|
|
| |
|
|
| |
 |
| |
Asante-Opoku-Reindorf Memorial Lectures
Source: ACI
|
|
The fourth series of Lectures in the Asante-Opoku-Reindorf Memorial Lectures were given at the
British Council Hall and the College Chapel of the Presbyterian College of Education, Akropong-Akuapem on Wednesday 4 November, and Friday 6 November 2009, respectively. These Annual Lectures are organised by the Institute in conjunction with the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences in honour of Revs David Asante, Theophilus Opoku and Carl Christian Reindorf. The three are key figures in the cultural witness to their own people in their time and the lecture series seeks to immortalise them.
This year the Lectures were given by Professor Kofi Asare Opoku, a renowned academic , who happens to be the grandson of Rev Theophilus Opoku. He is currently the Vice- President, Institutional Advancement, at the African University College of Communication, Accra. The lectures were on the topic: ‘Cooking on the two legs of the Hearth: African Spirituality and the Socio-Cultural Transformation of Africa’. Both lectures were chaired by Professor R.F. Amonoo, FGA, President of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences, and was assisted by the Assistant Honorary Secretary of the Academy, Professor R. Mills-Tettey.
In his lecture, Professor Opoku paid glowing tribute to the three people whom we celebrate in these lectures and said they represent a gleaming beacon of inspiration and an admirable example of commitment to education and higher ideals.
The lecture itself was inspired by the absorbing ideas of the Akan proverb:
The present generation say that they no longer rest at the old
resting place: why don’t they then remove one of the stones of
the hearth and cook on the remaining two?
By implication, the younger generations are saying that the ideals of the culture have been superseded by other world religions, or that they have been made irrelevant by their own internal weaknesses or spiritual inadequacies and unsuited for the modern or contemporary world. This, according to the lecturer, amounts to the removal of the inescapable basis and stability of African life. He sees this as part of the larger problem of the devaluation of the religious and cultural values of indigenous people the world over.
He therefore calls on indigenous people themselves to derive meaning and significance from their inherent traditions, and to take charge and to reconstruct their own value systems for their own societies. These traditions, according to the lecturer, have inestimable and sacred values for the world at large.
|
| |
|
|
