Encountering 'prosperity' Gospel in nineteenth century gold coast: Indigenous perceptions of Western missionary societies

Abstract Contemporary Pentecostal emphasis on Prosperity Gospel is not a recent event. In the Gold Coast, indigenous people have always considered the Gospel as a tool for prosperity. The eagerness and willingness to receive missionaries into West African communities was usually predicated on the desire for national prosperity. This chapter examines the longue durée of perceptions of prosperity that dates back to initial encounters between traditional African rulers and Western missionaries. It demonstrates that most of the African societies had their own expectations of the missionary societies and these, most often, did not include casting away their old faith and adopting a new faith which they perceived to be foreign. The Gospel was for most of these societies a tool for both communal and individual prosperity. By focusing on three different kingdoms in Southern Ghana in the nineteenth century, the chapter shows how African traditional leaders attempted to and succeeded in providing for the development of their kingdoms through missionary reception. Archival and oral sources were used to investigate the relationship between the rulers and the missionaries as a pursuit of prosperity. In some cases, this search for prosperity was motivated by ancestral revelation, or the acquaintance of royalty, or even the result of some inter-ethnic conflict and contest. In all these, the principal theme of communal and individual prosperity was prominent.