Defiling the Church: The Impact of Mmusuo in Akan Conception

Abstract

Many Christian churches in parts of Ghana dominated by Akans do not allow corpses to be brought inside the church during funerals services. Others face constant and vehement objection when it is done. Cultural differences on the subject have fuelled heated disputes that have led in some cases to severe congregational division. Opposition is often sustained by a culturally biased approach to biblical texts concerning sacredness and defilement as related to Old Testament sanctuary and temple ritual. Particularly, the religious philosophy of mmusuo provides the psycho-emotive motivation from which many Akan Christians vehemently oppose the practice as sacrilegious. It also provides an analytical and rhetorical framework for appropriating various biblical passages relating to religious sacrilege. This paper unpacks this framework and proposes effectively contextualized theology as a means of avoiding such erroneous conflations and resolving the disputes that arise at the interface of African culture and Christian religion, especially in multicultural congregations.