The Church of Pentecost – A System of Female Suppression.

The ace broadcast journalist of Peace FM is right when he said ‘the same faith, different beliefs’ on the religious program he holds every Sunday. We have one faith, yet the belief systems are different with extremes. Largely, this has been possible due to the variances in the interpretation of the same document. The Bible means different things to different people. Or the interpretation one gives to the Bible is dependent on where he’s standing.

The Church of Pentecost with its rich history of conflicts was started by Pastor James Mckeown (1900-1989) – an Irish sent by the Apostolic Church, Bradford – UK to then Gold Coast, now Ghana in 1937 to aid a group of believers led by Peter Newman Anim in Asamankese. The church was said to split up in 1939 due to doctrinal differences resulting in the separation of the church from the parent church in Bradford, UK. The new church which became known as Apostolic Church, Gold Coast was later to be faced with conflicts leading to the advice by His Excellency Dr. Kwame Nkrumah to the leadership of the church to change its name resulting in the church’s present name-The Church of Pentecost legally replacing the Ghana Apostolic Church.
For the past decades, The Church of Pentecost has come under, some unsavory and unnecessary, attacks in Ghana for what appears as its ‘extreme’ beliefs in certain areas of life and church. It holds strong views on the role of women in the church, dress codes, youth relations, marriage, and child-bearing.
After searching for a nearby place of worship on this past Sunday, I ended up walking to an uncompleted building with a screaming poster – Welcome to The Church of Pentecost, CP – Down, Salem Assembly. Scanning through the crowd, I walked wielding my orange-cladded diary in my right hand to join an empty seat behind a group of young guys. I took this seat because that was the only available empty seat. However, after careful scrutiny, I realized instinctively that I had made the right decision. I was later to realize that in this particular church, the men seat separately from the women. The men sat on the left while the women sat on the right. Imagine how embarrassing it would be if I had taken a seat among the women? I am sure the pastor would scream into the microphone for me to get my ass off the place. Or he would shove someone to quietly walk up to me to gently ask me to move. I played these options in my head when I realized what I had done correctly without physical help.
The pastor was preaching about Romans 12:18 that ‘If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.’ I reached for my diary to write. As I threw my glance to the pulpit to catch the words being tossed on his lips, I saw an army of men sitting directly behind him on the platform. I was surprised not to find any woman among them. They are all men. Where are the women – deaconess, and pastor’s wife? Now this was strange to me. As a Presbyterian with the long standing tradition of uniformity of worship and belief in collaborative worship, mingling with women in worship is second to nature to us. We sit together, dance together in the same line, and rise together for the offering bowl. Later on I saw the deaconess’ and the pastor’s wife separately sitting below the platform—a demonstration of their position in the church. Second citizens.
When it was time for dancing, the women waited for the men to end their dance before they began. Now the system of suppression appears neat woven into the fabric of the church that all the social groups have accepted their place in the church. How could separation be encouraged in the House of God? To what end is such practices as this serving?
One last thing stung me as hard as ever – the way the women spoke as though they have accepted that they are there to serve the male establishment. There’s one thing I am particularly sure of – that the gender parity and the whole business of women empowerment could never be successful if we fail to uproot some of these standing barricades from the path.
We cannot perpetuate traditional systems and beliefs by suppressing the people who will help it—the people who matter in the sustainability project. We need to let everyone in the society believe in one unique identity – the self. I know The Church of Pentecost can go about its worship with no difficult if it gets rid of this obstacle to women freedom.
The women need to find their voice. Or better their voices need to be given to them.