Christian Missionaries and Education: Presbyterian Educational Chaplaincy as Holistic Mission Strategy for Transformational Development

This paper surveys and analyses the history of the chaplains and missionaries who were educational pioneers in the Gold Coast (now Ghana). It seeks historical illumination and possible lessons from the early Christian missionary education enterprises in the Gold Coast so as to design holistic missional education policies and the praxis of moral and transformational development within the 21st-century Presbyterian education system in Ghana. One objective is to resolve the challenge of increasing moral degradation amongst the youth and students of Ghana, which affects their industry and employability. The analysis indicates that what eventually became synonymous with the Basel Mission’s educational system of ‘Presbyterian disciplined’ training had roots that spanned 430 years, dating back to about the mid-15th century. Preliminary foundations were laid sporadically by naval merchant chaplains from Portugal, Netherlands, Britain and Denmark for over 350 years before the Basel missionaries consolidated the educational edifice in terms of structure, content, management and expansion in the 19th century. The paper affirms that the ‘Presbyterian discipline’ educational system bequeathed by missionaries can inform an educational approach designed to produce moral transformation today. However, it also points out some effects of Western Enlightenment worldviews on the missionaries’ educational impact, which led them to impose European values rather than opening the way for African self-transformation. The conclusion suggests that PCG privatises its schools and design the centric curricula for holistic missional and moral and transformational education, taking into account the unity of truth, the integration of faith and learning, and the ministry of the Holy Spirit.