The exact date the Methodist Church came to Mankessim, the heartland of the Mfantse
people is not certain.
Arkaifie states, for instance, that the Methodist Church in Mankessim was established in 1838.
This is countered by the church‟s souvenir programme, which indicates that it was founded in 1836, immediately, after that of the Enyan Abassa society in the same year.
In a traditional society where oral history was the main channel of passing on information rather than written documents, such discrepancies concerning datefor certain historical event could easily arise.
The way to ascertain the fact is to do cross-
checking of information. According to Neylor Kweku Appiah, a past Circuit Steward of Abasa, the Church there was founded in 1838.
The Methodist Missionary at that time in the person of Freeman, visited the Enyan Abasa congregation on November 26, 1838.
According to the 1843 missionary report to the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society
(WMMS), the church had twenty-one adult members as in December, 1843.
Further, in listing the existing Methodist fellowships/nursery societies during the
time of Wrigley 1836-1837, Bartels does not mention the Mankesim and Abasa
churches.
It is, therefore, likely that the Mankessim church was founded in 1838
according to these records.
It was from Mankessim that the Enyan-Maim branch was started by a group of traders, who were dealing in palm kernel trade.
It has been recorded, however, that, before the Methodist evangelization of Mankessim and Enyan Abasa, Christian gospel had already been proclaimed to the people of Saltpond.
A member of the Cape Coast “Bible Band,” in the person of John Sam had started preaching before 1830 to the people of Lower Saltpond (also referred to as Nankesedo), calling upon them to repent.
Out of this effort, a fellowship started, which was, officially, inaugurated as a nursery church by Rev. Thomas Birch Freeman in 1838.
However, due to early misunderstanding between the missionary and the early converts to Christianity, as regards traditional festival and customs, this fellowship was not sustained.
A second one was, later, started in the home of Opanyin Kwame Annan by Freeman; out
of this grew most of the Methodist churches in the Nkusukum area.
Adult members in the Saltpond church stood at twenty-six in May 1842.
The church‟s written record of both Mankessim and Saltpond Circuits indicate that it was out of the latter that the former circuit was created.
Though it is not certain which of the Ekumfi communities was the first to have been
reached by the Methodists; available records however, indicate that the person who was instrumental in the Methodist evangelization in this area was Ben Sam, a Methodist teacher-catechist from Ekumfi Ekrawfo, who later converted to Islam in 1885.
Historian Gorman indicates that a Methodist Church was constructed at Gyinakomah by Ben Sam in the Ekumfi area before his conversion to Islam; consequently, Methodism reached
Gyinakomah and Ekumfi area before 1885.
In terms of administrative structure, Methodism in this area has grown into four big circuits, namely Saltpond, Mankessim, Otuam and Enyan Abasa, each headed by a
Superintendent Minister, with a pastoral oversight over a number of societies.
The history of Methodism in this area will not be complete without mention of the
clash between Christianity and the Mfantse indigenous religious shrine, which was centralized at the Nananom pɔw sacred grove, near Mankessim.
References have been made regarding the conflicts that ensued from time to time between the European Christian evangelization and the Ghanaian indigenous religious and cultural context.
It will thus be superfluous to revisit these, but it suffices to say that while this particular decisive confrontation turned round the fortunes of the Methodist missionary drive among the Mfantse people for good, the fate of the indigenous sacred shrine at Mankessim was one of disintegration, from which that institution never recovered.
The alluded confrontation is, particularly, intriguing in view of the circumstances
that led to it and its aftermath.
The centre of this drama was Akweesi, who was living at that time in a coastal village, Asafa, about ten miles east of Nananom pɔw.
Akweesi was accused of witchcraft out of sheer jealousy for his hard work.
This was, strangely, confirmed by the officials at the shrine. All his belongings were taken away and he was,nearly, killed by the community, but for the timely intervention of his friend, Esiar Kofi.
He could no longer live among his own people, but had to go into exile with his wives and children.
He created his settlement on the only available plain between Asafa and Nananompɔw, which was impossible for people to stay because of the presence of wild animals at that time.
Indeed no land would be given to him, except that one, since he was considered as a wizard.
Akweesi and his family survived the danger and it was not long when a hunter and a Christian by name Kwaasiar Atta from Obokor came to befriend him.
Kwaasiar came often to hunt on the land and, eventually, came to live with him and the family in the small village.
Due to Akweesi‟s hard work, his farm work prospered, thereby, attracting others, including even those who accused him of witchcraft.
Crayner in fact explains that it
was this twist of events that made Akweesi to name his village „Obi dan obi,‟ rendered in
short as „Obidan.‟ meaning, „even my accusers are now coming to depend on me‟.
Meanwhile, Kwaasiar Atta had shared the Christian faith with Akweesi and his family members and the inhabitants of the village offered Christian prayers every evening
and studied the bible.
On Sundays they did not work, but devoted the day to worship
service and rest.
However, this community and its farming activities were, rather, too close
to the Nananom pɔw grove and the priests and priestesses who officiated at the shrine
began to have some apprehensions.
This feeling of discomfort was due more to the fear of
discovering the trickery that had been invented to exploit the people than the belief that the
proximity of the inhabitants constituted a disturbance to the nananom, the ancestors who
were buried there.
Bartels inferred that Akweesi and his fellow Christians at Obidan treated
the shrine and its worship with contempt.
That allusion needs some clarifications; else it
would appear that the Christians did not have respect for the ancestors and their own
culture.
It happened that one day Kwaasiar, on his hunting round within the precincts of the
grove, saw people who were entering the forest and climbing into the branches of the tree.
Not very convinced of what he saw, he went for one of Akweesi‟s nephews in the village,
Kofi Kuma to come and observe what was going on.
They then realized that those strange
sounds that came from the branches of the tree, sometimes with sands falling from above
were, actually, orchestrated by human beings and not the ancestors as people were made to
believe.
It was this discovery that made the Christians treat the shrine with contempt; an attitude that, finally, led to the clash between the Mfantse chiefs and the officials of the
shrine on one side and Akweesi and the Christians in his village on the other.
One day, Kwaasiar shot a deer quite close to the grove and the animal rushed into
the sacred grove that was, traditionally, declared as forbidden ground to anyone.
He,
consequently, solicited the assistance of his friend, Akweesi to accompany him to the grove
to retrieve the animal.
While coming out of the grove with the animal and two tree sticks
that Akweesi had cut, they were met by someone from Mankessim, who went to inform the chief, Nana Edu that Akweesi and his village members were farming and hunting in the
ancestral grove.
A strong contingent of the palace guards, including Nana Edu himself invaded the Obidan village, took most of the members captive and destroyed their huts and
belongings.
One of the Christians, together with Akweesi‟s wife who escaped, managed to
reach the British District Administrator and some of the Methodist members at Anomabo,
who, in turn, sent an urgent message to Cruickshank, the Judicial Assessor of the British
Administrator at Cape Coast for help.
Military personnel were despatched to
Mankessim, who saw to the immediate release of the detained Christians.
All those who
were involved in the case – the Christians, the priests and the priestesses of the shrine and
the chief of Mankessim, Nana Edu and his elders – were all summoned to a court trial at
Cape Coast after an initial attempt to settle it at Anomabo failed.
At this trial, the burden
was on the Christians to prove that the activities at the Nananom shrine were, actually, shrouded in deception and exploitation.
The deep belief and trust of Mfantse people in the shrine was such that the testimonies of the Christians from Obidan alone would have been
treated as fabrication.
Under rather strange circumstances at this time, certain developments
among the high functionaries of the shrine had created discrimination and hurt among some of them, and one of them, Ɔkɔmfo (priest) Kum had, around this time, decided to renounce his faith in Nananom;
it was a crucial moment that unfolded an incredible turn of events.
At the Cape Coast trial, Akweesi testified to the drama of deceit practised at the shrine as
he and some of his colleague Christians at the village had seen.
This was confirmed by
Ɔkɔmfo Kum, who narrated in detail the various acts of trickery performed by the
functionaries of the group as well as the plot by the priests/priestesses to poison three
prominent Anomabo Methodist church elders – George Blankson, John Hayfron and
Andrew William Parker – for their active involvement in ensuring the trial of the case.
Apart from the punishment meted out to the functionaries of the shrine as required by law, the outcome of the trial was one of shock and extreme disappointment for the chiefs and the
entire Mfantse people who, over the years, had exercised deep faith in Nananom and the
rituals at the shrine.
They found themselves to have been deceived and exploited by the
priests/priestesses of the shrine and their informants.
It was an episode that brought,
shamefully, to an end the religious hold of Nananom pɔw on the lives of the people and,
rather, served as the pulling force for the rapid growth of Methodism in the Mfantse land
and in the whole of Ghana.
Many Mfantse Chiefs opened their doors for the establishment of Methodist churches and schools in their communities afterward. For instance, Nana Edu,
the chief of Mankessim sponsored the building of Methodist church in the town.
The degeneration of Nananom shrine into deception and exploitation demonstrate how institutionalized religions have, sometimes, been exploited by its functionaries to entrench their power in society and to serve the interest of the powerful.
This illusory nature of religion and its use in exploiting people gave grounds to Karl Marx‟s critique of religion as
“the opium of the people.”
The Methodist evangelization and spread in the area and beyond were carried through dawn home/chapel devotional meetings (with the singing of hymns and local Christian songs, lyrics), dawn preaching in suburbs, class meetings (where studying of the bible or
discussion of any relevant topic for Christian living took place), Sunday morning and evening services, annual camp meetings (involving teaching and intense prayer activities), among others.
An outstanding dimension of Methodist missionary work is the provision of
schools, hospitals/clinics and other social services based on community need.
The above-
mentioned activities of the church were some of the reasons that accounted for the church‟s spread and growth in this area and in Ghana as a whole.
