meat virtually every week (since religious seekers are often asked to do sadaka, or gift-giving for ritual purposes). In indigenous religions, the quest to know the future gave rise to abisa among the Akan. While the practise of abisa is a universal phenomenon in indigenous religions, I am using the Akan for the sake of convenience. Abisa was part of the efforts of human beings to explore the will of the divine. Asamoah-Gyadu observes that “inquiry,” a religious process by which people learn about their destinies from those capable of “seeing” into the spiritual realm, is “the operative principle in dealing with such sacred personalities in abisa.” 579 It is an effort to peep into the future to guide the present. Students, workers, patients, politicians, and traders all consult religious functionaries for abisa. The abisa brings the divine close to human contact. It helps 579

Asamoah-Gyadu, “Christ,” p. 95.

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human beings manipulate the systems of the world. This is not an outlier in the so-called modern world. In Greek democracy according to Cicero, judges consult the auspices before returning to offer judgement. This is a religious practice of consulting the oracles. One bizarre way my colleagues and I attempted to predict (abisa) our Basic Education Certificate Examinations (BECE) questions in 1998 was a suggestion by one of our friends, Joseph Kennah, that we should consult a lottery caster. In Christianity, prophecy remains very important, particularly to contemporary Pentecostals. Prophecy featured prominently in the theocratic governmentality of ancient Israel. The nation of ancient Israel had national prophets who were responsible for telling the mind of God to the administrators and the people. As national prophets, they could rebuke kings whose administrations ran roughshod over the will of God. The prophets also provided military guidance. They were able to guide warriors on war strategies through their interaction with God. In the inter-testament period, wrongly referred to as “four hundred years of silence,” a few individuals in Jewish history rose up who claimed to use rituals to foretell the future. But a few years before the birth of Jesus Christ, there were ad hoc and spontaneous prophets who were operating. We know of Zacharia, the father of John the Baptist. We also know about Prophet Agabus from the life of Paul. But the extent to which prophecy constituted part of governmentality had waned since the Jews were under the rule of imperial Rome. The entry of Jesus Christ into human history marked the ultimate revelation of God to humanity, while the canonised Bible marked the ultimate revelation and concretisation of God’s will for humanity. If anyone wants to know about God’s mind concerning an issue, they are directed to read the Bible. But there are times when God continues to speak to people on some specific issues. These issues may include marriage, health, political leadership, and business. But the caveat is that these revelations should cohere with what the Bible says. But in the face of specific revelations, it is political prophecies that have assumed ultimate importance in Ghana. This is because man (in a generic sense) is a political being (to paraphrase Aristotle). Politics—the administration of resources to satisfy human needs—is at the core of our existence. Without politics, nothing will run. Given the centrality of politics, which is also about power and how it is regulated, political prophecies remain contentious in Ghana. The vexatious nature of political prophecies is based on the partisan bent some of these prophecies take. The key exponents of political prophecies include Rev. Isaac Owusu Bempah, Archbishop (elect) Elijah Salifu Amoako, and more recently, Nigel Gaisie. There are many 232

other such prophets, but these three have received maximum attention because of their contradictory predictions about who will win Ghana’s 2020 general elections. While Salifu Amoako and Owusu Bempah are convinced that the New Patriotic Party (NPP), under the leadership of Nana Addo Danquah Akufu Addo, will retain power (with Salifu Amoako predicting a 53 percent margin for the NPP), Nigel Gaisie thinks that the National Democratic Congress (NDC), led by John Dramani Mahama, would win the elections. The differences in predictions have caused the ire of some other pastors to run unchecked with insults. One such pastor, also a prophet, is Kofi Oduro. Kofi Oduro took to his church space to lambast and lampoon the political prophets in Ghana. He characterised political prophets with derogatory terms such as prostitutes, sex maniacs, corrupt, and hypocrites. In response, Salifu Amoako and Owusu Bempah have equally descended mercilessly on Kofi Oduro. Owusu Bempah has also used unprintable words to “expose” Kofi Oduro. In the end, Ghanaians find themselves in a quagmire of religious verbal assaults. Social media has mediated the extent to which insults and counter-insults are publicised. It is, therefore, easy for Ghanaians who are frustrated with these prophets to join the fray and cast aspersions against Christianity in general. In the whirlwind of all this, my position is that the quest to know the future will continue to be with us and signify our humanity. To know the future is part of the human quest to pre-empt disorder as part of structuring and governing society. As I have said it is about how to mitigate uncertainty. The quest to know the future can lead human beings to engage in all forms of occultic practices, including numerology, astrology, palmistry, etc. But, regardless of how we seek to know the future, political prophets need to respect each other’s unique prophecies. This is precisely because none of them controls the world. All of them may have the right to claim that God spoke to them, but we need to democratise the charisma and the gifts of the prophets so that it is pointless to attack prophecies. Everyone should have the right to prophesy since it is part of one’s constitutional right. One of the points at which prophecies could be controlled is when their content explicitly portends danger to the peace of Ghana. Until then, we should treat all these prophecies as part of humanity’s quest to unveil the future. Since God alone controls the three dimensions of time, we should just stay cool and count on Him to rule His world. In the end, whether NPP or NDC wins the 2020 elections, Jesus Christ is still the King. Over the years, prophecies have become part of the religious menu of some Pentecostal and neo-Pentecostal churches in Ghana. 233

Incidentally, on the eve of 2019, I concluded my reading of Prof. Opoku Onyinah’s book, Pentecostal Exorcism: Witchcraft and Demonology in Ghana. 580 The thesis of the book, which I subscribe to, is that abisa (the Akan concept of divination) was one of the reasons for the persistence of prophecy, belief in witchcraft, and exorcism in the Church of Pentecost and other neo-Pentecostal churches in Ghana. Following the surmise of Harvey Cox, Onyinah maintained that abisa, framed around prophetic ministry, is a restoration of primal spirituality in the Pentecostal movement. The reason for the continuity of abisha and prophecy part of uncertainty in the lives of people who desire to know what the future holds. As humans with the trademarks of fallibility and lack of omniscience, it has been part of our desire to predict the future. Thus, in almost all cultures, people have attempted to pre-empt the future. This is why, when God wanted to challenge the pagans’ gods in the book of Isaiah, His litmus test was the ability to predict the future with precision. Among the Akan, the group I am quite conversant with both as a student of African Studies and an Akan myself, the ability to predict and explain occurring events and envisage the future constitutes the centrality of the Akan religion. This is partly because, among the Akan, nothing happens by chance. Whatever happens in the material is just the playback of what happened in the spiritual world. The idea of mystical causality provides compelling reasons for Akan to explore the ‘whys’ as opposed to the ‘hows’ of life. Hence, predicting the future helps Akan to make sense of the world, which is suffused with spirits. In the same way, the fact that the Akan religion has a pantheon of deities enables the Akan to appeal to multiple deities to peep into the future. It also helps the Akan to understand the nagging question of God’s goodness and the existential reality of evil. As Rabbi Jonathan Sacks has observed, for monotheistic faiths like Christianity and Judaism, the existence of evil poses a major challenge. It becomes difficult for Christians and Jews to reconcile the existence of evil and a good God. The basic question, which forms the fulcrum of theodicy, is: if God is good, why is there evil? To use my family history to help us elucidate the importance of abisa and prophecy, let me use the history of my family. Ten years ago, I lost my father, Anthony Prempeh. He was 65 years old when he died. He did not fall sick. He just consciously fell and died at home. His death occurred in front of my twin sisters, who were only ten years old. The older one saw my father dying, but she did not understand what was 580 Opoku Onyinah, Pentecostal exorcism: Witchcraft and demonology in Ghana (Dorset, UK: Deo Publishing, 2012).

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happening. But when later it was confirmed that my father had died (after he was rushed to the hospital, he died at home), my paternal aunt, whom some suspect to be a witch, said to me, “Kofi, your father died for nothing.” There is a need for abisa. I just did not believe what she said. I thought that as a Catholic, she would simply accept that God gives life, and He also takes it. But, here, her background as an Akan supplanted her Catholic belief. Even so, the reality of abisa dawned on me when my maternal aunt, Odwira, died on the day my father’s funeral was held (the very same day my father was buried). Aunty Odwira was part of my matriclan entourage that went around thanking people who had donated to my father’s funeral, as was customary. At about 3 p.m., she complained that she was tired and wanted to go and take a nap. She left the funeral ground (which was less than ten minutes away from my maternal family’s house). As she was descending about four steps to enter the female quarters of the house, she slipped and became unconscious. She was offered first aid and rushed to the hospital. But she died on the way to the hospital. My uncle and other matriclan members thought aunty Odwira’s death was strange and mysterious. Their immediate reflex action was to go to Abura Dunkwa for abisa. Following the abisa, they were told that Aunty Odwira had died as a result of imprecation (invocation of curses). I had difficulty understanding that but was careful not to voice any dissenting views. As a teaching assistant at the University of Cape Coast at the time, I knew that any voicing of disagreement over the abisa would stigmatise me as a badly influenced, educated young man. I kept my cool. But what explained the attempt to do abisa over the deaths of my relatives (father and aunt) was the centrality of the direct influence of the spirits in the activities of the mundane world. It was also based on the Akan cosmogony, which saw the mundane and esoteric worlds as inextricably intertwined. For many Akan, the esoteric and mundane worlds are in constant interaction. There is a regular crisscrossing of spirits between the two worlds. It is this worldview that explains the desire on the part of the Akan to find answers to the why questions, as opposed to the how questions through abisa. So, doctors explained what killed my father (pneumonia) and my aunt, but that was not satisfactory to a people whose worldview is deeply seeped in religion. The rise of prophecy, particularly among Akan “Christian” leaders, is simply a restoration of Akan’s primal spirituality, abisa. During the era of the European missionaries, attempts were made to suppress spiritual possession (in Akan indigenous religions) and abisa. In most cases, spirit possession and abisa were fused. They also suppressed frenzied religious emotionalism. In sum, the missionaries dismissed the Akan 235

spiritual world as illusive. In its place, they built schools and hospitals in their attempt to provide the Akan with a rationalistic approach to seeking meaning in life and also answering life’s existential questions. Salems were created by the Basel missionaries in the nineteenth century to enforce the attempt to make the Akan Christians more attuned to the workings of a “civilized” world. It should be noted that missionaries, particularly in the nineteenth century, were products of the Enlightenment, which promoted rationalism as a valuable tool for comprehending life’s rhyme. George Williamson, who wrote a book on the relationship between the Akan religion and Christianity, argued that the position of the missionaries in dismissing the Akan spiritual map was not in accordance with New Testament Christianity. Plus or minus, the work of the missionaries in undermining the existential reality of the Akan spiritual world suffered a hiccup following the emergence of African prophets. These prophets revived the African penchant for predicting the future. They included William Wade Harris, a native of Liberia from the Grebo people; John Swatson, born at Benyin in Apollonia (western Ghana); and Prophet Samson Oppong (from Dormaa Ahenkro). Though these early prophets worked in the historic churches, they specialised in abisa, healing, and exorcism. But some of their disciples began the so-called Sunsum sore (Spiritual Churches) in Ghana. For example, Grace Tani and John Nackabah, whom Harris had baptised during his ministry in Ghana, founded the Twelve Apostolic Church of Ghana. These prophets and spiritual churches revived prophetism and abisa, which were very central to Akan spirituality. Onyinah wrote in the Church of Pentecost (the church I attend) that the visit of a team of three members of the Latter Rain Movement, led by Dr. Thomas Wyatt, in early 153 marked the beginning of prophetism in the church. Aside from the Latter Rain Movement, other televangelists, including William Branham, Gordon Lindsay, T.L. Osborn, and Oral Roberts, also consolidated prophetism in the Church of Pentecost. Following the stint the church had with these televangelists, some individuals in the church began their prophetic ministries. These included John Mensah, Sister Amma Amankwaah, Maame Sophia Dede, and Brother Gilbert Ablor. These individuals pursued prophetism and healing, anchored by abisa. They established prayer camps, where supposed witches were exorcised and the sick were healed. They also specialised in prophetic ministry. Over time, the modus operandi and some of the teachings of these “prophets” conflicted with the scriptural teachings of the Church. But since the prayer camps had contributed to the numerical growth of the Church 236

of Pentecost, their existence became a major puzzle. In the end, the church incorporated the camps into its mainstream structure for effective administration. Some of these “prophets,” like Paul Owusu Tabiri, who founded the Bethel Prayer International Ministry, left the church. Until very recently, under the chairmanship of Apostle Prof. Opoku Onyinah, the Church of Pentecost continued to struggle with directive prophecies, which were becoming the routine means of appointing church officers. The rise of the charismatic movement since the 1970s also contributed to the continuity of the abisa prophecy. The charismatic church in Ghana, influenced by Morris Cerullo and Benson Idahosa, who visited Ghana in 1977 and 1978, respectively, had a deep-seated influence on reviving prophetism in Ghanaian Christianity. Aside from these two American preachers, others, including Oral Roberts, Kenneth Hagin, Kenneth Copeland, Reinhard Bonke, and Benin Hinn, have helped in routinizing prophetism in the charismatic movement. As I have said, more recently since the turn of the millennium, neocharismatic groups have continued the prophetic tradition in Ghanaian Christianity. We have had Owusu Bempah, Daniel Obinim, Bishop Bonegas, Prophet Nicholas Osei aka Kumchacha, Prophet Ebenezer Adarkwa Yiadom aka Opambour, Apostle Agya Dan, Apostle Francis Kwarteng, Apostle Kwasi Sarpong, Rev. Isaac Osei Bonsu, Prophet Nigel Gaisie, Prophet Emmanuel Badu Kobi, and Rev. Obofour all claiming to speak for God. Their prophecies have caused a furore in Ghana. Many times, their prophecies have failed. And not just that, some of the prophetic figures have woefully failed to apply discretion to their trade. For example, in his sermon on December 31, 2018, and as part of his routine practise every New Year’s Eve, Rev. Isaac Owusu Bempah made eighteen prophecies for 2019. 581 The prophecies included the deaths of the national chief imam, Sheikh Osmanu Nuhu Sharubutu, and Ghana’s Muslim Vice-President, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia. Ex-Presidents John Agyekum Kufuor and John Mahama were also predicted to die. 582 For reasons yet to be established, a group of irate Muslims went and vandalised the property of Owusu Bempah at Dansoman in Accra, a day after the prophecy. Owusu-Bempah’s prediction about the chief Imam’s death must be contextually discussed—so, I situate the furore that Bempah’s prediction stirred against the person and role of the office of the 581 Ghanaweb (2 January 2019), “The 18 prophecies of Owusu Bempah,” https://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/The-18-propheciesof-Owusu-Bempah-712368. 582 Ibid.

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National Chief Imam in Ghana’s politics. The National Chief Imam’s life has been very significant to several Ghanaians of all strands. He has been a force for inter-faith peaceful interaction since he became the head of the Muslim community in the 1990s. He was instrumental in ensuring that Muslims gained two national public holidays for their Id Fitr and Id Adhar religious festivals. 583 Also, while a Sufi Muslim cleric, he has succeeded in brokering peace and intra-faith mutual respect among Muslims. Several times, he has collaborated with the national head of the Ahlu Sunna Muslims to address tension among Muslims. Whenever Ghana faced any potential post-election political stalemate, the National Chief Imams worked with the National Peace Council and other stakeholders to restore peace. He is considered the father/pater and mentor of several Ghanaian politicians, including the current VicePresident, Dr Bawumia. He has worked with all the presidents of Ghana since the 1990s when the country re-democratised without openly being partisan. He is also respected globally and has been given an honorary doctorate by a Ghanaian university. In all this, what remains yet to be resolved is how the office and charisma of the Chief Imam are to be institutionalised, given that he is advanced in age, a centenarian from the perspective of the Islamic calendar. There are also rumours of considerable lurking contestation, which is festering ethnocentric feelings among major ethnic groups in Ghana that experienced Islamisation since the 16th Century. Given all these complex issues around the Chief Imam, it was no surprise that a group of young Muslim men spontaneously and predictably reacted to Bempah’s public prediction by physically attacking Bempah’s church in Accra. 584 What is surprising is Bempah’s lack of circumspection when publicly predicting such a towering figure. Regrettably, when several Christians berated Owusu-Bempah for his lack of discretion, and when the Ghana Pentecostal and Charismatic Council, an ecumenical establishment in 1969, was asked to discuss with him to tone, Owusu-Bempah slammed Onyinah of being hypocritical about prophecies. 585 Onyinah, as I have mentioned, like the 583 Charles Prempeh, Nima-Maamobi in Ghana’s Postcolonial Development: Migration, Islam and Social Transformation (Bamenda/Cameroon: Langaa RPCIG, 2022). 584 Ghanaweb (2 January 2019), “Machete-wielding Muslim youth vandalise Owusu Bempah’s church,” https://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/Machete-wieldingMuslim-youth-vandalise-Owusu-Bempah-s-church-712373. 585 Ghanaweb (2 January 2022), “Owusu Bempah slams Opoku Onyinah for being hypocritical about prophecies,” https://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/Owusu-Bempahslams-Opoku-Onyinah-for-being-hypocritical-about-prophecies-1435987.

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National Chief Imam, is a highly respected religious figure in Ghana. So, instead of Owusu-Bempah admitting his excesses, he accused Onyinah of seeking spiritual help from him (Owusu-Bempah). OwusuBempah’s reputation after his controversial “doom’s prophecy” about the National Chief Imam went further down the drain. Things really started falling apart for Owusu-Bempah. Until November 2022, he faced trial for conspiracy to commit offensive conduct against a former indigenous priestess, Nana Agradaa, known as Patricia Asiedu, whose meteoric rise to the position of a Christian evangelist, remains a major controversy among Christians. 586 The above discussions reflect on plurality and its various strands— especially with respect to religion and public governance. Many scholars have honestly struggled to find a point of convergence in a world that is deeply plural in many ways. There is plurality in the areas of politics, economics, religion, race, sports, and culture. To a significant extent, the existential reality of plurality in the global world has generated many conversations about how to interact with others without any accompanying resentment. Over the centuries, the world has spilled so much blood in the name of religion, sports, or politics. About ten years ago, I read a book, Conflict: What Has Religion Got to Do with It? An African-European Dialogue. 587 In the book, which is a compendium of presentations, one of the presenters (the Most Reverend Charles Gabriel Palmer-Buckle) argued that there are three main things that have the potential to inspire good and evil simultaneously. These are religion, politics, and sports. Indeed, these three fundamental aspects of life have either been a blessing or a curse to the human race throughout history. But it is the plurality of our world that leaves us with the question: what do we do with our differences? Jonathan Sacks, the former national Jewish Rabbi in the UK, asked the question in a very poignant manner: “How do I love the unlike?” In his book, The Dignity of Difference, Jonathan Sacks argued that the basic challenge confronting the human race is not necessarily the reality of difference as much as it is about the question of how to appreciate our differences. 588 But, after reading Sacks, my understanding is broadening and crystallising on the 586 Ghanaweb (30 November 2022), “Owusu Bempah, six others discharged over death threats on Agradaa”, https://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/Owusu-Bempahsix-others-discharged-over-death-threats-on-Agradaa-1672133. 587 Goethe-Institut, Conflict: What Has Religion Got to Do with It? An AfricanEuropean Dialogue (Accra: Woeli Publishing Service, 2004). 588 Jonathan Sacks, The dignity of difference: How to avoid the clash of civilization (London: Continuum, 2002).

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question of plurality. The problem with plurality is not because it has the potential to ignite violence. The challenge is that in a plural society, we begin defining ourselves (which is fundamental to pluralism) from the wrong premise: self-righteousness. In a world where we believe we are better than others, we tend to look at others through the prism of our culture, race, and political affiliation. Sometimes, we even judge the validity of the debate about the “unlike” from the point of view of sports. This feeds into what is known in psychology as “confirmation bias.” Incidentally, all religions, apart from Christianity, tend to enforce and enjoin self-righteousness as a means of salvation. In other words, our righteousness is founded on our actions in all religions and ideologies around the world. Accessing the blissful world (nirvana or moksha) is based on how much good we have done and the position of our righteousness on the pendulum. In one of the religions, I have read quite extensively, one’s salvation is based on the extent to which one’s “goodness” supersedes one’s evil acts. Salvation becomes a contest of self-righteousness in this religion. How much one can obey laws and rituals is the epicentre of this religion. “What can you do to please God and earn his salvation?” becomes the key question of this and other religions. Christianity offers a different Weltanschauung. It is only Christianity that begins from the point of view of one’s innate evil. Christianity argues that, following the fall of Adam and Eve, our progenitors, all of us are born fallible and evil-bent. We have no righteousness in us, and we are incapable of meeting God’s righteous requirement. Thus, beginning from the point of self-debasement, the Christian looks to God for salvation. The innate evil of human beings makes God the only saviour of the human race. Thus, in Christianity, it is what God does, as opposed to what we do, that offers salvation. This explains why, in Christianity, salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, and in Christ alone. We did not do anything to deserve salvation. Even so, the position of the two spectrums—Christianity and other religions—on matters of salvation has implications for human behaviour and conduct. The Christian comes to God, “beating” his chest with the words, “Lord, I am a sinner.” I do not deserve it. “Please forgive me” (Luke 18:13). As a result, the Christian arrives with a sense of humility and worship. In other religions, the believer says, “Lord, look at how many times I have fasted.” Look at how many times I have prayed. Look at how many times I have performed pilgrimages. “I am worthy of your salvation” (Luke 18:11–12). The approach is one of selfworth, which can impede true worship. 240

The spillover effect of these two positions on salvation is not farfetched. Those who think they must earn their salvation through rituals are quick to exhibit righteousness, which could be very superficial. They are always quick to defend their faith, even if it means shedding blood. Also, because their notion of salvation is work, they tend to be intolerant and arrogant. Their self-righteousness leads them to trash those who disagree with them. On the other hand, the humility of the true Christian makes her develop an attitude of tolerance and love towards others. For her, because she did not deserve God’s salvation, she sees herself as not better than anyone. She becomes sober and sometimes pacifist. In terms of forgiveness, the one whose salvation is given (ascribed) is apt to forgive, because she was forgiven of her sins. On the other hand, the one who comes with the understanding that salvation was worked for and achieved is reticent to forgive because he has not experienced the forgiveness of his god. These dynamics have impact on public governance—for without forgiveness, public activities which often involves law and competition would disrupt governance.

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Chapter 4 Corruption: money and Galamsey Speech: ”All the world’s a stage” BY William Shakespeare (from As You Like It, spoken by Jaques) All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages. At first the infant, Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms; And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel And shining morning face, creeping like snail Unwillingly to school. And then the lover, Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier, Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard, Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel, Seeking the bubble reputation Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice, In fair round belly with good capon lin’d, With eyes severe and beard of formal cut, Full of wise saws and modern instances; And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts Into the lean and slipper’d pantaloon, With spectacles on nose and pouch on side; His youthful hose, well sav’d, a world too wide For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice, Turning again toward childish treble, pipes And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all, That ends this strange eventful history, Is second childishness and mere oblivion; Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

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Corruption: Money and Galamsey Globally, there is a lot of discussion about corruption. It is a global moral challenge that manifests itself in many ways. According to some, corruption impedes human advancement. Despite the fact that corruption is a problem that all people face, it is frequently implied that it is particularly prevalent in Africa. I believe that the prevalence of corruption on the continent, which has gained significant traction in African discourses, is one reason why the west views Africa as the hub of corruption. In other words, corruption is evident in Africa at the lower levels, where it is encountered frequently. On the road, it is common to be stopped by a police officer and asked to pay a bribe, sometimes for no reason at all. Additionally, it is quite frequent to enter an office only to find the secretary or security officer requesting a “brown envelope” before allowing one to a specific manager. However, no matter how frustrating the everyday corrupt practises are to Africans, one cannot talk about them without discussing the socio-economic context. In several African countries, the salary of workers, based on the minimum wage, is nothing comparable to the cost of living. When I used to work at one private university in Accra, the shock of my life was when I discovered, somehow accidentally, that the salary of one of the drivers of the school was a little over GH 500.00. Meanwhile, this driver was responsible for several daily activities at the university, including running errands and undertaking other important tasks. He is also in his late 50s, has children and a wife, and rents a house in Accra. When I got to know his salary, I became aware of the reason he and his colleagues often asked lecturers for help. The irony of it was also that, as a full-time lecturer, my salary was GH 1,697.00. As I looked at the man and reflected on the issue of corruption, I only wondered why such a person would not be corrupt. The conditions of corruption will be so real to him that it will take a superior reason, other than anything rational, for him not to be tempted to engage in one form of corruption or another. Any time I remember this professor from that private university, I tend to understand why my late father was considered a man of considerable moral aptitude. I learned as I got older that my father didn’t have much. He constantly struggled to make ends meet. When I was younger, it was difficult for me to understand why my father had so little while our neighbours had everything. The fact that some of my father’s coworkers would sneak in to inform my mother about his involvement in our poverty in front of all of us, his children, irritated me and perhaps some of my siblings and other family members. Usually, one of them, in particular, would 244

tell my mother, “Mr. Prempeh is the reason you and the children are struggling.” “He wouldn’t steal even when he needed to.” But my father kept his moral composure, and in his old age, especially after he retired from active service, he often bragged that “I never had an issue with the police.” As a young man and a father, I have come to appreciate my father’s negative attitude towards corruption. I have come to admire him forever as my mentor, and indeed, he was my best friend until he passed on December 13, 2008, soon after my undergraduate studies. In my own life, I have done several things for pro bono reasons, which has earned the rebuke of my friends. My friends would frequently advise me to commercialise the assistance I provide to people and to make money in everything I do. A few weeks ago, a friend was so angry with me for not being aggressive enough for money that she told me, “Money runs the world, and I can only pity your wife with your attitude of doing things for free.” Undoubtedly, in Africa’s lower echelons, there is a lot of pressure to submit to corruption. When I worked as a teaching assistant at the University of Cape Coast (UCC), I remember a female student who came to my room in Casely Hayford Hall because she was afraid of failing an exam. To my surprise, this young woman claimed that she would agree to anything—including having sex—if I could change the outcome. This was against the fact that sexual encounters between professors and students remained a challenge on several university campuses. 589 Gracefully, I did not yield to a pervasive temptation among my professors and my colleague TAs. But that incident, among others, reminded me of the complexity of different shades of corruption in our world. The kinship system, built on the social idea of reciprocity where the younger generation is expected to take care of the older generation, could easily induce newly employed young men and women to indulge in corruption, especially if one obtains public office to provide one’s family and friends with money, goods, favour or appointment. 590 A young employee who genuinely is unable to support family members, including regular attendance at funerals, is likely to be socially ostracised. Even at church, those who are labelled as “bench warmers” for either not giving enough during offering or tithing tend to suffer multidimensional social exclusion.

589 Louise Morley, “Sex, grades and power in higher education in Ghana and Tanzania,” Cambridge Journal of Education, 41, 1 (2011): 101-151. 590 Joseph Atsu Ayee, The roots of corruption: The Ghanaian enquiry revisited (Accra: The Institute of Economic Affairs, 2016), p. 25.

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In addition to poor salaries, the welfare system in Africa is also very weak. Consequently, people who work in the public sector come under intense pressure to play the role of the state. 591 Individuals are compelled to pay school fees, take care of the bills of both family members and neighbours, and also attend sociogenic activities, as demonstrated by donations. I sympathise with Members of Parliament (MPs) who become the parents and mothers of everyone in their constituency. One former MP of Okaikwei South Constituency in Ghana’s fifth parliament of the fourth republic, Nana Akomea, said on the Kokrokoo morning show on Accra-based Peace FM that during his active years as an MP, anytime he attended a funeral, he had to pay multiple donations. Usually, because most villages hold collective funerals, albeit at various locations, an MP who visits one funeral on a weekend ends up attending about five total, and at each funeral, he has to make generous contributions. Nana Akomea said that sometimes funeral donations are staged; once funeral organisers are aware their MP is in attendance, they prod someone to donate, say, GH 100,000 and openly announce it to the cheers of the public. So, if an MP goes to give anything less, that MP becomes a laughing stock and risks losing an election. Beyond funerals, MPs take over the duties of the state by paying bills, school fees, and providing social responsibilities. One would argue that these MPs dig their graves by promising more than they can execute during elections. While that is true, the nature of Africa’s politics is such that MPs and politicians must indeed make promises to be voted into office. Elsewhere in England, the younger generation is hardly interested in voting because their daily sustenance, such as visiting the General Practitioner (GP), getting welfare from the state, and enjoying their financial autonomy, are independent of their vote. Research put together; research led by a team of political scientists at the University of Ghana that said MPs of ruling parties hardly visit their constituencies was predictable. This is because MPs whose parties are not in government can recuse themselves from becoming providers by claiming that their party is not in government. This may give credence to Jennifer Hasty’s assertion that corruption is not just a matter of individual selfishness and private gains, as it is about socially embedded,

591 Padmore Adusei Amoah, “Examining attitudes towards welfare in an in/security regime: Evidence from Ghana,” Social Policy and Society, 19, 4 (2020): 661676.

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shaped by larger sociocultural notions of power, privilege, and responsibility. 592 Shifting from England to other Western countries like France, which has enjoyed the welfare system for decades, the outcome of the pandemic is redefining the face of retirement and welfarism. President Emmanuel Macron has embarked on an overhaul of France’s expensive and generous pension system to preserve its finances by forcing people to delay their retirement, extending it from 60 to 62 in 2010 and 64 in 2023. The backlash has been overwhelming, as polls show that four out of five people oppose the policy. 593 Meanwhile, while it is said that older people are discriminated against in their search for jobs, making France one of the lowest levels in Europe, 594 there is hardly any discussion on how the state’s welfare system has sustained these idle older hands, who enjoy transfer payments. How do we juxtapose that with Francophone countries in Africa, where the majority of the workforce in the informal sector work till they drop dead? To blunt resistance to the pension overhaul, it is reported that the Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne last week unveiled measures that she said would make things fairer, including a roughly 100 euro increase in the minimum monthly pension, to €1,200 (about $1,300), and exemptions for those who start working at younger ages in arduous blue-collar jobs to retire earlier.

The question is: who will pay for yet another welfare system? Africa needs to beware! Given the above as context, the cost of an election in Africa, limiting myself to Ghana in particular, is remarkably high. Politicians are compelled to mobilise resources to reinvest public trust in the country’s democracy. Meanwhile, the country is yet to decide whether or not political parties should be funded. 595 For this reason, apart from prestige, one wonders why anyone would volunteer to enter politics. Nevertheless, because politics in Ghana is hardly lucrative by itself, political activism is also about business. Right from the university 592 Jennifer Hasty, “The pleasures of corruption: Desire and discipline in Ghanaian political culture,” Cultural Anthropology, 20, 2 (2005): 271-301. 593 Liz Alderman (17 January 2023), “As France moves to delay retirement, older workers are in a quandary,” https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/17/business/france-retirement-agepension.html. 594 Ibid. 595 Emmanuel Sakyi and Kinsley S. Agomor, “State funding of political parties in Ghana: Exploring the views of card-holding and non-card holding party members,” African Social Science Review, 8, 1 (2016): 71-86.

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student elections to the national level, politicians invest hugely in political campaigns to canvass support—indexing the extent to which politicians influence students’ politics. 596 Once they win, the natural course is that they would want to recoup. I have hardly witnessed Ghanaian politicians disputing anything that benefits them financially. Meanwhile, they debate any national issue to the point of pretentious killing one another. According to my reading of Ghanaian politics, the political space does not fetch. The political space is not appealing; while the state remains undecided about funding political parties. 597 Meanwhile, the lack of state funding of political parties is reported to account for the lack of party dynamism and encourages the abuse of incumbency, political support and corruption that, in turn, undermine political party competitiveness, thereby undermining the entire system of multiparty democracy in Ghana. 598 I sincerely believe that those who left lucrative jobs abroad to participate in Ghanaian politics, such as Prof. Kwabena Frimpong Boateng and Papa Kwasi Nduom, are still nursing their wounds. 599 In England, where I have lived since 2017, I have met several Ghanaians who could easily go into politics back home, yet fear they may come to nothing in the long run. Already, research shows that Ghanaian migrants seeking to return to re-settle in Ghana are burdened with challenges, such as “finding accommodation and jobs, establishing contract with colleagues and friends, meeting the high expectations of extended family members, adjusting to their poor infrastructure

596 George M. Bob-Milliar, “Political party activism in Ghana: Factors influencing the decision of the politically active to join a political party,” Democratization, 19, 4 (2012): 668-689. 597 Joseph R. A. Ayee, “Financing of political parties in Ghana: An exploratory study,” in Kwame A. Ninsin & F.K. Drah (eds), Political parties and democracy in Ghana’s fourth republic, 246-257 (Accra: Woeli Publishing Services, 1993). 598 Alban S.K. Bagbin & Albert Ahenkan, “Political party financing and reporting in Ghana: Practitioners perspectives,” in Kobby Mensah (ed), Political marketing and management in Ghana: A new architecture, 111-132 (Cham/Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), p. 112. 599 Frimpong Boateng narrates how he was framed: See: Ghanaweb (11 March 2023), “Professor Frimpong Boateng breaks silence on missing excavators, alleges plot to unseat him,” https://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/ProfessorFrimpong-Boateng-breaks-silence-on-missing-excavators-alleges-plot-to-unseathim-1728803. Gifty Adjei hosts celebrated Cardiologist, Prof. Frimpong-Boateng on Legends of our time: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=214435361155500&ref=sharing.

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facilities in the city.” 600 People who want to maintain their dignity would not enter politics because of animosities and envy from the public and politicians. Morphing into the idea that “politics is a dirty game,” I surmise that politics in Ghana can hardly appeal to several well-meaning technocrats and accomplished individuals. This is usually the case with women who are often denigrated along androcentric lines for going into politics. To stay away from gendered-based power imbalance and discrimination, structural institution and cultural, and traditional barriers and roadblocks, several women may not risk themselves in Ghana’s partisan politics, which is androcentric-laden. 601 As I have said Ghanaian politics tends to alienate sometimes persons with good intention to serve or those who felt they had given their best to the country. I recall the case of a former government official of the New Patriotic Party, Hon. Hackman Owusu Agyeman, who once said that he was very embarrassed when his grandson asked him whether he was a thief. According to him, soon after his party had left office in January 2009, a group of panellists on one of Accra’s privately owned television stations kept saying to the ears of his grandson that he (Owusu Agyeman) was a thief. He said that he said it because he could not explain to the infantile mind of his grandson that the accusation was one of the hazards of politics. More recently, in 2022, the Minister of Health, Kwaku Agyeman Manu, was grilled by a Parliamentary Select Committee over allegations of COVID-related corruption. Accordingly, the Minister had been imprudent in establishing a contract with a foreign-based company to provide vaccines without consulting parliament. In all the proceedings, which I watched, the minister kept saying he was not guilty and that he was under duress, seeing the number of Ghanaians dying of the virus, to ensure that an immediate vaccine was secured. Not only that, as part of putting himself on the line, Mr. Kwaku Agyeman Manu contracted the virus, which resulted in his hospitalization—a fate some of his colleagues, such as Kwadwo Owusu Afriyie (popularly known as Sir John) and former president Jerry John Rawlings, did not survive. Nevertheless, while the Select Committee did not find him complicit in any deliberate act of corruption, some individuals kept insisting that 600 Mary Boatemaa Setrana and Steve Tonah, “Return migrants and the challenge of reintegration: The case of returnees to Kumasi, Ghana,” Ìrìnkèrindò: A Journal of African Migration, 7 (2014): 113-142, p. 113. 601 Marie-Antoinette Sossou, “We do not enjoy equal political rights: Ghanaian women’s perception of political participation in Ghana,” Sage Open, (2011): 1-9, DOI: 10.1177/2158244011410715.

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he should be charged and prosecuted. When I reflected on the case of Kwaku Agyeman Manu, I thought about the connect between stress and moral decisions. Research continues to show a nexus between stress and moral decisions. Much as human beings are treated as rational and follow through with rational choices, research suggested that emotions and gut reactions have a key part to play in moral reasoning. 602 Also, the charge that the Minister deliberately misled the nation in signing a contract with a Covid-19 vaccine producing company is not that simple. There are several factors that merge to usually shape a leader’s decision in times of crisis. Research shows that psychological impact, concerns about self, and worsened health do shape moral dilemmas and attending decisions. 603 Given that the Minister admitted he was in a moral dilemma, is it not possible that he discharged automatic response based on, inter alia, the above factors? During the energy crisis, known locally as Dumsɔr, the then president of Ghana, John Mahama went came under intense stress from Ghanaian citizens. Beyond the overly politicisation of the issue by the New Patriotic Party (NPP), then in opposition, a section of Ghanaians created satirical greeting to drum home the perceived incompetence of Mahama in addressing the energy crisis. The greeting was, “Yɛ ma mo dumsɔr ooo” to wit: “We wish you energy crisis” of which one responded, “Yaa Mahama,” to wit, “Alright, Mahama.” Considering that Mahama was really going through stress as a result of the energy crisis, Ghana’s Chief Psychiatrist, Prof Akwasi Osei, suggested the president underwent psychological check-up. He stated his reason as follows: It’s very crucial for the whole country, the government is the executive of the country and the government is made up of people and every single individual, your mind is the chief executive of your body. Therefore, it means the mind of the President is the chief executive of not only his own body but the whole country and that becomes doubly crucial. I have no reason to think that he [Mahama] is in a state that requires check-up per se, but is a general principle that we are giving... the president is a lot of stress and you’ll need to de-stress and this is a measure that will help him to de-stress. 604 602 Farid F. Youssef, Karine Dookeeram, Vasant Basdeo, Emmanuel Francis et al., “Stress alters personal moral decision making,” Psychoneuroendrocrinology, 37 (2012): 491-498. 603 Carlos Romero-Rivas and Sara Rodríguez-Cuadrado, “The psychological impact of the Covid-19 pandemic affected decision-making processes,” The Spanish Journal of Psychology, 24 (2021): 1-41. 604 Ghanaweb (23 April 2015), “Mahama needs mental checkup—Chief psychiatrist,”

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The issue of stress and moral decisions has a resonance with a Bible story—about how some religious figures treat Moses. Moses’ intemperance at hitting the rock instead of following God’s command to speak to it has become a reason for some Pentecostal pastors to impugn Moses’ impatience. Meanwhile, what most of these pastors fail to realise is that, at the time, Moses had the same incident twice. The first, he instructed the rock as the Lord commanded, and the Hebrew people had water. The second time, he failed. Therefore, these pastors should understand Moses’ psychological state rather than simply accuse him of lacking emotional intelligence, which is a charge that is frequently made carelessly. Contextually, Moses was leading a group of people who had left Egypt but still had Egypt in them. The Hebrew people would complain about everything, even the smallest inconveniences; this was against the background that God provided for everything they needed. Their stiffnecked character was even confirmed by God, who wanted to destroy them in the wilderness. Even when God was certain to destroy the Hebrew people, Moses would risk his life in their defence. Interestingly, when God said the people had sinned while Moses was on the Mountains for the Ten Commandments (Decalogue), Moses said the people had not. This was Moses! No wonder God said Moses was the humblest person to have lived on the face of the earth. 605 For this reason, we may ask how he survived leading the people until the point where such a person could not handle it again. The answer has to do with the presence of Moses’ sister, Miriam. Given that Moses’ parents had died while he was young, it was his older sister, Miriam, who served as a mother to him. It was Miriam whom the Lord used to save Moses in the basket on the water. It was Miriam who organised the women to sing in praise of God and to boost the morale of Moses when the Hebrew people won the victory over the Egyptians. Given that Moses’ wife was even away from him, Miriam was the counsellor par excellence. Thus, anytime Moses had an issue, it was Miriam who was at his rescue, as she had always done. Regrettably, in the second incident, when Moses was to instruct the rock, Miriam died. With no one to consult and seek the usual support, Moses yielded to the psychological pressure to act in a way that displeased God. From a psychological perspective, anyone with mental stress can hardly make a reasonable decision. The above case of Moses was not dissimilar from https://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/Mahama-needsmental-checkup-Chief-psychiatrist-355693. 605 Numbers 12:3.

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that of Kwaku Manu Agyeman. And yet, he was taken to the cleaners and made to look stupid, even when he was truly clear in seeking to save lives. Beyond the above, politicians have also specialised in throwing wild allegations of corruption against themselves for political gain. For example, in 2017, Mahama Ayariga accused MPs of corruption, and yet, when he was hauled before the court to adduce evidence, he backed down and only apologised. The same MP accused Ghana’s former Minister of Energy, Mr. Boakye Agyarko, of corruption, only for it to turn out to be fabricated to dent the Minister. 606 If we bring the discussion down to the issue of ex gratia as the endof-service benefit to politicians, I argue that the issue is not as simple as Ghanaians think of it. As part of the country’s current economic morass, several voices have emerged against the state’s payment of exgratia to politicians. 607 While this call is a step in the right direction and stems from genuine public concern about financial product security, the issue, as I previously stated, is extremely complex. Given the financial, social, and psychological costs involved in democratic politics in Ghana, I surmise that it is the promise and payment of ex-gratia that encourages several technocrats to go into politics. Without the ex-gratia and any form of real motivation, aside from the salaries and a few “freebies” that politicians enjoy, I doubt whether anyone with a genuine business will go into politics. As Desmond Ayim-Aboagye asserted that ex-gratia is needed to ensure continued development of the country’s political institution—so, that instead of abolishing it, it could be revised to ensure cost efficiency. 608 Others, like the current presidential aspirant of the NPP, Mr Kwabena Agyepong thinks ex-gratia should be abolished, since Ghana’s limited resources cannot sustain it. 609 The issue, then, as he rightly said, is about service to humanity. Nevertheless, politics as a service to humanity is not as simple as that. There will hardly be any rational argument for one to just enter politics to serve, given the cost involved. It will take someone who believes in 606 Delali Adogla-Bessa (28 January 2017), “Bribery allegations against Agyarko fabricated – Osei Owusu,” https://citifmonline.com/2017/01/bribery-allegationsagainst-agyarko-fabricated-osei-owusu/. 607 Mark Nartey, “Representations of politicians in contemporary Ghanaian highlife music,” Comparative Literature and Culture, 17, 4 (2015): 2-7. 608 Desmond Ayim-Aboagye (21 March 2023) “The indispensability of ex-gratia iin Ghanaian politics,” https://www.modernghana.com/news/1219508/theindispensability-of-ex-gratia-in-ghanaian-poli.html. 609 GNA (12 October 2022), “Scrab ex-gratia payments immediately—Kwabena Agyepong,” https://gna.org.gh/2022/10/scrap-ex-gratia-payments-immediatelykwabena-agyapong/.

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what religion, more specifically Christianity, promises that “Whatever you do, do it to the glory of the Lord; and when you do good, do it with all your heart for your Father will reward you.” 610 For me, without this, I do not think any “secular” rational reason will be enough to induce anyone into politics. Worst of all, being incorruptible in the face of the real needs of kin members and friends is not rewarding. I know of one important public figure who is known as highly incorruptible. As a leader of one of the largest public organisations, he retired with a clean sheet. As he told me, “I did not even take what was due to me because I cared for my country and my fellow Ghanaians.” “I sacrificed for my country.” Meanwhile, his assistants and deputies were enjoying what they thought they deserved. At the time of this person’s retirement, he had nothing, not even a car in decent shape. His wife, who had been patient with him, had hoped that the person’s retirement would bring her sacrifices to closure with “end of service gifts” but was disappointed when that did not happen. Finally, the person’s wife abandoned him and went to flirt with a young man who is actively working, accusing her husband of being a fool. Currently, the man is only allowed to build in his village, even though he spent all his life in the city. In an interview, he told me that “I regretted the strong Basel moral training my grandfather invested in me.” “If I were to get another chance, I would not steal, but I would be wiser than I thought I was.” Looking at me, he charged me, “Be careful you don’t become like me, for it does not pay.” There are several such stories. The bottom line is that corruption and its manifestation are not just what we think they are. The media, which constantly reports on cases of corruption, is no exception. Whether they do this through their own invented “soli,” which leads them to determine whose story gets the limelight, undermine objectivity and independent news reportage raise both moral and cultural problem, nonetheless, also deeply rooted in corruption. 611 I have had bad experiences with the media that make me wonder how and when some of them still have the moral courage to level broad accusations of corruption against politicians. One of them, whom a lady believed to suffer from bisyndrome, was syndrome accused of sexually abusing her. She could not clear this image, yet she is strong on radio and television, charging politicians of all manner of corruption. The paradox is also that, as part of his morning show, he offers moral counselling. Cf. Colossians 3:23. Amin Alhassan & Muhammed Abdulai, “Cultural and moral implications of soli and its effects on journalism in Northern Ghana,” Journal of Media Ethics, (2019): 1-11: : https://doi.org/10.1080/23736992.2018.1564311. 610 611

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The complexities of all of this are that, as I will discuss in this chapter, national anti-corruption campaigners do not see corruption as a moral challenge. For this reason, the fight against corruption enters the realm of contradictions and fallacies. One usually hears a Ghanaian claim, “Ghanaians are very corrupt.” That the person making such a claim is also Ghanaian leaves a lot to be discussed about the complex nature of corruption. Not only that, because it leads to the misdiagnosis of corruption, but the fight against corruption is also more about investing in institutions, as opposed to similarly incorporating moral training about the canker—or pursuing a moral reform. This means that, instead of a Ghanaian rhetorically claiming Ghanaians are corrupt, the same Ghanaians could have asked, “Am I corrupt?” This is because, by externalising corruption, we all recuse ourselves of our complicity in matters of corruption. We invest in institutions, such as the court, and special anti-corruption establishments, such as the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice and the Economic and Organised Crime Office, all established in 1993 and all charged with the mandate to fight off corruption. That these institutions came at the turn of Ghana’s redemocratization in 1992 tells a lot about the extent to which the nation, working with civic society groups and the international community, considered the debilitating impact of corruption on the ideals of democracy and human rights. And yet, corruption, or the perception of corruption, has remained rife since the 1950s. More recently, in 2017 – Act, 2017 (Act 959), the government of Ghana established the Special Prosecutors Office to investigate and prosecute cases of corruption. 612 The office was the first field entered by Ghana’s celebrated anticorruption figure, Lawyer Martin Amidu, but for complex reasons, he resigned, claiming that corruption had kicked him out of office. So, what was he supposed to do, one might ask? Meanwhile the appointment of Martin Amidu was rightly hailed as an important landmark in Ghana’s journey towards ridding the public sector of wanton stealing and looting. As Ghana’s prolific columnist reasoned, From his past experience as anti-corruption leader, Martin Amidu, alias Citizen Vigilante stands tall above others. His stature and boldness in standing up to his superiors, even if it meant losing his ministerial job is

612 Olivia Anku-Tsede, Reginald Arthur and Majoreen Osrafadu Amankwah, “Special prosecutor: Panacea or facade to institutionalized corruption in Ghana?” Cogent Social Sciences, 9, 1 (2013): 1-17.

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also an indication that he is capable of asserting his independence from the Executive, especially the appointing authority. 613

Meanwhile, Mr Atta presciently hinted a possibility of Martin Amidu’s failure if he (Amidu) deployed his office and extended his anticorruption campaign to the office of the president. For the president to forestall the possibility of Amidu making forays into high offices, Mr Atta predicted that Amidu’s office could be starved of the basic resources to work with. Analysing the political risks and benefits, Mr Atta concluded that he was “least enthused about the office of the OSP.” Instead, he suggested the need for the country to ensure “strict enforcement of existing laws, rules and regulations and establishment of an independent State Prosecution Service separate from the Office of the Attorney General and Minister of Justice but not the duplication of prosecution powers by the establishment of OSP.” 614 Some journalists, including Paul Adom-Otchere, often use his program -“Good Evening Ghana” on Metro TV as an advocacy ground to push for fidelity to law as opposed to the moral aptitude of leadership to curb the country of corruption. The one who took over from him, Martin Amidu, Mr. Kissi Agyebeng, who impressed the nation with his undivided determination to fight corruption, both during his vetting in Parliament and public utterances in the media, recently said in December 2022 that he does not think Ghanaians are ready to fight corruption. In his response to a question on Newsfile on Joy TV, Agyebeng reasoned as follows: We expect so much from the institutions fighting corruption, but collectively, are we ready? A good measure of the reason why I say we are not ready yet is that more than 60% of people fear retaliation if they report corruption, and it is very dire. Even law enforcement agencies, the Office of the Special Prosecutor, and even the Special Prosecutor himself are not spared this special retaliation. 615

613 Kofi Ata (12 January 2018), “Special prosecutor: Has Martin Amidu been given the poisoned chalice?” https://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/features/Special-Prosecutor-HasMatin-Amidu-been-given-the-poisoned-chalice-616723. 614 Ibid. 615 Ghanaweb (31 December 2022), “I don’t think Ghana is ready to fight corruption – Special Prosecutor,” https://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/artikel.php?ID=168 8573&dicbo=v2-e473f60743466d5f7dfb96a8bea093b7.

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Mr Agyabeng’s admission of difficulty in fighting corruption is corroborated by recent research that his office is saddled with many challenges that inhibit the performance of his mandating – questioning whether the OSP is a panacea against corruption. 616 It is also supported by Mr Kofi Ata who predicted the failure of the OSP based on his observation that corruption is an endemic nationwide challenge of epic proportion and until the entire nation is ready to commit themselves to rooting it out, no one single person would succeed – making conclude that even when Martin Amidu, one of Ghana’s strongest voices and activists against corruption was first appointed to head the SOP, Atta concluded that Amidu’s appointment was a poisoned chalice. His conclusion was “because if he is successful in asserting his independence and effective in prosecuting thieves from both NDC and NPP as well as non-politicians, the hue and cry from NPP could result in his office being starved of resources, being denied access to public documents and non-cooperation from the Executive because it could bring down the government that appointed him.” 617 To a larger extent, I agree with both Mr Atta and Mr. Agybeng, but the issue is more complex than that. First, the collective is an imagined one. The “collective” is a group of constituted individuals who, while pontificating to be “righteous,” have learned lessons from Jesus not to throw stones. Meanwhile, the “collective” benefits from corruption because no one individual can easily become corrupt – which Mr Ata rightly observed in his journalistic essay. Corruption is very systemic and has transnational networks, as I shall discuss in the case of galamsey (also known as illegal mining). More importantly, as I have previously said, corruption is a moral issue, not an institutional issue. On this point, I agree with Mr Ata that there a need for attitudinal change. 618 Mr Ata’s conclusion that he has known Mr Amidu since the 1970s “an honest man and would serve Ghana well in the fight against public stealing”. 619 Yet, the fact that Amidu capitulated to giving up his job, regardless of his declared good intention and celebrated moral aptitude, implies that institutions alone (which is over-celebrated as a panacea) are not enough to fight off 616 Olivia Anku-Tsede, Reginald Arthur and Majoreen Osrafadu Amankwah, “Special prosecutor: Panacea or facade to institutionalized corruption in Ghana?” Cogent Social Sciences, 9, 1 (2013): 1-17. 617 Kofi Ata (12 January 2018), “Special prosecutor: Has Martin Amidu been given the poisoned chalice?” https://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/features/Special-Prosecutor-HasMatin-Amidu-been-given-the-poisoned-chalice-616723. 618 Ibid. 619 Ibid.

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corruption. in fact, in expressing his exasperation about Ghana’s almost irredeemable state of endemic moral corruption, Mr Ata concluded that “Ghana is now a country without leaders. It’s everyone for himself/herself and God for us all.” 620 Sincerely, as part of human ontological selfishness, which has always been discussed in class western tests and embedded in the sagacity of our ancestral Anansesem, human beings have always been looking for their interest first, before the other. indeed, by the time one satisfies one’s interest, the other whose interest is exploited and denied is dead and buried. Thus, the fight against it must involve moral restitution. It must shift from the “collective” blame culture to incorporate penitentiary culture. Instead of othering and blaming corruption, we should all look deep within ourselves when we “cast the stone” against those we perceive to be corrupt, regardless of whether we also did not steal the stone we are about to throw at those we charge. In all this, continuing the paternal advice of America’s former president, Barak Obama, who charged Ghanaians to build strong institutions to fight corruption when he visited the country in 2009, 621 Ghanaians have continued fighting corruption. Much as a Ghanaian academic has lashed out at Ghanaians for having demonstrated the enduring effect of “colonial mentality,” he rightly observed that “the only thing that Ghanaians probably do better than everybody else on our planet is to adopt a foreign culture and try to outdo the originators of that culture.”. 622 Collectivism reinforced, Ghanaians have hardly stopped to ask about how institutions are inanimate and yet manned by individual human beings with a vested interest. But as I have said, the fetishization of institutionalisation in the fight against corruption allows individuals to hide from their culpability in corruption. It also reinforces the “holier than thou” attitude among Ghanaians, particularly a segment of the youth. It is now quite common to hear people say, “Ghanaians are not angry enough against the corrupt political establishment.” Meanwhile, by adducing anger as an answer, we must properly understand that anger is good only when it 620 Kofi Ata (11 October 2022), “Is Ghana a mad country or a country with mad people?” https://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/features/Is-Ghana-amad-country-or-a-country-with-mad-people-1640285. 621 Office of the Press (11 July 2009), “Remarks by the President to the Ghanaian Parliament,” https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-pressoffice/remarks-president-ghanaian-parliament. 622 Kwabena Akurang-Parry, “Obama’s visit as a signifier of Ghanaians’ ‘colonial mentality,” In Kwasi Konadu and Clifford C. Campbell (eds), The Ghana reader: History, culture, politics, 440-446 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2016), p. 440.

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demonstrates a real willingness not to be part of what we are angry at. 623 This, for me, is because while anger is about our discontent with injustice, it regrettably leads us down the path of destruction instead of construction. In the 1980s, Jerry John Rawlings’ revolution, well intended to end corruption, resulted in several human rights abuse cases. The industries of genuinely hardworking industrialists collapsed, while Makola women charged with or alleged to be corrupt were severely beaten in public; 624 erstwhile political elites, including the erstwhile military head of state, General Ignatius Kutu Acheampong, had their heads put to the gallows. Corruption increased in spirited intensity a few years after Ghana’s transition to a democratic regime, acting as the proverbial “nine-day wonder.” Along with his wife, Rawlings was charged with corruption for allegedly using a specialised bathing technology. To prove his innocence, Rawlings, protected by immunity clauses, requested truth interrogators, and when that failed, knowing the nation would hardly expend money on that, he asked that Antoa Nyaama, a deity in Kumasi, be invoked—again, knowing that the deities did not save Prempeh I from the British, who took him to exile in 1900 and returned him in a reduced status as Kumasehene instead of his usual Asantehene. 625 Beyond anger spilling into human rights abuses, the posture of “holier than thou” in the fight against corruption leads young people in particular to readily adopt the syndrome of entitlement. I remember during a street demonstration of an army of energetic young men and women, holding the flag of blame culture in the skylines, a young man held a placard that read: “I cannot buy kooko (porridge), but they are driving 4X4.” This young man’s emotionally charged, terse statement obscured several things. Not least, it was as if when the young man got kooko, he wouldn’t want koose; and if he gets enough energy from kooko and koose, he wouldn’t want to ride a bicycle; and if he rides a bicycle, he wouldn’t desire a car; and so on and so forth. Nevertheless, that is precisely the mindset of several of Ghana’s young people. They easily see flashy things as marks of success. They always envy everyone they think stands in their way of “success”—however they conceptualise it. What they hardly know is that people who make their wealth through 623 Charles Prempeh, “Re-imagining wasatiyyah as a socio-theological mediation of youth anger in Accra, Ghana,” Unisia, 40, 1 (2022): 103-128. 624 Abena Ampofoa Asare, Truth without reconciliation: Human rights history of Ghana (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018). 625 Emmanuel Akyeampong, “Christianity, Modernity, and the Weight of Tradition in the Life of “Asantehene” Agyemang Prempeh I, c. 1888-1931,” Africa: Journal of the International African Institute, 69, 2 (1999): 279-311.

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the channels of duplicity live their lives with a caged conscience. They don’t know that the very criminality they admire and yet pretentiously hate cannot be undertaken without the courage of self-inflicted violence. Why do the young people think several criminals who are arrested often have something on them (including Sundu, one of the slang terms for marijuana in the ghettos of Maamobi) to alter their conscience? It is said that if you don’t have witchcraft, you cannot kill anyone—not even an ant. It is also said that discerning a witch requires mastery of witchcraft. Concurrently, if one is a young man, one should know that one’s route to success through criminality will similarly contain one on the route of perpetual guilt culture—the greatest prison is to be imprisoned by your conscience. If one hears a repentant soul confessing all the evils they have committed in life, one should know that they are also healing themselves of an imprisoned conscience. They are inhaling and feeding their souls with cathartic relief. For me, therefore, the fight against corruption is not so much about externalities, including institutions, but genuinely accepting that it is a moral sin that needs repentance. In “Waste Man,” a friend at the University of Cambridge, wrote on his Facebook wall that Black Sherif repudiates pseudo-explanations that appeal to laziness and greed, or weak moral constitutions traceable to a person’s biology or upbringing. He says people want to obey the law and pursue their desires for decent livelihoods through legitimate means. However, they find themselves in social environments he describes as “wasteland,” characterised by blocked opportunities and oppression, “where money holders make the rules and regulations.” He claims that the frustration and helplessness that ensue leave people vulnerable to unhealthy habits and criminal associations. I don’t think this is a denial of moral character; it’s rather a claim that situational and structural pressures can threaten moral character; hence exhortation alone won’t ensure ethical conduct. If you have a wasteland of a police agency, you can only breed corrupt officers. The good news is that a wasteland is a human creation; it can be undone, so “if they tell you to shut up, you’ll be shouting more.” As my senior colleague and friend, I responded: Yes, brilliant. It is the kind of human being who will recreate a ‘wasteland’ that I think makes Ayi Kwei Armah think, maybe rightly so, that ‘the beautyful ones are not yet born.’ If Kwame Nkrumah, the much celebrated wasn’t the beautyful one, maybe it may be another breed. But who are the beautyful ones: when will they be born? If the environment is wasteful and corrupting, where will the beautyful ones stand to recreate

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the wasteland? Just thinking alongside you, not pretending I have an answer that will be universally shared.

My observation resonates with Marxist utopianism which observed as follows Marxism has: [A] nice combination of the romantic and the rationalistic strains in the modern culture, a glorification of the vitality of the burden bearers of the world as the instrument of an ultimate universalistic humanism, but no recognition that this fateful class is also composed of sinful men and that their sin will become more apparent as soon as they cease to be oppressed and become the victors.

Anyways, with institutionalisation as the route to fighting off corruption, the majority of Ghanaians blame the environment and everyone in authority that they disagree with. However, returning to context and assuming a transnational view of corruption, I argue that the problem is not that institutions do not work or may not work in combating corruption. It is about human nature, its corrupt dimension, and our unwillingness to yield to others’ interests. In England, the institutions appear to work against corruption because of complex factors. First, the English people, through their philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes, realised in the 19th century that the state of nature is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” 626 The basis of nature is hunger or a lack of food. Every human being fundamentally thrives on food, the lack of which brings conflict and tension. Certainly, the Akan proverb has it that one cannot placate a hungry man with platitudes, much as one does not blow the trumpet on an empty stomach. There is a direct correlation, therefore, between hunger and immorality. This was captured by Ali as: When hunger has inflamed a fire in the heart of a person that consumes every drop of his blood and eliminates his faith, how can he enjoy life, believe in the justice of the people, sympathise with his brothers, and live kindly with his kinsmen and relatives? … A person who does not have anything to eat cannot possess the qualities of goodness and piety, because food is the first support for every class and the means of peace of mind.

626 Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (edited with an intro. &. Notes by J.C.A. Gaskin) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 84.

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It is food that enables a person to reflect and makes him adopt good morals and show good behaviour towards others. 627

Hunger and immorality are companions; 628 for this reason, I think fasting is a common ritual in nearly every major religion. Through fasting, one overcomes the banality of one’s nature to be greedy, belligerent, and cantankerous as a result of hunger. 629 I believe that fasting is highly spiritual, but I wonder why I must starve before the God of heaven hears me. It is here that I think of religious rituals as necessary in creating a regime to stifle our penchant for the banality of our natural selves—such that through embodied ritual practices such as fasting, religious actors are able to produce new moral selves for social convivial lifestyle. 630 The spillover of hunger into anger and immorality is demonstrated in the idea of “bringing up” a child. Children are born with a natural preference for food pleasure. We may teach children everything, but not where their mother’s breast was at birth. This reminds me of my daughter, Adwoa. Immediately after she was born, she would not keep quiet, just as every child would do. And given that my wife was in severe pain and needed just a brief moment to recoup from the excruciating pain of the Caesarean section, the only time Adwoa was quiet was when a bottle of powdered milk was given to her. As I stood in the theatre, I simply saw it as my responsibility to work hard to feed her while also curating her from the pleasure of food. It is against this background that, as observed by the Jewish Rabbi Manni, when children are being fed, they sing to help them appreciate another source of pleasure, music, other than food. Returning to the case of the English, since food must necessarily take precedence over music and is also pre-music, the English people went all out in search of goodies to feed the island. Armed with Adam Smith’s observation that “the baker gives bread not for benevolence, 627 George Jordac, The voice of human justice, a biography of Imam Ali (as) (trans. M. Fazel Haq), p. 76, https://shiapdfresources.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/thevoice-of-human-justice.pdf. 628 Md Johirul Islam, “Does hunger affect violent crime? A cross country study of developing,” SSRN (2021): https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4033213; Carmelo M. Vicario, Karolina A. Kuran, Robert Rogers, and Robert D. Rafal, “The effect hunger and satiety in the judgment of ethical violation,” Brain and Cognition, 125 (2018): 32-36. 629 Scot McKnight, Fasting (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2009). 630 Daniel Winchester, “Embodying the faith: Religious practice and the making of a Muslim moral habitus,” Social Forces, 86, 4 (2008): 1753-1780.

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but for his own self-preservation,” the British mercantilist economic philosophy led them down the path of massive exploitation of others. For example, Adam Smith support colonialism as part of forcing British mercantilist system upon the colonised world. 631 I had underestimated the extent of English looting in the nineteenth century until I visited the museums in Oxford and Cambridge. The fact that they looted ancient Egyptian graves for precious metals and ornaments, sometimes under the guise of seeking ancient wisdom, was enough to sustain their industrialization, which they had pioneered globally in the 18th century. 632 Indeed, the enslavement of Africans and the consequent colonisation of the continent were part of the English and European quest to free themselves from the harm that hunger causes—fulfilling, as I have said, the mercantilist aspiration of imperialist economists. Having looted for centuries, England in particular continues to exploit the labour of Africans to consolidate its economy. Corroborated by scholarly work, I have observed, for example, that the care industry is the heartland of English modern enslavement. 633 With a declining population, as part of the consequences of 18th-century industrialization, the outsourcing of industries to Asia since the turn of the millennium, and the promotion of LGBTQ rights, sex has become more for recreation than procreation. Population growth is slowing, while advances in medicine have resulted in increased life expectancy. Meanwhile, the neoliberal economic impact on the already collapsed extended family system is such that children do not consider themselves personally responsible for catering to their ageing parents and relatives. The elderly are viewed as economically unviable in the virtual and “fast” world of technology. In reality, the care sector has exploded, but the state is also unwilling to make investments where there are low chances of a high return on investment. I have noticed that the state has primarily hired care facilities that work under the nation’s National Insurance Scheme to take care of the elderly. The government has limited time for the elderly, so the NHS also outsources the care industry to experienced nurses as agents who run care homes. The UK government deliberately use third party agents or employers how 631 P.J. Cain and A.G. Hopkins, British imperialism, 1688—2015 (London: Routledge, 2016), 226. 632 George Abungu, “Illicit trafficking and destruction of cultural property in Africa: A continent at crossroads,” in Noah Charney (ed), Terrorists, tomb raiders, forgers and thieves, 240—254 (Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). 633 Caroline Emberson and Alexander Trautrims, “How might modern slavery risk in English adult social care procurement be reduced?” Public Procurement Global Revolution, IX, (2019): 1-29, https://nottinghamrepository.worktribe.com/output/2319744.

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exploit the already vulnerable migrants. The UK’s immigration policy, specifically, Immigration Acts of 2014 and 2016 that pretends to outlaw modern slavery is, as identified by flawed, counter-productive and disingenuous. 634 To run the care homes, the agents recruit newly arrived migrants and give them a maximum of two weeks of training to work as care workers. Most of these recruits are domestic casual workers who survive on wages. They are entitled to nothing apart from the minimum wage. They have no holidays, no health benefits, and no entitlement to even free further education and training in the work they do—thus, all creating hostile and downright inhuman environment for migrants, who are reduced to nothing but modern day slaves by a late capitalist consumerist culture. 635 Definitely, in a country where every single thing is observed under state-high panopticons (CCTV), the state is aware of the exploitation in the care industry. In 2021, I could have landed a job as a postdoctoral fellow at one of the universities in England. But for ideological and humanitarian reasons, while I was among the seven to have been shortlisted out of 40 applicants, I deliberately did not perform well. Even with that, I came in second place because I am not a historian with a mainline education. To ease my struggles, the Director of the Center interviewed me. I explained to the Director during the interview that I was relieved I did not get the position because I did not understand why I should instruct a course on slavery and colonialism, which I had to do when I could, as well as conduct research and instruct a class on contemporary slavery in England with a focus on the care industry. In fact, social injustice affecting immigrants and Africans is hardly ever discussed in England. English racism, which is pernicious in its current form and promotes the exploitation of migrant labour, is less widely discussed by the public than racism in the United States of

634 Stuart N. Hodkinson, Hannah Lewis and Louise Waite, “Fighting or fuelling forced labour? The modern slavery act 2015, irregular migrants and the vulnerabilising role of the UK’s hostile environment,” Critical Social Policy, 4,1 (2021): 68-90, p. 69. 635 For more the exploitation of migrant labour, see: Patricia Hynes, “Exploring the interface between asylum, human trafficking and/or ‘modern slavery’ within a hostile environment in the UK,” Social Sciences, 11 (2022): 1-20, https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci11060246; University of Nottingham Right Lab, The vulnerability of paid migrant live-in care workers in London to modern slavery, August 2022, chromeextension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://researchonline.lshtm.ac.uk /id/eprint/4666869/1/Emberson_etal_2022_The-vulnerability-of-paidmigrant.pdf.

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America. And yet, the English frequently dare to impose banalities on Africans as part of their idiotic promotion of human rights. The extent of corruption is rarely discussed in writing or conversation, and even when it is (often written by non-migrant academics), these materials are rarely used in classrooms. That attempt to conceal corruption is undoubtedly a part of the organised and systemic corruption in England. Beyond the care sector, nearly every aspect of society, including housing, education, health, and commerce, is routinely corrupt in England. Every other aspect of life is intertwined with accommodations and all of their structures. More than one’s cognitive abilities, one’s life influences whether or not one will attend the prestigious Oxford institutions. American “red lines” have an implicit British counterpart that is extremely lethal and highly discriminatory. Susan Smith rates residential segregation as the geographical expression of English racism—contributing to the spatial segregation of black population. 636 Some scholars have tried to downplay the extent of racial segregation, claiming that there is little evidence of significant segregation of Black ethnic groups, but more with regard to Asian groups—especially outside London. 637 But, as identified by Lan, Kandt and Longley, the issue of racial spatial segregation is more complex than just a mixture of ethnic groups. 638 The usual 40-minute rule that prohibits a child from crossing over from a school within a child’s local community straitjackets a child’s future educational and job prospects. In the meantime, I have noticed that the majority of white people in Britain leave when they feel encircled by immigrants, including those from Asia and Africa. Unfortunately, whenever white British people leave a community, the community itself suffers from a lack of social services, which has an impact on everything from education quality to sanitation and the cost of living. For these reasons, among others, Birmingham’s migrant-heavy suburbs like Moseley, Handsworth, Saltely, Burlington Street, and Bromwich—a city that is already predominately Muslim When I first arrived, I questioned whether I was in an urban slum in Accra because several of the migrant communities have poor sanitation, like a modern version of apartheid. In addition to 636 Susan Smith, “Segregation reconsidered” in Peter Jackson (ed), Race and racism: Essays in social geography, 22-41 (London: Unwin Hyman Ltd., 1987). 637 Ron Johnson, James Forrest and Michael Poulsen, “Are there ethnic enclaves/ghettos in English cities?” Urban Studies, 39, 4 (2002):591-618, https://doi.org/10.1080/00420980220119480. 638 Tian Lan, Jens Kandt and Paul Longley, “Geographic scales of residential segregation in English cities,” Urban Geography, 4, 11 (2020): 103-123. https://doi.org/10.1080/02723.

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being already impoverished, these areas frequently supply second-hand goods of inferior quality at exorbitant prices, even though the two areas are occasionally only 20 minutes apart by car. The national express buses that travel to the immigrant community are typically in poor condition and smell bad, adding to their problems. As it is part of the illogic of segregation, the aforementioned is not meant to imply that immigrants are dirty and British people are not. Having lived with a few British both in my college at Wolfson and in a relatively elite community in Birmingham (Selly Oak), I can attest to the extent to which several of these British do not stick to basic hygienic practices (leaving bowls unwashed; hardly flashing toilets when used etc.)—the nemesis of which was the basis of their geographical and social segregation against the Gold Coasters in the late colonial era of the 19th century. 639 Certainly, compared with migrant Muslims whose ritual cleaning rituals predispose them to cleanliness, the youthful segment of the British tends to be less predisposed to a good sanitary environment. For this reason, what explains the overflow of waste containers in migrant communities and less of the same in white-dominated communities is who has the money to pay for extra service. The Birmingham City Council is responsible for the sanitary condition of the city, but as a government institution, it tends to be overstretched as it runs on a budget they may consider insufficient. So much as they try to be efficient, they are often overwhelmed by the amount of work they do. White-dominated communities, under their social status, tend to enjoy preferential treatment as they are also capable of incorporating extra service from private sanitation agencies. The schools also deliberately poison the minds of migrants, particularly African pupils—indexing education as a deeply constructed form of indoctrination and source of mental imprisonment and reproduction of colonial ethos epistemically disempowering the colonised. 640 On January 8, 2022, I visited my Maamobi childhood friend who now lives in England. Because I had not seen her for more than a decade and had not visited her since I arrived in England in 2017, 639 Akwasi Kwarteng Amoako-Gyampah, “Household sanitary inspection, mosquito control and domestic hygiene in the Gold Coast (Ghana) from the latenineteenth to the mid-twentieth century,” Social History of Medicine, 35, 1 (2022): 278301; Akwasi Kwarteng Amoako-Gyampah, Sanitation and public hygiene in the Gold Coast (Ghana) from the late 19th century to 1950 (PhD thesis submitted to University of Johannesburg, 2019). 640 Bekeh Utietiang Ukelina, “The mis-education of the African child: The evolution of British colonial education policy in southern Nigeria, 1900-1925” The Athens Journal of History, 7, 2 (2021): 141-162; Carter G. Woodson, The mis-education of the Negro (New York: Penguin, 2023).

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once I met with her at her house, the two of us ended up talking for hours on end. It was just when I was about to leave that I paid attention to her first child, a lady of 13 years, who was busy working on her assignment. To make sure I did not neglect her, I exchanged pleasantries and asked about what she was learning. Incidentally, she had been given an assignment on the reasons for the “end” of the slave trade. Of all the reasons, including Christian abolitionists and the rise of so-called legitimate trade, nothing was said about the role of Africans or the critical role played by the industrial revolution—all against the fact that the economic reason for the abolition of slavery cannot be underestimated. 641 She was allowed to use the internet as part of her search, but because algorithms determine the type of information available on the internet, nearly all of the hyper-links provided to the poor lad excluded African agency and the role of the industrial revolution in redefining the nature of enslavement. The British Navy was made the heroes for supposedly abolishing the enslavement of Africans, and Africans were made to look evil for self-inflicted woes. I was immediately concerned and alarmed by the harm done to African students in England because I teach African studies. I already learned about the marginalisation of African children in schools and foster homes from a programme I participated in at Birmingham City University in 2019 As a result, when I discovered that this poor African woman had been misinformed and miseducated, I jumped in and guided her through a dialogical approach to learning, taking each of the numerous factors and critically analysing them one at a time. The girl only realised she was eating rubbish after we were finished. But there was a “but.” How would she offer a different response than what her teachers had requested from her? Of course, from Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” to John Dewey’s 20th-century educational philosophy, the world is aware of the importance of early childhood education for socialisation. 642 Once a child’s mind is captured early enough and fed on misinformation, the child is most likely held in perpetual servitude by the child’s educator. No wonder; every civilization has deployed education to redefine the contours of civilization. From the pre-modern world of priestly control 641 Eric Williams, The economic aspect of the abolition of the West Indian slave trade and slavery (ed and intro by Dale W. Tomich and William Darity Jr, respectively) (Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014). 642 Plato, “The allegory of the cave” in The Republic of Plato – Book VII, 193-220 (trans by Allan Bloom) (United States of America: BasicBooks, 1968),193-220; John Dewey, Democracy and education: An introduction to the philosophy of education (New York: The Macmillan, 1916).

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of literacy to the contemporary world, education is a complex form of indoctrination. The classroom is hardly neutral. It is against this background that several educators and philosophers, including the Brazilian Paulo Freire, say, “Attempting to liberate the oppressed without their reflective participation in the act of liberation is to treat them as objects that must be saved from a burning building.” 643 Indeed, corruption in England is not just at the pre-university level. Even at the university level, several undergraduate literature students read nothing about African novelists. It was a surprise to me that undergraduate literature students at the University of Cambridge do not read or even know one popular African novelist. The irony is even greater that in most of the bookshops in England, particularly Waterstones, the section dedicated to Africa is filled with books authored by westerners about Africans. Certainly, it is not even to say Africans are not writing, as it is also about the publishers and the cost of the book. Even on Amazon, academic books by African authors tend to be very expensive, whereas highly polemical and popular books on the continent by westerners tend to be very cheap. Considering that several African parents who migrated to England in the 1980s are themselves less educated and economically less powerful, they often compete over material things like who has properties in Ghana or who is wearing the newest clothes from Ghana. However, African children are potentially impoverished intellectually. It is not for nothing that the Bible says children should be trained while they are young, a truism that is similarly captured in a Ugandan proverb: “It is easier to bend a tree when it is green than when it is brown.” As a result, students wear uniforms at nearly all pre-university levels to receive uniform education and develop uniform cognitive minds that prepare them to be citizens of a nation. I recall a student at one of the pre-university colleges in Birmingham complaining that he was tired of wearing a uniform. Certainly, unknown to this young man, the uniform was part of his socialisation into what constitutes Britishness, or what Afua Hirsch would call being “Brit(ish).” 644 In light of everything, I have come to terms with the fact that African students frequently find themselves in situations where they initially identify as British as children but where being “Brit(ish)” as a young adult becomes more challenging as they mature. I can attest to the miseducation of African students because I have taught four times 643 Paul Freire, Pedagogy of the oppressed (trans. Myra Bergman Ramos) (New York/London: continuum, 2005), p. 65. 644 Afua Hirsch, Bri(ish): On race, identity and belonging (London: Vintage Digital, 2018).

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at Cambridge summer schools on various subjects from an African perspective. One of the pre-tertiary students from Kenya said to me after my first in-person teaching session with them at Cambridge, which was overseen by the summer school’s principal organizer, “I now know what to do with my academic ambition.” This came after a two-hour lecture on African Christology that I gave to her and her classmates. Even adult migrants who wish to apply for British citizenship are required to take exams in history and English metanarrative. I have talked to a few Africans who tried to be “British” but made a few mistakes along the way. There is no equivocation that education is a major source of indoctrination, 645 which in itself is not bad, particularly if it inculcates citizenship and international conviviality. But what we do know is that the British education system on history contorts both the history and image of Africans for not just British students but Africans as well. For this reason, it takes years of similar indoctrination to gain entry into teaching at the basic level in the British educational system. On December 2, 2022, I met a British man in his early 50s who claimed to have read history and now qualifies as a history teacher at the secondary school level. In our conversation, I realised that nearly all the information he had about African history was nothing short of a convenient myth. After several conversations with him, he realised he was very misinformed about what he thought he knew about Africa. Initially resisting my side of the African narrative, he caved in, and when I said I wished I could volunteer to teach African history and culture to pre-secondary school students, he was clear in telling me that, “By the time you would be done with your teacher training education, you have been tamed and rendered incapable of teaching what you know and want”—to paraphrase him. I have taken the liberty to go through this long route of the British education system to highlight the simplistic assumption held by African elites the classroom anywhere is neutral and that corruption is just the plight of Africans. Through the classroom in 2019, the Western world attempted to instil its decadent sexual practises on Africans. When some of us argued against it, a few Western-trained Africans, in my case Ghanaians, argued that teachers should retain control of the classroom. For me, I was not surprised these western-educated students, particularly those sponsored to study abroad, would promote and reproduce such imperialist agenda on Africans. The Ivy League and 645 Mariana Momanu, “The pedagogical dimension of indoctrination: Criticism of indoctrination and the constructivism in education,” Meta: Research in Hermeneutics, Phenomenology, and Practical Philosophy, IV, 1 (2012): 88-105.

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Oxbridge would not just offer admission and funding to African students out of altruism. The western prestigious regime, as part of the neo-colonial regime, tends to be the cognitive wing of leftist governments that have championed the sexual liberalisation agenda, particularly since the late 1960s. 646 Western humanistic theories have spread throughout the world and become regionalized through Michel Foucault’s poststructuralism theory, Simone de Beauvoir’s concretized feminism, and Jean-Paul Sartre’s existentialism. African students in Africa accept as facts the western theories that are presented to them. At Ghana’s top university, the University of Ghana, students who study philosophy of social science spend the entire semester reading only the subjective theories of western academics, as I mentioned in my book on gender and sexuality. Critical Ghanaian thinkers like Anton Wilhelm Amo, John Mensah Sarabah, Joseph Ephraim Casely Hayford, Kobina Sekyi, etc. are targeted by this type of self-inflicted mental violence. Additionally, Ghanaian academics must demonstrate that they begged their colonial “masters” for research funding to write a basic academic article about the “causes of teenage pregnancy” (pun intended). A factor in one’s advancement through the academic ranks is the amount of funding one has received from the West. But we are aware of the saying, “He who pays the piper calls the tune,” which explains why there is unnecessarily vexatious tension surrounding gender studies in Ghana. In all this, the doctrine is no more “publish or perish,” as it is about “publish or perish”—based on whether an author’s theoretical leaning is deemed conservative or liberal (bad news for conservative scholars). Scholars are increasingly dominating the market place—such that several publishers, based on my own subjective experience, are more interested in the market value of a book than a book’s epistemic value. 647 The above leads to a complex valorisation of authors—pandering often into cancel culture. In 2022, I was due for an appointment as a postdoctoral research fellow to help develop a course on digitalization and the future of humanity in Africa at one of the most prestigious universities in South Africa. But before I could even begin the interview, a colleague in Ghana called to tell me she had heard I was going to a university in South Africa. Given that the interview was three days away and that I had kept it a secret, I was taken aback. However, 646 Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt, The coddling of the American mind: How good intentions and bad ideas are setting up a generation for failure (New York: Penguin, 2018). 647 For a discussion on the impact of neoliberalism on scholarship, see: Mahmood Mamdani, Scholars in the marketplace: The dilemma of neo-liberal reform at Makerere University 1989-2005 (Cape Town: HRSC Press, 2007).

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given how interconnected our world is thanks to the internet, I also did not find it surprising that my impending trip to South Africa had already been made public. The fact that my friend overheard the conversation and overheard that I was going to South Africa surprised and worried me. I knew I had reason to be worried when I pressed my friend to tell me how she found out I was travelling to South Africa. This was because, as part of exercising my right as an academic and Christian conscience, I had written a memo to Parliament in defence of the country’s Family Bill to forestall western and minority elites’ attempts at imposing same-sex rights on the Ghanaian public. Because my memo strongly criticised a few female academics at the University of Ghana who were advocating for the rights of same-sex people, I knew these powerful female academics, who also call themselves allies of the minority sexual identity movement, would use their vast transnational network against me. True to my concern, when I finally had the interview, in which all the panellists said I was the best qualified for the job, I never heard from them again, until I heard from the grapevine that some academics in Ghana were frustrating my appointment because I had offered an opinion on the need for complexity and nuance in LGBTQ related debates. Meanwhile, compared with what these academics had written, my memo was far from academic and similarly confrontational. More to the point, I had expressed my view on the subject in an academic compendium published in South Africa. 648 But the fact that some African elites have aligned themselves with their western counterparts to foreclose Noah’s ark to only themselves and western “post” theories means they are happy to sacrifice their consciences at the expense of money. They may pose as champions of human rights, but, unlike Madam Agnes Amoah, their primary goals, it would appear, are money, promotion, and recognition by and in the circles of champions of freedom without responsibility. I say this because my appointment was postponed after the university in South Africa decided to heed the call from my home country of Ghana and also to ensure that they received funding for the project from one of America’s popular funding bodies. The option to silence had trumped debate. Africa’s problem is not just the Euro-American, but the African who claims to love the continent, sings and chants Afrocentrism, and yet 648 Charles Prempeh, “African agency, human rights and issues of homosexuality: Biden and Africa” In Bob Wekesa (ed.) Africa’s Policy Towards the US: The Biden Era, Johannesburg: African Centre for the Study of the United States (University of the Witwatersrand, 2021), pp. 137-157.

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apes at the crumbs from the white master’s table. These African academics would write all the niceties about decolonizing the academy and implore fellow students to think about decolonization, yet they are less committed to keeping the Triple Heritage of African society. Specifically, they are less inclined to protect the African family system, which, from the perspective of the traditions of the continent, remains the foundation of human civilization. They would promote the culture of death in the name of human rights when, as I have said, they are more interested in money. They, like the editors of liberalised journals and the presidents of western institutions, would jump on every international conference with funding and a visiting professorship appointment, knowingly or unknowingly as part of the Euro-American world’s compradors in harming the African continent. For those who have migrated to the western world, they tend to suffer identity crisis, much as they are African academics, Nesbitt has observed that they can no longer depend on the security of nationalism and ethnicity. Finding an answer in this quagmire, Nesbitt argued that three types of migrant intellectuals exist: the comprador intelligentsia, the postcolonial critics and the progressive exiles. 649 I was trained at Cambridge and briefly at Oxford, so I am aware of the philosophical liberal agenda of these institutions. The fact that they select the best Africans to train in the West so that they can return as Western ambassadors I will forever be thankful to Oxbridge, but at least I retain my Christian conscience, which I made known to my college president, Prof. Jane Clarke, about 30 minutes before my graduation on 21 September 2021: While the joy of our graduation and expectation therefore is stated as, ‘Dear World, the people who arrive in this city change Cambridge. The ideas that leave this city change the world. Yours, Cambridge,’ I am going to change the world for Jesus Christ, my saviour.

My point is that there is no reason for anyone to be hostile or belligerent towards people who claim to live a lifestyle that does not harm a second or third person. But with a culture of death such as the whole gamut of the LGBTQ agenda, seeking to impose it on all is itself the nemesis of western liberalism. The recent Cambridge Dictionary’s redefinition of what constitutes a man and a woman is a clear demonstration of cultural imposition from such an influential 649 Francis Njubi Nesbitt, “African intellectuals in the belly of the beast: Migration, identity and the politics of African intellectuals in the North,” Critical Arts, 17, 1-2 (2003): 17-35.

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university. It offers something to contemplate on how an enlightenment institution could succumb to the self-imposed illusion of a gender crisis. Cambridge now defines: A woman is not only an ‘adult human female’ but also ’an adult who lives and identifies as female even though they may have been said to have a different sex at birth.’ And the word ‘man,’ who is now no longer a male, but can also be someone who was born a girl.

The gender crisis, alongside race and identity politics, is described as the madness of crowds—a world “going through a great crowd derangement.” 650 When words lose their meaning, culture becomes nothing more than what one considers appropriate. Truth becomes subjective and matter of one’s preference. Morality becomes personal, informed by what one accepts at the subjective level. But will the reality be subjective as well? Unfortunately, through the schooling system, the western world is seeking to impose a particular, narrow narrative on everyone as the only true information. While claiming that knowledge is subjective, they do not believe that everyone else has the right to think differently and are invited to the epistemic commonwealth. The sexual liberation movement is so belligerent that Barak Obama, who campaigned on the idea that Ghanaians should allow institutions to function, left America more morally broken than when he arrived. Through him and via him, America’s human rights have become the apex of 21st-century cultural imperialism, where he admits that anyone who does not support gay rights is behind the pale of history. 651 Therefore, history for Barak Obama is about moral progression, which adulates sexual decadence—the culture of death, including wanton abortion—over all institutions that seek to protect human civilization. In Ghana, the allies of Barak Obama’s successor, the now far-leftist Catholic president of the US, Joe Biden, are deconstructing all institutions that stand in the way of the same-sex revolution. For the last few years, Ghana’s Centre for Democratic Consolidation have been very critical about the institution of the chieftaincy, claiming that the institution could imperil the country’s democratization—as chiefs continue to participate directly and indirectly in partisan politics. While 650 Douglas Murray, The madness of crowds: Gender, race and identity (London: Bloomsbury Continuum, 2019) 651 Barack Obama (24 October 2021), “Barack Obama speech for Virginia Gov. candidate Terry McAuliffe transcript,” https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/barack-obama-speech-for-virginia-govcandidate-terry-mcauliffe-transcript.

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he had the foresight to support same-sex rights as beneficial to humanity, the same people call Ghana’s national cathedral, which is now being funded by Christians, a “senseless and vanity project. 652 In all this, the media is heavily involved in narrowcasting, giving voices to the liberal west and their compradors to support the agenda of discrediting all indigenous institutions. Part of the plan is for the media to amplify the voices of a few cultural progressive elites by giving them airtime and interviews, suffocating counter-voices. 653 This trend of selectivity feeds a certain understanding of a real or perceived hypocrisy and moral capitulation of the west and its establishments. All of this is offset by the West’s economic advantage over Africa. In England, a cursory observation of the various supermarkets will bring to one’s attention that nearly all the consumables are imported. My wife and I often joke that the only thing the English can produce is bread, which they often demonstrate visibly, appealing to one’s sense of smell. To say the least, England is a consuming culture, consuming what it does not produce. On the contrary, several countries in Africa produce what they cannot consume immediately and consume what they hardly produce immediately. Part of the neo-colonial ethos of exploitation, transnational corporation and states, working in alliance with their African compradors are engaged in the phenomenon of land grabbing Africa—imperilling African food security. 654 A western company has secured a large tract of land in the Opeikuma area of Kasoa, Ghana’s Central Region, where it produces pineapple commercially. Certainly, the producers themselves hardly consume what they consume, while their pay is nothing compared to the cheapest cost of their labour at Aldi in Birmingham. In a prayer, a member of my church, St. Stephen’s and St. Wulstan’s, Selly Oak, asked God to forgive the English for the economic exploitation they continue to perpetrate on the rest of the world. In all this, my point is far from recusing Africans and Ghanaians from our complicity as much as it is to reinforce my argument that corruption is universal and comes across in different shades and colours. That the British consume what they do not produce and yet are not impoverished by inflation in an agricultural country like Ghana 652 Ghanaweb (16 December 2022), “The national cathedral is senseless and vanity – Kwasi Premeph,” https://www.ghanaweb.com/region/clubmate/TheNational-Cathedral-Is-Senseless-And-Vanity-Kwasi-Prempeh-33270. 653 University of Cambridge Centre for Gender Studies, “Webinar on LGBTQ+ rights in Botswana and Ghana,” https://www.gender.cam.ac.uk/news/webinarlgbtq-rights-botswana-and-ghana. 654 Fassil Demissie (ed), Land grabbing in Africa: The race for Africa’s rich farmland (New York: Routledge, 2015).

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is not because the English economists are more prudent than their Ghanaian counterparts or their African counterparts. African economists, once they leave their posts in their respective countries, secure high-profile appointments in influential institutions. A case in point is the former Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, who soon after leaving office in Nigeria as the Minister of Finance (2003–2006, 2011–2015), secured a job as the Director General of the World Trade Organization (WTO). Meanwhile, it may be argued that she did not transform the Nigerian economy in any seismically favourable way. The issue with the British economy and that of Ghana, in particular, and Africa, in general, is the efficiency of the British political economy regarding corruption. Taking a cue from their early 19th century philosophers, including Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, the British learned early enough that to survive as an island, they needed selfishness, not altruism. For this reason, they have been very shrewd in advancing complex layers of corruption since the 19th century. 655 From the opium wars of the mid-19th century, in which the British sought to destroy the Chinese economy with drugs, to David Ricardo’s idea of comparative advantage to promote British economic interests against India and Portugal, the British have sustained their imperialist economic agenda by imposing sanctions on countries such as Zimbabwe that seek to unsettle British interests. 656 As part of restructuring and rebuilding the post-Covid British economy, the British have again demonstrated their cognitive ability in the world of competing attention. Instead of rebuilding the post-Covid British economy, the British have again demonstrated their cognitive ability in the world of competing attention. Instead of the usual 1-year post-study visa extension, the political elites have extended it to 3 years for doctoral graduates and 2 years for master’s graduates. Additionally, the British government is importing skilled workers from India to work in England. The British are recalibrating Adam Smith’s dictum that “it is not for benevolence that the baker gives bread other than the baker’s self-preservation,” as a benevolent initiative. For this reason, skilled migrants pay several thousand pounds to get a visa through agencies and spend yet several thousand dollars to pursue further studies before they could work in England. This is against the background of these skilled labourers, the majority of whom are dentists, who are already qualified and were practising in their respective countries, particularly 655

2021).

Sathnam Sanghera, How imperialism has shaped modern Britain (London: Penguin,

656 P.G. Cain and A.G. Hopkins, British imperialism, 1688-2015 (3rd ed. London: Routledge, 2015).

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in India. After a year of top-up training, these skilled workers do not automatically get British citizenship. They work for a few more years and pay taxes before, if they are lucky, they are awarded citizenship. Of those who finished the master’s programme, several of them, regardless of their fields of expertise—apart from extremely limited branches in the sciences—end up working as non-skilled laborers. They are still enslaved by the care industry, despite having spent thousands of pounds to obtain master’s degrees from British universities. As I previously stated, British economists are not the best at economic management, but they are the best at understanding that, given that they have nothing but water bodies that are not deeply navigable for trans-continental commerce, they must use their wits to defraud the world. The political economy of Britain is based on nothing short of immorality, where, as Shakespeare told them, “fair is foul and foul is fair” when it comes to human life. After studying western theorists of the 18th and 19th centuries, my conclusion is that the world never thrives on benevolence; the world thrives on selfishness and selfcenteredness. It is a tale of criminals who have constructed a competitive world for the survival of the selfish. All of the above are structured in institutions such as the schooling system, the medical system, the pharmaceutical system, the prison system, the entertainment industry, and the cultural revolution agenda. In the end, we all claim to be free and yet are deeply imprisoned in a world system that gives us the illusion of working hard to acquire wealth only to find ourselves collapsing into pieces. I have seen several African men talking to themselves as they walk the streets of Birmingham and/or sit in national express buses. I have seen a few of them turn to drugs to dry away their sweat in a world where winter darkness offers human beings nothing but gloom. The post-Covid world of virtual migration and labour has worsened the exploitation of the impoverished. The world was on the highway of social media-induced individualism before the pandemic. But as part of the safety measures to contain the virus, working from a distance appears to have come to stay for commerce. A lot of sociogenic activities have migrated online. If our proclivity to harm strangers we know we will meet only once is true, then the virtual work of social relations centred on “things” poses a challenge. It will collapse social conviviality and reinforce strangeness, leading to marginalisation. As I have observed, the corrupt regime in England is so pervasive and corrosive that it tinkers with the human depraved nature for evil. It corrupts even hearts that are supposedly dedicated to God, similar to Lot being strangulated by the evils of Sodom. My experiences and interactions with several Ghanaians reveal that marriage by 275

convenience is quite common among the Ghanaian diaspora in England. 657 People, the majority of whom claim to be Christians, are getting marriages arranged with men and women they are not married to because they want to regularise their residential documents. Others are legally married but stage divorces in order to benefit from the welfare system, such as housing. Others with British citizenship trade their citizenship status for a fee by naming the children of other Ghanaian migrants. When my wife and I had our first child, several of the Ghanaians in Birmingham, including church elders, were surprised that we did not pay for someone to name our child so he could get British citizenship. This kind of moral corruption is believed to be quite pervasive. The issue of marriage by convenience, which some Ghanaian legal scholars tend to promote, also has its antinomies. In 2022, a certain Ghanaian man had his two legs amputated because he offended a woman he was conveniently living with. The man had diabetes that was affecting his legs—a situation that could have been managed over a period but would also weaken his economic capacity. When the woman he is living with was asked about what should be done with the man pretentiously registered as the man’s next of kin, the woman leveraged the situation to exact her pound of flesh for the man’s misconduct towards her. Concurrently, when she was asked about the man’s faith, she did not hesitate. She immediately asked for the man’s legs to be chopped off. The man is being wheeled as I write. Others also fake illness, which also has a consequence. According to popular belief, a woman in a Ghanaian church is currently crouching due to her evil intentions. As a result, the woman was involved in a minor accident, which earned her a monthly stipend until she recovered completely and returned to work. But knowing that the stipend was better than running and sweating in the merciless winter, she opted to exaggerate the pain she was in. She pretended she was never well, even when the doctors thought her condition had improved. She continued to use pranks to enjoy benefits until, as I speak, she is currently left limping in and out of life with crouching. As part of the COVID-19 economic recovery, the United Kingdom government has outsourced the recruitment of skilled labour to registered agencies. This, as in the case of Indian skilled workers, is also part of the neoliberal exploitative mechanism where the state pretends to exonerate itself from crime by operating through agents. For this purpose, agents have been involved in recruiting Ghanaian nurses 657 Katherine Charsley and Michaela Benson, “Marriages of convenience, and inconvenient marriages: Regulating spousal migration to Britain,” Journal of Immigration, Asylum and nationality Law, 26, 1 (2012): 10-26.

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across England. These trained nurses are promised good pay and, as a result, pay a fortune to obtain visas to travel to the UK. But soon after they arrive, they begin to feel the corrupt English regime. Several of them end up in care homes, where they earn wages and work their asses off. Last month, one of these Ghanaian nurses who was five months pregnant was laid off by the agents in Birmingham who were to work with her because the agent did not want to take responsibility for her pregnancy. Her Nigerian landlord, who is connected to the agency, was also ejecting her because she could not pay her rent. Unfortunately, her newly married husband, also a nurse, was yet to secure his visa to join her in England. In the end, the poor young lady of 26 years is stranded. My wife and I had to figure out a way to assist her with temporary housing. Eventually, a Ghanaian distant friend of her friend in Ghana invited her to London in the hopes of finding her a job. But, having witnessed the exploitative nature of Ghanaian families who used stranded migrants to care for their children, my wife and I have been concerned about the lady’s departure to London. In all this, the state institutions in England are suited for all the multiple layers of corruption. Through the digitalization of bureaucratic practices, non-literates or those who are unfamiliar with a purposefully complex online application portal, AI-automated responses that do not readily favour not only the ascension of the literate but also cut off communication channels to the non-literate reinforce corruption. Established and registered agencies, as well as individuals, spend large sums of money to persuade work visa applicants to always upload only their application details. England is structurally very corrupt! Transposing the institutionalised corrupt regime in England to Ghana, I argue that Ghana’s colonial history merged with the usual human depravities makes corruption a daily reality. In the case of Ghana, as I have argued elsewhere, British colonial governance structures, which the elites aped, resulted in the weakening of political development in postcolonial Ghana. Institutionalization of corruption takes the form of a modernised idea of an “economy of affection,” which, unlike its efficiency in the pre-capitalist or modern economy, does not yield much economic dividend. 658 Unlike England, where the British democratic regime succeeded partly through trans-continental pillaging to feed the masses. In Africa and the Gold Coast, the British deployed brute force to cow people into submitting to colonial control—often deploying the Gold Coast Hausa Constabulary—made 658 Goran Hyden, African politics in comparative perspective (2nd ed., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013/2006); chapter 4.

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up of slaves, traders, porters and ordinary people whose loyalty the British could readily count on. 659 The British succeeded in polarising the front of what became known as the Gold Coast to rule over them, whether through an indirect rule system or the deployment of “aliens” as soldiers. With a regime that was solidly built on both violence and coercion and retention of absolute and arbitrary use of power, 660 postcolonial elites had to either consolidate the mechanisms of colonial governance or overhaul them completely. However, two main factors obstructed the alteration of the colonial political regime. First, the African colonial-educated elites loved the colonial regime that offered them privilege and power. Fanon metaphorically described this as follows: “The look of lust, a look of envy; it expresses his [colonised man] dreams of possession—all manner of possession: to sit at the settler’s table, to sleep in the settle’s bed, with his wife if possible. The colonized man is an envious man.” 661 Second, the structured and systemic nature of colonialism was so routinized that overturning it in favour of any particular system was nearly impossible. The tension between Nkrumah, one of Ghana’s talismanic figures in the decolonization struggle—J.B. Danquah, and chiefs made traditional political institutions as an alternative almost impossible. 662 Consequently, several African revolutionary thinkers, including Frantz Fanon and Peter Ekeh, concluded that the elites could not bring political redemption and economic prosperity to postcolonial Africans. 663 For Ake the reason for both the unwillingness and ineptitude of the postcolonialism to reform the colonial political legacy was that “it was often a convenience of deradicalization by accommodation, a mere racial integration of the political elite.” 664 I, however, do not agree with Ake that the postcolonial leaders simply 659 Sarah Balakrishnan, “Imperial policing and the antinomies of power in early colonial Ghana,” International Journal of African Historical Studies, 53, 2 (2020): 173-193; Samuel Aniegye Ntewusu, From ex-soldiers to traders and transporters: The case of the Gold Coast Hausa Constabulary: 1874-1942 (Lisboa: 5th European Conference on African Studies, 2013). 660 Claude Ake, Democracy and development in Africa (Washington D.C.: The Brookings Institute, 1996), p. 2. 661 Frantz Fanon, The wretched of the earth (trans. Constance Farrington) (New York: Grove Press, 1963), p. 39 [emphasis in bracket, mine]. 662 Richard Rathbone, Nkrumah and the Chiefs: Politics of Chieftaincy in Ghana 19511960 (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2000). 663 Fanon, Wretched; Peter P.Ekeh, “Colonialism and the two publics in Africa: A theoretical statement,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 17, 1 (1975): 91112. 664 Ake, Democracy, p. 4.

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uninterested in undertaking any major transformation of the state they inherited. On the cusp of postcolonial complexity in socioeconomic and political reality, almost similar to getting stuck in the middle of a journey, African leaders have experimented with socialism at various levels. Given that capitalism is said to have laid the foundation of slavery and colonialism, several African leaders favoured and improvised their deployment of socialism. However, contrary to the vision of independence and economic prosperity, the complex economic downturn in economic prosperity threatened the already artificial postcolonial state. The postcolonial state also faced the artificial concatenation of ethnic groups relapsing into the pre-colonial state of ethnic autonomy. Lacking the colonial advantage of absolute power and its arbitrariness and fearing that devolution of power would result in fissiparous or disunity, 665 Nkrumah adopted the centralization of power. The issue of re-tribalization was also grim because the postcolonial leaders, knowing that they had campaign against the colonial use of violence could not readily use violence. Similarly, much as the colonial exploiters and thieves leveraged and instrumentalized racism to disengage from the psychological guilt of the violence they visited on the colonized, the postcolonial leaders could hardly deploy violence with a complete mental and emotional sanity. In response and against other complex realities, the one-party state became the norm in the governance system of several first-generation African leaders, including Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana and Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, who became authoritarian leaders. 666 Given the lived socio-economic realities of post-independence Global Cold War, as Akyeampong has discussed in his recent book, 667 charging African leaders of just petty bourgeois who were power-drunk, is in my estimation, unfortunate, simplistic, an attitude of “holier than thou”, and a fallacy of presentism. More so, the frustrations of the early postcolonial leaders are the same as the frustration of recent democratically leaders who had to respect the rights of the citizens, but at the same time, demonstrate leadership by leading in productive ways that may not be readily accepted by a section of their constituencies. 665 Joseph R.A. Ayee, “Local government, decentralization and state capacity in Ghana,” in Wisdom J. Tettey, Korbla P. Puplampu, and Bruce J. Berman (eds), Critical perspectives in politics and socio-economic development in Ghana, 45-82 (Leiden: Brill, 2003), p. 46. 666 Alex Thomson, An introduction to African politics (3rd ed. London: Routledge, 2010). 667 Emmanuel Kwaku Akyeampong, Independent Africa: The first generation of nation builders (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2023).

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On this score, I agree with Claude Ake that western liberal democracy can hardly transform Africa in the way its citizens want. Similarly, my own understanding is that the so-called liberal democracy, with all its entrapping of yielding human rights, tend to polarize Africans over needless partisanship. In the end, simple policy that could advance the good a particular country is subjected to the politicization – often to the delight of the neo-colonists who set the trap for us. For this reason, the continent desires to develop, its democracy must be mainstreamed on economic development based on traditional agriculture, political development based on decentralization of power, and reliance on indigenous communities to provide some refuge from the centralized state. 668 These factors are not irrelevant in helping curate democracy for development in Africa. But the major problem is more than these factors, as they are—the base of this book—issues of human ontological self-centredness. Africa could reform along all the suggestions, but until an appeal is made to the transcendental, to overtake rationality of the physical realm, governance of human beings would always be more complex than analysts tend to assume or admit. Whatever it is, as I argue, religion and power, must fuse. The colonialists absolute use of power was itself in contradistinction to how the idea of social contract spelt out the limit of power. Indeed, in Africa, and much of pre-modern Europe, power needed to be sacralised to a larger extent to yield some positive result. Not until the European world had satisfied themselves that looting and naked stealing of the resources of those had Othered and continue to Other would help them tame the spill over effect of hunger into a rancorous conflict, they hardly decentralized power. All this means that the colonialists’ appropriate power through its retaining absolute right and might over the colony – such use of power was nothing short of a coveting of God’s—who alone has right and might over human lives (theologically, the Sovereignty of God). 669 Beyond imposing liberal democracy on Africans, the witty European had succeeded in taming the epistemic prowess of some African intellectuals. They have become the compradors of the West, promoting scholarship that yields no fruitful result to the continent. They chant sonorously in a form of chorus response to the façade of decoloniality and decolonization. Yet, they lack the epistemic gloves that could challenge the epistemic injustice the Western world continue 668 Claude Ake, Democracy and development in Africa (Washington D.C.: The Brookings Institute, 1996). 669 Arthur W. Pink, The sovereignty of God (London: Banner of Truth, 1961); cf. Isaiah 14:27; Job 42:2.

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to deploy to dominate Africans since the Muslim-Arabs bequeathed paper civilization to the West. Sadly, a few of these the African academics who should from the roof top and pay lip service to the project of decolonization (whatever that is supposed to mean, if not mere cacophony)670 capitulate to the lure and deception of being made editors, co-editors and members of International journals, offered tokens of resources to undertake basic research such as “causes of teenage pregnancy” and “reasons for party elections” in Africa—all because the issue of “man/woman must survive” lurks at epicentre of African scholarship. It is quite easy to compromise an African scholar with money and promises of international conferences than to ask the same African scholar to remain fidelity to his ancestral wisdom – embedded in the existential reality of the continent’s Nkrumah’s consciencism and Ali Mazrui’s reframing as Triple heritage or Nyamnjoh’s convivial scholarship has beautifully captured in his philosophy of convivial scholarship. But at the heart of all this is the human moral depravity— the quest to be seen as overshadowing everyone and everything. At a meeting on day, an academic with international reputation said to a junior colleague that his/her mentor lives in a huge mansion at one of the porch areas in Accra. Meanwhile, the junior colleague knew very well that the said mentor benefits from promoting decadence human rights that runs roughshod over the centrality of the family in sustaining human civilization. Again, much as this allusion was intentionally meant to spite the junior colleague for challenging minority sexual “rights” in Ghana, for the junior colleague, it was an ammunition to stay away from the traps of ill-gained materialism, informed by surrounding and impious desecration of one’s conscience (tiri boa in Twi/Akan)—which as far as the Christian faith and conscience of the junior colleague keeps him from falling off the precipice. Ironically, just as one of sagacious saying goes, “a borrowed water never quenches,” these African academics, after all the accolades and titles and international reputation are still discontented. Their pride is competition rather than complementing. They cherish conviviality in scholarship, and yet prefer to be surrounded by individuals (usually sycophantic praise singers) whose scholarship lurks in their shadows— far away from the horizons of critical scholarship. Anything remotest shadow that appears to innocuously cast a beam of epistemic light is 670 For a balanced critique of decolonization, please see: Olúfẹ́ mi O. Táíwò, Against Decolonisation: Taking African Agency Seriously (La Vergne: Hurst, 2022); Charles Prempeh, Gender, Sexuality and Decolonisation in Postcolonial Ghana: A SocioPhilosophical Engagement (Bamenda/Cameroon: Langaa RPCIG, 2023).

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enough for them to discharge their arsenals of cancel culture—both locally and trans-nationally. Lacking any modicum of humanistic selfconfidence, they have no idea of the Biblical ontological dignity— where one’s dignity is not based on one’s accomplishment, but one bearing God’s image. But all this confirms St. Augustine’s observation about the woeful inadequacy of materialism: “Thou awakes us to delight in Thy praise; for Thou madest us for Thyself, and our heart is restless, until it repose in Thee.” 671 So, yes, African leaders, obviously, had their weaknesses, but they were also not without a sincere commitment to advance the welfare of their people. Nevertheless, we must, for the sake of overcoming the contemporary challenges that have always been the continent, admit that some of the errors of the leaders were as a result of self-serving ambition. In an attempt to impress their countrymen and women, Nkrumah, for example, embarked on economic projects, such as hasty industrialization, that were not viable and that collapsed soon after they had started. 672 When contestation from other elites became irresistible, he passed draconian laws to have them incarcerated under the pretence that their lives were under threat. Not only that when the Bank of Ghana was established in 1957, the Government of Ghana had a majority shareholding of 51% while the remaining were in the hands of related government organizations and political party groups. 673 Agyeman-Duah interpreted this as a demonstration of how a bank that was not run, or intended to be so as a business entity – established as a subsidiary of the state, it marked the beginning of the culture of loan default that has forever saddled the nation. 674 In the end, Nkrumah denied himself the benefit of the wisdom of several of the nationalists who preceded him. As hard as he worked and having achieved enough successes, corruption burdened his government, and as discontent against his government surged, Ghanaian security forces and their American CIA agents overthrew Nkrumah while he was on his way to Hanoi. 671 St. Augustine, The Confessions (Coradella Collegiate Bookshelf editions, 2004), Book 1, p. 1. 672 Tony Killick, Development economics in action: A study of economic policies in Ghana (2nd edition) (London: Routledge, 2010/1978), p. 225. 673 Sam Mensah, “Banking and capital markets: The evolution of Ghana’s financial. Sector and future prospects,” in Ernest Aryeetey and Ravi Kanbur (eds), The economy of Ghana: Sixty years after independence, 117-136 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), p. 121; Ivor Agyeman-Duah, Central Bank in Ghana and governors: Institutional growth and economic development (Tema/Ghana: Digibooks Ghana Ltd., 2022), p. 28. 674 Agyeman-Duah, Central Bank, p. 29.

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The failure of the postcolonial state has put Ghana in an exceedingly difficult condition where ethnocentrism, religious fundamentalism, and partisan politics—all reinforced by human self-centeredness— frustrated the institutionalisation of corruption. Sadly, Ghanaian corrupt elites would syphon money from the country and invest in England and, more recently, South Africa. Thus, one could see that while the corrupt British regime pushes the burden of the English man and woman onto external countries, the burden of Ghanaians is worsened by Ghanaians who pile foreign imperialism on them. Worse still, as I have said, some of the academics in Ghana, particularly the economists, have turned economics on its head. As figures, they have shifted from economics to philosophy. They consume western statistics that continue to incite Ghanaians against themselves with reports of uncontrolled inflation rates. Meanwhile, American and British inflation levels were exceedingly high and nearly unprecedented since the 1980s. 675 Yet, the Americans and British would not kill themselves because of inflation; they would, just like Ghanaian leaders, blame Putin for their woes. But as they have always done, they would push their burdens, as usual, by dividing the front of Africans, distracting them from pursuing what is necessary. For example, as I stated elsewhere, while Ghanaians and the world were held in the grips of the coronavirus pandemic, Ghanaian elites were busily pushing through the agenda of gay rights. It was as if what was needed at the time when people were dying was gay rights, indicating how far we sometimes needlessly get polarised over what has no relevance for human flourishing. Meanwhile, Singapore, already developed, was strategizing its post-Covid recovery and, in the process, won the hearts of the Germans, who are building the biggest vaccination centre in Singapore. Now, Singapore is considering decriminalising gay rights. Regrettably, the same Ghanaian academics would compare Ghana’s development with Singapore to shame Ghana. Additionally, Ghanaian elites, who are expected to know better, would invite populists to their studios to condemn political elites and the churches. Not just that they would carefully dance away from and recuse Biden’s of blaming Russia for America’s inflation, and yet, accuse their Ghanaian leaders, who similarly point to Russia, as incompetent. Need I say anymore, some of these academics who confidently rule out the Russian factor in Ghana’s economic ditch, have 675 The Editorial Board (10 March 2022), It’s Joe Biden’s inflation: He blames Vladimir Putin, but his policies and the federal reserve are at fault,” https://www.wsj.com/articles/its-joe-bidens-inflation-vladimir-putin-russiaukraine-prices-bureau-of-labor-statistics-11646952656.

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“retired” from mainstream academia in the West and taken up leadership positions in American-funded “civil” society organizations to promote what Biden tells them as liberal democracy. They, in obedience to and alliance with Biden’s Democracy Summit for Democracy 2021, 676 called themselves allies of the US’s promotion of sorts of Ghanaian/African counter-cultural practices. Beyond home-based Ghanaian academics, diasporan Ghanaian citizens have become experts in economic management. Through the mediation of the internet, anyone with expertise on a wide range of subjects, from economics to marriage, can extend the reach of their voices across the country. They may have genuinely wanted to draw on their transnational work and/or skills to contribute to nation-building, but they sometimes tend to simplify the Ghanaian economic predicament. Whether through the simplicity of economic progress as in Twene Jonas’ “Glass nkoaa” or Kevin Taylor’s bashing of every Ghanaian as incompetent, apart from his rhetoric, the Ghanaian diaspora remains very vocal and explosive in their discussion of Ghanaian matters. A few of them in England, including those with terminal degrees in either economics or development studies, will often speak on Joy FM’s Newsfile profile, condemning every Ghanaian economist, as if they have even written any simplistic journalistic article to analyse the impact of Britain’s oppressive economic regime on the Ghanaian diaspora. These diasporan Ghanaian experts never stop comparing the Ghanaian economy with that of the western world, as if they are faring any better in the West. This qualifies them as Francis Nyamnjoh’s “disillusioned Africans.” 677 As transnational citizens in the West with legal regimes that allow for a degree of what would qualify as defamation or libel in Ghana, these migrants often go scot-free with their use of incendiary statements and defamation of individuals. Even so, they the transnational Ghanaian citizens know very well that live in the diaspora is not as rosy as they pretentiously portray. Nevertheless, they continue to make sanctimonious forays into the Ghanaian space, deliberately obscuring the difficult lives abroad because, as Kwabena Akurang-Parry right said: The true story (of diaspora life) is never told to those in Africa. that would amount to the ritual demolition of the shrine and monuments reserved for the velvet seekers. It would exacerbate the painful death of those who are already seventy-seven years dead. … The search for the https://www.state.gov/summit-for-democracy-2021/. Francis Nyamnjoh, The disillusioned African (Bamenda/Cameroon: Langaa RPCIG, 2007). 676 677

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velvet has another norm to it: struggling Africans in tehse parts don’t tell those in Africa about their suffering and tribulations! Anyone who does that betrays the collective dream. It aborts the collective African dream. The dream is about crusading for cargo cult of these parts. The velvet is entirely anything foreign, but Africa. 678

Akurang-Parry continues with the whitewashing of the diasporan world: Those who have shrines and monuments erected in their honour; they are the ones who should carry the blame. They are the ones who have woefully failed to tell the truth about these parts: the suffering, the alienation, the marginalisation, above all the otherness and othering. The velvet seekers have substituted the killing of the soul in these parts for dreams they no longer believe in. They are cultural orphans, marginalized in their mortgaged homes, secluded offices, and hostile workplaces. 679

Corruption is real. Perceptions of corruption are equally real. And the fight against corruption must be equally real. Over the years, we have all concluded—and rightly so—that corruption is a major burden to our quest for socio-economic development. Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s first president, even audaciously promised us that, once we got the political kingdom (political independence), everything else would happen—we would reach the Promised Land of prosperity. Elsewhere in Africa, the same hopes were expressed. The message was clear: once the racial Other—the oppressor—was eliminated, we would reach Canaan. It was not only politicians who were hopeful of the African dream. Some theologians also took interest in the indigenisation of Christianity to resonate with the political aspiration. Indeed, shortly after independence, we witnessed sporadic infrastructural development. Roads were constructed, hospitals were built, more schools were established, and efforts were made to streamline the political economy. Laws were passed and symbols developed to fashion a unified state as part of de-tribalizing Africa. But less than a decade into political independence, the hopes that birthed the decolonisation agenda started evaporating. Many people felt we had not yet reached the Promised Land. We have still not reached it. This led to some scholars reassessing the post-colonial state in Africa. In the case of Ghana, Ayi Kwei Armah wrote an interesting but politically 678 Kwabena O. Akurang-Parry, Velvet seekers: Africans orbiting these parts (Tema/Ghana: Digibooks, 2022), p. 17, 25. 679 Ibid., p. 51.

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controversial novel, The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born. The book decried the fact that Ghana had not yet reached the Promised Land— corruption stampeded us. I think that we have not yet reached the promised Land. As a country and continent, we are struggling with challenges such as poor sanitation and squalid living conditions, high levels of poverty, diseases, unemployment, low-intensity conflicts, and partisan politics. These challenges continue to take the wind out of our sails as a nation and continent. But the root of our challenges remains corruption. Corruption appears to compete with deities in terms of its omnipresence and omnipotence. Corruption—of all kinds—can be found everywhere, including in the private and public spheres. This leads to virtually universal acceptance that corruption is the root cause of all our challenges. All this while, we all appear to know the answer to corruption. Either we strengthen our institutions—which we have always known—or we give the task of rooting out corruption to individuals with certain strong qualities and moral aptitude. I must say that because of the preponderance of corruption, we are prepared to offer cultic attention to any individual who promises to be the Messiah in the fight against corruption. This partly explains why, upon his appointment, Mr. Martin Amidu was almost universally hailed across the nation. It also explains why our former president, Jerry John Rawlings, was dubbed “Junior Jesus.” As an individual, my position is that we should see corruption not necessarily as a political issue but as a moral one. This has been the position of one of Ghana’s renowned philosophers, Kwame Gyekye. Kwame Gyekye, a moral philosopher, maintained that corruption as a challenge should be regarded as a moral quandary. As a moral challenge, individuals must demonstrate a strong moral aptitude to fight it. I agree with Professor Kwame Gyekye. And more so, as a Christian, I think Christianity offers the ultimate answer to corruption. In Christianity, salvation implies a total transformation of the individual. This transformation should influence the attitude of the Christian public worker. The Bible says that if anyone is in Christ, he or she is a new creation, and all other things are gone. This means that a Christian’s moral life should be impeccable. The person should live what he or she believes—as discussed in my preface. The person should not make a distinction between private and public life. Both spheres should be saturated with the ethical values taught by Jesus Christ, God’s only accredited Saviour of the elect. In terms of corruption, a Christian has to personalise the fight by asking the question, “Am I corrupt?” In many cases, we all hide behind the 286

generalities by asking, “Are they corrupt?” With this question, we absolve ourselves of complicity in the fight against the canker. But alas, Christians in Ghana and Africa are as culpable and complicit in charges of corruption as everyone else. This leaves a paradox that must be answered. If Ghana is overwhelmingly Christian—at least among people claiming to be Christians—why is corruption so pervasive in the country? When Ghana’s largest Protestant denomination, the Church of Pentecost, declared “Possessing the Nation” as its vision for the next five years, their goal was/is to answer this question by instilling Christian values in the private and public spheres. In all of this, some of us felt that the president did well by appointing Mr. Martin Amidu as Special Prosecutor to head the fight against corruption. I exercised conditional optimism about his appointment. This was precisely because I felt his success in the office was not automatic, as it would depend on his ability to live above the norm to deepen the crusade against what we all know as the ultimate burden to our socio-economic development—corruption. He had to suffer from altruistic madness, hating criminals. Again, as a Christian, I saw Mr. Martin Amidu, at the finite level, playing the role of Jesus Christ, who came to root out the ultimate corruption (sin) that led humans into all forms of depravity. Given the key role Jesus Christ had, he could not have failed. He had all the excuses he needed to fail. As He got to the climax of His mission in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus, as a human, almost gave up. But looking at the glory that was awaiting Him, He persevered and conquered corruption (sin). Because of what Jesus Christ did, he brought salvation to the elect of God. His person and what he did laid the groundwork for great civilizations. 680 Jesus Christ has inspired billions of people to lay their lives down for others. Many have become philanthropists because of Jesus Christ. In sum, the world has been regenerated for good because of Jesus Christ. But the biggest question is: What if Jesus Christ had failed? What if He hadn’t been ko na du—fighting until the bitter end? Certainly, if that had happened, the history of the world would have been written differently and human lives would have taken a different course. If Jesus had failed, certainly, I would not have the hope of eternal bliss. It is from this perspective that I find Mr. Amidu’s resignation unfortunate. Mr. Amidu was put in office to fight corruption. As the head of the Office of Special Prosecutor, I don’t think Mr. Amidu was 680 Rodney Stark, The victory of reason: How Christianity led to freedom, capitalism, and western success (New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2006).

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expecting to find it easy in the fight against the canker. As I have indicated, corruption has a divine nature. It is pervasive. It is universal. It is strong. It is difficult to fight. And it needs strong people to fight it, not those with talking abilities. So, I don’t think Mr. Amidu was anticipating fighting corruption with kid’s gloves. I don’t think he was expecting to find everyone—including those in “high places”—singing his praises. Just as Jesus Christ became an enemy of corruption (Satan, who instigated His death), anyone who declares himself or herself to fight corruption becomes an enemy of society. This is because the fight against corruption is countercultural and counterintuitive since corruption is part of the depraved nature of human beings. I must say without any equivocation that Mr. Martin Amidu failed himself, Ghana, and Africa. He is not a hero. He was given a task that he knew would be difficult to complete. He was well aware that the task at hand demanded his own lauded discipline and unwavering stance against moral laxity and corruption. He was aware that he was going to run in contradistinction to everyone else—including the president of the land. To facilitate his work, Mr. Martin Amidu’s office was given significant freedom from all forms of interference. In terms of corruption, he was not to yield to any influence from any source. What even helped him in fashioning his neutrality in the fight was that he does not belong to the ruling party, the New Patriotic Party, which appointed him. He is also not a darling of the National Democratic Congress. He implied that he could cut through corruption in all directions with his sword without fear or favour. In the end, Mr. Amidu was called into the office to fight for what he has always claimed to have a passion for doing. He claims he could not live with criminals. And I guess most of us don’t want to live with known criminals. So, if indeed he could not live with criminals, why did he give in to pressure from alleged criminals? Leaving his office with no significant success after two years of “work” disappoints the nation. He has failed himself, Ghana, Africa, and God, if he believes there is God. He cannot be our hero in the fight against corruption because he lacked perseverance- ko na du. To summarise my take on Mr. Martin Amidu, I will say that the fight against corruption should be personal and moral. We must always ask ourselves: “Am I corrupt?” I am convinced that if we moralise and valorise the fight against corruption, we may succeed. We need someone who embodies the symbolic “ko na du” (fighting to the end or persevering to the end), not people who give up on flimsy excuses. In life, no one becomes a hero with excuses, for there are always excuses to free us from difficult tasks. What makes us heroes is when we dare 288

the consequences and fight until the bitter end—ko na du. Even Christianity is about fighting to the end (Matthew 24:13). Christians and Covid-19 pandemic in Ghana As I stated in the preface, Christians have admittedly struggled to live the ideals of their beliefs—a situation that complicates the push for religion into public governance. The difficulty in living what one believes was manifested during the novel Covid-19 pandemic. At the height of the pandemic, in mid-2020, Peace FM reported that some Ghanaians who have water tanks and/or sell water directly from their pipes are refusing to allow their fellow distressed Ghanaians to get free water. Already, the pervasive water insecurity was identified as a potential challenge to government’s initiative at providing free water to mostly insecure households that were already in arrears in their payment of water bills. 681 On the whole, however, recent assessment of the government’s provision of free water indicated that it successfully resulted in an increased flow of water and its concurrent consumption among citizens. 682 That water flow into several Ghanaian homes during the pandemic was nearly seamless with a concurrent increased in consumption is a plus to Ghana’s response to the disruption caused by the pandemic. What caught my attention was the earlier unwillingness on the part of owners of water tankers in some urban Accra to allow tenants to fetch water. Meanwhile, the government of Ghana, in its last but one speech to the nation, stated that the government was absorbing the cost of (US$48.42 m) water for Ghanaians for the next three months. He, therefore, directed all water providers to allow Ghanaians to have water for free. Several Ghanaians, mostly members of the government’s party, took to social media and other platforms to hail the president. I was particularly critical of people who underestimated the value of expressing gratitude to the president. But, knowing how sometimes such policies are undermined by self-interests of some citizens, my main concern was whether some of our people would follow the president’s instructions.

681 Sarah L. Smiley, Benjamin D. Agbemor, Ellis A. Adams and Raymond Tutu, “Ghana’s free water directive may not benefit water insecure households,” African Geographical Review, 39, 4 (2020): 398-404, https://doi.org/10.1080/19376812.2020.1810083. 682 Nicholas Fielmua and Jennifer Dokbila Mengba, “Back to basics: Urban households’ perspective on free water supply in Ghana in the Covid-19 pandemic,” Waterlines, 41, 2 (2022): 125-137, http://doi.org/10.3362/1756-3488.21-00013.

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But, sadly, my uncertainty about some Ghanaians not conforming to the president’s direction was confirmed. I was not so much worried that some people are not allowing their fellow Ghanaians to fetch water as I was about the fact that most of these people call themselves Christians. Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic that took siege of the world, churches, para-religious organisations, and other individuals responded to both local and trans-local call to help Ghanaians. Some churches went beyond their reach to help people from other religious backgrounds. 683 Ghanaian citizens witnessed the best in the country’s health professionals as they put their lives on the line to save lives. Similarly, citizens witnessed the robustness with which some of the country’s security personnel are defending the territorial and aerial spaces of the country. Some of them also diligently guarding against deviants who could have flouted the rules against physical and social distancing—of course, there were reported cases of a few security persons applying brutality to foster citizens’ conformity to lockdown and Covid-related safety rules. 684 Nevertheless, it came as a piece of distressing nemesis of faith when some Ghanaians trashed the “sacred” words of the president and refused water to their neighbours. In England, when the National Health Service (NHS), in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, called for volunteers to support their staff. With this call, over 400,000 people responded. 685 The number of people willing to freely support the state of England was so huge that some were asked to hold on. Incidentally, England has seen rapid secularisation since the late nineteenth century, so one would be curious to know the motivation people have to show kindness. 686 Given the significant decline in church attendance among the British--at least since the 1960s, 687 it could be surmised that several of the people who are volunteering are not religious. It is also possible that these are people who may not even take inspiration directly from 683 Charles Prempeh, “Religion and the state in an episodic moment of COVID19 in Ghana,”Social Sciences & Humanities Open, 4, 1 (2021), pp. 1-8. 684 Festival Godwin Boateng, Saviour Kusi and Samuel Ametepey, “Covid-19 lockdown defiance, public ‘indiscipline’, and criminalisation of vulnerable population in Ghana,” African Review of Economics and Finance (2021): 1-30. 685 NHS (25 March 2020), “Over 400,000 people join NHS army of volunteers in one day,” https://www.england.nhs.uk/2020/03/over-400000-people-join-nhsarmy-of-volunteers-in-oneday/#:~:text=Over%20400%2C000%20people%20have%20already,target%20by% 20over%20100%2C000%20people. 686 Callum G. Brown, The death of Christian Britain (London: Routledge, 2009/2001). 687 Ibid.

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any religion—as much Western world is becoming atheist. 688 A few may be “spiritual” (though difficult to conceptualise-except sometimes as some form of privatised religion with individuals identifying with no one particular institutionalised religion) and share no affiliation with any organised religion. 689 Those who share religious beliefs may be motivated by their faith, but more specifically by the perilous time we live in. Nevertheless, it may be argued that being kind and expressing willingness may be part of the human impulse and part of religious/Christian virtues that have been weaned off its theological roots. 690 In Ghana, about eighty percent (80%) of the population subscribes to one or two of the three main religions: Islam, Christianity, and indigenous religions. A few of them may have an alliance with Eastern religions, particularly Hinduism and Buddhism. The Ghanaian private and public spheres are suffused with religion. Consequently, while it is inaccurate to repeat the refrain of John Mbiti that Africans are notoriously or incurably religious (to quote Geoffrey Parrinder), religion indeed has ubiquitous expression in our world. Religion occupies such a central place in our repertoire of activities that, in both the lower and higher domains, religion finds expression. The opposite happens in England. As I have stated, many English people do not identify with any organised religion. I have met many students at the University of Cambridge who have never read the Bible or owned a copy—indexing Callum Brown’s observation that without coercion, several Westerners have since the 1960s become atheist with no knowledge about the Bible. 691 My Ghanaian colleague was surprised to hear an English student say that he had never attended a church since he was born. There are some people in England who have not read even a sentence in the Bible. Religion is a private affair. It is hardly allowed in the public sphere. One hardly finds religious inscriptions on vehicles, stores (maybe a few of the Arab mini-supermarkets), and doorposts. In Cambridge and Birmingham, you may not even hear the muezzin calling people for prayers through the minaret. One hardly finds material religious symbols, like the rosary, on people. Apart from a few African churches, church services hardly go beyond one and a half hours—all indicating the de-Christianisation of Britain. 688 Callum G. Brown, Becoming atheist: Humanism and the secular West (London: Bloomsbury, 2017). 689 Joseph Blankholm, The secular paradox: On the religiosity of the not religious (New York: New York University Press, 2022). 690 Graeme Smith, A short history of secularism (New York: I.B. Taurus, 2008). 691 Brown, Becoming 73.

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Given the differences in religious landscapes, it is curious to explain the differences in demonstrating altruism and care in Ghana and England in the country’s perilous time of COVID-19. Many reasons may explain the differences. In order to understand the different attitudes Ghanaians and English people have towards humanitarianism, I will condense these reasons into social cost and social pressure. I will begin with Ghanaians. In Ghana, the two main reasons for being religious are important in gauging the extent to which people live what they believe. Social pressure is the system where people are “forced” to be religious. Many Ghanaians may choose to be religious because of social pressure. Social pressure is where one suffers for not being religious—this was a major feature of imperial Roman Empire, where Christianity as a state religion in the 4th century involved implicit and explicit coercion of people into acceptance of the faith. 692 The Ghanaian space is such that if one does not go to church or pray at the mosque, one is likely to suffer hugely. If you were to ask any Ghanaian what qualities he or she would expect from a prospective spouse, it is most likely that the first response would be “someone religious.” This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, because for the religious constituency, it helps them to foster religious homogeneity in their conjugal homes— given that both Christianity and Islam, by framing marriage as part of their religious practices and divine-cultural mandate encourage endogamy, more so for their female constituency. 693 But it demonstrates the centrality of religion in virtually everything we know. It also demonstrates how religion is ingrained in the fibre of our activities. Politicians and political prophets have also leveraged the perceived “religiosity” of Ghanaians to deploy religion as a valuable tool in exploiting and manipulating Ghanaians. Selling of religious rituals, such as akwakyire (divine guidance) and abisa (inquiring of the Lord) have all complexly become part of Ghana’s religious entrepreneurship or Hagen and Welker idea of concept of how the monetisation of the market has impacted every facet of life, including religion—giving rise to the subtitle of their edited volume as “money as God”. 694 With the 692 Jeremy M. Schott, Christianity, empire, and the making of religion in late antiquity (Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press, 2008). 693 Stephen Owoahene-Acheampong and Charles Prempeh, “Contemporary Zongo communities in Accra interfaith marriages: The case of Muslims and Christians in Accra,” African Studies Quarterly, 19, 1 (2020): 23-40. 694 Francis Benyah, “Commodification of the gospel and the socio-economics of neo-Pentecostal/Charismatic Christianity in Ghana,” Legon Journal of the Humanities, 29.2 (2018): 116-145; Jürgen von Hagen and Michael Welker (eds), Money as God?

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Ghanaian economy facing massive morasses, it has become very easy for religious figures to manipulate people in the name of God than anything else. Manipulation that is justified on religious grounds or through transcendental appeal is a major bait for people because in the world, three things drive passion for good and/or evil: sports, politics, and religion. But religion is the most important index for determining the contours of passion. The entrenched position of religion in our society is such that the less religious or irreligious are likely to lose friends and family. Unlike in England, it is possible to say that virtually every Ghanaian is born into a religion—given the strong entanglement between the spiritual and material in citizen’s non-binary cosmos. Even those who refer to themselves as humanists struggle to hem their children against the influence of religion because schools and public places are inundated with religion. I must, therefore, argue that secular humanism, with a history that is unclear in terms of when it started in Ghana has not succeeded in stemming the tide against religion—its promotion from the echelon of power divides the Ghanaian society— that is entangled in a belief in God. This is against the fact that the idea of Nkrumah promoting it from the perspective of the corridors of power has not been successful in the decline of religion in Ghana’s public sphere. In postcolonial Ghana, Nkrumah established the Ghana Young Pioneer Movement in 1960 and the Nkrumah Ideological Institute, Institute, Central Region in 1961, to routinised Ghanaian children in materialist and humanistic philosophy—a position Botchway: [E]ither a misunderstanding or deliberately concocted fallacy about the movement’s philosophy, which emphasized that through hard work, intellectual power, collective strength and effort, patriotism, loyalty to the leader, his vision and country, and loyalty to Ghana, Africa, and PanAfricanism, the youth could become ‘saviours’ and build a paradise in Ghana, Africa, and globally. 695

Initially, the Christian Council supported the GYP, but disagreed over what they read as the deification of Nkrumah in the GYP philosophy, “Nkrumah is our Messiah.” The Anglican priest, Bishop Richard Roseveare, for example, accused Nkrumah of using the The monetisation and its impact on religion, politics, law and ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014); 695 De-Valera N.Y.M. Botchway, “‘There is a new African in the world!’— Kwame Nkrumah and the making of a ‘new African (wo)man’ in Ghana 19571966,” Comparativ: Zeitschrift für Globalgeschichte und Vergleichende Gesellschaftsforschung, 28, 5 (2018): 60-76, p. 73.

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Movement to promote godlessness—a reason Nkrumah deported him from Ghana to Britain in 1962. 696 Kwame Nkrumah’s ideas may have, therefore, stoked an attempt at limiting the impact of transcendental religion on Ghanaians to consolidate the decolonization agenda. Nkrumah argued against any flirtation with transcendental religion Nkrumah claimed that for many Africans “heaven was not outside the world but inside. These African societies did not accept transcendentalism… .” 697 Nkrumah, therefore assumed that the overwhelming emphasis people placed on God was borne out of fear— ”fear created the gods, and fear preserves them, fear in begone ages of wars, pestilences, earthquakes, and the nature gone berserk, fear of acts of God.” 698 Notwithstanding, the perceived use of religion for manipulative reasons, in Ghana, social pressure to be religious is also such citizens mostly invoke the name of God when we know we are lying and cheating; read or recite the Bible or Qur’an, respectively, when we are fleecing people. All the above may justify Nkrumah’s concern about the challenges transcendental religion posed to the nascent postcolonial nation— which is also the reason Botchway justified the Christian misjudgement of Nkrumah’s motive. But, Botchway also admitted that the Ghanaian constituency considers the belief in God and for Christians, Jesus as the only Messiah as imperative. 699 Similarly, Botchway argued against any possibility of Nkrumah leveraging the Movement to teach children to report on their parents, but he also admitted that, “[p]erhaps some of the members ‘spied’ and made reports because they deemed it their patriotic duty to expose people whose actions and utterances they considered to be detrimental to the security of their leader and state, and Ghana’s sovereignty.” 700 From Botchway’s argument and Nkrumah’s sometimes contradictory comments on religion (nevertheless, emphasising his eclectic approach to the mission religions), it could be gleaned that by putting loyalty to any human being and the state over and above both God and Jesus Christ, as the Christian only Messiah would definitely invoke dissent and protests from the country’s religious community—the reasons, as I have already established, the state is a social construct; while religion has a strong 696 Georger Y. Annan, Christian education—A practical application to the emerging African nation of Ghana (BA thesis, McMaster University, 1970), p. 12. 697 Kwame Nkrumah, Consciencism: Philosophy and ideology for de-colonization (New York: Monthly Review, 1964), 12. 698 Ibid., p. 14. 699 Botchway, “‘There is a new African world’”, p. 73. 700 Ibid., p. 73.

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appeal because it comes in the name of God who is treated as sovereign head of both real and imagined religious communities on earth and the hereafter. The above discussion of Christian loyalty which mostly is offered to God above anything else leads to my discussion of the opposite of social pressure in religious affiliation and practice—social cost. The social cost is the price one pays for being religious. This applies partly to Ghana but more to England. In Ghana, the social cost of being religious is that you must strain yourself not to be corrupt—in one way or another. One has to be strong in your faith to avoid cheating the system. This is because corruption, as I have said, in the lower domain is so pervasive and there is every reason to be corrupt that it will take a heartless swim against a menacing tide not to be corrupt. Sometimes failing to be corrupt will imply that one may lose friends, family members, or even one’s job. In England, the social cost of what a Christian accepts and does not accept is real. Liberalism in England, which has turned Christian ethics on its head, is such that a pastor or Christian may find it hard, if not almost impossible, to keep his “conservative” convictions against abortion, homosexuality, and premarital sex—this was the plight of a Christian street preacher who was arrested and convicted of misgendering a man who identifies as a woman. 701 These moral issues have been liberalised since the 1960s and have become the paradigm through which life is lived in what Callum Brown, who as cited above described as the atheistic world of the West. They have also been normalised and canonised into law. Running roughshod over them will result in legal challenges. In some countries in the West, a pastor risks losing his licence if he fails to officiate or preside over homosexual marriages. But in all of this, Christians are called to be like Jesus Christ. We are not to “be” Jesus, but to be “like” Jesus. This implies that Christians are not on a march to progress into the realm of deities or gods, in the manner that Jesus is God. To personalise it, we are not expected to progress from being finite beings to becoming infinite beings. No matter how many religious practises we engage in, our finite nature remains. But we are called to share the communicable attributes of Jesus Christ—primarily the attribute of LOVE. God saved His elect because of love. Jesus entered history and lived among us because of love. It was love alone that brought God into our world to save us. This 701 Anugrah Kumar (9 March 2023), “‘Orwellian’: Street preacher appeals conviction for ‘misgendering’ a man who identifies as a woman,” https://www.christianpost.com/news/british-street-preacher-appeals-convictionfor-misgendering.html.

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is why John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son,” is the heartbeat of the Christian message. Christians are expected to love because Jesus shows us love. Christians are expected to serve because Jesus served us by washing our feet. Christians are expected to be charitable because Jesus was charitable towards us. Whatever Christians are, we owe it to God. So, why can’t we give to the world what was freely given to us? People who are in pain do not care how much we know about God or how much theology and doctrine we can teach. They care about how much we care. History books are littered with many instances where men and women were moved by their Christian faith in the Lord to advance the common good of society. 702 it is also true that Christians have been legitimised social systems such as authoritarian regime— such as Roman imperialism, medieval kingdoms, slavery, serfdom, mercantilism, militarism and racism that oppressed people. 703 The voices of Christian men and women have also advocated and pursued justice, peace, love, family law civil rights and civil liberties, and for the marginalised. 704 Consequently, I can surmise that, while one may not necessarily have to be religious to be good to those in need, the western world has had Christian values of love for humanity deeply engrained in their society such that, even in post-Christian England, the Christian value of service to humanity is still very evident in the face of crisis. In Acts 3, we read about an unprecedented act of kindness by Peter and John. In the text, we read about how the Apostle Peter defied human constraints and self-imposed taboos to touch and heal a person who had been lame from birth. It was considered a sin in first-century Jewish culture to touch someone who was born lame because it was considered a curse (John 9:1). But the Apostle Peter defied selfimposed tradition and touched and healed a lame person. Christians are expected to demonstrate love by touching someone’s life with kindness. If you are playing politics with water, then your Christianity is problematic. If you cannot do good to someone who cannot help you, then your Christianity is questionable. If you cannot provide for the needy, beyond preaching, then you are unlike Jesus Christ. We need to be like Jesus Christ by showing love to people in need. Even if the government will not absorb the cost of the water you 702 Frank Prochaska, Christianity and social service in modern Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). 703 Rosemary Radford Ruether, Christianity and social systems (London: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2009). 704 George W. Forell (ed), Christian social teachings: A reader in Christian social ethics: From the Bible to the present (2nd ed., Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2013).

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supply, at least do it for the Lord, since the Bible categorically says that there is more blessing than giving (Acts 20:35).

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Chapter 5 God, Human Beings, Money: Interrogating Issues of Corruption We want money and nothing else Sika ye mogya Money moves the world

Introduction The biblical declaration that “the love of money” is the root of all evil is hardly accepted as given in the neo-liberal economy. In fact, the author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad begins, “the root of all evil is a lack of money.” Music has received enough attention that anything that human beings have both made and created deserves attention. It is sung in popular music, celebrated in social gatherings, used to measure one’s wealth, and determines the valued commodity for trade. But is money? While money is a product of human culture, it has come to represent nearly the soul of humans. In one popular highlife song in Ghana, the artist said money is equivalent to life (sika ye mogya). Because money is seamlessly presented as life and hence one’s value, a popular Ghanaian song also has it that “Money makes the old young and the young old.” But others say that money is worthless compared to life. For example, the famous popular rapper, now a preacher of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, admonished in one of his songs that “money should be used to purchase life and not life for money.” Money is also gendered. 705 Not only does money speak to the gendered structure of society, it mediates among people along political, economic and generation bonds: politicians use it to establish relationship with their voting constituency, the poor; given as sacrifice and offering to God—all indexing the social role of money. 706 Most 705 Nadina Anderson, “To provide and protect: Gendering money in Ukrainian households,” Gender and Society, 31, 3 (2017): 359-382; Michael Bittman, Paula England, Liana Sayer, Nancy Folbre and George Matheson, “When does gender trump money? Bargaining and time in household work,” American Journal of Sociology, 109, 1 (2003): 186-214. 706 Ariel Wilkis, The moral power of money: Morality and economy in the life of the poor (Stanford/California: Stanford University Press, 2018).

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important, money as a social fact, serving as the valve around which relationships at different layers, is to cite Wilkis, “morally ubiquitous because it has a hand in social orders, moral hierarchies, and power relations.” 707 It is the moral dimension of money, that I generally discuss how an invention of human beings has been sacralised to the deprecation of human beings. So, to return to the gendered aspect of money, research has shown that in Ukraine, money tends to mediate among couples, such that in men and women depend on it to demarcate gender boundaries. As part of the construction and affirmation of masculinity, men give money, while women keep theirs, as they perform household chores. 708 Meanwhile, once women are economically empowered, they negotiate the gendered boundaries that money draws. In Australia and the United States, Bittman et al., showed that women decrease in their housework as their earnings increase up to a point where both spouses contribute equally to income--giving rise to mutual respects among men and women. 709

Figure 7: Cartoon on money as gendered Source: 9ja-joke¶bles’s posts 710

In Ghana, it is said, usually with androcentric tone, that the only thing that makes women happy is the sight of money. There are several jokes in this assertion. In Ghana and other African societies, men are expected to perform the instrumental role of working in the public sphere to provide money to their women, who are culturally expected Ibid., p. 23. Anderson, “To provide and protect,” 709 Bittman et al., “When does money.” 710 9ja-jokes¶bles (8 May 2023), https://www.facebook.com/search/top?q=9ja-joke%26parables. 707 708

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to perform the expressive role of homemakers. Known in local English as “chop money” or in Twi as Akonhoma, men’s worth in their conjugal homes is, inter alia, measured according to their financial capacity. But unlike in Australia and America where, as said above, the women’s earning of salary ensures equality in sharing the cost of maintaining the household, in Ghana the situation is not that simple. Usually, even when women are working, their husbands would still expect them to undertake household chores and sometimes contribute to financial upkeep of the home. Similarly, in some homes, even when women are working and share household chores with their husbands, women would hardly contribute financially to household chores. As part of writing this chapter, my interviews with some Akan couples indicated that the situation of Akan working in the formal sector keeping their money to themselves is very high compared to women from patrilineal societies. The reason may be that Akan women, by virtue of the Akan matrilineal social structure, still retain strong kinship ties with their families of origin. All said, universally, money speaks a commonly shared language. The sight of it hardly needs interpretation other than the fact that possession of it is also about both economic and political power. It could even be considered the broker of peace among religious groups that would hardly sustain a peaceful conversation with each other over doctrines without conflict. The sight of money could also induce happiness. Several people who see money as his or hers or potentially theirs could be said to dream of happiness. There are even euphemisms for money, such as the recent one given by the president of Ghana, “Sika mpe dede,” which contextually was a call on Ghanaians to embrace hard work, accept personal responsibility, instead of “plenty talks – noise/aimless talk”, which yields nothing productive. Regardless of how we look at money, it is also important to understand why money has such a universally shared value. To be sure, money is a social construct, much as it is a cultural creation. Money has no inherent value. Instead, it has acquired value. But it’s fascinating to learn why something with acquired value appears to have an inherent value attribute. According to both Yuval Noah Harari and John Higgs, money’s relevance is because of humans’ shared illusions. Harari wrote that the development of money “requires no technological breakthrough—it was a purely mental revolution.” It involved the creation of a new inter-subjective reality that exists solely in people’s shared imagination.” 711 As he said it is a figment of the collective imagination. But Yuval contradicted himself when he defines money as 711

Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens, p. 197.

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“anything that people are willing to use to represent systematically the value of other things to exchange goods and services.” 712 Similarly, the fact that he goes on a tangent to explain how people came to accept what he considered a shared illusion is also telling enough of the tensions he is dealing with. That he admitted that emperors had to put their images on the currency implies intentionality. As a result, the value of money cannot simply be a figment of one’s imagination. Much as money’s value is acquired from its human creators, it also has some level of autonomy. One cannot just determine the value of money on one’s terms. One cannot just burn money that is currently considered legal tender without legal consequences. When an insane person holds money and a sane person holds money, they may not have the same understanding of what they are holding. The value of money is, therefore, not just about shared human illusions; it is also about human intentionality to incorporate the creative power God vested in them to advance their common good. Nevertheless, everything that is created must be guided by rules and regulations. Because a motor vehicle is a cultural creation of humans, it must be used in accordance with human-established rules. When the established rules are violated, the car’s acquired value could harm human beings. 713 So, yes, cultural creations could have their own agency. To extend the argument to God, God did not create the universe and then abandon it. In all the creation accounts, God was clear in establishing ontological and ethical boundaries. In the case of non-human animate beings, they were to procreate according to their kind. Human beings were also to respect the boundary that existed between them as creatures and God as the Creator. Any violation of life’s ethical and ontological boundaries has consequences. Returning to money, I argue that it is not just a mindless creation or an issue of human sharing illusions. Money is an intentional cultural creation of human beings. It depicts humans as rational creatures created by a rational creator. As rational creatures, God endowed human beings with the capacity to co-create, such that what God does at the infinite level, human beings do at the finite level. There is, therefore, a relationality of purpose in what God and human beings do. Nevertheless, whatever human beings create or make must subsist under the overwhelming authority of God, the ultimate creator.

Ibid., p. 197. For more on the dialect relationship between human beings and their cultural production, see: Peter L. Berger, The sacred canopy: Elements of a sociological theory of religion (New York: Anchor Books, 1967), Chapter One. 712 713

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Human beings are therefore very intentional about what they do. Money, which plays an important mediating role in human interactions, cannot be a product of psychopaths or people suffering from mental neurosis. As I have said, currencies have images, and such images are not randomly chosen; they are purposefully chosen to communicate. Fundamentally, the image and inscription on currency are meant to draw a boundary between money and its relationality with human beings. The images and inscriptions point out the fact that money does not have any inherent value but rather an acquired value based on the images and inscriptions emblazoned on it. More importantly, the image of a human figure, often the emperor or a prominent and accomplished member of society, is meant to communicate that human beings are more valuable than money. In other words, the inscriptions and images are to caution human beings against subverting the order of creation— not to put money ahead of man and man ahead of God. It is also to contest the often-present possibility of money and politics distorting what Cox referred to as “the self-other encounter.” 714 With the above as my background, I discuss John Higgs’s interpretation of Jesus’ driving out merchants in the Temple because of the ancient prohibition against usury. As Higgs wrote, “In the New Testament, when Jesus overturned the tables at the temple, his anger grew from the fact that the moneylenders were engaging in usury.” “Jesus, it is generally accepted, was a pretty non-violent type of guy, so when you note how all the other sins, cruelties, and injustices of the world failed to tip him over into anger, you get a glimpse at just how taboo usury was.” 715 Admitting that the reason for human displeasure with usury is open to interpretation, Higgs argued as follows: “It worked against the natural order of things.” Work created wealth, so wealth accumulating without work was unnatural. It was seen as a form of tyranny or theft. “Usury was a form of corruption, a financial cancer, and one that could throw economies off balance and bring them crashing down.” 716 It is good that Giggs left room for an interpretation of Jesus’ action. Much as I appreciate Giggs’s economic reading into Jesus’ action, the issue was more complex than that. At least, since he admitted that Jesus was not tipped over by other egregious acts but rather usury, then we cannot just see the issue only through the economic lens. Yes, there was economic exploitation going on, but why should economic exploitation be enough to draw the quick judgement of Jesus Christ? Cox, The future, p. 34. Higgs, p. 229. 716 Ibid., p. 230. 714 715

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Was it money Jesus was defending or something else? We could glean from the parables of Jesus Christ that He was not against profit-making, though He was against all forms of injustice. Given the person and mission of Jesus Christ and the statement He made at the scene in the Temple, a reductionistic reading of the incident as economic would be a gross injustice to Him. With this, I analyse the incident as follows: The Bible records in Matthew 21:1–17 that Jesus went to the Temple as part of His triumphant entry into Jerusalem— the heartland of Jewish religious rituals. The Temple is also a symbolic representation of God’s presence. Anyone who visited the temple was in the mood to offer special worship and cultic attention to God. The temple was, therefore, functionally a place for human beings to interface with their creator. It was not a space for economic activities— not to even talk about usury. Thus, several violations went on that drew Jesus’ righteous anger. First, instead of God, money had been elevated and become the centre of the temple’s activity. Second, instead of human beings, money had become a means to both fleece and exploit them. Third, the temple, indexing the egalitarianism of human ontological worth before God, fosters homogeneity dignity and shared submissiveness to the same Creator. Put together, the incident at the temple was a full-blown act of idolatry. It was a subversion of the ontological order of creation. God created human beings, and human beings created money—that is the order of creation. But what happened at the Temple was the inverse of that: money took precedence over God and human beings. In effect, what has no ontological worth but acquired worth as a result of humans’ superiority over humans and God. The issue Jesus had to deal with was therefore more than an economic one, as it was about human violations of both ontological boundaries. First, human beings are to worship God and Him alone and love their neighbour as themselves. But the incident demonstrated that human beings had made a cult out of money and worshipped it at the expense of both the Creator and love for fellow human beings. The issue of money becomes more complex when measured against the contemporary virtual world (cyborg). Indeed, before the coronavirus pandemic, several activities were already migrating online. More specifically, several economic transactions are online. Social relations of in-person interaction are progressively being mediated online, where it is not even an issue of people engaging on paper but rather electronically. Consequently, whereas in the pre-e-commerce world, paper money ensured that people congregated at the market to trade, recently, money has also experienced a transformative turn, becoming 304

highly invisible and yet real. It is, therefore, quite common for traders and workers to interact online without meeting in person. Sometime in 2019, while conducting fieldwork for my doctoral thesis in Ghana, I attended a programme organised by one of the youth groups in the community. The essence of the event was to help the more youthful segment of the community appreciate online entrepreneurship. In the course of the programme, one of the resource persons, a product of the University of Cape Coast, my alma mater, said that he could spend a whole week in the room without stepping out, except during prayer times. The same was said by a female participant. I was incensed by the conversation, knowing the depression that online activities could cause. When I asked about the impact of online transactions on socio-psychological health, the entire room went quiet. In the 19th century, Karl Marx observed the pernicious effect of the commodification of social relations. In the last section of Capital, titled “The Fetishism of the Commodity and its Marx discussed the complexity of objectifying social relations. Human beings are fundamentally social, but Marx argued that the sociality of human beings is mediated by the production of human efforts. This results in the mystification of the commodity, which is “abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties.” 717 Marx is not arguing that the whole issue of commodity fetishism is part of the false consciousness that is part of the human expression of illusion. Instead, endowing the product of human beings with transcendental legitimization is the deliberate creation of a highly structured social world. As he argued, The mysterious nature of the commodity form is thus simply the fact that the commodity reflects the social characteristics of men’s labour as objective characteristics of the labour products themselves, as socionatural properties of these things. As a result, it reflects the producers’ social relations to labour as a social relation that exists apart from and outside of the producers. 718

We could glean from the above that the mysterious in Marx’s understanding is not about human beings expressing any psychotic challenge, but rather the capacity of human beings to transpose social relations from the realm of in-person interaction to the relationship between “things.” The acceptance of human social relations as relations 717 Karl Marx, Capital: A critique of political economy Vol. I (trans. Ben Fowks and intro. By Ernest Mandel) (London: Penguin Classics, 1990), p. 160 718 Ibid., pp. 164-165.

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between “things” is thus mysterious. For this reason, Marx said that he called it “Fetishism,” which “attaches itself to the products of labour as soon as they are produced as commodities and is, therefore, inseparable from the production of commodities.” 719 e noticed that in the case of both Yuval Noah Harari and John Giggs, they both used the expression “willing,” which I said implies that the human construction of money is not an illusion. In the case of Marx, his use of “attaches itself” also implies that the commodification of social relations is part of the existential reality of the world, which is a necessary creation of human conscious awareness, not false consciousness. Marx, therefore, argues that the social reality of commodity fetishism is a deliberate creation of the bourgeois class. The bourgeoisie creates it as “self-evident and nature-imposed.” 720 The bourgeoisie skilfully reifies the fetishization of commodities as real and essential to society. Thus, as Marx said: Men do not, therefore, bring their products and their labour into relation with each other as values because they see these objects merely as the material manifestations of homogenous human labour. The reverse is true: by equating their different products to each other in exchange for values, they equate their different kinds of labour with human labour. They do this without being aware of it. 721

Through the bourgeois structuring of society, individuals involved in commodity fetishism become convinced that the situation is real and believe they are in control when they are not. Marx said that for labourers, “their own movement within society has for them the form of a movement made by things, which far from being under their control, in fact, controls them.” 722 In all of this, Marx argued that fetishism is not just about commodities but is embodied in money. This is because it is the meeting point of every commodity. As he said, “all other commodities universally express their values in a particular commodity because it is money.” As Marx already said anyone can use money without understanding what money is – its real value. 723 The problem is that the imagined value of money takes precedence over human beings. From the discussion so far, it is clear that money is valorised by human beings to create a social world of inequality and exploitation. But how do we Ibid., p. 165. Ibid. 721 Ibid., pp. 166-167. 722 Ibid., p. 167. 723 Ibid., 268. 719 720

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handle this complex issue? For Marx and Engels, the issue is class struggle, where they charge the working class to begin a revolution against the bourgeoisie. The history of all previously existing societies is the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebian, lord and serf, guildmaster and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carrying on an unbroken, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended in either a revolutionary re-constitution of society at large or the common ruin of the contending classes. 724 To demonstrate that the shame culture of the panopticon in dealing with corruption has hardly succeeded, I argue that there is always a rational reason not to be corrupt. I take the case of galamsey (to wit: gather and sell—unregulated small-scale mining). Since the late 1980s, the colonial legacies of underdevelopment and postcolonial misgovernance of the human quest for self-have resulted in the wanton destruction of the land and ecosystem through the activities of unregulated small-scale miners. Persons involved in unregulated smallscale mining have accused transnational mining companies of dispossessing them of natural resources. Research has shown that several transnational mining companies operating in gold-producing areas have not positively impacted mining communities as expected by both the state and residents. 725 But in specific areas like the Ahafo, where Newmont Goldcorp operates major concession, research indicates that the company has had positive impact on the community—food production is reported to be doing well, there is an increasing revenues for local government, and access to information, voice and accountability, and conservation of environmental and cultural resources. 726 Nevertheless, the study also indicated a few concerns from some members of the community which related to dust pollution, health and safety, acid rains, blasting on buildings, and the long-term impact of mining operations on both health and safety of inhabitants. 727 Coupled with the 1980s economic shambles, which has hardly seen any significant improvement, galamseyers have used any rational reason, including poverty, to justify 724 Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels, Manifesto of Communist (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1965), p. 31. 725 David Anaafo, Resource extraction and sustainable development of mine-take communities in Ghana (Accra: Good Government Africa, 2021). 726 David Anaafo, Resource extraction and sustainable development of mine-take communities in Ghana (Accra: Good Government Africa, 2021), p. 10. 727 Ibid., p. 10.

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their actions, in which they knowingly destroy land and water bodies. 728 This was largely because the state’s removal of subsidy on agriculture incapacitated rural smallholder farming who had to find an alternative livelihood—with majority of them turning to informal (unlicensed) artisanal and small-scale mining. 729 In several of the documentaries on the menace, galamseyers have mentioned the need for money to upset poverty and take care of their families and their needs as major reasons for their indulgence in the practice. Since the turn of the millennium, the government has applied the law and the force of shame culture, morphing into several “militant” approaches to dealing with the issue. Several measures have been taken, including military-police operations such as Operation Vanguard (mid2017), GalamStop, the use of drones (the Panopticon), and the burning of excavators. Yet, the menace remains a major challenge to the ecosystem. Even security officers who are mandated by the state to stem the tide against gold also get infected by the quest for money, which a District Chief Executive, Mr Bossman Osei-Hyiamang Jr is reported to have referred to as “the magnetic appeal of gold. 730 Out of legitimate frustration and conviction that galamseyers are irrational, the controversial response to the galamsey has even been a call for a “shoot to kill” approach. Nevertheless, since the menace continues to attract chiefs, politicians, and other foreign migrants, and despite the use of brute force, my question is: Can the gun end what has been considered an illegality when the people involved think of money as more important than life? How can the use of guns convince galamseyers that money is ontologically worthless? Also, the proliferation and attraction galamsey has had from the country’s young people has been attributed to poor state’s regulatory and international donors who prioritise formal transnational mining companies at the expense of local interest. 731 This means that, regardless of whether policy failure and power play are exacerbating poverty, the fact remains that law and guns have failed to address a population that values money more than life; a population that will choose money over life. Again, like the general issue of 728 Gavin Hilson and Clive Potter, “Structural adjustment and subsistence industry: Artisanal gold mining in Ghana,” Development and Change, 36, 1 (2005): 103131. 729 Gavin Hilson, “The case of artisanal gold mining in sub-Saharan Africa,” SAIS Review, XXXIII, 1 (2013): 51-64. 730 MAGNETFILM (2022), “Galamsey – For a fistful of Gold – Documentary about the illegal gold business,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dSdvrOncM0&t=33s. 731 Hilson, “The case of artisanal,” p. 54.

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corruption, galamsey is a moral issue about how individuals could answer the question, “How do I love others by preserving the land for human common use?” The fault lines of Galamsey (illegal mining) Since the late colonial era in the 1980s, illegal mining, loosely referred to as “Galamsey,” to wit, “gather them and sell,” has become a major blot on our conscience as Ghanaians. The persistence of galamsey in the face of cautions, threats, and policies (and laws) signifies the challenge Ghanaians have always had as a people. In recent Afrocentric scholarship, it is easiest to condemn Europeans for enslaving Africans. It is also too easy to blame the country’s challenges on colonialism and Nkrumah’s notion of neo-colonialism. Certainly, it is not in doubt that in a competitive world where survival of the fittest is based on selfishness, not altruism, Africa stands to gain or lose based on how Africans guard their front. It is also without any equivocation that slavery and colonialism were drawbacks to Africa’s quest for socioeconomic development. 732 My only worry is that whenever we externalise the reasons for our underachievement, real as they may be, we easily absolve and recuse ourselves of any wrongdoing. When something bad occurs, people with a fixed mindset are more likely to wonder, “Who did this to us?” rather than “What did we do wrong?” Given that we have always looked elsewhere to rationalise our complicity in our troubles, we keep reinventing the challenges that entrap us in despondence. For example, for a very long time, the debate raged over whether Africans should be given reparation or not. As would be expected, many Africans opted for reparation for slavery. Meanwhile, we still have families in Ghana and elsewhere on the continent that are still very rich because their ancestors entangled themselves in the slave trade. So far, Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings is one of the few Asante royals who admitted in her book, “It Takes A Woman,” that the Asante Kingdom was deeply involved in the slave trade. 733 Just as we have always turned ourselves into saints when it comes to evil, we have approached the issue of galamsey as a metanarrative of 732 Albert A. Boahen, African perspectives on colonialism (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987); Albert A. Boahen, Topics in West African history (London: Longmans, 1966). 733 Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings, It takes a woman: A life shaped by heritage, leadership and the woman who defined hope (N.p.: Hillcroft Bay Press, 2018).

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foreigners invading our land. Sometimes informed by what some socialist analysts may frame was western imported sinophobism, we have always, plus or minus, accused the Chinese of either dispossessing Africans of our land or exploiting our natural resources. In many instances, this tiring accusation obfuscates the role Africans—”factors and collaborators”—are playing in messing up the prospects of the continent. Looking at the nature of galamsey—its visibility, huge capital investment, and drudgery involved in securing a parcel of land—it is difficult to assume that we are unaware of where it happens. Also, it will be hardly convincing to assume that some of our chiefs, politicians, and ordinary citizens are not involved in the galamsey chain. The parties involved in the galamsey menace are aware of the harm they are causing the environment. They are also aware of how much they are ruining the chances for posterity to survive. But, like some of our African enslavers, these individuals are concerned with how they will benefit today. They are also interested in pursuing personal aggrandisement at the expense of the collective good. The fault line in all this is that the so-called foreigners who are destroying our ecosystem are seriously guarding their ecosystem against any imbalance. In China, like any developed economy, any unlawful felling of trees is a crime punishable by incarceration. In England, virtually every community has a public park embellished with trees. And trees are protected by the state. Animals have also been royally adopted against extinction. In our own country, we are sacrificing tomorrow to satisfy today’s needs. We are compromising our chances of future survival. And of course, our current predicament is gaping enough. Is it any wonder that the late Kenyan theologian, John S. Mbiti, concluded that futurism is not part of the African notion of time? While Mbiti has rightly been critiqued, it is important to mention that the pervasiveness of galamsey remains a blot on our conscience in the 21st century world. The point is that the 21st century has witnessed an unprecedented advance in technology. This is to the extent that it is possible to extract resources without unreasonably harming the environment. But it appears that Africa remains a strange continent that is always lagging. It is a continent with multiple enigmas. It is a puzzle for the world. It is arguably in Africa that individuals are interested in preempting the future to destroy it. It is also in Ghana where the struggle against poverty is impoverishing citizens! In the next round of Ghanaian historians, I will not be surprised if we continue the anthem of “blame game” as we spill ink to conveniently crucify the Chinese. In the end, even if we agree that the Chinese are dispossessing us of our 310

land or destroying it, 734 we must find out how they get access to the land—we must, as said, blame our leaders. 735 The fault lines in galamsey need moral restitution in Ghana. Fighting Galamsey like the parable of a baby Maamobi has produced several great men and women in all areas of life. But the person who made the most impression on my taste for philosophy is Alhaji Haruna Dabre, simply called Alhaji Haruna. Alhaji Haruna was the former assemblyman for Maamobi East. He is a truly kind man, generous, and highly appreciative of differences. He attends to everyone equally – Muslim and non-Muslim, men and women, children and adults. But that wasn’t all, and that wasn’t why I took him as a father. What endeared him to me was his love for philosophy. He loves all philosophies, including theosophy, as a Muslim. To say Alhaji Haruna is intelligent is an understatement. From the biographical information I have collected about him and about himself, I know that, at a very tender age, people marvelled at his sophisticated wisdom. In the late 1950s, Alhaji Haruna, in the company of his siblings and community members, joined the political campaign team of Nkrumah. The songs of Nkrumah’s team had lured and captivated Alhaji Haruna and his siblings to follow Nkrumah’s campaign team’s point of no return; he and his older siblings got lost. While his older siblings didn’t know what to do except berate themselves for disobeying their parents, the young Alhaji Haruna marched them to the police station to seek help. At the police station, when they were asked about where they stayed in Accra, his older siblings panicked into stupor and just remained instantly dumb. Alhaji Haruna was at their rescue. He articulately spoke about his father, who worked with the survey department. Before long, he and his siblings were taken right home by the police. Right from childhood, Alhaji Haruna served as the darling of everyone, including one Ada woman who miraculously had a baby for the first time because he cared for Alhaji Haruna well. But Alhaji 734 Simbo Olurunfemi, “Changing Africa-China relations—colonialism or partnership? In Sabella O. Abidde and Tokunbo A. Ayoola, China and Africa: Between imperialism and partnership in humanitarian development, 139-158 (Langham: Lexington Books, 2021). 735 Sabella O. Abidde and Tokunbo A. Ayoola, “Conclusion: The Chinese and a continent made fragile by its leaders,” In Sabella O. Abidde and Tokunbo A. Ayoola (eds), China and Africa: Between imperialism and partnership in humanitarian development, 345-354 (Langham: Lexington Books, 2021).

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Haruna isn’t the darling of theological and philosophical competence. He studied in Saudi Arabia and became a leading thinker in Islamic philosophy. But his philosophical eclecticism makes him tap into all religions, including Christianity and Eastern religions. Resultantly, he is deeply knowledgeable, lives a simple life, and cares for people, but regrettably, he is seen as a theological threat to the socalled reformist Muslims. Why have I taken the trouble to give this biographical account? Well, Alhaji Haruna has kept his philosophical pluralities to this day. He was already a supporter of Nkrumah in the late 1990s and had received training as a Young Pioneer. He has always been a socialist, albeit at a complex, amorphous, and nebulous level, as is to be expected. As a result, he would persuade a few of us younger people to attend the socialist forum with him, where Uncle Kwasi Pratt displayed exceptional knowledge of socialism. But it is important to note that in the 1990s, Ghana was ebbing gradually out of its extreme economic challenges. So, as part of the quest for survival and knowing how generous Alhaji Haruna is, we, the young ones, were readily excited and accepted his invitation to join the socialist forum. We thought that the socialist forum was about sharing food and other goodies. So, for the first two weeks, we went. While we did not find food, we were not immediately worried because we thought we were new. But over time, we realised that the whole business there was full of big English and chants of revolution, the lifting of fists against life’s imperfections, focusing on Ghana and Africa, and highly demonising capitalist imperialists. So, we became wise. Anytime Alhaji Haruna invited us, the other young men would invert the revolutionary chant: “Gbamuuuu,” which is “we want food.” I think eventually I became the only foolish person who kept attending the forum. Admittedly, there were times when I felt like throwing the revolutionary fist against those whose rhetoric was rather long and daunting. especially when they pretended, they didn’t need “Gbamuuuu.” Nonetheless, because I persisted in learning, Alhaji Haruna decided to sponsor me to study journalism soon after I completed my secondary school education in 2001 at the West Africa Secondary School. but I wasn’t interested. The socialist forum had whetted my appetite for a university education. So, it was, for me, a university education or nothing. Currently, nearly everyone is talking about the galamsey menace. Interestingly, everyone, including Galamseyers, beneficiaries, and institutionalised galamsey structures, is talking about it. But we have been talking about Galamsey since the 1990s, as far as I can remember, under the regime of the revolutionary par excellence, Jerry John Rawlings. 312

Under the neoliberals, we talked about it. Under Ghana’s former president, Jon Evans Atta Mills, we talked about it. We discussed the man from the North down below. We are now discussing it under the leadership of someone whose father was once a ceremonial president of Ghana. Wait, that isn’t all. Under “restricted media space,” we talked about it. Under free media space, enhanced by social media, we are talking about it. But while we talk and keep talking about it, the fact is that we keep doing more and more galamsey and producing more galamseyers. Whether under the sacrificial death of Major Mahama or the perceived lack of phallic competence of men in uniform, who are said to be compromised by money to cow in to galamsey, galamsey is king— egwe/ɔhene—leading some academics concluding that the entire country has failed in the fight against the menace. 736 We can hardly argue that there are ungoverned areas in Ghana. Every small space—in the bush, in the sea, and in the air—has a human owner. In the country, for example, about 80 percent of land falls squarely under the custodianship of chiefs. Also, we said we have drones and Close Circuit Television as a panopticon all over our space. The instrument for galamsey is not a spiritual entity. Whether they are produced in Ghana or not, the machines are operated by human beings who are rational. This complicates the issues of Ghana’s water bodies being reduced to sources of poison to kill consumer, as the operators of galamsey are not irrational or caught in a web of delusion—they are aware of the harm they are doing to citizens. Again, they are not stupid. They know they cannot drink the brown or dusty water. They also die in their quest for gold. It is not also all about being jobless, as not every jobless person would think galamsey is the answer to life. It is not about good people being forced to become bad people due to external circumstances. How can ontologically good people be corrupted by banalities like perishable products of gold? But one thing is sure: if the political elites claim to fight rational beings with AK-47s when they know gold is worth more than life, what does the political think they are doing? Admittedly, it should be common that life is better than gold. What about the opposite, which is the ontological worldview of galamseyers? Will the nation ever triumph with its destructive weapon? The sermons against the menace can hardly be stopped with political sermons and rhetoric—galamseyers they know water is life, but what if 736 Ernest Arhinful (19 October 2022), “We have failed galamsey fight collectively, not just government—lecturer,” https://www.myjoyonline.com/we-failedgalamsey-fight-collectively-not-just-government-lecturer/.

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water is just water and gold is also gold? Reducing everything to a parable of a baby, let me say as follows: I love Charles Dickens, not because of his first name—which I share. I love Dickens because he wrote incredible novels through the eyes of children. So, going by his wisdom, I will do the same. I do the same because children are children and act like children; they hardly pretend, especially when considered hungry babies. Babies, when they are hungry, want nothing but food. Babies, according to both oral accounts and readings, are said to know their mothers from the day of their birth. But babies are highly adoptable. They easily switch mothers, but based on the same condition: the constant supply of breast milk. I have seen babies who, for complex reasons, needed whet mothers. Again, so long as the breast milk flows, babies are okay. If one tells a child not to go near a paedophile, he will tell one, “Yes, mom.” But when the paedophile has toffees, one’s child will say he is going for the toffees, not the owner of the toffees. That is how food is a basic need for all of us. A baby’s crave for food is simply a natural pleasure. For all the above reasons, when a baby is hungry and there’s no breast milk, parents will try to divert a baby’s attention from the natural pleasure of food to another level of pleasure: music. So, parents sing lullabies, which keep the baby from crying temporarily. But when the lullabies don’t descend to the tummy, the baby begins to tell the difference between the two pleasures at play. The baby knows that the pleasure from music, however nice, isn’t like the pleasure from breast milk. So, the baby tries to weigh parents’ tricks; the baby plays to the gallery, but before long, the lullabies lose the spellbound pleasure of music. At this point, the baby cries with a fist, wanting to throw himself or herself down to death; babies prefer food (gold) to life. But would the food and gold sustain life? Well, that is a philosophical question. Which comes first, life, food, or gold? Which one should be protected: life, food, or gold? How do we even protect life without food or gold? At the University of Cape Coast, where I had my undergraduate education in African Studies, we had a statue with a baby seeking to wrestle the breast milk from his mother. That statute has had multiple interpretations, depending on one’s social position in life or grade point. But my classmates from 2004–2008 used to say the statute implies: We should eat more, for UCC is hard. As a Casfordian, belonging to the University’s only male hall–-Casely Hayford Hall—I know our philosophy—popular culture, summed up as Casfordianism, is that “ɔbra nyinaa ɛfa nea obɛdi ada ɛni nea obɛda ɛdi” to wit: “Life is all about what 314

you eat to sleep and what you sleep to eat.” However, we interpret Casfordianism, the issue is still about what comes first: food, gold, or life. Ghana appears to fail in the war against galamsey, if indeed a war has been declared on the menace because the political elites have read the quagmire around the subject as a technical problem. As a result, every response has been technical: emotional rage, insult, fistfight, and guns. Meanwhile, it is rumoured that when the uniformed men get to the galamsey sites, they also get stuck in the limbo between “gold” and “life.” Purgatory becomes necessary. But will there be any priests? What must Ghana do, given that nearly all the technical measures have failed us? Well, we need people to be fooled. We need all Ghanaians to be foolish and prefer life over food or gold. Like the baby, the pleasure of food is stronger than life, though life is anterior to food or gold. In reality, however, the fool and his gold are rarely discarded— at least not the case of galamsey. The challenge is to recreate and reorient people to see life as existentially superior to food or gold. Life is fundamentally important; food and gold aren’t. We always interfere with food and gold to make them consumable. Fruits, too, require human cultural intervention, either through washing or conversion into more pleasurable consumables. Food and gold are dependent on human beings. But life is independent of human beings. Life is also independent of food and gold. Life is both real and putatively dependent on its ultimate owner, God, not gold. Reducing my perspective to the Biblical narrative, I muse over my own question: Why did Abraham hand over Isaac to God? I imagine that he reckoned, and rightly so, that life is God’s. After, he had multiple affairs with Sarah, but until God directly intervened, their sex life was for recreation, not the ultimate goal of procreation. This means a lot for Ghana’s religious constituency. If Abraham considered himself as a steward of the precious son God had given him and was ready to handover that son back to God, then there is much as stake for Ghana’s religious constituency, particularly majority Christians and Muslims who claim Abraham as a patriarch. What informed Abraham’s willingness to obey ontological boundary, by appreciating the fact that much as Isaac was a child from his loins, Isaac was God’s property? The answer may lie in Abrahma’s moral life, discipline and understanding of life’s ultimate purpose—which is human beings are God’s viceroy to take care of God’s creation; not competitors with God over God’s creation. The question then is how could religious people in Ghana, deploy the ritual of fasting to elevate and enhance their moral lives in the fight against galamsey? How can the pleasure for food and money be supplanted in the interest of God’s creation—Ghana’s water bodies, 315

flora and fauna? These questions are critical in the fight against galamsey because, as far as my knowledge of Ghana’s religious map is concerned, several of the religious people in Ghana believe that human beings are superior to food and gold. This may have added additional reason to the relevance they accord the ritual of fasting—a practice nearly all the religious groups ceremonially encourage. From my interactions and personal experiences with social benefit of fasting, I argue that through fasting, we tame the pleasures that undermine the ontological quality of life. Fasting allows us to forego penultimate pleasures in exchange for the ultimate pleasure—life. In sum, through fasting, we get to know the sublime truth that life is pleasurable par excellence. If we understand the pleasurability of life through self-denial, it means we will fail if we use guns and emotions to fight galamsey. In the end, I surmise that say that the political need to deploy philosophy, certainly, not negating the technical solution, to answer the issue of galamsey. The philosophical approach is the way out because galamsey is a moral issue, not an economic or technical issue. It is a moral issue that one’s conscience must be appealed to reason and reflect over one’s action, which would have a negative impact on human flourishing. It’s also about worldview, not about money. It’s about life, not its peripheries. With this, we need a “why” response to win the fight against galamsey. The “how” should be transient and give way to the “why” as permanent. All this means we need to restructure our education system to make the teaching of the philosophy of life and the meaning of existence foundational. We don’t need a reason to live; we need a life. Life has enough meaning to be lived meaningfully. Consequently, from class one to the end of schooling, every school child must know and answer the existential questions: Who am I? Why am I here? What should I do next? Until we learn, answer, and continue to answer these questions, trust me, we will fight Galamsey like a treadmill race. My students at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology can attest that I make them think about these philosophical issues. We must practise existential philosophy to help save humanity. The fault lines in all the “post” theories that reify “self” will only sink all of us. The overwhelming Christian population should ask themselves: Why did Jesus Christ leave all His glory and sublated himself to the point of excruciating pain and the death of crucifixion? The basic answer is: He desperately wants to save lives from eternal damnation. His charge afterwards was and is: “Love your neighbour as yourself.” Galamsey is about loving yourself. But what about your next neighbour, whose life cannot be sustained because of you? Do you love your neighbour? 316

The crusade against corruption: My subjective perspective Life is an antinomy of simplicity and complexity. Life is a paradoxical mixture of simplicity and complexity. There are times we almost effortlessly get what we want, but there are times that however hard we try, rack our brains, and exert enough energy, we don’t seem to break through—at least not the way we anticipate it. There are times we can easily decipher a challenge and readily offer insight. But there are times, too, that no matter our ingenuity and innovativeness, a particular problem just keeps telling us, “You lie bad.” There are times when we just know and rely on God when problems come our way. But there are times when we stumble and struggle to believe in a caring God. There are times when our belief in the existential reality of God as the uncreated Creator is just part of our psychological predilection (a kind of autopilot) and we don’t struggle to remember that He exists. But there are times when we simply have to wonder if God is (or was) and cares. The opposites in life don’t mean we’re either weak or strong, but rather that post-fallen creation plays mind games with us. Whenever we struggle to believe in God or even make sense of Him, we shouldn’t fret unreasonably and think we have become heretics. We should not imagine that when we question God’s existence in the face of life’s difficulties, God is throwing tantrums, angrily marking His register of damnation, and breathing hot and cold to pounce on us. We can glean from the narratives of the Bible that all of God’s faithful questioned God at some point. Abraham questioned the justice of God. Moses doubted God’s sovereignty. Job felt God was unfair. Jesus even questioned why God, His Father, had left him to suffer alone. Thomas doubted Jesus’ resurrection. Paul struggled to understand why God wouldn’t heal him. In all the antinomies of life, which must and do unsettle and severally upset our faith in God, we react largely because of two reasons: The first is that God has put an eternity of bliss in our hearts. Second, we sigh in desperation in times of crisis because we believe God can help us since He deposits bliss in us. Let me attempt to explain the above point with a bit of a generated philosophical axiom. How do we know something isn’t right in our life? Is it the pain? The pain but do we know that we can also imagine that the pain isn’t real? Well, we may be aware that some people try to practise transcendental meditation, hoping to minimise the pain in their lives. Others think that when they think positively long enough, they can subdue pain. However, it is also true that no amount of opium can 317

ever completely eliminate pain. So, the truth is that pain isn’t psychological; it’s real. Nonetheless, how do we know pain is real? We do so both biologically and philosophically. Biologically, when a part of our organically structured body goes through pain, our body reacts in a way that shouldn’t be part of life. Otherwise, if the pain is part and parcel of life, why should the body react ferociously, including giving us sleepless nights as a respite? This leads to my second reason: we translate our physical and biological pain to the philosophical level. We begin to question why we must have pain. At this point, we destabilise the pagan Greek mind-body dichotomy. Instead, we try to convince ourselves that pain isn’t natural to us. This sets us on a long quest for an answer. Nonetheless, our reaction to pain indicates that something isn’t quite right or that something has fundamentally gone wrong. That understanding then brings us back home to the “why” questions, which all the saints of God asked. It becomes a natural confirmation bias. It appears that we all, theists, deists, and atheists, address our why questions to a higher-than-us being. For example, when we struggle to overcome an erratic water supply, we may fume at our family members for wasting water or blame the Waterworks people for abnegating their duty. But somehow, we all direct our anger at the government. Because we believe that the government is obligated by the social contract to protect our peace, joy, and welfare. Even so, no matter how hard we threaten the government with a vote of no confidence or a coup, the problem of erratic water supply will not be solved if all life is about material historicism. For example, if the rains don’t come or water doesn’t naturally flow from somewhere without human intervention, what can the government do? I think most of us are aware—either through experience or reading—that several governments have openly declared—willy-nilly—their ineptitude in addressing all our challenges. Assuming the government doesn’t visibly and audibly declare its ontological incompetence, we, as rational beings, can tell that the government cannot help us. At that point, we try to appeal to something else. Naturally, when we all reach a dead end, we all turn to something we believe is higher than us (to recapitulate for emphasis)— at the very least, something unlike us or no one like us. Some may appeal to the mind. Since the mind can hardly be seen but is real, we ask our mind to suppress our pain. So, we see all the banalities of a positive mindset and the explication of all the various intelligent quotients. Regrettably, the mind will be tired, and so some of us—the majority of us—will try to alter the mind—through drugs. We often think the 318

mind will need enhancement, so we either drink alcohol (wine), invest in sex (women), or use drugs (weed)—we may call these the 3Ws”— hoping to be deluded. In all this, a cyclical chain of habituation is formed that is both in our mind and our experience. We engage the 3Ws to a high level to derive satisfaction until a counterproductive result occurs—chronic illness and, eventually, death – and then we return to what we wanted to avoid—pain. What about death? Well, we can be epicurean about it, but not when we know our death will cause pain to our dependents. But that’s not all; death may lead us somewhere. We are unable to use rationality to determine our ontological origins. Does it make sense to think a sperm and an egg can make a complex human being whose complex mind alone overtakes his or her biological elements of spermatozoa and ovum? In other words, because we are higher than anything material, material things we depend on later will depend on us. When we depend on our cars, wine, money, and the women we have sadly converted into sex objects, we belittle ourselves. As we become lower than ourselves (debasement) or lose ontological dignity, we crash to death. There’s, however, another way. When we are knocked down by the invented things on which we rely, we turn back to God. We return to Him in either a penitentiary or a blaming mood. In the latter case, a story is told about an atheist, whose life was nothing but pain asked: “God, why do you subject me to this unbearable pain? Is it because I believe you don’t exist?” Well, if one does not believe God exists, why must one even rationalise pain to involve Him? Others, too, become deeply religious. They know that God is their ultimate helper. They depend on him; but whether one believes in God or not, the truth is that He works in His own time. To cite C.S. Lewis, “A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line.” 737 Life is about having faith in God that He will help us. So, when we either accuse or berate God for not responding to us the way we want, we should avoid the temptation of wishing Him away. We should be foolhardy enough to say with Job, “Even if He slays me, yet I will have hope in Him.” Why must we be foolhardy to know God is with us? My answer may be simplistic. But the point is that when we rationalise what is irrational (pain), we may ground ourselves down to point zero— suicide—and think life isn’t worth it, going back to square one. I pray that we will always have faith and not pretend we can rationalise everything. By reason alone, we may be very miserable. We may need the opium of a classless world or God’s heaven. We may not physically experience Karl Marx’s utopian, classless world or the material heaven 737

Lewis, Mere, p. 38.

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Jesus Christ promised. But we can, as Christians, live in the blissful world to come in faith and in anticipation of Jesus Christ, who lived, died, was resurrected, ascended, and now lives forever. If one thinks Karl Marx lived but Jesus Christ didn’t, then I think we are not being both rational and faithful enough. After all, most of us were not there at the time Marx and Jesus lived (We both trust the accounts of those who wrote about them or what Marx wrote). So, a Christian’s faith in a better world is not a blind walk in the dark, but real faith based on a real God who has experienced our pain. What would a Marxist or a rationalist depend on? More aluta continua that never brings any ultimate victory, or more thinking that changes nothing ultimately? For me, I take or trust him (Jesus Christ) despite everything—faith. The crown: Christianity as a story, than philosophy as a system Several times, we hear of a few individuals committing suicide. In several cultures, including the Akan, there are mixed attitudes towards suicide. These attitudes could be highly contradictory. In the ancient world of heroism and machoism, shame culture made suicide imperative. This was precisely because an individual’s identity was intricately intertwined with group identity. One way such societies constructed group identity was through naming. Individuals were named to reflect their ancestry and genealogical tree. So, a person would introduce himself with a name that connects him or her to distant ancestors. For example, one could say, “I am Ishaq, the son of Ibrahim, the son of Terah, the son of Haran, etc. Jesus’s own is complex, depending on which of the three gospel accounts one reads (Matthew, Luke, and John). The different genealogical narratives of Jesus Christ are complementary rather than contradictory because they all tell important stories about Jesus Christ. According to Matthew, Jesus Christ fulfils Abraham’s promise by keeping the Sabbath. In Luke, Jesus comes as the fulfilment of God the Father’s promise of redemption, given to humanity through Adam. Jesus belongs to all of us. In John, God fulfils His promises of visiting once again, as He did in the Garden before the entrance of sin. Jesus is God. In the end, Jesus Christ’s genealogies, in complement, give us ultimate hope for all those He calls. He isn’t a territorial, spatialtemporal, or racial God. This explains why Jesus did not have any of the weaknesses of all cultures. Hence, no culture can fully accommodate Jesus Christ without making amends—it is also largely against this that informed Kwame 320

Bediako’s theology of Jesus as capable of inhabiting among Africans. 738 We either allow Him to amend our culture for His redemption or retain our weak culture for His ultimate damnation. Back to ancient naming practices: People typically have an impact on the community when they act, as they are motivated by a sense of self. Suicide was therefore seen as a way out by those who believed their actions or inaction could bring about the demise of their group—the basic of altruistic suicide in some cultures, including the Japanese that I mentioned above. Several years ago, I read books on suicide. In a few of these books, I found a misconception that tended to read, at least as I understood, Christian martyrdom as a form of suicide. Usually, the early Apostles of Jesus Christ were said to have cherished suicide—escape from the world—as they submitted to crucifixion. I sincerely think this kind of misreading and misinterpretation needs to be corrected. As we know from people who commit suicide, the Apostles of Jesus Christ never accepted death as an escape from worldly concerns. The Apostles of Jesus Christ and every Christian saw death as an enemy. We Christians, unlike some evolutionary scientists, do not see death as natural. As Christians, we object to death. We fight death by pushing the boundaries of modern science and the humanities to promote life on Earth. Nevertheless, death isn’t something we fear. We don’t see death as an end to life. Death, for us, isn’t the equivalent of extinction. We see death as an exit from a material world to a better one. For us, the worst of death will always lead to the best that will ever happen to us. The above implies that we defend and stand for our faith, even if it implies daring death, by choosing the cross as opposed to any worldly crown. Our choice of eternal bliss over transient material gains is because of the intertwined historical life of Jesus Christ. For this reason, several Christians would not support voluntary suicide, which they may read as escapism but which may be considered out of sync in scholarship on suicide. Christians repudiate suicide precisely because as identified by George Minois it is considered self-murder and insult to God. 739 Jesus Christ, the King of kings and the uncreated Creator, chose to be born in an unfit cradle—a manger. Ordinarily, no king would want 738 Kwame Bediako, Jesus in Africa: The Christian gospel in African history and experience (Akropong-Akuapem, Ghana: Regnum Africa, 2000); Kwame Bediako, Christianity in Africa: The renewal of a non-Western religion (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1995); Kwame Bediako, Theology and identity: The impact of culture upon Christian thought in the second century and in modern Africa (Oxford: Regnum, 1992). 739 Georges Minois, History of suicide: Voluntary death in Western culture (trans. Lydia G. Cochrane) (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999).

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to have his child born in a manger. Hardly would a capitalist choose Nyankpanduri traditional midwives in the Northern Region of Ghana over Nyaho Clinic-trained gynaecologists in Accra. These days, people would carry a pregnancy in Accra and travel to Florida in the USA to give birth to a child. I know a few friends who spent a fortune to travel with their pregnancy to the US to have their babies born there. Unborn babies even run away from their ancestral home for another nationality. They flee the reality of pain for the illusions of ecstasy. Jesus Christ did nothing of that. His conception was in the city, but his birth was in a manger. If one understands city life, that is a seamless and quintessential example of a counterculture: the embracement of reality over illusion. Nevertheless, such an anomaly signals good news. It implies that as Christians, we must be normal children. We should not pretend to be exceptional children, different from any child. As part of the unfortunate reports on suicide in Ghana a few years ago, one of the suicides, believed to come from an upper-class home, is alleged to have left a note that read, “Mom and Dad, sorry I couldn’t be the child you expected.” The fact that Jesus needed a cradle implies that every child needs a cradle. Every child must be allowed to be a child. This means children must feel what it means to be a child. Running, petty stealing, unnecessary crying, learning a good and bad language, passing and failing exams, believing and disbelieving in one’s family’s faith, and so on—are all part of childhood lives. These antinomies, though unrelated to the life of Jesus Christ, are the natural paths of every child born in a cradle. But such experiences must come through socialisation. Children must be made to know that life is made up of multiple crosses. As they engaged in all the contrary actions, they would go through pain. More so, as they come to faith in Jesus Christ, they will endure every imaginable pain and self-imposed pain. They would have to endure moral successes and moral failures. The Cross of the Christian faith must remind every Christian that they are called to persevere. They are called not to resign or even pretend to be saints; otherwise, they would commit suicide and write suicide notes denouncing facades and illusions. They are told to keep bouncing back and running. When they fall, they are called to keep resisting the temptations of a never-ending low. Just like every child, falling as part of learning to walk shouldn’t be a source of discouragement and trepidation. The Christian should never crave to fall but shouldn’t necessarily deny its reality when he or she does. This possibility of falling was precisely one of the reasons Jesus Christ admonished us to intercede for one another. as well as warning disillusioned self-proclaimed righteous Christians. 322

The 19th century European Christian missionaries knew the Christian journey as a bag of mixed challenges and accompanied the Bible with John Bunyan’s, The Pilgrim’s Progress. 740 Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress, in my reading, vividly captures the entire biblical narrative as philosophy in stories rather than philosophy in the system. So, unlike capitalism, marxism, and all the “isms” that are nearly fossilised in their application, the Christian philosophy is a story of real human beings whose lives were a mixture of successes and failures. So, we learn from human experiences (with Christ as the ultimate) rather than those of angels with no earthly experiences (I Corinthians 10:11). Unfortunately, I have observed the church in Ghana as has having gravitated towards a Christian story as the system’s philosophy. The Christian story as a journey has been inverted and reduced from a story of persevering sinners on a journey towards righteousness to saints on arrival in a treadmill race. With such a misreading of our faith, Biblical characters, such as Moses, are treated as lacking emotional intelligence (impatient), as if the idea of emotional intelligence, based on the a certain understanding of human beings as a concatenation of emotions, is easily applicable in times of personal crisis. Sometimes, I shudder to think that very soon, Jesus’ anger against the thieves in the Temple in Jerusalem would be read as a lack of emotional intelligence. Indeed, giving advice and taking advice are simply unrelated, as the rationality of the former is untouched by reality, while the latter depends on the emotion that trashes reflection. Both extremes are characteristics of material philosophy, not Christian philosophy as a story of lived experiences. The church then employs all means of deception, including gossip and division at the Lord’s Table, to coerce Christians into secret but real and dangerous sins. Regrettably, secret sins are more dangerous than public sins because we feel covered before men in our long religious garbs, while our moral nakedness lies naked before the God who sees all secrets. Secret sins to gain human glory deny us the help and counsel to persevere. I think the church needs to take note of the threat secret sins poses to the world. Praying in tongues and biblical expositions aren’t even as sophisticated as real scholarship—especially among Pentecostals, who until recently did not prioritise theological education. 741 If a church prefers speaking in tongues and observation rituals, such as ceremonial days, to 740

2004).

Isabel Hofmeyr, The Portable Bunyan (Princeton: Princeton University Press,

741 Peter White, “A missional study of Ghanaian Pentecostal churches’ leadership and leadership formation,” HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies, 7, 15 (2015): 1-18.

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scholarship, then we reduce religion to Cain’s transactional faith of seeking to deceive God with a gift, not a true sacrifice of self in need of grace and mercy. Church disciplinary practices, such as excommunication, which usually reduces the individual to a domain of pariahdom, have blocked the doors of the church for several “Christians.” Several Christians either keep missing communion, practise church as a form of shifting cultivation, or deploy science to subvert sin-induced excommunication. In all this, we should know that Abraham, Jacob, Moses, Peter, Paul, etc. were real human beings who were hardly righteous but who attained righteousness through perseverance. They are persevered because those who persevere receive a crown. Indeed, every victory comes after much pain. Hence, the Calvinistic story, “No pain, no gain.” “There isn’t a crown bearer in heaven who wasn’t a cross bearer on earth,” says Charles Spurgeon. The shame of the cross-means shame. But that shame is redeemed with a crown when we persevere. Instead of Christians pretending to have arrived and churches pretending to be filled by self-made saints, let’s see the seamless entanglement between the 3 Cs: cradle, cross, and crown. For in the end, “we will tell the story of how we overcome.” 742 Blessed are those who persevere in faith, for they shall be saved. We shouldn’t pretend to be holy; we shouldn’t live in sin; we should just embrace the cradle, the cross, as we focus on the cross as our ultimate hope. If the Cross remains our ultimate focus, there will, therefore, be no condemnation awaiting us. We should allow no one to persuade us to remain in a cradle and on the cross with accusations, because no one is qualified to pass an eternal verdict on us. Hence, every one of us would go through a real human journey in faith. We shouldn’t give up; we should bounce 742 Taken from a line in Charles Albert Tindley and B.B McKinney’s, hymn, “Trials on dark of every hand.” Charles Albert Tindley was born in Berlin, Maryland, July 7, 1851; son of Charles and Hester Tindley. His father was a slave, and his mother was free. Hester died when he was very young; he was taken in by his mother’s sister Caroline Miller Robbins in order to keep his freedom. He was expected to work to help the family. In his Book of Sermons (1932), he speaks of being “hired out” as a young boy, “wherever father could place me.” He married Daisy Henry when he was seventeen. Together they had eight children, some of whom would later assist him with the publication of his hymns; Son of James Calvin McKinney and Martha Annis Heflin McKinney, B. B. attended Mount Lebanon Academy, Louisiana; Louisiana College, Pineville, Louisiana; the Southwestern Baptist Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas; the Siegel-Myers Correspondence School of Music, Chicago, Illinois (BM.1922); and the Bush Conservatory of Music, Chicago. Oklahoma Baptist University awarded him an honorary MusD degree in 1942; https://hymnary.org/text/trials_dark_on_every_hand.

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back, as the Crown remains our ultimate hope, with everything else being penultimate. As Christians, let’s always remember that our Bible is a philosophy in the story of lived human beings with lived experiences, as opposed to philosophy as a highfalutin system. Whenever the Christian story becomes a philosophy of systems, we do what capitalists and Marxists have done and continue to do to the world: arrogance, intemperance, discrimination, exploitation, unforgiveness, persecution, and hatred. These are not the characteristics of Christ, because Christ was not Adam Smith or Karl Marx in search of material primitive accumulation for profit. Christ was and is in search of sinners through His renunciation of glory (II Corinthians 8:9). Jesus and the human quagmire There is something about the Biblical Jesus Christ that we all don’t like. I am deliberate about the Biblical Jesus Christ because others have invented multiple Jesuses who are not different from themselves or human beings. For example, for some people, Jesus is simply a prophet. Human beings could be prophets. For others, Jesus was and is a great teacher and philosopher. Human beings can be great teachers and philosophers. Yet for others, Jesus is gentle, meek, and mild. We want someone who will accommodate us, regardless of our sins, without judgment. Finally, for some, Jesus Christ was simply a mythical figure created to aid in the organisation of society into structured inequality. We all don’t want to be judged or told that He will judge us. I would have loved to have the above images of Jesus Christ. I would have loved to have a meek, gentle, and loving Jesus who patronised my sexual sins and immoral life. I would love the above Jesus of world religions and philosophy; , I want to be me in a world of selfies. But my disappointment is that the Jesus of the Bible is more than all of the above and is the creator of everything. He is the uncreated Creator who declares that we are His property and that we must worship him. Jesus Christ of the Bible says there’s nothing we have that He didn’t give us. Everything men and women imagine that becomes real as cultural product cannot be, indeed, real unless we use what Jesus created before our creation. 743 Jesus Christ of the Bible could even be annoying. He created everything before every one of us so that when we want to make noise, He will simply tell us, “Shut up; the mouse was here before you.” 743

Alister McGrath, Creation (London: SPCK, 2004).

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Another annoying thing about Jesus Christ is that he died and was resurrected. Because He died, no matter how long we live and how menacingly wicked we could become, we will die. That isn’t all; Jesus Christ was also resurrected. 744 This means that we will all resurrect. When we decide to burn ourselves into ashes, liquid, vapor, etc., He says we shall resurrect. He was resurrected, which means we shall live to see the effect of all our pre-mortal actions and inactions. Jesus Christ says He is a jealous God; is it not annoying for God to be jealous? It is, but what can we do about it? He created us and made us the crown of everything. Now, we turn around to worship the money, car, houses, and certificates that you have created. Man-made things are ontologically inferior to human beings, but e worship our creature—similar to what I have already discussed as Marx’s concept of commodity fetishism. Is it not a banality that must rightly attract God’s jealousy? Finally, Jesus Christ created the family and structured it as biological males and females performing different but complementary tasks. He says men are breadwinners and women are homemakers—as we glean from Genesis 3. 745 Well, both men and women don’t like this at face value. But it arguably appears men want women to be home, while women want men to feed the house. So, even when it could be argued that if we patronise gender blindness, we still come to our cul de Sac, knowing we cannot subvert Jesus Christ as the uncreated Creator. The other annoying thing about Jesus Christ is that He says He forgives us. Sometimes, even when one thinks one is killing Him with one’s pen and brilliance, Jesus calls on His Father to forgive one. This is annoying because Jesus sees us as vulnerable, even when we are killing Him. He simply says we are acting out of your sin, which has given us illusions. Finally, Jesus Christ says that after all is said and sundry, He will judge us. He is waiting until the end of time to cast a verdict on our lives. Jesus Christ could certainly be annoying, such that I also don’t want him. But is there any alternative? The answer is, no, because all the alternatives may lead us on an insatiable pathway of destruction.

744 For a comprehensive and scholarly discussion on the history and theology of the resurrection, see: N.T. Wright, The resurrection of the Son of God (London: SPCK, 2003). 745 See: John Piper and Wayne Grudem, 50 crucial questions: An overview of central concerns about manhood and womanhood (Illinois: Crossway Books, 2016); Dennis Rainey (ed), Building strong family (Illinois: Crossway Books, 2002); Wayne Grudem (ed), Biblical foundations for manhood and womanhood (Illinois: Crossway, 2002).

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Take all the humanistic philosophies that have become paradigms— all the “post” theories, they all create a post-earthly human being whose end is nothing but further confusion in an ocean a world of ontological imperfection. When I read the intellectual history of all the thinkers of the post-theories, I see how fleeting their theories are. 746 We may not like Jesus Christ of the Bible, but may hardly be any alternative to what He represents, did and said in human quest for flourishing. As a Christian, therefore, I bow my knees and lay my perishable crown of a doctoral degree from the University of Cambridge at the Old Rugged Cross for an imperishable crown. Women and religion: The case of Evangelist Patria Asiedu (Nana Agradaa) Religious exploitation, which includes, as I have already stated above, the commodification of God. But much as both men and women are susceptible to becoming pliable to religious exploitation, it could be argued that women tend to be the most affected. There have been several instances where women have fallen victim to religious exploitation in Ghana. What is also of interest to me is when women religious leaders participate in women’s exploitation. Under this section, I discuss the case of Evangelist Patricia Asiedu, popularly known as Nana Agradaa, a convert from indigenous religion as priestess to Evangelist in Christianity with her own church. I will give an anecdote as part of indicating the simplicity of seeing women as victims of religion or perpetrators of it—all indexing the complex entwinement between religion and politics in Ghana. On Sunday (October 9, 2022), I worshipped with the Elevation Assemblies of God Church at Agbogba, Accra. Much as I visited the church’s senior pastor for a purpose other than worshipping fellow pilgrims, I had a bit lurking in my mind that I would participate in their Bible Study Class. Given that I was at the church a few minutes after 6am, I had a long interaction with the senior pastor. I also admired the young men and women who dedicated their lives to serving the Lord. These young people spent their early Sunday mornings preparing the grounds for church service. After multiple failures in sorting out a technical challenge that sent me to the Elevation Assemblies of God Church, l decided to sanguinely participate in the church’s Sunday School class, which often gives me the opportunity to study the Bible, away from the preacher-centred sermons. Sunday School or Bible instruction, as it was also called has a 746

Paul Johnson, Intellectuals (London: Phoenix Giant, 1996/1988).

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long history that begins with Robert Raikes of Gloucester, England, who in 1757 reached out to a gang of ragged boys and paid Mrs Meredith to teach them reading, writing, arithmetic, and religion. 747 the first recorded Sunday School in America was held in 1785 at Oak Grove, Virginia by William Elliot. 748 It is unclear when Sunday School started in the Gold Coast—but most likely towards the end of the 19th century by the Protestant missionaries. However, the Assemblies of God Church, having started operating in the Gold Coast in 1937, 749 has one of the best Sunday School systems among classical Pentecostals in Ghana. Incidentally or rather providentially, the lesson for that Sunday was on faith. It was led by a highly spirited and enthusiastic young man - a trainee pastor. As l sat calmly admiring his zest in dividing the word of truth, I was also interested in his responses to questions that the audience had for him. I found some of his responses to the questions on faith unconvincing. But I was torn between two streams: should I just keep quiet and concentrate on fixing my intractable technical challenge or say something to claim faith to solve my problem? My dilemma was also because I had taken a seat away from the gathering that signalled me as a “stranger” amidst church members. Anyways, l couldn’t keep quiet forever. I shot up my hand and was given the mobile microphone to voice my comments. With microphone in hand and taking time to adjust my pair of lenses, I asked the following four questions: 1. What is faith? 2. When and why do we need faith? 3. Is faith rational and must it be rational? 4. What is the role of faith in God’s governance of His universe? Do we change God’s mind as a result of our exercising of faith? After my questions, l noticed that the entire room of about 30 congregations went silent for about 5 minutes with eyeballs scouting and combing for responses.

Was I being profiled as a cantankerous person? More importantly, the interrogatory eyes returned searchingly and focused on the leader of the discussion. After the leader had thought for a while, he pleaded with me to repeat my questions. To cut a long story short, the class 747 Elmer Towns, “Sunday School” in Ed Hindson and Dan Mitchell (eds), The popular encylopedia of church history: The people, places, and events that shaped Christianity, 317319 (Eugene, Oregon: Harvest House Publishers, 2013), p. 317. 748 Ibid., p. 318. 749 Paul Frimpong-Manso, Fire from the north: The origins, growth, development & influence of Assemblies of God, Ghana (Tema/Ghana: Digibooks Ghana Ltd., 2018).

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ended with no clear responses. As time run quickly for the main church service to begin, we agreed that the questions will be considered on the following Sunday. Why have I bored you with my storytelling? I think that faith is the orbiting point of life and the application or lack of it, as I have observed, tends to exert mixed impacts on Ghanaian Christians—especially as they deal with life’s difficulties. Life’s existential vicissitudes are so intractable that our life simply revolves around the valve of always solving problems. In a world where we can hardly have 24 hours of uninterrupted peace, we cannot simply depend on what we see and think; we must either believe in a supernatural being or an invented god to find meaning in a meaningless world—given that human beings are meaning seekers. 750 Whether it is about a god-in-the-gap or humbly admitting science cannot answer all our questions, we may need faith. Or we may need opium to dance illusional into the classless utopian world of Karl Marx. As if by divine fiat, women are a people of faith. 751 Beginning with Eve who had faith enough to talk to a stranger her husband dared not invite to Delilah who could dialogue with a giant into a stupor, women are a people who may have incredible faith. Indeed, since creation women have exercised uncommon faith. Whether in the case of David or Jesus Christ, my saviour, the success of men’s adventure depends on women’s approval. In Akan indigenous religions, the spiritual map was significantly democratic that allowed all persons with the capacity to tap into the spiritual realm to serve as religious leader to affirm human general welfare. Also, because the religion was/is this-worldly-focused, rituals were more about a means of communication than essential spiritual exercise. 752 For this reason, women featured prominently in indigenous religions as leaders who served political elites, 753 as I mentioned in the case of Nana Oparebea and Nkrumah; others, such as Grace Tani, were among the earliest to have established African

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2006).

Karen Armstrong, A short history of myth (New York: Canongate Books, Ltd.,

751 Joseph O. and Andrew L. Whitehead, “Gendering (non)religion: Politics, education, and gender gaps in secularity in the United States,” Social Forces, 94, 4 (2016):1623–45. 752 Okot p’Bitek, African traditional reeligion in western scholarship (Kampala: East African Literature Bureau, 1970); Kwasi Wiredu, “Toward decolonizing African philosophy and religion,” African Studies Quarterly, 1 4 (1998): 17-46. 753 Brigid M. Sackey, New directions in gender and religion: The changing status of women in African independent churches (Lanham: Lexington, 2006).

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independent churches in the Gold Coast. She and Papa Kwesi John Nackabah founded the Twelve Apostles Church in the late 1917. 754 In all of Ghana’s major religions that I have studied, women are kingpins. Even as floor members, the success of every religion relies on the reproductive and socialisation roles women play. Without women, all religions and certainly humanity would perish. Historically, women have undertaken their role by acquiescing in the performance of both expressive roles and public duties. It appeared the complex binary between transcendent and immanent roles between men and women respectively angered women to be more visible in the public sphere— at least from the analysis of Simone de Beauvoir. 755 Since the turn of the millennium, several women have entered the formal sector of the economy. Either through the democratisation of western education or women’s freedom rights activism, women are in the transcendental realm, equally contributing Ghana’s economy with their male counterparts. 756 The above has complex implications for women in religion and public life. This is because economically highly accomplished women are less likely to end as single mothers; whereas economically less empowered women who choose to engage in conjugal unions, tend to end up as single mothers. 757 The instance when religion comes to the fore is when impoverished single mothers appeal to religion to address the challenges of keeping their families together. For complex reasons, several homes in urban Accra, as I have observed, are headed by women of all social classes. As women integrate both expressive and instrumental roles, several of them tend to dabble in religious rituals for help from the divine. Ordinarily, this should have been a good source of respite. But the instrumentalization and weaponization of religion in the hands of clever tricksters, who are also seeking survival, make women highly precarious. 754 Amos Darkwe Asare, “‘Singing the healing’: The rituals of the Twelve Apostles Church in Ghana,” African Music: Journal of the International Library of African Music 11.1 (2019): 113-116; Paul Breidenback, “Maame Harris Grace Tani and Papa Kwesi John Nackabah: Independent church leaders in the Gold Coast, 1914-1958,” The International Journal of African Historical Studies, 12, 4 (1979): 581-614. 755 Simone de Beauvoir, The second sex (trans. H.M. Parshley) (London: Jonathan Cape, 1953). 756 Nora Judith Amu, The role of women in Ghana’s economy (Accra: Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, Ghana, 2006). 757 Castro Ayebeng, Kwamena Sekyi Dickson, Abdul-Aziz Seidu and Joshua Amo-Adjei, “Single motherhood in Ghana: Analysis of trends and predictors using demographic and survey data,” Humanities & Social Sciences Communications, 9,1 (2022): 1-10.

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Several religious women are, therefore, highly susceptible to exploitation in the hands of religious mercenaries—usually men. It is either religious mercenaries sexually abuse women or exploit them financially. Either way, religious women tend to suffer from double jeopardy. As I observed the Agradaa’s issue (without any hasty valorisation), I saw that several of those believed to have been fleeced were women with babies, strapped to their backs. These are women who are in search of answers to Ghana’s economic morass—indexed by men who have neglected their duties to provide for the home. Unfortunately, it appears nowhere cool for women, as the women of God—including evangelists and prophetesses have been creative in developing a transactional religion that tend to privilege value for money over value for the dignity of the impoverished. In this transactional religion, it appears to me that, it is salvation that is by grace, but financial breakthrough is about no sentiment in business. The case of Evangelist Agradaa, therefore, points to a complex issue that involves the increasing cases of divorce rates—with majority women becoming single mothers, and inadequate state institutions to attend to the needs of these women. The legal regime, even with women representation on the bench has not benefitted women as expected. The neo-Pentecostal figures and other religious figures who commit all manner of atrocities appeal to the psychology of fear—cowering their members to submit thinking and reasoning to exploitation. On July 9, 2017, I attended the wedding ceremony of my cousin, and the events that unfolded at the wedding heightened my fears about the future of the church in Ghana, and broadly Africa. At the church, whose name I deliberately will not mention, the pastor conducted his Sunday service before the wedding. Because of the wedding, the pastor decided to hold captive visitors who were attending the ceremony at his church. So, he decided to engage in some form of exorcism. He claimed to have the spiritual prowess to know and control the realm of the spirit. Alas, he called the wife of my maternal uncle and said to her that she had been spiritually poisoned and that if she had not come to the church, she would have suffered from stomach cancer. I was sitting right in front of my uncle’s wife, so I was expecting that he would call me too—but for whatever reason (could it be my glasses), he did not call me. He offered a terse and quite rehearsed prayer and claimed that he had neutralised the spiritual poisoning. I felt uneasy about this development for three main reasons: first, I realised that the religious figure was only embarrassing the wife of my maternal uncle. Let us assume without admitting that he was right in his spiritual insight, could 331

he not have used a different approach to tell her about it? For instance, could he not have called her privately, and together with the leadership of the church, prayed with her? Second, I felt he wanted to use my maternal uncle’s wife to gain cheap popularity. Third, I felt that, by using my maternal aunt, he was capitalising on her vulnerability to instil fear in everybody in the church. All said, he did that to legitimise his authority and win the support of the gathering, whom he eyed as members. But more disturbingly, by connecting pain to spirituality, particularly witchcraft, these charlatans succeed in creating friction and international fragmentation in families. Following the logic of witchcraft, if an old woman is accused of being a witch, then by extension her daughter and granddaughters are also witches. 758 The existence of witch camps in some regions in Ghana is emblematic of a nation that is deeply rooted in superstition and religious extremism. 759 What happened at the church is a broader reflection of how these religious figures use religion to con unsuspecting and/or suspecting Ghanaians. Their modus operandi is to instil fear in the people. Another method they use is what I call theistic dualism. Here, they create a religious scene, where God and Satan are put on the pedestal of authority. In the distorted theology of these charlatans, Satan is not a creature of God, but a supreme authority that ruffles shoulders with God. Also, they try to over-spiritualise every issue, and it is that which makes them relevant. Here, if you have a headache, they should be able to attribute it to the devil. And once it is the devil that is responsible for your headache, and since the charlatan is the only person who can fight the devil, you obviously would have to invest your faith in him. This Zoroastrian dualistic theology is the trump card of these charlatans. 760 Similarly, they take advantage of the economic morass of Ghana. Quite a sizeable number of sick people can hardly afford to seek broader conventional treatment when they are sick. If you are sick and you fail to get the right conventional treatment, you will be compelled to go to these charlatans for their spiritual gimmicks. There is a slew of reasons for the thriving of these charlatans, but for the sake of space, I will just duel on one: which is the lack of sound theological teaching about pain, suffering, and evil. This is known in theological parlance as theodicy. The Christian faith is based on 758 G.K. Nukunya, Tradition and change in Ghana: An introduction to sociology (Accra: Ghana Universities Press, 1992). 759 Mensah Adinkrah, Witchcraft, witches, and violence in Ghana (New York: Berghahn Books, 2015). 760 Mary Boyce, Zoroastrianism; Their religious beliefs and practices (London: Routledge, 1979).

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suffering and pain. The Lord Jesus Christ was the chief of all sufferers, and the crime committed against him, which is deicide, is the highest form of crime ever committed in human history. Also, the early apostles went through significant pain. Most of them died very degrading deaths. This is to the extent that one of the mantras of the Christian faith is: “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.” Unfortunately, most of these religious figures, who ride on the fleecing stint of the prosperity Gospel, have distorted the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the centrality of suffering in the Christian faith. Gone were the days in the 1960s in Ghana, when Christians would sing songs like, “If I lose my mom; if I lose my dad; if I lose the love that they gave me; if I lose all that I may possess, I know that I still love Jesus.” Today, such songs have lost their meaning and become anachronistic. Most likely, several Ghanaians want material prosperity. I am not against material prosperity. My concern is how materialism and epicurean logic has taken hostage of Christians. Given this theology, Christians are unable to bear the brunt of living the Christian faith. Several Christians are simply not willing to die or suffer for the sake of the Gospel. These Christians, then, keep running uncontrollably seeking these religious figures. Some Christians have sustained the work of neo-Pentecostal religious figures as they remain oblivious to the fact that Church history teaches us that the church thrives under very severe and intense persecution. Christianity is not based on miracles and exorcism, however, we cling to them. Christianity is based on the person (deity and humanity of Jesus Christ) and work (crucifixion and resurrection) of Jesus Christ. As we go through pain, we should know that our lord Jesus Christ went through the worst of pains, and yet was without sin, and because of that, He can sympathise with us. Chasing miracles at the expense of authentic Christianity is injurious to our fate in the hereafter. In all this, the above trend portends a major challenge to the socialisation of children to take up responsible leadership roles in society. with religion, which several of these women would have considered a viable alternative to their difficulties, it is important to discuss how some of the neo-Pentecostal churches in Ghana, often founded and headed by individuals, with very poor administrative structures and theological training of leadership, has become the reverse of the Christian Reformation of the 16th century. In the next section, I discuss the historical and continuing relevance of the 16th century Reformation—marking its rebirth as an imperative to cure the injustice in the religious sector in Ghana.

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Reversing the gains of the reformation The religious exploitation in Ghana qualifies as a reversal of the Christian Reformation of the 16th century. The Christian Reformation of the 16th Century was important for breaking ecclesiastical powers. When Martin Luther, the torchbearer of the Reformation, posted his ninety-five theses, he did so in the hope of espousing Christianity as a relationship between God and man. He challenged the attempts by some of the religious leaders at the time to privatize the Christian faith. The religious leaders at the time found his attempt highly offensive and ordered his arrest and prosecution. The Reformation, which was based on promoting and endorsing the sanctity of the Christian faith, provided the linchpin for the translation of the Bible into multiple languages. The logic of the Reformation was that the Bible should be read and understood by any Christian in his or her language. Thus, the near deification of Latin as the dominant language of the church gave way to other languages being promoted. The efforts to have the Bible translated into the multiple languages of the world were met with hostility from the dominant religious figures at the time, and yet, with determination, the Reformers succeeded. Many of the Reformers had to put their lives on the line to have the Bible translated from Latin and Greek to other languages. Martin Luther’s initiative paved the path for other well-meaning Christians to critique and find an alternative solution to the dominance of the papacy system. Most importantly, the Reformation also reemphasised the particularity of Jesus Christ as the only mediator between God the Father and Man. The unbiblical attempts to reduce Christianity to humanistic philosophy and centralization of the gospel as the bona fide property of a few individuals were challenged by the ethos of the reformation. The works of the early missionaries in Africa and elsewhere in the world were influenced by the Reformation. Thus, when the missionaries came to Africa, they engaged themselves in meticulously translating the Bible into the local languages of Africa. The motivation for translating the Bible into African languages was meant to bring God closer to the Africans within his cultural context. To be sure, we may blame the early Christian missionaries for the both real and perceived wrong things they did, but there is one thing we cannot fail to appreciate: their introduction of Western education and the promotion of African languages. Following the spirit of the Reformation, the early missionaries deconstructed the spiritualization of the Christian faith,

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away from indigenous spirituality. 761 They, therefore, presented a comprehensive gospel, framed as the 3Hs (Heart, Hand, Head), to Africa. By the 3Hs, the early missionaries, provided the H eart of Africans with the gospel, provided the H and with a vocation/skill, and with the H ead , provided him with western education. Africa has much to be thankful for what the missionaries did—a fact that Ghana’s J.B. Danquah admitted in his Akan doctrine of God. As part of the positive impact of the 16th century Reformation, Christianity ceased to be the property of a few individuals, who controlled the minds of the populace because they held a monopoly over one language. Unlike Islam, which Ali A. Mazrui describes as a religion of chosen language, Christianity does not have a chosen language. 762 God is the creator of all languages; hence, He understands all languages. Unfortunately, some neo-Pentecostal Christian leaders are reversing the gains of the Reformation. In Africa, the type of neoPentecostal Christianity that is practised is a reminiscence of the dark days of European history. The whole idea of what is known in Ghana as “Akwankyerɛ” has given unalloyed power to the clergy. Most members of the clergy gleefully take advantage of church members. In Ghana today, it is common to hear a so-called pastor inviting people to church with money to buy their so-called anointing oil. Indeed, most so-called men of God are fleecing their church members. Sometime in November 2021, I boarded Trotro (commercial minibuses) from Atomic Junction to Haatso to visit a friend. On the bus, the driver had tuned in to one of the Twi-oriented Fm stations, and lo and behold, there was a so-called man of God, who was on air to preach. As is typical of most of these neo-Pentecostal men of God, the preacher spent the entire 30-minute time slot not talking about God, but rather promoting the sale of “anointing” oil. It is so sad, that much as the centre of gravity of Christianity is progressively shifting from the West to Africa and Asia, 763 one wonders whether Africans in particular are ready to carry the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ to the rest of the world. Can Africa be a credible mouthpiece of Jesus, the saviour of the elect? Sadly, in Africa, emotions take the place of logic in worship. This resonates with Leopold Senghor’s assertion that ‘Emotion is African, and reason/logic is Greek.’ In Ghana, several neo-Pentecostal pastors 761 762

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Meyer, Translating. Ali A. Mazrui, “Islamic and western values,” Foreign Affairs, 76, 5 (1997): 118-

763 Philip Jenkins, The next Christendom: The coming of global Christianity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).

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do not receive adequate theological training and consequently do not apply systemic and expository discussion of the Bible during church service. The pastor is the epitome of the Bible. Since the late 1980s, the rise of the “pray for me” syndrome has betrayed the ontological disposition of Christianity as a relationship between God and human beings. The display of opulence is also a major feature of the neoPentecostal Christianity in Ghana. It is not uncommon for some neoPentecostal religious figures to display the wealth they acquired from their religious trade. They primitively accumulate wealth, while the majority of their church members live in penury. These religious leaders take the tenth per cent (known as a tithe) of whatever their members, through hard work, get and yet they (the religious leaders) hardly redistribute. Certainly, for the older charismatic churches, some of their leaders redistribute wealth and liaise their members with the political elites for job opportunities—making these religious figures the patrons and Big men in the cities. 764 Among neo-Pentecostal Christians in Ghana, the Bible could hardly be considered the centre of attraction of the Christian faith. Sentimentality, displayed through din at the sight of miracles, as opposed to effective reasoning has obscured, masked, and significantly taken the place of systematic study of the Bible. Instead of the Bible being used as a divine instrument to lead men to God, it could be argued the Bible has become an instrument of oppression in the hands of the oppressor. The neo-Pentecostals in Ghana bring to the fore the manipulative tendencies of religion—which predisposes the laity to manipulation. No wonder, as I have already said Karl Marx could valorise religion as “the opium of the masses.” The misrepresentation of Christianity is reflective of the deeply rooted nature of corruption in Ghana— bringing out the paradox of a Christian majority in a country that is deeply routinised in all shades of corruption. Christians persons who identify as Christians are about 71% of the Ghanaian population, and yet, the country is floundering in poverty. Stunted growth has become a lot of the country. It is imperative to revisit the gains of the Reformation. The Protestant Ethics, which Max Weber talks about, significantly provided a basis for the development of Europe and America. 765 In Africa, the opposite happened, even though it is often said the Protestant ethic may have both preceded and positively impacted the work culture of the Akuapim people in the Eastern 764 John F. McCauley, “‘Africa’s New Big man? Pentecostalism and patronage in Ghana,” African Affairs, 112/446 (2012): 1-21. 765 Max Weber, The protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism (London: Routledge, 1992).

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Region—since the Akuapim were among the earliest to have touched base with the Basel missionaries in the 19th Century. 766 Religion and Covid-19 in Ghana The coronavirus (COVID-19) disease remains a challenge to the world. This is to the extent that the increasing rate of COVID-19related deaths is alarming and discomforting. Anyone could be a victim of the virus. My condolences to all bereaved families. But the challenge is not about the virus – since we shall die, anyway. The challenge is what will be said of us when we bid an eternal farewell to the material world. Equally true is what we will say about ourselves as we exit this world. In the last few days, I have been reflecting on the type of eulogy that matters, especially as we constantly face the threats of death. As I think about this, I cast wide the scope of my reading to incorporate the history of eulogy. Historically, all societies had eulogies to honour the dead with words of praise, love, and remembrance. The eulogies usually addressed the devastating effect of death on a community. James Daley in his edited book, Great Eulogies Throughout History, observed that ceremonies honouring the dead go back to humanity’s earliest days. The modern concept of the eulogy traces its history back to the funeral orations (epitaphios logos) of ancient Greece, in which a prominent orator would praise a deceased citizen’s virtues at a public burial ceremony. 767 Among the Akan, the word for a funeral, “ayie,” itself presupposes praise. This is precisely because, as I gathered from my in-depth interview with the paramount chief of Twifo-Heman in the Central Region in 2007, “ayie” is a contraction of “aye yi ye” – to wit, “to praise”. This chimes with the Akan practice of singing the praise of a deceased person. As part of eulogies, there were/are professional mourners (dating back to ancient Egypt) who sing dirges to praise the dead. 768 Akan women in Ghana have participated in funerals, inter alia, as professional mourners for centuries. 769 One of my maternal grandmothers was one 766 Brigid Sackey, “A protestant ethic among the Akuapem? A reflection,” Universitas, 11, 1 (2008): 169-192; Jon Miller, Missionary zeal and institutional control: Organizational contradictions in the Basel mission on the Gold Coast, 1828-1917 (London: Routledge, 2003). 767 James Daley (ed), Great eulogies throughout history (New York: Dover Publications, Inc, 2016). 768 Henry George Fischer, Egyptian women of the old Kingdom and the heracleopolitan period (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000). 769 Osei-Mensah Aborampah, ‘Women’s role in the mourning rituals of the Akan of Ghana,’ Ethnology, 38, 3 (1999): 257-271.

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such professional mourner; she and her team specialised in honouring the dead by recounting the deeds of the dead through dirges. In a contemporary funeral performance in Ghana, reading tributes has become an important source of recollecting the heroic deeds of the deceased. Through tributes, it is possible to peep into the life of the deceased. It is equally possible to identify the values and achievements of the person. As tribute reading becomes consolidated in funeral ceremonies in Ghana, some critics have raised concerns about sanitising/purifying the dead. For these critics, tributes obscure the real and a balanced account of the dead. They maintain that the practice makes saints of men whose lives were far from “perfect”. Some maintain that eulogies endorse lies, as relatives and friends construct dead persons as holy. It is said that a pastor once asked his congregation to live well so that he would not be forced to lie at their respective funerals. As a person, I sometimes see tribute reading to have complex implications. While it is good to highlight the good deeds of the dead, is it not possible that the living may take doing good for granted, since good will be said about them in the post-mortem, anyway? On rare occasions, tributes capture the evil deeds of the dead. Plus or minus, I think tributes help in reinforcing the need to live for others and contribute to building a just society. Certainly, tributes/eulogies are not meant to whitewash some of the fallouts of the deceased, as it is to encourage the living to emulate some of the good deeds the deceased was known for. Much as social commentators may continue to spill ink over the ontology of human beings – whether we are good or bad – the reality we are faced with is the human proclivity to sin. Solomon, the famous wise king, was right in observing that “There is not a righteous man on earth who does what is right and never sins” (Ecclesiastes 7:20). The above points to the fact that to sin is not a strange thing, though not encouraging. To be flawless as a human being is a brutal exception no human being can achieve. More so, to go out of our way to do good is equally worth recounting. In my understanding, it is the rarity of doing good on the part of human beings that reifies the importance attached to a eulogy. Thus, it is through eulogy that those alive are encouraged to reach beyond their innate fallibility to accomplish important feats. As we recount the good deeds of a deceased person, we chart pathways for those alive to follow. This means that eulogy has a material benefit. But, gauging from the Christian perspective, eulogy does not affect the state of the dead. While alive, God gives every human being the opportunity to repent and accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Saviour. Good deeds may have a material benefit, but we are not saved based on good deeds. 338

We are saved by grace alone, through faith alone and in Christ alone (John 3:16, Acts 4:12; Ephesians 2:8-9). In Christianity, therefore, salvation in Jesus Christ comes before any merits in doing good. As Christians, we believe that once we are saved by Christ, we feel the need to extend the love of Christ – through doing good – to our neighbours. It is because of this that, since the first advent of Jesus Christ, Christians have led the way in charity services. As a demonstration of the love of Jesus Christ, Christians have provided social services, including building hospitals and schools across the world. Nearly all the top universities in the world were directly built by Christians or individuals who were inspired by Christian virtues. In all of this, I am aware of the tiring debates over the motivation for doing good. Philosophers have questioned the reality of altruism – doing good for the sake of it. 770 Many have argued that none does good without a grain of self-interest. Biological evolution theory even goes further to show that selfishness is the heartbeat of life. The selfcentredness that clouds goodness affirms the Christian position that salvation in Christ must be anterior to doing good. Consequently, while scholars may split hairs over the motivation for individuals doing good, it is a truism that, in Christianity, we mostly do good for the sake of the goodness Christ continues to exercise towards us. Christians are saved for good works, not the inverse (Ephesians 2:10). Given the difference between doing good for the sake of selffulfilment and doing good for the sake of Christ’s grace towards Christians, I must restate that doing well merely for the sake of it does not have any salvific effect. Impliedly, from the Christian perspective, and apart from Christ, no amount of eulogising will save the dead. It is for this reason that I am interested in the tribute that binds. I am interested in the tribute that has eternal significance. At the end of his mission on earth and as he faced the inevitability of death, the Apostle Paul could boldly craft his own eternally binding eulogy, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award on me on that day – and not only me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing” (II Timothy 4:7-8). One day, I shall bow out of this world. I will take the exit door. It is either Christ coming to meet me on earth and take me away or I go to meet Him. Either way, this beleaguered world is not my native home.

770 Matthieu Richard, Altruism: The power of compassion to change yourself and the world (London: Atlantic Books, 2015).

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But what is important is the eulogy I scribble for myself. Will I confidently say I have kept the faith? Can I say I have fought the good fight and finished the race? At the end of my journey, will I count on the Lord’s crown or the materiality of my earthly achievements? The other eulogy that has an eternal value is what Jesus Christ Himself will say about us at the end of our earthly pilgrim. It will be glorious and satisfying to hear Jesus say to me, “Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness” (Matthew 25:23). As I pilgrim through life; as I advance in registering my support for the human race, my ultimate goal is to have two tributes that have eternal significance. A tribute that I will write about myself, highlighting how much faithfulness I have been to my Christian faith and the world, and the tribute from Jesus Christ. Dear Lord, give me the courage to stand for the truth of Jesus Christ. Grant me the grace to contribute to fostering human flourishing. But above all, keep me in you till you come or I come to meet you. Morality and law: Journalism and ethnocentric atavism in Ghana Journalism is a great profession. It is the profession that connects the other organs of government—the legislature, judiciary, and executive. This is because journalists do one of the things that make us human—our possession of intelligible vocal power. When we communicate, people get to know about it because of journalists. Communication is so important in all human societies, as they all began as oral societies. Without communication, ideas would not be birthed, there will be no invention, and there will be no governance. The importance of communication is central to defining our sociality. This is why people who hardly talk (no disrespect to persons with some form of disability) are considered the ugliest, even if they possess charming aesthetic qualities. The Baganda of Uganda says, “An ugly, talkative person, is better than a beautiful person who is reserved.” Among the Akan of Ghana and other ethnic groups, persons who are always silent are dreaded. This is because it is assumed they could be harbouring evil thoughts. It is also because if one has good thoughts, why is one then quiet? It is based on this that the Akan say that one’s head is full of darkness if one does not speak. As human societies advance in culture and governance, it becomes imperative to have channels that communicate rules and regulations. It is also important to pass on information about governmentality to citizens. In pre-industrial societies, different approaches were used to 340

communicate. These included symbols, music, drums, proverbs, and arts. Through these channels, information was circulated to the governed. 771 It also ensured that a two-way communication model was established between the rulers and the ruled. In addition to all this, some societies had a special person trained to broadcast power. Among the Akan and other groups, these persons were called akyeame. 772 Different etymologies have been deployed to explain the word. This includes the expression “ɔkyea asɛm no ma no men” to wit, “he can refine the statement to satisfy the ear.” This is precisely because it is clear that the akyeame was responsible for refining the language of communication (speech) between the rulers and the ruled. 773 In some cases, the akyeame had an additional function which was to shield the ruler from malevolent spirits. In our modern governance, we have individuals—men and women—who are trained to do a sort of work similar to the akyeame. These are journalists. They are responsible for writing and reporting. Like the akyeame, through their work as reporters and writers, journalists help in the broadcasting of power and dissemination of information. Given the leading role journalists play in shaping the governance, by mediating the interactions between the political elites and citizens, journalists are usually the subject of attack by dictators. Dictators mostly do have surreptitious approaches to “cowing” journalists into submission. As a sequel to this, they resort to the brutality of persons and the criminalisation of journalists (free speech). The world has a tall list of records of dictators who destroyed lives and barred all forms of opposition. But because journalists usually stand in the way of dictators, they become the object of attacks. In Ghana, we have witnessed many instances where some political elites sought to gag the rights of journalists. Ghana had a criminal libel, which was considered anachronistic to modern journalism, embedded in freedom of expression. The law seen as inimical to press freedom sat in a long history of the colonial administrators seeking to limit freedom of expression. The colonial government’s efforts at controlling freedom

771 Kwesi Yankah, Speaking for the chief: Okyeame and the politics of Akan royal oratory (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1995). 772 Ibid. 773 Kwasi Ansu- Kyeremeh, Indigenous communication in Africa: Concept, application and prospects (Accra: Ghana University Press, 2005).

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of expression were consolidated in the first Criminal Code in 1892, which was subsequently amended in 1934. 774 Fortunately, in 2001, the government of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), under the leadership of H.E. John Agyekum Kufuor repealed that law. This gave journalists significant freedom to practice their profession. It also significantly freed the National Media Commission, an independent body insulated from government interference. More specifically, it freed journalists from needless censorship. But the repealing of the criminal libel law does not necessarily translate into effective freedom for journalists. In many cases, the regimes of the NPP and the National Democratic Congress (NDC) have seen some retrogression in granting freedom of expression to journalists. This notwithstanding, some of Ghanaian citizens have concerns about the manner some journalists go about their duties. They struggle to understand why some journalists are not able to blend morality and law in the performance of their duty. Journalists are expected to report and write about issues without recourse to fear or favour. They are also to enforce objectivity, as they repudiate favouritism. While this is not always the case, due to the existential reality of confirmation biases, journalists are to ensure some degree of fairness in their duty. But it appears as if most of Ghana’s journalists straddle law and morality. On the one hand, they are required by the ethics of their profession (law) to report the case as it is. But they are also to apply their conscience to find out whether what the law requires them to do will serve the interest of Ghana. This is particularly crucial, especially at a time when some form of “primitive” ethnocentrism is threatening the country’s fragile national unity and democracy. There is a longstanding debate over the correlation between law and morality. These debates morphed into what is known in legal studies as the Hart-Fuller debate. 775 Hart argued that laws are no more than what societies formally promulgate. He, therefore, separated morality from law. Fuller, on the other hand, argued that laws must conform to fundamental principles embodied by natural law. Can law and morality be fused as one? Should an individual be governed by the law or morality, or both? Can one have a moral justification to disobey a law? What should govern the life of an 774 William Yaw Owusu, The Ghanaian media landscape: How unethical practices of journalists undermine progress (London: Thomson Reuters Foundation, 2012), p. 8. 775 Nicola Lacey, “Philosophy, political morality, and history: Explaining the enduring resonance of Hart-Fuller debate,” New York University Law Review, 83 (2008): 1059-1087.

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individual—law or morality? This debate has tested the minds of legal philosophers for decades. But the two eminent scholars, Hart and Fuller, have made important statements that are worthy of consideration. Hart observed that “law may be law but too evil to be obeyed.” 776 Fuller also observed that if the law is not fused with morality it ‘may become dangerous.” 777 These two statements signify the need to have a balance between law and morality, framed around one’s agency. In resolving the perceived incompatibility between law and morality, CH. Perelman, in Justice Law and argument observed that traditionally, studies dedicated to the relations between law and morality insisted, from a Kantian orientation, upon the following distinctions: “law governs external behaviour, morality emphasizes intention law establishes a correction between rights and obligations, morality prescribes duties which do not bring forth subjective right; law establishes obligations sanctioned by power, morality escapes organized sanctions.” 778 While the distinction between law and morality could be arid, I argue that the two are the same, but looked at from different perspectives. Morality is believed to hinge on God, whereas (positive) law is based on society’s invention. Broadly, the debate is over God—theocentric and man—anthropocentric as the sources of morality and law, respectively. The same debate animated the discussion in African philosophy over the source of morality: is it religion? Society? Conscience? 779 It is difficult to rigidly separate the three sources of morality. This is because religion—if we broadly define it to include atheism—is encompassing. Historically, as I have discussed, religion and politics had often been fused until the nineteenth century. I, therefore, argue that whether law or morality, they are all shaped by values and beliefs that a group of people share. For example, there may be a law permitting abortion or prescribing it. But that law is based on the worldviews of a group of people over the source of life and when life begins. Either way, law and morals are united in the fact that 776 H.L. A. Hart, “Positivism and the separation of law and morals,” Harvard Law Review, 71, 4 (1958): 593-629, p. 620. 777 Lon L. Fuller, “Positivism and fidelity to law: A reply to Professor Hart,” Harvard Law Review, 71, 4 (1958): 630-672, p. 631. 778 C.H. Pereman, Justice, law, and argument: Essays on moral and legal reasoning (London: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1980), p. 114. 779 Kwame Gyekye, “African Ethics”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2011 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = .

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they are informed by beliefs and values. Separating the two is to obfuscate the importance of beliefs and worldviews in shaping the law. Extrapolating this to the discussion on law, morality and journalism, it is difficult to understand how some Ghanaian journalists operate. Some of them, in the name of following the law or ethics of their professions, report all cases as it is. According to these journalists, it is not their responsibility to refine the words of the people they are reporting. It is here that I sincerely think journalists must apply morality. In the Akan idiom, it is said that “it is a wise person who is sent on an errand to deliver information, not a person with long legs.” This proverb indicates that it is not just about reporting, but wisely reporting a piece of news. There are many instances where some journalists have failed to apply morality to their profession. But in the of ethnocentric atavism, I will limit myself to Kobina Tahir Hammond’s alleged comment on ethnocentrism. In June-July 2020, K.T. Hammond, the New Patriotic Party Member of Parliament (MP), representing Adansi-Asokwa constituency of the Ashanti Region of Ghana, was reported to have questioned the citizenship of some of the people of the Volta Region. 780 By all standards, while the alleged statement attributed to K.T. Hammond was morally reprehensible, everyone knows that reporting such a case, even if it is true, had/has the potential of ruining the peace of Ghana—the collective good. This is because the timing of the report was wrong. Not only that, the journalist did not do due diligence before publishing his story. As Ghana was thrown into a near pandemonium, following the publishing of the news, I asked myself: couldn’t the journalist have applied morality to his work? Definitely, a journalist’s job is to report it as it is. But if “as it is” is detrimental to nationbuilding, a journalist is expected to apply morality. This is because the law may necessitate the reportage of such a piece of news, but is it moral? This question is imperative because the law deals with general issues while morality deals with specific issues. In other words, the law may not answer every question about what one should do or say at every moment, but morality could be so detailed 780 Ghanaweb (29 June 2020), “Parliament urged to question K.T. Hammond over ‘ethnocentric’ comments,” https://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/Parliament-urgedto-question-K-T-Hammond-over-ethnocentric-comments-993145; Ghanaweb (29 June 2020), “‘How can I brand the population of Volta Region non-Ghanaians’”— K.T. Hammond denies comment,” https://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/How-can-I-brandthe-population-of-Volta-Region-non-Ghanaians-KT-Hammond-denies-comment992659.

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that one is forced to personalise the implication of one’s action. For example, in reporting on K.T. Hammond’s alleged ethnocentric comment, the journalist could have asked himself, “Is it moral for me to report the story?” instead of “Is it lawful to report it?” With such questions in mind, a journalist would look beyond the law to immerse himself in the moral implications of his action. This means that while it may be lawful to report the comment by the MP, such an act could be too evil to do, since it may lead to greater harm. It would have also brought out the agency that the journalist is a human being with a conscience. From this perspective, the question then would be: “was it lawful and professional for the journalist to report the alleged comment?” The answer is, yes. But was it moral? The answer is no. To answer this question on the part of a journalist, he could move away from the law, which generalises to engage morality which individualises. So, instead of asking the question “what shall we do?” to reflect the profession of journalism, he could have asked himself, “what shall I do?” This would have compelled the journalist to look beyond the law to carefully weigh the implication of his reportage. It is against the fact that we straddle law and morality daily that the Apostle Paul rightly made the following important statement about law and morality. He framed this as follows: “Everything is permissible, but not everything is beneficial. Everything is permissible, but not everything is constructive. Nobody should seek his good, but the good of others” (I Corinthians 10:23-24). Paul’s observation clearly articulates the Christian view of human beings. In Christianity, human beings are neither gods nor animals. They are created, moral beings with an agency that is expressed in responsibility and duties. Individuals are expected to critically reflect on their actions, whether there is a law permitting it or prohibiting it. The law may permit what is morally reprehensible. The individual is to personalise all issues. This implies that while the law may sanction a practice, the individual should weigh it against his agency and moral conscience. This is precisely because the law is not neutral. The law reflects the moral views of the elite. The law is a codification of the moral views of a group of people. This makes it imperative for individuals to weigh the law against their values. More critical is Paul’s categorical statement that “Nobody should seek his good, but the good of others” (I Corinthians 10:24). This statement is significant for human society. This means that since the fall of man in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3), every human being is selfish. The idea of altruism for the sake of it or “do good for the sake of it” is simply idealistic. In the real sense of life, every human being 345

acts on selfishness. This is not to say that selfishness is entirely bad. In fact, from the perspective of evolution, organisms survive because of selfishness, not altruism. Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection is based on the idea that it is selfishness (not strength) that keeps a certain race from extinction, not altruism. It is, therefore, true that in life, we all put ourselves at the centre when we are saying something, acting or deciding. Whether in politics, business, family life (marriage) or religious activities, we are usually driven by selfishness. So, a journalist may be moved by his selfishness to report or not report a case. The reason may be fame, wealth, and public acceptance. Even so, it is the larger dangers associated with selfishness that Paul informs us that we should go beyond the boundaries of the law to do good. This, as I have said, is because the law itself is based on the values of the elite. Marxist legal scholars argue, for example, that the law is always meant to serve the interest of the bourgeoises, not the proletariat. Journalists should, therefore, always allow their moral values to judge their profession, not necessarily the law governing their profession. This, as I have said, is because journalism is central to all forms of governance. Their duty helps in the democratisation of all human societies since they relay information that is critical for governance. It is based on this that I relate the work of a journalist to the akyeame. The akyeame is expected to report as it is. But they are to apply morality. If someone says something that is very offensive and can lead to unrest, the akyeame must refine the statement without violating the core of the message. This is always difficult, but it is the reason akyeame office is not passed on biologically. Persons who are akyeame must demonstrate rare wisdom and proficiency in language and cultural nuances before they are offered the office. This is because their statements could make or unmake peace in society. It is also to say that both the akyeame and journalists overlap with the public enactment of power. In all this, do I seek to exonerate the alleged ethnocentric comment? Certainly, no. Instead, I am emphasising the role of the journalist in walking the tightrope of law and morality. Since the journalist broadcasts power, the duty is on him/her to exercise a moral conscience in what is reported. To end, let me restate that morality constitutes the linchpin of all human relations and the exercise of volition. This is to the extent that the late Kwame Gyekye, one of the eminent Ghanaian professors of philosophy, observed that among the Akan when one does anything untoward, it was one’s conscience that was appealed to not the law or 346

religion. This is roughly framed as follows: “So, given what you have done, how does your conscience speak to you?” 781 As human beings with some degree of agency, we should, therefore, allow our moral conscience to guide us. If you are a Christian journalist or communicator, always ask yourself in the course of duty, “Does reporting this story to glorify the Lord?” (cf. I Corinthians 10:31). Fighting ethnocentrism in Ghana: The Moses’ approach From the foregoing, I have reflected on the existential reality of ethnocentrism in Ghana that has plagued the country since late colonialism. I must begin by saying that ethnocentrism as a sociopolitical challenge is not a challenge of a minority ethnic group—in any case, a minority could be socio-politically more powerful than a majority, as it happened in South Africa under Apartheid, with minority white dominating over majority black. With this, I still maintain that ethnocentrism is so pervasive in Ghana and it finds expression in schools, workplaces, churches and mosques. It finds expression in the three arms of life – politics, sports, and religion. It is a systemic challenge that affects virtually everyone in one way or the other (either overtly or covertly). It has become a major obstacle in rooting out corruption in the country. As a social challenge, ethnocentrism is not just about a particular group suffering from social injustice. It is also about the experiences of individuals who are constituents of a group. In dealing with ethnocentrism, therefore, we need to take it from the perspective of individuals, as well as of groups. I am sure that almost all of us will have some experiences to share on the subject. I know people from some ethnic groups who have changed (or added to) their names because of the tempo of ethnocentrism in our country. I have a friend who changed his name to gain favour from a certain political party. I also know friends who name their children strategically to achieve a political end. I listened to the interview K.T. Hammond granted and I sense that there was bad journalism in practice. I guess journalists, in addition to their training, are to apply common sense to their profession. The Akan say that “in delivering a message, we send the wise, not the long-legged person.” Sadly, some of our journalists write and report on issues that are likely to set the nation on the false precipice of collapse. It is about time journalists applied Plato’s Allegory of the Chariot. They should exercise some degree of reasonability and rationality in their 781

Gyekye, “African Ethics.”

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report. If a politician says something explosive, must a journalist at all cost report it? What benefit would a bad comment from a politician do to the benefit of Ghana? Assuming K.T. Hammond said what the journalist reported him to have said, was the journalist under any obligation to have published the story? Couldn’t the journalist have exercised common sense in what he reported? In any case, what did the journalist stand to gain by reporting what K.T. Hammond is purported to have said if not to imperil Ghana’s fragile peace? As I said yesterday, we cannot pretend that it is only a minority that suffers from this social cancer. Ethnocentrism is a challenge that we all face in one way or the other. Let us not assume that Akan are in the position of privilege and others are on the margins of life. Ethnocentric cuts across ethnic groups. We all must, therefore, take a collective approach to deal with this challenge. Much as ethnocentrism is a transethnic challenge, it is a form of social injustice. It is straitjacketing people who are “different” from us. In Ghana virtually all ethnic groups are stereotyped. And since we are in the mood to root out ethnocentrism, I will not go into mentioning some of the needless profiles against ethnic groups. The result of ethnocentrism as a form of social injustice is that some people have failed to progress in their academic pursuit; some have lost their jobs or been denied employment; others have failed to marry their conjugal boyfriends and girlfriends; some children have been neglected and so on. As opportunistic as human beings are, some individuals tend to harvest ethnocentrism to achieve their parochial interests. It is either they pretend some ethnic groups are more privileged than others or they deploy ethnicity to advance their careers. In Ghana, things are so bad that ethnic groups fare differently, depending on which political party is in office. Given that no one particular group lives with ethnocentrism alone, we cannot pretend that the battle against this social malaise must be fought by only a certain group. We all have to be immersed in the fight. And to fight it well, I propose Moses’s approach to dealing with social injustice. Moses was born to Hebrew parents but brought up in the palace of Pharaoh. He grew up as a privileged person. He had everything he needed. Potentially, he was tipped to become the next Pharaoh. And like anyone who may have the illusions of being privileged, he did not need to worry about the plight of those who faced social injustice. He could have been indifferent to social injustice. But Moses became a different person. While he was in a position of influence, he decided to empathise equally with anyone who suffered from social injustice. His fight against social injustice was without political colouration. He fought injustice regardless of who was involved. 348

Moses first fight against injustice was directed as an Egyptian who was maltreating a Hebrew person (Exodus 2:11-12). He went straight in defence of the Hebrews because the Hebrew were experiencing injustice. What we can learn from Moses is that we have to defend our own when one of our own is suffering from any form of injustice. Here we must look within to protect ourselves. We can extrapolate this to include the fact that we must cherish who we are. We must love our culture and our identity. In the fight against ethnocentrism, we must not lose a sense of our identity. This is because there is dignity in our differences. It is also because self-hate is dangerous. The next time, it was a Hebrew against Hebrew, Moses went in defence of the Hebrew who was being maltreated (Exodus 2:13-14). He spoke against injustice. Here, what we can learn is that social injustice should be condemned even if it is perpetrated by one of our own. In fighting against social injustice, we should not shield members of our group who promote it. Impliedly, we should condemn ethnocentrism even if it is engineered and instigated by one of our own. This also means that we should not condemn ethnocentrism only to become proponents of it. If ethnocentrism against us is bad, it is also bad for us to direct it at others. Finally, Moses defended social justice among non-Hebrew people (Exodus 2:15-17). In this incident, Moses did not have any personal interest. It was about groups that were unrelated to him. He had no business poking his nose into the affairs of non-Hebrew people locked in acrimonious contests. But he went ahead and contested injustice. This means we must speak against ethnocentrism even if it does not happen to us directly. Moses action resonates with Martin Luther King Jr.’s sagacious observation that: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” We can glean from this that it is simply humane to fight against injustice because we share a common humanity. Stringing the Mosaic approach together, we must speak against ethnocentrism everywhere at all times without discrimination. We should be determined to stand for social justice regardless of the cost. Fighting against ethnocentrism can make us look like the fifth columnist to our ethnic members, especially when we critique them. Moses experienced it when his fellow Hebrew questioned Moses’s legitimacy to fight social injustice. Ethnic political actors can threaten us if we fight ethnocentric feelings in our ethnic group. Moses experienced that when he became a target of Pharaoh’s fury. Also, those we fight for may see us as seeking to patronize them. But in all of this, we should not be discouraged. We should fight ethnocentrism, 349

since it blights the peaceful interactions in Ghana’s pluro-ethnic space, especially in the regional capitals. The hope of Africa is not Pan-Africanism The year 2018 marked 60th anniversary since Kwame Nkrumah organised the All-African Peoples’ Conference in Accra, Ghana in 1958. 782 As part of the commemoration, different conferences, framed around the theme of Pan-Africanism, were held in many parts of the world. In Cambridge, the Cambridge University Ghanaian Society in collaboration with the Black Cantabs Society and African Studies and Scholars Union invited the voluble Pan-Africanist and civil rights advocate, Bob Brown, to the University on November 29, 2018, to speak on the subject of Pan-Africanism. The event was held at Wolfson College, under the theme: The Pan-African Promise: Past, Present and Futures. On 6-8 December 2018, another conference was held at Birmingham City University (Birmingham, UK), under the theme: ReEngaging Pan-Africanism Conference. The University of Ghana was not left out. The Institute of African Studies at the University also mobilised students, scholars, and activists to commemorate the event. As an African Studies student, the history of Pan-Africanism as an ideological and socio-political movement was part of my academic menu. I was taught to believe that the success of colonialism and neocolonialism was/is predicated on the disunity inherent among Africans. While many scholars and activists were not very clear about the focus and direction, as well as the philosophical grounding of PanAfricanism, the common thread that many Pan-Africanists shared and continue to share is that the hope of Africa is framed around continental and inter-continental unity. We are constantly told that once Africa is united, development (however we conceptualise it) would be the default consequence. Over the years, I have read quite a bit about Pan-Africanism. My provisional conclusion is that the ideological foundation of PanAfricanism informed some political decisions and initiatives. For PanAfricanists, like Edward Wilmot Blyden, Africans in Liberia, who had no touch with the English, needed some form of colonisation to bring them to the light of the ‘modern/civilised’ world—much as he celebrated African cultures and moral aptitude, he prescribed Christianity as a necessary faith to displace indigenous beliefs and

782 D. Zizwe Poe, Kwame Nkrumah’s contribution to Pan-Africanism: An Afrocentric analysis (New York: Routledge, 2003).

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practices. 783 Others like Marcus Garvey felt that it was only a strong bond between continental Africans and diasporan Africans, understood in the logic of the Back to Africa Movement that held the key to preempting the evils of colonialism. 784 W.E.B. Du Bois was rather of the view that Africans in the diaspora did not need to relocate to continental Africa before they could contribute to the progress of Africans anywhere in the world—Africa rather needs its talented tenth/the leadership class. 785 It is arguable that the ‘Fathers’ of Pan-Africanism did not have a clear sense of the direction of the movement. In the end, Marcus Garvey could not go to Africa, while Du Bois relocated to Ghana and died there. It was the 1945 congress in Manchester that saw the largescale involvement of continental Africans in the movement. 786 It was there that Kwame Nkrumah developed his philosophy of PanAfricanism to the full. When he became the president of Ghana, he organised the All-African Peoples’ Conference to encourage unity among Africans to liberate the rest of the continent from the yoke of colonialism. Many of the non-Ghanaian participants went to their respective countries to engender the struggle against colonialism. It is, therefore, not coincidental that by the 1960s, many countries in Africa had had their political independence from colonialism. Over the years, ethnic, linguistic, religious, economic, political, and ideological pluralities in Africa have been identified as formidable obstacles to achieving the ideals of Pan-Africanism. 787 My understanding is that right from the beginning, many of the leaders in Africa did not define clearly what was to be the main means of uniting the continent - political or economic, or both. Regardless of the successes or perceived failures of the Pan-African ideals, I am inclined to think that the hope of Africa is not Pan-Africanism. Africans could unite, but if they ignore a remapping of the attitudes of Africans, the quest for development would continue to be a fleeting illusion. Until we eschew corruption, destructive partisan politics, religious fanaticism, 783 Edward Wilmot Blyden, Christianity, Islam and the negro race (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1967/1887). 784 Marcus Garvey, Message to the people: The course of African philosophy (ed. Tony Martin) (Massachusetts: The Majority Press, 1986); A Jacques Garvey, Garvey and Garveyism (Kingston, Jamaica: United Printers Ltd., 1963). 785 W.E.B. Du Bois, The souls of black folk (ed Brent Hayes Edwards) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). 786 Hakim Adi, Pan-Africanism: A history (London: Bloomsbury Academy, 2018). 787 Guy Martin, “Dream of unity: From the United States of Africa to the Federation of African Studies,” Journal of African and Asian Studies, 12, 3 (2013): 169188.

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ethnocentrism, nepotism, pilfering, self-centeredness, afrophobia, and the practice of sorcery, no amount of touting the ideals of PanAfricanism will save the continent. These were the attitudes that lightened the burden of the exploiters of Africa. It is also these attitudes that have enslaved Africans in the quagmires of poor sanitation and squalid living conditions, abject poverty, illiteracy, diseases, political famine, and conflicts. While I do not underestimate the debilitating force of neocolonialism, the West or East cannot exploit Africans without the complicity of some Africans. History informs us that slavery and colonialism were made possible with the full collaboration of some Africans. 788 Until Africans allowed negative attitudes to divide their front, no European or Arab could exploit them. Consequently, I hold the view that the progress of Africans is not Pan-Africanism. The hope of Africa will come from a change of attitude. Instead of harping on vague concepts and ideologies, Africans should enforce the ideal human and divine values that will propel the progress of the continent. I suggest the three main solutions to redefining and re-engaging the development of the continent. First, instead of reinventing the dead gods of Kemetism (which most Pan-Africanists advocate), African Christians should invoke the ideal values of the Christian faith. The Christian values of equality, checks and balances, selflessness, love, peace, gentleness, unity and equality, we-feeling, kindness, and humility should be brought to the public sphere. There should be ‘secular’ institutions, working alongside religious institutions, to enforce these values. Second, Christians should eschew partisan politics. They should direct their focus and energy to support any political party that has the burden and aspiration of developing the continent of Africa on sound Christian ethical values. In relation to this, Christians should go into politics to contribute to infusing Christian values into the African political system. The Bible says that a nation is built on the pillars of righteousness. Sin is a reproach to any nation. Finally, Christians should not shy away from counteracting falsehood, enshrined in neotraditionalism, neo-paganism, and Kemetism, with the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The truth of Jesus Christ frees us from the materialistic and epicurean bent that generates corruption and unhealthy competition. Consequently, instead of focusing on the parochialism and defunct ideals of Pan-Africanism, Africans should focus on moral and ethical 788 Walter Rodney, West Africa and the Atlantic slave-trade (Nairobi: East African Publishing House, 1967).

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reengineering to birth the African renaissance. The challenge of Africa is not political, but moral and ethical. Sound Christian ethics alone can unite Africa, not some politically charged and emotive ideologies. While Africans may disagree and split hairs over political and economic ideologies, at least, we can all agree that cheating, corruption, pilfering, selfishness, and partisan politics are a reproach to the progress of the continent. Since these are all ethical issues (springing from corrupt hearts), it reinforces my call for moral and ethical reengineering in Africa. In the end, we need the Lord Jesus Christ, who alone can transform hearts and heads. Anyone interested in knowing how Christian values changed and positively shaped the world of England should read Charles J. Ryle’s: “Christian Leaders of the 18th Century.” A cup of water in my name: Jesus, Darwin and Alexis de Tocqueville The need for moral reformation to transform Africa also comes against the background how Africans recuperate the Christian virtue of altruism. Until the collapse of the Soviet World in 1991, the EuroAmerican world had devised ways of controlling the world. They had, as usual, incorporated revitalised theories of their ancestors, such as Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Charles Darwin, John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, and Rousseau into sustaining global asymmetric relations. So, historically, whether directly or not, these theories had provided a strong intellectual basis for the western world to exploit the world of the Other—particularly Africans. Whenever the West had done enough damage to the rest of the world and when they took a superficial recession to devise new exploitative strategies, they turn against themselves—leading to an internal contradiction. The internal contradiction in the West leads to the spillovers in the so-named Western civilization—often creating ideological cleavages. Consequently, at the end of the so-named World War II in 1945, the West had to turn against themselves as another level of façade to refill and refuel to do more damage to the rest of the world. The tension resulted in the superficial ideological division of the Euro-American world into the capitalist West and Socialist East. Either way, each side of the divide did not significantly benefit any African country other than the Euro-American world. Unfortunately, the ideological division in the ideological world led to the creation of a bipolar world, forcing nations to either belong to the West or the East. The force of such dualization was so strong that African leaders were to choose between the two worlds. 353

Nkrumah, who initially adopted a neutral ground (non-alliance) with “We face neither the East nor West, we face forward” 789 had to capitulate to the force of the East. Nevertheless, neither the West nor East has significantly helped any African nation, as these ideologies are part and parcel of the old agenda of the Euro-American world to milk the world. This is precisely because it is either the West lays claim to liberalism to promote all manner of debased cultural practices and economic manipulations or the East sacrifices culture at the altar of economic interest to stifle belief in God and bracket the world out of the control of the Creator – which leads to the mugging of human rights. In a conflagration of a superficial bipolar world, the “collapse” of the East in 1991 reinforced America’s sense of superiority over the world. Their fang capitalism is collapsing the world. 790 Human civilization is, therefore, under threat as everything has been monetised, commodified, and weaponised. The political economy of the current coronavirus pandemic has clearly demonstrated the fault lines of western late capitalism. As the world continues to head towards a capitalist-induced apocalyptic collapse, I reflected on Jesus’s words in Matthew 10:42, which reads: “Indeed, if anyone gives you even a cup of water because you bear the name of Christ, truly I tell you he will never reward.” I simply summarise the text as, “If you give anyone a cup of water in my name.”

In the world of fawning capitalism, framed as different levels of neoliberalisation, everything, as I have said above, has been monetised. It is nearly becoming impossible for people to do kindness without reducing kindness to monetary value. Everything is about money and money is about money. Money has, since the rise of the modern world, become the god/goddess of the world. With the deification of money, capitalism has become the philosophy that routinises it. This development is undoubtedly a dangerous prelude to the collapse of human civilization. The threat the deification of money portends to the world is such that money is 789

https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/acref/9780191826719.001.000 1/q-oro-ed4-00007911. 790 Ha-Joon Chang, 23 things they don’t tell you about capitalism (London: Penguin Books, 2010); Samir Amin, Ending the crisis of capitalism or ending capitalism? (trans. Victoria Bawtree) (Cape Town: Pambazuka Press, 2011); Samir Amin, Capitalism in the age of globalization: Th management of contemporary society (London: Zed Books, 2014/1997).

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illogical as money is ontologically inferior to human beings. This is so because people invented money. Therefore, it is crude idolatry to reduce people to the likeness of money. Money would be the pinnacle of idolatry and would plunge the world into utter destruction. It is incredibly dangerous. To reverse the dangers capitalist commodification of social relation pose to humanity, which Karl Marx called “commodity fetishism” it is important that we take a critical look at Jesus’s statement. Jesus’s statement is inviting us to do good in His name. This means that when we do good, we should do it for the sake of Christ. We should reflect on how Christ left His glory to die for us. We should consider the fact that we are nothing without God and yet God saved us. We also remember that God did not and does not owe any of us salvation, apart from His justifiable damnation. Yet, He saved us – making salvation purely a matter of grace alone, through faith, and in Christ alone. So, let us do good, because of Jesus’s ultimate goodness towards us. More so, we should do good without any monetary consideration because there is nothing we own (not the centrality of our salvation) that was given to us by Jesus Christ. The second reason we should do good in the name of Christ is that, as human beings, we are decidedly selfish. Several academic and popular works, including the nineteenth-century classic work of Charles Darwin’s “On The Origin of Species” indicate that human beings are simply selfish. Meanwhile, a contemporary of Charles Darwin, Alexis de Tocqueville, who was a French aristocrat and political analyst, studied the role of religion in America around the same time that Darwin went around the world to study nature. Interestingly, and rightly so, de Tocqueville in his work on American Democracy observed that religion, specifically Christianity, was/is the basis of human altruism – making American civil society a possibility. So, Darwin and de Tocqueville appeared to have arrived at contradictory conclusions between selfishness and altruism as they went out in their exploration of a world where religion had to be “relegated” to the background, as a result of the secularisation of politics in the eighteen-century. Nevertheless, both eventually agreed that altruism is stronger than selfishness. For example, Darwin was right in his observation that for organisms to survive as individuals, they needed to be selfish (natural selection). But to survive as a group, based on his observation of a sonamed tribal group, they needed altruism. Unfortunately, as someone who had thrown God out of the window, he concluded that altruism may be possible in the realm of a 355

miracle. The opposite of Darwin’s selfishness is de Tocqueville’s religion-induced altruism. But since religion can be manipulated and indeed been manipulated to perpetuate human suffering, including enslavement, we must all do good for the sake of Jesus Christ. We can do good only when we look unto Christ who has given us an ultimate reason to do good because He will reward our kindness, generosity, and love for humanity. If we give water in His name, He will reward us with eternal bliss. That, He historically resurrected from death, after doing us the ultimate good (saving us from sin) means He will not only bring us to life after sacrificing for others, He will bring us to glory. The sacrificial love Christ has for us in laying His life for us implies that when we sacrifice ourselves to the point of death to “give a cup of water in His name,” we shall live. Consequently, the worse that can happen to us (death) because of doing good in His name will lead to the best that will ever happen to us. With the above, it is clear that the pagan Greek philosophy that “We should do good for the sake of goodness” is simply impossible. When human beings do good without God as the main reason, every good will end up on the axis of neo-liberal exploitation. Friendship would be reduced to “friendship of convenience,” while the Satanic trinity, “I, me, and myself” will reign supreme, with religion turning to a transactional cult of commodifying prayers, prophecies, and blessings. As we have entered this year, my goal is to continue to “give a cup of water in the name of Christ.”

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Chapter 6 Concluding Thoughts Verse I Oh oh aah ooh ah ah Call me Kofi Kinaa Friday chapel all night Saturday na ye wo club no mo Yɛ le yɛ more things Women, shoker bugu cup no mo Ade ye ship na ɔde Bible no baa yɛ no Nkrɔfo sie nara nso di schnapp no bɛ yɛ Nti girls na wo duro chapel a wo kɔ yɛ no Bra bɛ hwɛ, wɔn nso a na club no wo kɔ yi Chorus Nti Nyame som paa na yɛ le som yi a? ho a?

Bisa wo nua, ne bisa woa so wo Nyame som paa na yɛ le som yi

Ma Jehovafo no rebaa ne ɛrɛguani Nti Nyame som paa na yɛ le som yi a? Nae ɛtale obi nu kun dɛ plaster yi a?

Nyame som paa na yɛ le som yi

Friday chapel all night, Saturday, we are all in club We are doing more things, amen, shocker in the cup The ship which brought the Bible People say, is the same ship which brought Schnapp So the girl who came to the church service Come and see, is the same girl who came to the club

So, is it God that we are worshipping like that? Ask your brother and you your sister Is it God that we are worshiping like that? And you are running away because of Jehovah Witness So is it God that we are worshiping like that? And you are attached to someone’s husband like plaster Is it God that we are worshiping like that? Take care of it for me and you are killing him to take to his house

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Hwɛ so ma me a ɛleku no agye ne dan yi Verse II Me sie atamuda paa… Ɛda a Nyame bɛba physical Sɛ won consider pa dia… Anhwɛ na heaven wɛn ya nipa Cos, nokware no wɔ hɔ Nso asɔfo yi w’ntumi w’nka Sikasɛm ne nti chapel ahiafoɔ ntumi w’mba

I said judgement day The day God will come physical If he didn’t consider, He might not get a single soul in heaven Because the truth is there, but the pastors refuse to say it Because of money, the poor are unable to come to church They are unable to come For that place, things fall apart When you say, they say anointed men touch But members are unable to attend some

W’ntumi w’mba oo Ɛho mpo na ndi the things fall apart Ɛka a wo sie anointed men touch Chapel yi w’wɔ schools paa Chorus Nyame som paa na yɛ le som yi a? W’ma agyanka na asɛm ayɛ mɔbɔ yi Nti Nyame som paa na yɛ le som yi a? Wo nua fom wo a, atumi fa nkyɛ no yi a?

Nyame som paa na yɛ le som yi

Don Nana Amu ade na wo de ahyɛ bitters yi, asey Verse III Hwɛboo sofo yegyi woa wo ho Adi yi a, ɛka yi ɔda woa w’nu Wo ara hwɛboo na di ye ɔda woa’nu Hwɛboo sɔfo yegyi woa wo ho Ɔsie ɔyɛ American ne Muslim, ɔnom bibiabi Nkurofo w’adi yi ɔda woa w’nu

So, is it God that we are worshipping like that? We have made the life of an orphan pathetic So, is it God that we are worshipping like that? If your neighbour offends you, you are unable to forgive him or her So, is it God that we are worshipping like that? So, you the mixed Don Nana Amu (drink) with bitters, bro!

Hwɛboo, pastor, we claim it from you This debt, it is a burden to you Hwɛboo, pastor, we claim it from you You claim you are American and Muslim and yet your take every liquor

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Hwɛ, ɛhu Christian, ɛhu Muslim, ɛhu nkaefo no Ɛhu sɔfo, ɛhu komfo basaa Kataasihyɛ, prɔyɛ, bɔ na ɔhyɛ nso wa nyɛ MP wo kurom kwan no nsu tɔ a pakyaa Obia sie ɔyɛ bad man Ɛno nti lecturer pɛ sɛ ɔno wo da Ansaa na wa ma wo pass mark For money we go shed blood Nyame bɛ yɛ, ɔbɛ kye, yɛ ntum, yɛ pɛ no fast fast Nti (so) fast life, fast cars, fast trap pot Church service hɔ na yɛ hu snap chat calls 31st ɔwo church, ɔdi ne ho a ma Nyame On the 3rd na w’gye no ho kɔ Trek Part time Christian, you want fight full time devil You dey joke

You see a Christian, you see a Muslim, you see the rest, you see the pastor, you see the indigenous priest Corruption and promises, but the road to the MPs hometown is a mess Everyone says he is a bad man The lecturer wants to have sexual affair Before they give marks Because of money, we shed blood God will do; God will provide, but we can’t wait, we want it fast So fast life, fast cars, fast trap pot Church service, it there we find chat calls 31st service, he claims to have offered himself to God On the 3rd, he liberates himself to go on trek Part time Christian, you want to fight full time devil You are a joke

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I have advanced an argument about the need to infuse religion into politics; however, on a balanced scale, I now want to summarise my argument by looking at the paradoxical question I posed in the introductory chapter: Why is the overwhelming presence of religious people not morally transforming the public sphere for human flourishing? This question has received extensive attention, particularly from those who discharge their anger against charismatic Christianity. Nevertheless, the conversation has not escaped musicians in the cities. Both gospel and popular musicians have discussed the paradox in their compositions. For me, the most recent is Kofi Kenaata’s Things Fall 791 Ghana Music (18 October 2019), “Lyrics: Things fall apart by Kofi Kinaata,” https://www.ghanamusic.com/audio/lyrics/2019/10/18/lyrics-things-fall-apart-bykofi-kinaata/.

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Apart. Martin King Arthur, a 32-year-old songwriter from Takoradi in the Western region, borrows from Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, an objective critique of colonialism and African cultures, to criticise imprecise and oscillate-minded Christians. It is the perceptiveness of Kenaata’s critique that made me decide to begin this chapter with his hit song, Things Fall Apart—though I have no intention of analysing it. To respond to this question, I will pay particular attention to Christianity for two main reasons. First, Christians constitute the majority of Ghana’s religious constituency. Secondly, unlike every other religion, Christianity is radically counter-cultural, as it calls on devotees to renounce any attempts at mixing the world with the eternal kingdom. Throughout scripture, from the Old Testament to the New Testament, the Bible is littered with stories of people of faith who left everything to follow God. God was signalling to the world through Abraham, who left the family, community, and thriving land of his birth—the fundamental bases of the human self and collective identity—that we must submit ourselves and love Him more than anything else. By responding to God’s call and leaving everything, Abraham submitted himself to God, who called him. While Abraham was not sure of God’s promise and, indeed, died without having it all fulfilled, he was willing to respond to God’s call to be unique in the world: “Walk before me and be righteous.” I have already discussed this, so I won’t go any further. It is also very instructive that Abraham appears after four narratives. Following Abraham, we read about Moses, who, like Abraham, abandoned the wealth of the palace of the foremost political power at the time to heed God’s call. All of the stories depict a counter-cultural movement in which people are responding to God’s call by turning their focus away from the world of materialism and towards the future eternal city. We read about John the Baptist, who preceded Jesus Christ and gave up worldly pleasures to live in the wilderness before Christ. John the Baptizer made the same decision as the earlier patriarchs to exhort urban dwellers to flee the corruption of the city and join the joyous life of the wilderness. Christ was called to the wilderness before He began His ministry. He experienced temptation in the wilderness, and the nature of the temptation is very instructive. The Devil showed Jesus all of life’s pleasures, including food, wealth, and fame. The Devil believed that by using these pleasures, he could persuade Jesus to abandon His mission of saving souls from eternal damnation. Jesus graciously passed the test, renounced the world, and the Bible claims that soon after, the angels ministered to Him. 360

It was after that encounter that Jesus re-entered the city to begin His ministry. Life in the city is always complex. Cities have historically been culturally diverse, with law rather than moral values shaping city life. In other words, city life is based on transactions and how one could be smart to deploy the laws of the land to one’s advantage, as opposed to covenantal love that fosters care and we-feeling. City life is also very lawless; as the domain of competition over money and power, city dwellers tend to be very mean and inconsiderate. It is about “everyone for himself, God for us all.” Life in the city is, therefore, very tempting for everyone. The quest for survival against the obvious economic hardship in the city makes city life a true test of one’s faith as a countercultural Christian. Every now and then, young people migrate from the countryside to the cities in search of unavailable jobs. Several of them, out of disappointment and struggles over the crumbs of life, end up in socially ill practices, such as prostitution and armed robbery. Away from parental and gerontocratic control, young people in the cities determine their moral boundaries and contours of life—often informed by some form of pragmatism. Several young people experiment with the use of illegal drugs and herbs, depending on what it takes to survive in the city (such as marijuana). In my observation, the majority of these young people in Accra tend to drift away from both faith and natal family virtues, although a few of them genuinely engage in legal business. The challenge in the city is also compounded by the therapeutic culture of the 1970s, where analysts focused more on the external causes of deviance than on internal proclivities and intentions. On radio, television, and social media, analysts exonerate young people of needless partisan politics and laziness. In the last half-decade, Ghanaian industrialists have complained about the poor work attitude of Ghanaian youth. The most recent remark came from a champion of young people, Daniel McKorley, also known as McDan. As a business magnate and Chief Executive Officer of the McDan Group of companies, he observed on January 20, 2023, that Ghanaian youth are lazy and oversleep. As usual, the young people took him to the cleaners and very much insulted him, charging him with not suffering enough in life. Kafui Dei, the host of the GTV morning show, called McDan to address a number of the criticisms and allegations made by young people. The young people who continued to insult him in the GTV Facebook chat box were unsatisfied with his responses, being aware that most of the labourers at Kasoa construction sites are young people from Ghana’s neighbouring Francophone countries—Togo and Benin. Regrettably, some people who have sway over academics and politicians take advantage of the nation’s ongoing economic difficulties 361

to easily persuade young people to participate in occasionally very pointless street protests. In one of such street demonstrations, the lead organizer, a Cambridge doctoral student, signalled that he would arm his friends. Any attempts at justifying such a reckless call did not sit well with the majority of Ghanaians. Out of frustration, he commented on the coup that has landed him in trouble. As I conclude this book, I return to Augustine’s diagnosis of the ills of the earthly city. I agree with Augustine that the moral ills that destroyed Rome and every other city were caused by human self-love. I take the liberty to cite Augustine liberally on this: Therefore, two cities have been created by two different loves: the heavenly city by a love of God that goes so far as to loathe self, and the earthly city by a love of self that goes so far as to despise God. The one seeks glory from men, the other finds its highest glory in God, the Witness of our conscience. As a result, the one exalts itself, the other exalts the Lord. The one lifts its head in its glory; the other says to its God, ‘Thou art my glory, and the lifter up of mine head. In the Earthly City, princes are as much mastered by the lust for mastery as the nations which they subdue are by them; in the Heavenly, all serve one another in charity, rulers by their counsel and subjects by their obedience. One city loves its strength as displayed in its mighty men; the other says to its God, ‘I will love Thee, O Lord, my strength. 792

Augustine brings out the issue far better than anyone, I think, could do. No wonder he is considered the greatest Christian theologian since the apostles. 793 It is the love for the pleasures of life that leads several of us into evil, envy, and creating a toxic environment that suffocates human flourishing. It is self-love that usually inspires us towards destruction. While self-love is also good for our preservation, the negative effects of self-love on an already fallen human being are dangerous and remain a major challenge to the world. For this purpose, the issue about the paradox between the overwhelming Christian presence in Ghana and the enduring legacy of corruption is about human nature. It is about people who are hardly convinced by the Christian faith. It is about the so-called men and women of God who leverage people’s vulnerability to advance their self-love pleasures. It is needless to say that people who patronise such men and women of God 792 Augustine, The city of God against the pagans (edited by R.W. Dyson) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 632. 793 Tony Lane, A concise history of Christian thought (New York: t&t Clark, 2006), p. 47.

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also do so for their interests. The recent case of Agraada that I talked about is a clear example. In the end, it is about riding on the popularity of Christianity and its history to advance personal goals. As a result, Christianity in Ghana and the rest of the world involves both social cost and social pressure. It is about whether people see any benefit in identifying with Christianity or whether they see a cost. In Ghana, I dare say that several people identify with Christianity because of social pressure and social benefit. The overwhelming presence of Christian culture compels nearly everyone to identify with it for their own interests. Since growing up in the 1980s, I have observed that nearly all the herbalists on our commercial buses have adopted the Christian mantra as a strategy. Whether they believe what they quote from the Bible or the prayers in Jesus’ name that they offer, they always begin with a text from the Bible and a prayer in Jesus’ name. Through that, they gain entry into the audience. I have seen the same practise among even Muslim herbalists in Madina and Nima. It is also along this same path that I think politicians also use the name and culture of Christianity to advance their political interests. It is also for this reason that several people go to church or publicly wear things with Christian themes and symbols. A female member of one of Ghana’s classical Pentecostal churches was involved in a morning brawl with a neighbour, according to the story. When a female member of her church greeted her with the usual greetings for the women’s wing, “Kronkron ma awurade” (to holiness unto God), she responded, “Ma awurade aaa,” stressing her discontent in “aaa,” and continued, “ennye nsemfo” (is it not nonsense) to return to her emotional discharge against her belligerent. It is the same popular culture of Christianity in Ghana’s public sphere that, I think, makes several people chicken out of Christianity once they do not realise any social service or feel their faith threatened. It is the same reason that Christians would openly renounce Christ in favour of a religious market that promises more goodies. Meanwhile, elsewhere in the western world, where Christian culture is in the minority, it costs money to be a Christian. Now and then, we read stories about Christians in America, China, and the Arab world, including Iran, who are persecuted because of their profession of the Christian faith. At the same time, Christianity in countries where Christians are heavily persecuted is growing in leaps and bounds, confirming Tertullian’s observation that “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.” Against the above context, we can make sense of what Christ said: “Anyone who accepts me must deny himself or herself and embrace the cross.” Christ also called us to persecution, as the world will see us 363

as deeply counter-cultural. When in an office, we do not steal, we work hard against every oppression, and we will be the target of persecution. When we refuse to identify with the evils of the world, we will be treated as evil. As I have said in my introduction, even so-called Christians will be the first to cast the first stone when one of them decides to remain loyal to the heavenly cause. Admittedly, therefore, Christianity comes across as a difficult religion or faith. As a countercultural faith, it demands perseverance and communion with like-minded Christians who prefer to read and practise John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress to any pretentious prosperity gospel. To end my discussion, I cite the benediction of my church in Birmingham, England, St. Stephen’s and St. Wulstan’s, which states; We go into the world to walk in God’s light, to rejoice in God’s love and to reflect God’s glory. So may the love of the Lord Jesus draw us to himself, the power of the Lord Jesus strengthen us in his service, the joy of the Lord Jesus fill our hearts; and may the blessing of God almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, be among us and remain with us always. All Amen. 794

794 It is a combination of two of the prayers from the Church of England’s Patterns for Worship resources – which has a great variety of helpful and encouraging material.

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“This book is a testament of Dr Charles Prempeh’s academic excellence, witting proficiency, his open and critical mind and ability to blend Philosophy, Religion, Politics, History, Economics and others in one book in a captivating analysis that must be read with both open and critical mind whether as a student, teacher, academic, pastor or whatever your background.” KOFI ATA, Cambridge, UK “The Political Economy of Heaven and Earth provides an insightful theoretical foundation of religion and politics in public governance.” THERESA BEBAAKU DERY, PhD, Medical Physicist/Research Scientist, Accra “The level of scholarship Dr Charles Prempeh has expressed in his book is breath-taking.” DR EMMANUEL FREDERICK ASHONG, New Jersey, USA “Dr Prempeh has provided us with an academic feast healthy for politicians, pastors, students, lecturers and all who want to fearlessly contribute to Ghana’s political economy.” REV. CHRISTIAN TSEKPOE (PhD), Pentecost University, Accra “… a must read for everyone seeking to have a multidimensional understanding of contemporary issues in Ghana.” PATRICIA SERWAA AFRIFA, PhD Carnegie Corporation of New York Fellow (2021)

DR CHARLES PREMPEH is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Cultural and African Studies, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi-Ghana. He holds a PhD in Theology and Religious Studies from the University of Cambridge, UK, since 2021. Before Cambridge, he obtained B.A. African Studies (First Class Division) from the University of Cape Coast, Ghana in 2008; MPhil African Studies from the Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana in 2011, where he was also awarded the prestigious Agyeman-Duah Award in 2010 for academic excellence. Prempeh has researched and published extensively on various aspects of society in Ghana. Langaa Research & Publishing Common Initiative Group P.O. Box 902 Mankon Bamenda North West Region Cameroon

CHARLES PREMPEH

In March 2017, the president of Ghana, Nana Addo Dankwa-Akufu announced his intention to build a national cathedral to the people of Ghana. The announcement elicited watertight counterarguments that morphed into two a priori re-litigated assumptions: First, Ghana is a secular country and second, religion and state formation are incompatible. Informed by a frustrating paradox of an overwhelming religious presence and concurrent pervasive corruption in the country, public conversation reached a cul-de-sac of “conviction without compromising.” In The Political Economy of Heaven and Earth in Ghana, Charles Prempeh deploys the national cathedral as an entry point to provide both interdisciplinary and autoethnographic understanding of religion and politics. The book shows the capacity of religion, when properly cultivated and curated as a worldview to answer the why questions of life, will foster personal, moral, collective and ontological responsibility. All this is needed to stem the tide against corruption, commodity fetishism, environmental degradation (illegal mining—galamsey), heritage destruction and religious exploitation. Prempeh recuperates a historical fact about the mutual inclusivity between religion and politics—politics helping to manage differences, while religion provides a transcendental reason for unity to be forged for human flourishing. Separating the two is, therefore, ahistorical and an obvious threat to the intangible virtues that answers, “why and how” questions for public governance.

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF

“Dr Prempeh brings to the fore sharp contrasts between the worlds that can appear to be attractively heavenly and the ones that look earthly and unattractive.” SHINE OFORI (Dr Mrs), Biblical Counsellor and Educator, Accra

HEAVEN AND EARATH IN GHANA

“Many contemporary development issues and their defective public policies bother the sovereignty of Ghana that requires a philosopher’s guide and an eye witness’s calibration. And here is where Prempeh’s book is most helpful.” IVOR AGYEMAN-DUAH, Historian and author of Between Faith and History: A Biography of JA Kufuor

The Political Economy of

Heaven and Earth in ghana CHARLES PREMPEH