Samson Oppong

Samson Kwame Oppong also Sampson Opon or Opong (c. 1884 – c.1960 or 1965) was a controversial Akan Christian preacher-prophet on the Gold Coast in the 1920s. His missionary zeal, unconventional and fiery ministry helped entrench Methodism in the Ashanti and Brong-Ahafo Regions of Ghana, through a large-scale spiritual awakening and revival. Though his knowledge of Christian theology was minimal, he is known to have employed threats and other coercive techniques to proselytise in the Ghanaian towns and villages he worked in.

Early life Born Kwame Oppong in a slave family, he was owned by a wealthy man named Kofi Dom in Akuntanim, a Bono village near Berekum and the Ivorian border, about 64km (40 miles) west of Sunyani, the capital of the Brong Ahafo Region of Ghana. Very little is known of the exact circumstances of his birth. Oppong resisted conversion and baptism while in prison. On the night Moses was released from prison, Oppong asked Moses for money to which he responded, “I have no money but that which I have I shall give you. I commend you into God’s keeping.”

He was baptised by the Rev. Ofosuhene of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, assumed the name Samson and subsequently donned his own ministerial garb of a long black robe with a huge cross in the middle and a red cross on either shoulder, with hair falling to his shoulders.

Waterworth recognised Oppong from third party accounts as “the Ashanti prophet, who had for several months been preaching a fiery call to repentance in many towns in the heart of the Ashanti forest.”

The theology and missiology scholar, M. A. Kwamena-Poh further observed, “At this time Sampson Opon had some similarities to John Wesley (1703-91), the English founder of the Methodist movement. Like Wesley he had undergone the experience of conversion, and like Wesley he decided to bring to others the faith he had found. Like Wesley, too, he won converts by using appeals to fear and pity, with threats of hell fire, promises of Heaven, wildly emotional oratory, and hymn singing. But, unlike Wesley, he was a criminal turned evangelist. Perhaps it was these resemblances to Wesley which attracted the Methodist to Opon, and made them decide to use his services. He toured Asante with the Rev. W. C. Waterworth, arousing intense emotions, and baptizing about 10,000 people in less than two years. The Basel Mission, on the other hand, saw in him only a “big fetish man” with a thin veneer of Christianity.”

Later years Under the influence of his nephew, Oppong became an alcoholic in his later years. Echoing the Biblical Samson who lost his legendary strength under the influence of Delilah, the English Methodist minister, Arthur Eustace Southon explained that alcohol was Oppong Achilles’ heel. Lacking discipline and spiritual preparation, he lost his electrifying preaching and prophetic abilities and the power to read the Bible using the black stone. and the coastal Fante ministers, whose uppity and elitist mannerisms Oppong particularly disdained. He became a subsistence farmer much later. The Basel missionary, W. Schafer remarked that Samson Oppong “lived in the bush with two or more wives, cultivated cocoa and drank a great deal of palm wine.” the indigenous contribution of Samson Oppong can thus be aligned to what scholar, Dana L. Robert noted on Western mission-initiated African churches, “The church becomes an inclusive body when people are considered partners rather than objects: being a mission of the people is significantly different from being a mission to the people. True inclusivity is not a program, but a result of welcoming people into the family.” William Wade Harris and John Swatson worked further West while Oppong worked in Asante. Other independent evangelicals in West Africa were Moses Orimolade, Babalola Ositelu, Simon Kimbangu, Peter Anim, Garrick Braide (Delta) and T.J. Marshall, a Methodist pioneer in Porto Novo. The evangelical ministries of Harris and Oppong ushered in an epoch of African independence from European missionary control and self-expression in the church. This can be situated against the mushrooming of other indigenous churches such as the Musama Disco Christo Church, the Saviours Church (Memena Gyidifo), the Church of the Twelve Apostles (started by Grace Tani of Ankobra Mouth and John Nackabah of Essuawa) and the African Faith Tabernacle Church. Harris encouraged his converts to wait for orthodox missionaries while Oppong became valuable to Ghanaian Methodism. The mass activities were particularly attractive to Africans who had not interacted a priori with European Christian missionaries. These Pentecostal renewals were largely at odds with both traditional liturgical formalism and nominalism of mainstream European Christianity.

William Wade Harris Harris, born in Cape Palmas, Liberia, is reputed to have converted 120,000 adults to Christianity within eighteen months to two years, covering Liberia, Ivory Coast and western Gold Coast. He was educated by missionaries from the A.M.E. Zion church where he learned to read and write in both his native language and in English. He worked as a teacher, warden and headmaster of a small Episcopal boarding school. He left his factory job due to persistent illness and returned to Boso, his hometown where he married an Akan woman and raised four daughters. He became acquainted with Pastor A. Clark, founder of the Faith Tabernacle Church, Philadelphia and editor of the Christian periodical, The Sword of the Spirit. The tabernacle pursued faith healing as part of its practices which was alien to the Presbyterian-raised Anim. He resigned from the Presbyterian church. Pastor Clark mailed an ordination certificate to Anim in 1923, officially qualifying him as a pastor. While building his ministry, he came across another periodical, Pentecostal, The Apostolic Faith that piqued his interest. This publication was owned by the Apostolic Faith Evangelistic Organization, of Portland Oregon. Eventually, he resigned from the Faith Tabernacle in 1930 and changed his ministry's name to Apostolic Faith. A colleague Faith Tabernacle pastor from Nigeria, David O. Odubanjo introduced him to the missionaries of the Apostolic Church of Bradford UK. Ultimately, after a series of visits by Apostolic missionaries, notably George Perfect (1931) and James McKeown (1937), Anim aligned his movement to the Apostolic Church of the UK. Later, Anim broke away from the mother church due to disagreements with his British counterparts and renamed his church, the Christ Apostolic Church International (CACI) in 1939.