Introduction
The pioneers of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana (PCG), the Basel missionaries, entered the then Gold Coast on December 18, 1828. Their missionary work left many legacies that the PGC boasts of to date. Many Basel missionaries, especially men of later cohorts, shared their lives with their spouses, who were meant to support them. However, not much is heard about the roles played by the spouses in the missionary work. During the joint excursion by students from Basel and Ghanaian students in January 2023, at selected sites where the missionaries worked in Ghana, Catharine Mulgrave and Rosina Widmann were mentioned for their roles in establishing girls’ schools in Osu and Aburi, respectively. The missionaries worked at several other places, planting churches, nurturing them to grow, and engaging in other mission work. I began to wonder about the roles played by their wives in support of the church work aside from the involvement of some in other fields of the mission work. Reflecting an earlier research trip, I recalled that one elderly woman sang the praises of the wives of the Basel missionaries and credited them as the initiators of the Women’s Fellowship in the PCG today. It also came to mind strongly how my mother, a strong Presbyterian woman in her late nineties now, used to refer to the group as “Women’s Class” years back. I became curious and decided to find out how the Women’s Class became the Women’s Fellowship and its impact.
Women Fellowship in the PCG
The search revealed that the Presbyterian Church of Ghana Women’s Fellowship, as we know it today, actually started as a Women’s Class. Janet Amoa-Kumi, a pastor’s wife who helped to establish the group in some parts of the country, wrote that the originators of the group were the wives of Basel missionaries. She noted that they brought together the wives of converts in the mission stations and taught them memory verses and how to read and write. Additionally, they trained these African women in housekeeping, needlework and handicrafts, among others. Their meeting became a regular group, which they named the Women’s Class as African women went to the missionary wives to learn from them.[1] Oral tradition has it that the main aim of the European missionary wives was to help the African women develop Christian devotional lives and build Christian homes, as women were seen as the homemakers. Moreover, the White women added the teaching of vital life skills to help the African women improve upon skills they already had as well as learn new ones to make their meetings motivating and inspiring. For instance, Mrs Widmann was mentioned as someone who “contributed to the teaching of the women midwifery, nursing care, housewifery including cookery, knitting, needlework and other handcrafts.”[2] Besides, I also found a record that stated that between 1843 and 1886, there was a change in the understanding of the role of the wife of a missionary. Instead of participating intensely in the various domains of missionary activities, they were to serve primarily as models of the idea of Christian femininity and provide informal tuition in their households.[3] This information helped in connecting the dots on how the White women took it upon themselves to assist the African women develop true Christian devotional life, and also help them to improve upon their handy skills for daily living.
More so, I discovered that in the year 1900, Mrs Amalie Duisberg Jaminet, wife of a Basel Mission (BM) trader in the Gold Coast, took the initiative to transport this idea formerly into the church and form the Women’s Class in the then Preatorious congregation (now Resurrection Congregation, Accra, of the PCG)[4]. As the membership grew, following a PCG publication, many subgroups were formed with the help of some African women who offered their homes to host these smaller groups for daily morning devotions while the entire group met weekly. At that point, a cordial relationship ensued between the missionary wives and the African women, such that the European women at that point moved from house to house to visit the groups in the homes of the African women during their meeting times to interact with them.[5] Due to this pleasant relationship and friendly atmosphere created, the idea of a fellowship came to mind yet they maintained the name Women’s Class. The missionaries replicated this group wherever they worked until they left the shores of the Gold Coast. Nevertheless, their departure did not extinguish the group. The women missionaries of the Scottish mission who took over the missionary work in 1918 worked with the African pastor’s wives to keep the existing groups going and create others wherever they served. Independently, some African women also formed similar groups in their homes for morning devotions.[6]
Later six African women under the leadership of Mrs. Felicia Afriyie took full charge to ensure the growth of the group spiritually and physically. This saw the establishment of the fellowship in other parts of the country that did not have the group, which contributed tremendously to the growth of the church as a whole.[7] A new dawn came when in 1942, the then Moderator of the church, Rt. Rev. S.S. Odonkor, having experienced the involvement of women in the overseas churches and also recognizing the work the women were doing here in Ghana, appealed to the church to help regularise their activities. This plea led to the formation of the Women’s Work Central Committee in 1943 to coordinate all individual women’s classes under one body.[8] In 1955, the coordinating committee decided to rename the group into the “Women’s Fellowship” to promote the bond established among the women.[9] In order to have a venue to train the leadership, the BM offered an old mission bungalow at Begoro for refurbishing for that purpose, and later it became the Begoro Women’s Training Centre.[10]
Today, the Women’s Fellowship is one of the most flourishing groups in the church. Its motto is “let your light shine” (Matthew 5:16). They have a unique greeting – “the Lord be with you” with a response “the Lord bless you” (Ruth 2:4b).[11] The fellowship as a legacy has not neglected the premise on which the group started. The group still upholds the idea of developing the devotional life of its members and promoting the study of the Holy Scriptures to help build up their homes and lead exemplary lives wherever they find themselves to attract other women to Christ. They have not lost sight of learning basic life skills to improve everyday life either. Occasionally, the leadership invites skilled personnel for instruction on skills like soap making, juice making and others. Some local groups or district groups pick up these skills as income-generating activities, and even some individual members do the same. The fellowship has contributed tremendously to the growth of the church through their evangelistic ventures and by spearheading the ministry of women in the church. They also contribute enormously to the church’s social responsibility ventures, visiting prisons and orphanages, supporting them, and sharing the gospel with the inmates. I referred to the Women’s Fellowship as a legacy of the wives of the Basel missionaries because no one can deny that the seed they planted germinated, the African women nurtured it, and it has become a blessing to date and still is thriving.
