The Evangelical Presbyterian Church, Ghana is a mainline Protestant Christian denomination in Ghana. It is popularly referred to as the "EP Church". It has strong roots in the Evangelical and Reformed traditions. The denomination's Presbyterian sister church is the Presbyterian Church of Ghana.
Christianity is the religion with the largest following in Ghana. Christian Life Of Christ, Catholics, Methodists, Anglicans, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Seventh-Day Adventists, Pentecostals, Baptists, Evangelical Charismatics, Latter-day Saints, etc.
Alexander Worthy Clerk was a Jamaican Moravian pioneer missionary, teacher and clergyman who arrived in 1843 in the Danish Protectorate of Christiansborg, now Osu in Accra, Ghana, then known as the Gold Coast. He was part of the first group of 24 West Indian missionaries from Jamaica and Antigua who worked under the aegis of the Basel Evangelical Missionary Society of Switzerland. Caribbean missionary activity in Africa fit into the broader "Atlantic Missionary Movement" of the diaspora between the 1780s and the 1920s. Shortly after his arrival in Ghana, the mission appointed Clerk as the first Deacon of the Christ Presbyterian Church, Akropong, founded by the first Basel missionary survivor on the Gold Coast, Andreas Riis in 1835, as the organisation's first Protestant church in the country. Alexander Clerk is widely acknowledged and regarded as one of the pioneers of the precursor to the Presbyterian Church of Ghana. As a leader in education in colonial Ghana, he designed curriculum and pedagogy, co-establishing with fellow educators, George Peter Thompson and Catherine Mulgrave, an all-male boarding middle school, the Salem School at Osu in 1843. In 1848, Clerk was an inaugural faculty member at the Basel Mission Seminary, Akropong, now known as the Presbyterian College of Education, where he was an instructor in Biblical studies. The Basel missionaries founded the Akropong seminary and normal school to train teacher-catechists in service of the mission. The college is the second oldest higher educational institution in early modern West Africa after Fourah Bay College in Freetown, Sierra Leone which was established in 1827. Clerk was the father of Nicholas Timothy Clerk, a Basel-trained theologian, who was elected the first Synod Clerk of the Presbyterian Church of the Gold Coast from 1918 to 1932 and co-founded the all boys' boarding high school, the Presbyterian Boys' Secondary School established in 1938. A. W. Clerk was also the progenitor of the historically important Clerk family from the suburb of Osu in Accra.
Nicholas Timothy Clerk was a Gold Coast theologian, clergyman and pioneering missionary of the Basel Evangelical Missionary Society in southeast colonial Ghana. His father was the Jamaican Moravian missionary and teacher, Alexander Worthy Clerk, who worked extensively on the Gold Coast with the Basel Mission and co-founded in 1843 the Salem School, a Presbyterian boarding middle school for boys. Born on the Gold Coast, N. T. Clerk was elected the first Synod Clerk of the Presbyterian Church of the Gold Coast, in effect, the chief ecclesiastical officer, equivalent to the chief administrator, leading the overall strategic operations of the national Reformed Protestant church organisation, a position he held from 1918 to 1932. A staunch advocate of secondary education, Nicholas Timothy Clerk became a founding father of the all-boys Presbyterian boarding school in Ghana, the Presbyterian Boys' Secondary School, established in 1938. As Synod Clerk, he pushed vigorously for and was instrumental in turning the original idea of a church mission high school into reality.
Gottlieb Ababio Adom was a Ghanaian educator, journalist, editor and Presbyterian minister who served as the Editor of the Christian Messenger from 1966 to 1970. The Christian Messenger, established in 1883 by the Basel Mission, is the primary newspaper of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana.
The Trinity Theological Seminary is a Protestant seminary located on a 70-acre campus in Legon, Accra. As an ecumenical theological tertiary and ministerial training institution, it serves students in Ghana and the West African sub-region. The focus of the curriculum is pedagogy, guidance, counselling, and fieldwork to adequately prepare students for careers in Christian ministry. The school has charter status, offers certificate, diploma, and degree programmes, and is accredited by the National Accreditation Board of the Ghanaian Ministry of Education.
The Presbyterian College of Education, Akropong, is a co-educational teacher-training college in Akropong in the Akwapim North district of the Eastern Region of Ghana. It has gone through a series of previous names, including the Presbyterian Training College, the Scottish Mission Teacher Training College, and the Basel Mission Seminary. The college is accredited by the National Accreditation Board of the Ministry of Education, Ghana as a Degree Research Institution affiliated to the University of Education, Winneba.
The Salem School, Osu, or the Osu Presbyterian Boys’ Boarding School or simply, Osu Salem, formerly known as the Basel Mission Middle School, is an all boys’ residential middle or junior secondary school located in the suburb of Osu in Accra, Ghana. The Salem School was the first middle school and the first boarding school to be established in Ghana. The school was founded under the auspices of the Basel Mission in 1843 and supervised by three pioneering missionaries and schoolmasters, Jamaican, Alexander Worthy Clerk and Angolan-born Jamaican Catherine Mulgrave together with the German-trained Americo-Liberian George Peter Thompson.
The Ebenezer Presbyterian Church, formerly known as the Basel Mission Church, Christiansborg, is a historic Protestant church located in the suburb of Osu in Accra, Ghana. The church was founded by the Basel Evangelical Missionary Society in 1847. Previously near the Christiansborg Castle at a hamlet called Osu Amanfong, where a commemorative monument now stands, the church relocated northwards to its present location near the Salem School when a new chapel was constructed and consecrated in 1902. The church is affiliated to the Presbyterian Church of Ghana. Liturgical services are conducted in English and the Ga language.
The Christian Messenger is an English-language monthly publication and the official newspaper of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana. It is the oldest continuously operating faith-based news journal in Ghana, and one of the oldest newspapers in the country. It was set up on the Gold Coast in 1883 by the Basel Evangelical Missionary Society. The first issue was published in Basel on 1 March 1883 under the editorship of the German missionary and philologist, Johann Gottlieb Christaller who had then retired from the mission.
Johann Gottlieb Christaller was a German missionary, clergyman, ethnolinguist, translator and philologist who served with the Basel Mission. He was devoted to the study of the Twi language in what was then the Gold Coast, now Ghana. He was instrumental, together with African colleagues, Akan linguists, David Asante, Theophilus Opoku, Jonathan Palmer Bekoe, and Paul Keteku in the translation of the Bible into the Akuapem dialect of Twi. Christaller was also the first editor of the Christian Messenger, the official news publication of the Basel Mission, serving from 1883 to 1895. He is recognised in some circles as the "founder of scientific linguistic research in West Africa".
The Christ Presbyterian Church, formerly known as the Basel Mission Church, Akropong, is a historic Protestant church located in Akropong–Akuapem, Ghana. It is the first Presbyterian Church to be established in Ghana. It was founded in 1835 by Andreas Riis, a Danish minister and missionary of the Basel Mission who was the only congregant at the time. After years of dormancy, the church began to flourish after the arrival of the Moravian missionaries from the West Indies in 1843. The Basel missionary, Johann Georg Widmann was appointed the minister-in-charge of the Akropong church in 1845. The Jamaican missionary, John Hall, who had served as an elder in his home church in Irwin Hill, Montego Bay, became the first Presbyter of the church while Alexander Worthy Clerk became the first Deacon. Liturgical services are conducted in English and the Twi language.
The Akrofi-Christaller Institute of Theology, Mission and Culture (ACI), formerly known as the Akrofi-Christaller Memorial Centre for Mission Research and Applied Theology, is a tertiary, postgraduate research and training institute located in Akropong-Akuapem in Ghana. The institute was set up to study and document Christian religious thought, history and theology through the lens of culture, historiography and life in Ghanaian society and Africa as well as scholarship on ecumenical relations between the continent and the rest of the world.
Clement Anderson Akrofi was an ethnolinguist, translator and philologist who worked extensively on the structure of the Twi language under the aegis of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana.
David Asante was a philologist, linguist, translator and the first Akan native missionary of the Basel Evangelical Missionary Society. He was the second African to be educated in Europe by the Basel Mission after the Americo-Liberian pastor, George Peter Thompson. Asante worked closely with the German missionary and philologist, Johann Gottlieb Christaller and fellow native linguists, Theophilus Opoku, Jonathan Palmer Bekoe, and Paul Staudt Keteku in the translation of the Bible into the Twi language.
Theophilus Herman Kofi Opoku was a native Akan linguist, translator, philologist, educator and missionary who became the first indigenous African to be ordained a pastor on Gold Coast soil by the Basel Mission in 1872. Opoku worked closely with the German missionary and philologist Johann Gottlieb Christaller as well as fellow native Akan linguists, David Asante, Jonathan Palmer Bekoe, and Paul Staudt Keteku in the translation of the Bible into the Twi language.
Andreas Riis was a Danish minister and pioneer missionary who is widely regarded by historians as the founder of the Gold Coast branch of the Basel Evangelical Missionary Society. A resident of the Gold Coast from 1832 to 1845, Riis played a critical role in the recruitment of 24 West Indian missionaries from Jamaica and Antigua in 1843 to aid the work of the mission in formal education, agriculture and the propagation of the Gospel in colonial Ghana. As the first Basel missionary in Akropong in 1835, he laid the groundwork for the first mission house, eventually resulting in the founding of the first Christian church there which later became the Christ Presbyterian Church, Akropong.
Rose Ann Miller was a Jamaican-born educator pioneer who worked extensively on the Gold Coast in both Basel Mission and government-run schools. As a child in 1843, Miller relocated to the Gold Coast with her parents and siblings, as part of a group of 24 West Indian settlers recruited by the Danish minister, Andreas Riis and the Basel Mission to augment evangelism efforts in Ghana.
Peter Hall was a Gold Coast-born Jamaican teacher, missionary and Presbyterian clergyman who was elected the first Moderator of the Presbyterian Church of the Gold Coast, equivalent to the rank of chairperson of the synod or chief executive of the national church organisation, a position he held from 1918 to 1922. Hall was the son of John Hall, one of 24 West Indian missionaries who arrived in the Danish Protectorate of Christiansborg and worked under the auspices of the Basel Evangelical Missionary Society.
Friedrich Augustus Louis Ramseyer also Fritz Ramseyer was a Swiss-born Basel missionary, who was captured by the Asante in 1869 in colonial Ghana, together with his wife Rosa Louise Ramseyer, Basel mission technical staff, Johannes Kühne and French trader, Marie-Joseph Bonnat. Ramseyer was later released in 1874 and pioneered the Christian mission in Kumasi and the rest of Asante. Additionally, he spearheaded the planting of churches in Abetifi. Apart from his evangelism, Ramseyer was instrumental in the expansion of opportunities in the fields of education, artisan industry training, land acquisition for building design and manpower development in the areas he lived and worked in.
