QUAQUE: THE FIRST AFRICAN ANGLICAN PRIEST

Anglican engagement with Africa coincided with British involvement in the Atlantic slave trade. The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG) responded to requests for a chaplain for the British traders on the Gold Coast of West Africa (present-day Ghana), appointing Thomas Thompson to serve as chaplain to the Castle, the British fort at Cape Coast. Thompson stayed from 1751 to 1756, when ill health (the constant hazard for Europeans before effective treatment for malaria became available in the late nineteenth century) caused him to return home. His main task was to provide pastoral service to the transient European traders and the mixed-race community at the Castle. The slave trade being the sole reason for the existence of the fort, missionary work was difficult to undertake. Long after he left Africa, in 1772, Thompson wrote a pamphlet defending the slave trade – the very year of the Mansfield judgement, which undermined the legal basis for slavery in England itself. But one of Thompson's actions did have missionary consequences. In 1754, he had arranged with a local chief, Caboceer Cudjoe [Kodwo], to send three youths to England to be educated. Two of the boys died, but the third, Quaque (Kwaku), who was thirteen, survived and was baptised Philip. In 1765 he was appointed by the SPG to minister at the Castle. Before leaving England, he was ordained deacon and priest and thus became the first African (and, indeed, non-white) priest of the Anglican communion.