The Christian Apologetic Alliance has rejected calls for mission schools to alter their Christian identity to accommodate the religious practices of students from other faiths.
The group argues that while Muslim and other non-Christian students have the right to practice their faith, that freedom should not extend to changing the religious character, traditions and established rules of Christian mission schools.
In a statement issued on September 3 in response to concerns raised by the Ghana Muslim Students Association over the rights and welfare of Muslim students in mission schools, the Alliance said religious tolerance must be distinguished from the identity of an institution.
It maintained that mission schools were established on clearly defined Christian values and that their worship practices, discipline and traditions are integral to their institutional identity.
“Religious freedom protects the individual; it does not automatically confer upon the individual the right to redesign an institution founded upon a different religious identity,” the group stated.
The Alliance further argued that students who choose to attend mission schools should respect the rules and practices governing those institutions, regardless of their religious backgrounds.
It stressed that welcoming students of other faiths does not mean mission schools must abandon their Christian ethos, insisting that religious diversity and institutional identity can coexist without one undermining the other.
The group also rejected the argument that public funding of mission schools should require them to abandon or modify their Christian character. According to the Alliance, government support for education should not be used as a basis for dismantling the historical identity of institutions established by Christian missionaries.
The Alliance has therefore called on the government, the Ghana Education Service, churches, school authorities, parents and students to protect what it describes as the historic and distinctive character of mission schools.
It affirmed that Muslims have the right to practice their faith, while Christians have an equal right to maintain Christian institutions and for mission schools to preserve their founding traditions, worship and disciplinary systems.
“No religious group should seek to transform another religious institution into something it was never established to be,” the statement said.
The Alliance has also cautioned Ghana against what it described as the consequences of prolonged disputes over religious accommodation in mission schools, citing developments in Nigeria as a warning against allowing tensions over institutional identity to escalate.
