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This morning, my good friend Ezekiel Adjorlolo Tye Nartey sent me a message on WhatsApp after I posted on my status that I would not comment on the Wesley Girls issue. His text said, “Comments. I want to read your perspective on it.” I called him and shared my thoughts privately, but something in me felt unsettled. Perhaps silence, my initial position of “no comments,” is also a form of participation. So I have decided to make my reflections public.

Before anything else, let me return to an interesting section in the joint statement released by the Christian Council and the Catholic Bishops’ Conference. These are not marginal voices. They are esteemed religious institutions in this country, custodians of these mission schools, so their statement must not be taken lightly. They wrote:

“Our position is not rooted in hostility towards other faiths, but in a desire to preserve the integrity of institutions we have built and nurtured for over a century—a mission that touches history, law, culture, educational philosophy, and the Church’s foundational role in Ghana.”

This entire debate, whether Muslims should be allowed to practice their faith in Christian mission schools, is fundamentally about ownership and identity. But to understand it fully, one must return to history. The church’s statement itself takes us there.

Christian mission schools were established by European missionaries whose central objective was not merely to “educate” but to Christianize. We celebrate the introduction of education and attribute it to the church, but what we rarely acknowledge is that the kind of education they offered was a tool of segregation and control, a means of conversion, and a mechanism for reshaping identities. Education was not a neutral gift; it was a hub for producing Christian converts. You gained access to education only if you were willing to step into the Christian civilizing project (either you are a convert, or you want to be one; no in-betweens).

Children who desired to attend school were required to live in Salem City (introduced by the Basel Missionaries) or a boarding house supervised by the missionaries, away from their families and communities. This model was intentionally designed to provide missionaries with close supervision over all students, allowing them to reshape their worldview. While students learned to read and write, they were also taught to disregard their ancestral way of living because it was considered evil, backward, and unworthy of Christian living. Thus, to be a Christian was to reject one’s culture and way of life and adopt Eurocentric norms, values, and ideologies. The African convert was not merely being educated; he was being remade.

This remaking did not end in the nineteenth century. It has continued, quietly, subtly, shaping our communal imagination. This kind of education has had a profound impact on converts’ identities that continues to shape the way we interact with one another in our communities today. The African converts became very suspicious, judgmental, and individualistic. Instead of the communal ethos that once defined African life, we now view difference as danger. The very community that once held people together through shared rituals and mutual accountability has been fragmented by the inherited theology of separation. The Ghanaian convert, whose life was shaped by a collective moral order, now lives within an isolated moral struggle. The very cherished village of the people became the mission station, the extended family that bonded people in unity became the nuclear family, and faith, once a communal journey, became an individualistic battle for salvation and survival.

So when the Christian Council and Catholic Bishops say their “schools operate within a Christian worldview, gather for Christian worship, and uphold Christian values,” they are not merely asserting identity. They are unknowingly reinforcing the very Eurocentric ideologies that once gave missionaries power to dominate, control, discipline, and shape the identities of African children. Students must pray in a particular liturgy, sing hymns, read the Bible in a prescribed manner, and dress in a certain way, all of which serve as markers of Christian acceptability and affirmed Western norms.

And to be fair, this is not only a Christian phenomenon. Islamic missionary movements across Africa also used education as a tool of conversion. The logic of religious supremacy is not Christian alone; it is a human temptation that we must all attempt to resist.

So when the church argues that “Permitting separate religious practices, uniforms, and prayer schedules would fracture the communal unity and discipline that underpin our school’s ethos,” we must hear the deeper fear beneath the words. Their fear is the erasure of an identity they have spent over a century constructing. Their fear is that the Christianizing agenda, which built these schools, will be threatened. This is why they add:

“Parallel religious systems could erode this cohesion and weaken the qualities that have made our mission schools strong.”

This is the same logic missionaries used: separate, control, reshape. Protect the convert. Guard the identity. Maintain the “purity” of the mission.

This is the historical background that has shaped us for generations, a kind of education that dominates, imposes, controls, and views otherness as danger.

Now, to be fair, the church also makes another valid argument: Muslim parents know the rules of these schools before they enroll their children. They sign onto these values consciously. So, in principle, they cannot later claim discrimination when they willingly joined institutions that see themselves as Christian formations. I agree with this point. Rules are rules.

But my pushback is this: how does allowing other faith communities to express their faith, through prayer, fasting, or occasional gatherings, “erode cohesion” and “weaken the qualities” of these schools? If other mission schools have found ways to create respectful spaces where Muslims and non-Christians can practice their faith without undermining the school’s identity, why can’t Wesley Girls? Why do we assume that identity is so fragile that diversity will destroy it?

What exactly are we so afraid of as a church?

Does the presence of the Muslim girl praying at dawn threaten the integrity of the Gospel? Does the sound of an afternoon prayer rupture the moral formation of the Christian child? Is our Christian identity truly strengthened by exclusion? If so, then perhaps the danger is not Islam. Perhaps the danger is the weakness of the formation we claim.

The truth is this: if our Christian faith needs the absence of others to survive, then it is not Christlike. Christ sat among difference. Christ ate with “others.” Christ embodied a hospitality that did not fear contamination.

We cannot claim to be a light to the world and then panic when the world walks into our corridors.

So yes, Muslim parents knew the rules. But rules made in the nineteenth century, rooted in colonial control, do not need to shape the twenty first century church. We can do better. We can be faithful and still be just. We can uphold our Christian identity and still make room for others to uphold theirs. This is not erosion. This is discipleship.

And maybe, just maybe, this is the moment the church is being invited to examine itself, not its students.

as always theologyisfine! trustme!