William Wadé Harris

William Wadé Harris (c. 1860 – 1929) was a Liberian Grebo evangelist, who preached in Liberia, Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana. He has been described as the "most extraordinary one man evangelical crusade that Africa has ever known" and is considered one of the originators of today's prosperity gospel.

After Lowrie went to Cape Palmas, Harris became a (Kru-boy) crew boy on board ships which sailed on the coast of West Africa. After he returned as a crew boy on ships and settled back home as a brick mason, he married Rose Badick Farr and had six children. clad in a white robe and a turban. He carried a bamboo cross, a Bible and a gourd rattle, symbolizing the African nature of his mission. Harris identified himself with the biblical prophet Elijah. In an eighteen-month period in 1913–1914, Harris baptized over 100,000 new converts.

He went on three more missionary journeys thereafter (1917-1918, 1919, and 1921), which he travelled from Liberia to Sierra Leone and back.

Death and legacy Harris died in 1929 in extreme poverty. His preaching produced hundreds of "Harris" churches along the Ivory Coast, although many of his followers joined established denominations, both Catholic and Protestant. Jones Darkwa Amanor suggests that he can "be considered as the precursor of the Pentecostal Movement in Ghana,"