4 - Religious actors and the peace process

Summary

Christianity in Liberia

In Liberia Christianity has always played a key role in the political process. It has been a constituent part of the structures of oppression, corruption and mismanagement. It was not something to be viewed over against the state; nor was it something to be pictured as parallel to the state; it was in fact part of the state apparatus … ideologically Christianity was used to sanction or explain all kinds of dubious realities; it supplied the categories of rhetoric to justify all kinds of events and structures.

(Gifford, 1995: 291)

The history of the Church in Liberia intertwines with that of the Liberian state and vice versa. Indeed, Browne's (1994: 4) description of the nature of the relationship between the Liberian state and Christianity as ‘coeval’ is apt. The American Colonization Society (ACS) was the medium used to found Liberia by facilitating the repatriation of freed Black American slaves to Africa. Apart from its civilizing and ‘Christianization’ objective, it was also, in Clay's words, ‘rid our country of a useless and pernicious, if not dangerous portion of its population…’ (Ciment, 2013: 9, 11). Indeed, it is believed that the first Liberian church was founded on board the ship bearing the first set of freed slaves to settle in Liberia in 1822 (Gifford, 1993; Browne, 1994). Gershoni (2008) notes that one of the core objectives of the ACS was to make Liberia a prototype of a Western Christian society that would disseminate Christian and Western values among Africans, via the establishment of missionary schools that would spread Christian values and ideals (Gershoni, 2008: 414–15).

Also on Liberia's Christian background, Lartey notes that:

Liberia was established by freed slaves that came from America. They settled here and purchased land from the natives that they met here. They declared Liberia a sovereign state in 1847. Before that, Monrovia was known as Christopolis and I assume that lent a lot of credibility to Christianity. When the freed slaves came to Liberia, they came not only to settle and promote Western culture but also to evangelize, spread the Gospel in West Africa and particularly in Liberia. So, the founding fathers of Liberia were from the Church.This is buttressed by the fact that the Constitution of Liberia was signed in the Providence Baptist Church in 1847. (Lartey, 2013)