This book is an attempt to recapture the liberation philosophy of Kwame Nkrumah (1909-1972), first prime minister and first president of the Republic of Ghana in West Africa. The goals of this study are threefold: first, it is to make a scholarly contribution to the ongoing discussion for the development of a theoretical basis upon which modern Ghanaian sociopolitical, sociocultural, socioe-conomic, and sociohuman development can be built. Second, it is to offer the contemporary Ghanaian religious institutions a paradigm for developing an advocacy role in the building of civil society in Ghana. Ghana is in cultural, political, and religious transition and needs an indigenous conceptual basis to direct its practices now and in the future. Third, the book seeks to recapitulate Ghana’s self-dignity, self-realization, and self-subsistence by highlighting the essential assumptions, dimensions, and specificities of “African Personhood” reclaimed and repossessed through a human-oriented practice and reflection of orthopraxis.

Consequently, the study claims that Nkrumah’s liberation thought and action are relevant and paradigmatic for present-day religion and state in Ghana. It is argued in this study that from the African political and economic viewpoint, Nkrumah advocated a socialist system created out of the inculturation of African religio-humanist values with the inherited Euro-Christian political culture and social tradition as a strategy to liberate, unite, and integrate Ghana and the rest of Africa. Nkrumah made the Ghanaian orAfrican people and their situations the basis of any ideological inculturation, theological discussions, and actions.

Using both secular and religious sources and adopting an interdisciplinary approach, this study reappraises the precolonial social and political system in Ghana and assesses the impact of British colonial and postcolonial hegemonies on the state, religion, and civil society. With a view to reconstructing a new advocacy role for themselves in the Ghanaian society in the recapitulation of Ghana’s self-appraisal, self-dignity, self-realization, self-subsistence, and self-assertion, it is argued here that the diverse religious communities, the state, and multi-ethnic groups (indigenous states, aman) in Ghana must endeavor to coexist peacefully, eliminate ethnocentrism, act with courage and hope, and affirm and practice equitable co-existence.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ROBERT YAW OWUSU holds a Ph.D. degree in Church-State Studies from Baylor University and is an ordained minister of the Ghana Baptist Convention. He was formerly Senior Lecturer of Systematic Theology at Central University in Accra, Ghana and is currently Adjunct Professor of Social and International Studies at Southern Polytechnic State University at Marietta, Georgia (USA) and Pastor of Amazing Grace Baptist Church in Atlanta. His research interest is in the role of intellectual and moral leadership in national integration, in strengthening civil society and promoting social justice.

CATEGORY
History, Politics, Religion/AFRICA