Religion and Values in Contemporary Africa: Christian Interpretations of Vice/Virtue Discourses in Ghana

The perceived state of morality in Ghana

In 1995 Joshua N. Kudadjie, an important Ghanaian Christian clergyman and professor of moral philosophy, issued a small volume titled Moral Renewal in Ghana: Ideals, Realities, and Possibilities. The author’s introduction speaks to the heart of our research articulated in this article:

I have observed the moral scene, agonized over it, enquired regarding it, reflected on it, prayed over it, talked about it, and tried to do something about it. . . . My concern is that we should create a moral community in Ghana. When I speak of creating a moral community, I mean simply that we should forge together by a deliberate act, a society of persons who take morality seriously; and who are deeply concerned about the moral aspect of things . . . and who endeavor both in public and private life to do what is morally right, and avoid what is morally evil. ¹

Such a moral community, Kudadjie went on to say, must share and cherish some fundamental moral values.

At the dawn of the current millennium, the West Africa Association of Theological Institutions (WAATI) held a conference under the theme “Religion, Morality, and West African Society.” The proceedings, published in 2002, responded to a simple theological question: “If it is true that religion does have a profound influence on moral values and the moral life—then why is it that in Africa both public and private morality are so abysmally low?” ²

As recently as January 2020, Ghana’s leading newspaper, the Daily Graphic, reported that a senior academic had called for concerted efforts to be made by the government “to rekindle the core societal values of the country to help accelerate national development.” Delivering the keynote address at a National Development Forum, the newspaper reported that Dr. Charles Wiafe-Akenten of University of Ghana’s Psychology Department noted that “dwindling societal values had contributed to the current socio-economic and political ills of [Ghana].” The lecturer bemoaned the situation as follows: “Unfortunately, for the past few decades and currently, it is difficult for me to argue forcefully that we have clear, dominant and manifested values because our values seem to have been diluted and become somewhat nebulous and distorted if not highly eroded.” The lecturer suggested a need to “consciously work on the nation’s value system and re-introduce traditional values that would enhance relevant and utilitarian values.” ³

On February 24, 2020, the front-page of Ghana’s Daily Graphic announced that the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment in Ghana had initiated processes to revise the school curriculum. It was being revised at all levels to accommodate “building character and nurturing values” in young people. It is instructive that an important component of Ghana’s basic school revised curriculum, according to the Daily Graphic report, is religious and moral education. Religious organizations were considered major stakeholders in the consultation under review. The issue of values in Ghana is so important that some called for a “moral renewal program” as a better approach to development than the “economic renewal program” that has been part of the public discourse since the military dictatorship years of the 1970s. Groups that have constantly called for and issued statements on the need for moral renewal included Ghana’s Catholic Bishops’ Conference and the Christian Council of Ghana, which brings together all the major Protestant denominations in the country. In reality, moral and economic recoveries need not be mutually exclusive. Gains made from economic recovery programs could be rendered unprofitable if corruption remains an option for those seeking to abuse the system.

These developments, both within Christian circles and at the national level, reveal to us that many voices—governments, educationists and educational institutions, members of civil society, and religious organizations—consider morality to be critical to the future of Africa in terms of social sanity, economic development, and political stability. Since Ghana is a majority Christian country, it is to be expected that the mission of the church would include some leading role in moral education.

For the purposes of this article, our interest in “values” as an African Christian category lies in three main areas. First, the Ghanaian context is one in which morality is related to religion, and therefore it is impossible to escape a discussion of virtues and vices outside the religious sphere. Second, Ghana is predominantly Christian, which means we can expect people to talk about values with reference to what it means to be Christian. Third, there is a widely held view that there is a relationship between morality, citizenship, and development. Therefore, one would expect that in a majority Christian setting, the moral temper of the society ought to be of the highest standard. It is not uncommon for media discussions of social, economic, and political issues in Ghana to mention that, even though churches abound, corruption still seems to be a perpetual national problem. The subject matter of this research is thus relevant to public discourse as we seek to account for the paradox of Christian growth, along with a decline in public morality.

The Ghanaian context

Ghanaian philosopher Kwame Gyekye refers to cultural values as “those forms of behavior, practice, or thought that are nurtured by a culture and held, cherished and maintained by the users of the culture as the most worthwhile, desirable, as having sufficient importance and relevance to their lives.” ⁴ Within the framework of Akan social and humanistic ethics, Gyekye notes elsewhere, “What is morally good is generally that which promotes social welfare, solidarity and harmony in human relationships.” ⁵ When Ghanaians refer to core or fundamental traditional values, they often mean those virtues that are rooted in the culture, inseparable from African religious beliefs. Traditional deities and ancestors demand truthfulness, honesty, and integrity—not necessarily for their own sake, but as virtues that enhance social and cosmic harmony. These traditional custodians of morality reward those who observe the values of virtue and punish those who flout them.

Among the Akan of Ghana, nyimpa (“one who is truly human”) is the embodiment of what is considered ideal and ethically responsible. The nyimpa is the cultured individual who turns out well, is disciplined and well-mannered and behaved, is courteous, and is respectful of and obedient to elders and those in authority. The nyimpa possesses the right disposition toward others and never becomes manbonyi (“one who destroys the community”). ⁶

There is much in Christian morality that coheres with African traditional values of virtue. Virtues are instilled in newborn babies during naming ceremonies. Among the Akan of Ghana, a child is named on the eighth day after birth. Early in the morning on that day, there is a gathering of the family. The officiating elder places the baby on his lap and, dipping his forefinger alternately in some alcoholic beverage and water, instructs the baby thus: “Just as there is a difference between this drink and this water, grow up to hold clearly in your mind the difference between truth and falsehood. If you say it is water, let it be water, and if you claim it is a drink, let it be a drink; let your yea be yea and your nay, nay.” This ceremony takes place not simply with individual morality in mind but also with a view to communal harmony, toward nation building. Through rites of passage such as these naming ceremonies, we encounter in African peoples the view that individuality means acting with the interests of others in mind. As Wilson M. Maina has noted, in the sense of communal belonging, individual self-realization also finds fulfillment. Maina notes through the work of Bénézet Bujo that individuality cannot be separated from the communitarian nature of human existence in African societies, which implies that every person must contribute to communal well-being. ⁷ This traditional position of moral philosophy coheres with Paul’s admonition “Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others” (Phil 2:4).

African traditional values are steeped in a religious paradigm, as are Christian values. Conclusions about African values are thus best understood when seen in the light of faith and spirituality. Ghanaian Old Testament scholar Mark S. Aidoo posits that spirituality is the human capacity to translate transcendental relationships into existential reality. In his words, “Spirituality focuses not only on God but also aims at responses that make one fulfill God’s motive for creating humanity, that is, a person becoming fully human in the world.” ⁸

Today, Ghana has a population of almost twenty-five million people, 71 percent of whom claim a Christian orientation. Christians are called to deal with the tensions between the demands of the flesh and the demands of the Spirit: “For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace” (Rom 8:5–6). Throughout the biblical narratives, virtues as defined by God are considered critical to a godly or, in the case of the New Testament, a Christian identity. Paul tells the Galatians, “Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires” (Gal 5:24). Christian citizenship means that those who profess faith in Christ consider themselves citizens of two countries—one existential and the other eschatological. Christians live on earth, but as Paul would have it, their “citizenship is in heaven” (Phil 3:20). The heavenly citizenship is always contingent upon how the earthly one is handled. And in the teaching of Jesus, Christians ought to be working toward accumulating a heavenly heritage that is beyond the logic of decay and destructiveness, as against the temporary and transient nature of our earthly acquisitions.

Yet, as noted above, neither Christian nor African traditional standards of morality seem to shine through in the public discourse about morality in Ghana. Older generations appeal to their Basel Mission training in their critique of modern moral permissiveness, with its imported values often mediated by social media. In postcolonial African societies, mission education was synonymous with moral upbringing and integrity. The curricula of mission schools were designed to impart academic knowledge alongside Christian values. At the heart of the moral training received through formal education was the fear of God, which was supposed to express itself in personal discipline, which was also the aim of traditional forms of moral education. The virtues of honesty, integrity, moral purity, truth, and hard work were presented as consistent with being Christian. In other words, the Christian was supposed to be a person who eschewed those vices considered to be at variance with a Christlike lifestyle. Christian mission and virtues have always been packaged together.

However, Ghanaian Christianity is now overwhelmingly charismatic in orientation. This is the stream of the faith that preaches a prosperity gospel, according to which material acquisitions are the prime indicators of God’s favor and blessing. Here, there is a bit of tension between the two foci of the eschatological and existential in Christianity. Prosperity preaching endorses conspicuous consumption in a way that does not allow for holding its proponents and its practitioners accountable. Simply put, the prosperity gospel is materialistic in orientation, which puts parts of it at variance with what counts as values in both the secular and the Christian mission contexts in Africa. In contemporary charismatic prosperity preaching, the teachings of Jesus on values—modesty, simplicity, self-denial, humility—have been jettisoned for a selective use of the Bible to support the materialistic lifestyles of preachers and their followers. The pursuit of unbridled materialism that prosperity preachers promote in the name of the gospel engenders covetousness and greed, vices that African traditions also frown upon. For the new charismatic Christians, the relevance of the Christian faith lies in making it count in one’s existential pursuits.

Joel Carpenter refers to several theological trends associated with the development of non-Western Christianity that the church in the developed West could learn from. ⁹ Two of them are particularly instructive for our discussion here. One is that non-Western churches are more likely to address issues related to poverty and social justice; the other is that non-Western churches are attracted to and practice the supernatural elements of biblical faith: visions, healings, and exorcism. Both observations are valued because in an African context of poverty, deprivation, and squalor, how the gospel relates to these issues are matters of public interest. There is a certain inability of prosperity preachers to challenge immoral sources of wealth and also to articulate a useful theology of poverty, pain, and suffering, since, as it is preached, those who come to Christ and fulfill their tithing obligations have the right to expect God to bless them. In the minds of large numbers of the public, the Christian church in Africa has become complicit in the moral decline of their societies.

Researching values within an African Christian context

The question we set out to ask in this investigation was, What does it mean to be a respectable African in the twenty-first century? In other words, what values are good members of modern African societies expected to uphold, and which ones are they to eschew? The goal was to hear from everyday Ghanaians about their understanding and representation of morality. We explored our research questions using multiple strategies. First, with the assistance of community contacts, we conducted focus-group discussions in twenty-four neighborhoods in a large metropolitan area in southern Ghana. We asked sixty-four male and forty-eight female participants of diverse religious, ethnic, and economic backgrounds to list and discuss what they presently considered to be characteristics of good members of Ghanaian society.

Next, we examined values represented in over four hundred vehicle stickers. Vehicle stickers with slogans are common on Ghanaian commercial vehicles. Finally, informed by our focus group and vehicle-sticker data, we conducted a quantitative exploration of spirituality and values, targeting a sample of one thousand Ghanaian adults. It was our hope that our investigation would help inform the discourse on morality in Ghana and help answer larger questions such as, What are the intersections between predominant Ghanaian values and the Christian faith? If the cultivation of values of virtue has implications for citizenship and nation building, how do vices undermine the Christian evangel? What steps need to be taken to translate virtues into practical everyday living and the exercise of spirituality within the public sphere? We provide a brief overview of our key findings below, and we plan to present detailed analyses of each of these studies elsewhere.

Our focus-group participants were specifically asked to contribute to a discussion of Ghanaian values. In all, our participants suggested thirty-three values. The most frequently mentioned were faith-based actions, love, respect for authority, traditional aesthetic values, family, finances, community, and self-discipline, showing a mix of themes driven by religion and of those not driven by religion.

Curiously, our value-focused interview prompts additionally elicited a conversation about vices, suggesting that values, virtues, and vices may be considered interconnected abstractions. In all, participants proposed a total of twenty-four vice-related themes. The most frequently mentioned were greed, jealousy, deceit, bad leadership, conflict, disrespect, and sexual immorality.

Our analysis of vehicle stickers collected from multiple public transportation stations across Ghana’s capital city revealed a predominant (71.7 percent) focus on spiritual themes such as faith, praise, thanks, prayer, steadfastness, justice, brotherliness, and repentance. We also noted individual and community-level values such as hard work, honesty, bravery, individualism, patience, respect, prudence, community, contentment, family, hope, love, perseverance, goodness, and generosity.

Finally, in our English-language-based survey of one thousand adults (84.1 percent were Christian, 12.8 percent were Muslim), most respondents reported commitment to their religious faith and strong endorsement of qualities such as truth and honesty; a negative view of behaviors such as bribery, theft, and substance abuse; and a moderate rejection of materialism. We consistently observed connections between the mentioned values and vices, and we noted an overlap between the mentioned values, the quantitatively endorsed values, and vehicle sticker slogans.

Together, our results represented what people thought were the strengths and weaknesses of Ghanaian society. Our focus-group interviews indicated that some Ghanaians bemoan incidents of corruption, contemporary views about sexuality, and lack of respect for the elderly in society. Such behavior was attributed to the breakdown of traditional systems of moral education and the failure of the Christian church and its members to preach and live out Christian values. Our focus-group discussants considered politicians and “the youth” to be the ones typically committing these vices, suggesting that socially unacceptble behavior was largely seen as practiced by the “other.”

Implications for values, education, and the public sphere

The lamentations captured in Joshua Kudadjie’s book Moral Renewal address the perceived decline in the moral temper of the society, despite the very obvious presence of Christianity in Ghana. Our results illuminated the presence of intergenerational tensions in Ghana fueled by the younger generation’s perceived shift away from tradition toward a more individualist and secular value system. This finding suggests that shifts in morality may not occur consistently across all sectors of the society. We also found that despite the negative rhetoric about the state of Ghanaian morality, people identified many good qualities about Ghanaian society. Our data on the endorsement of materialism can be construed as quantitative support for Asamoah-Gyadu’s observation about the tension between eschatological and existential concerns. ¹⁰ Finally, our findings suggest that behavioral and moral shortcomings are located in a gray area that is simultaneously not regularly policed and, most important for the public, not explicitly condemned in religious spaces such as the Christian churches. If this is indeed the case, then it would seem that for nation-building to occur, concerted efforts will need to be made to address such gray areas from all noted moral influencers simultaneously: the church, the state, and the extended family. In addition to targeting the general populace, some efforts could be designed to specifically target identified perceived “high risk” moral-offender segments of the population.

We referred to Joel Carpenter as identifying several trends that characterize the beliefs and thinking of the main body of non-Western Christians today. They include these churches accepting the authority of Scripture and, by Western standards, many holding a theology that seems quite orthodox and traditional, as well as individual Christians likely being morally and ethically conservative. The implications for Christian citizenship are obvious. In February 2011 a group of African church leaders from across different denominations and led by the late Lamin Sanneh met in Accra, the capital of Ghana, to deliberate on religious freedom and citizenship on the continent. The immediate inspiration for this gathering was the fact that religious leaders in Africa have had to give a lot of thought to issues of church and state because of the scale and urgency of the various crises that were then engulfing their societies. The crises ranged from the social to the political, with corruption topping the list of vices that many considered were bringing Africa’s economy to its knees.

The meeting produced the Accra Charter of Religious Freedom and Citizenship, which articulated the critical importance of letting faith influence public order and morality. The focus in terms of citizenship and change was on religious institutions. The document was subsequently printed in full for a wider readership in the International Bulletin of Missionary Research, with a short opening commentary by Lamin Sanneh. ¹¹ Sanneh’s commentary lamented Africa’s lack of resources and the physical assets needed to make a substantial difference to the material lives and conditions of citizens. The level of corruption in Africa, Sanneh noted, had led well-meaning members of society to decry the fact that even religious leaders had become complicit in the moral degeneration of societies, with religious officials now co-opted through pecuniary baits into serving as “moral chaplains to those in power, resulting in turning the moral witness of the churches into a mere political gallery.” ¹²

The corruption of religious leadership, Sanneh further pointed out, harms the cause of good governance by dimming hope and giving incentive to arbitrary power. The likely consequence was that dictatorial abuses, even in countries that were supposedly democratic, were going to continue but that in the long run such practice would most likely “spark popular disenchantment and a demand for change.” In Sanneh’s words: “In many countries religious institutions have often been the only viable structures left in the wake of the collapse of state institutions, including the breakdown of the organs of law and order. Given their endurance and their increasing influence, religious institutions represent an important source of hope in a time of great uncertainty. Accordingly, the willingness of religious leaders to speak to popular despair and to strive in the cause of peace, justice, and reconciliation gives the religious voice an important public role.” ¹³ The discussion of Christianity and citizenship in Africa is made even more important by the considerable devotion that the average African gives to religion while also being actively involved in civic life. This combination, Sanneh further noted, shows that people take seriously their dual role as citizens and as believers.

As Carpenter avers, the Christian faith at work in the West attempts to push Christians to live with the changing values of secularizing societies. This narrative, he notes, is not plausible in the Global South. The church still remains a major stakeholder in education in Ghana. The country has insisted on keeping faith and education linked, and so school chaplaincy, for example, is still very critical to moral education in Ghanaian educational institutions. The growth of Christianity in Africa has come with opportunities for influencing from the church that we miss at our peril. Ghanaian values are not inconsistent with Christian values, and with many young people in church and with the general society expecting the church to have its influence count in society, we must not formulate a mission agenda that excludes those virtues that are supposed to be an outflow of our relationship with Christ.