Presbyterian Church of Ghana

The Presbyterian Church of Ghana
Presbyterian Church of Ghana logo
Presbyterian Church of Ghana Logo
ClassificationProtestant
OrientationCalvinist
ScriptureHoly Bible
TheologyReformed
PolityPresbyterian
Associations
FounderBasel Mission
Moravian Church in Jamaica and the Cayman Islands
Church of Scotland
Origin
  • 28 December 1828[2]
  • 195 years ago

Accra, Gold Coast
Congregations4,889 (2019)
Members1,015,174 (2019)
PublicationsChristian Messenger
Official websitepcgonline.org

The Presbyterian Church of Ghana is a mainstream Protestant and ecumenically-minded church denomination in Ghana. The oldest, continuously existing, established Christian Church in Ghana, it was started by the Basel missionaries on 18 December 1828.[3] The missionaries had been trained in Germany and Switzerland and arrived on the Gold Coast to spread Christianity.[2] The work of the mission became stronger when Moravian missionaries from the West Indies arrived in the country in 1843.[4] In 1848, the Basel Mission Church set up a seminary, now named the Presbyterian College of Education, Akropong, for the training of church workers to help in the missionary work. The Ga and Twi languages were added as part of the doctrinal text used in the training of the seminarians. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, the Presbyterian church had its missions concentrated in the southeastern parts of the Gold Coast and the peri-urban Akan hinterland. By the mid-20th century, the church had expanded and founded churches among the Asante people who lived in the middle belt of Ghana as well as the northern territories by the 1940s. The Basel missionaries left the Gold Coast during the First World War in 1917. The work of the Presbyterian church was continued by missionaries from the Church of Scotland, the mother church of the worldwide orthodox or mainline (oldline) Presbyterian denomination. The official newspaper of the church is the Christian Messenger, established by the Basel Mission in 1883.[5][6] The denomination's Presbyterian sister church is the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, Ghana.[7]

  1. ^ "WCRC churches". Archived from the original on August 8, 2012. Retrieved August 18, 2013.
  2. ^ a b "World Council of Reformed Churches". World Council of Churches website. 1 January 2006. Archived from the original on 23 June 2013. Retrieved 15 June 2011.
  3. ^ "Origins, Heritage, Birth of Presbyterian Church of Ghana". GhanaWeb. 22 September 2015. Archived from the original on 2017-07-19. Retrieved 2018-08-11.
  4. ^ Cite error: The named reference :0 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  5. ^ "Christian Messenger, Ghana". 2017-05-22. Archived from the original on 2017-05-22. Retrieved 2017-11-28.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  6. ^ "Christian Messenger takes new look". GhanaWeb. 30 November 2001. Archived from the original on 2017-05-12. Retrieved 2017-11-28.
  7. ^ Cite error: The named reference :4 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).