Abstract

This dissertation is an attempt to recapture the liberation philosophy of Kwame Nkrumah , 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, socioeconomic, 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 dissertation 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 Islamic social tradition as a strategy to liberate, unite, and integrate Ghana and the rest of Africa. Nkrumah made the Ghanaian or African 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. ;Finally, the study challenges the religious institutions in Ghana to engage in and reflect on Nkrumah's liberation thought as a paradigm 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 that the diverse religious communities, the state, and multi-ethnic groups in Ghana must endeavor to coexist peacefully, eliminate ethnocentrism, act with courage and hope, and affirm and practice equitable co-existence