sult of Egba crisis and defeat in the 1820's. He would later become a prominent missionary for the Wesley-Methodist Missionary Society.This African diversity, coupled with European administration of the company and eventual colony, would prove to be a source of conflict in the Freetown Peninsula. The principal competition of cultures would come over the practice of religion. The Peterson chapter and the group project by Ms. Brewer, Mr. Keenan and Ms. Doerr outline this conflict well. The main source of conflict and competition was between the British Church and Wesley and Methodist Africans, and between Muslims and both of the former groups. Peterson comments on early religion in Sierra Leone: "There persisted within the church of Sierra Leone a strong element of prior, non-Christian belief which tended to fuse with the religion of the European. In addition, Islam was to be found flourishing in the villages and in Freetown" (230). The British movement to free slaves also had a paternalistic element: "to the Britonthe conversion of the heathen was as much a part of the settlement's collective purpose as was the wish to civilize the so-called barbarian" (230). Many of the Africans on the Freetown peninsula did not embrace Christianity and most of those that did committed to Wesley or Methodist faiths inherited by the Nova-Scotians.The British authority did not welcome any of these religious practices; instead, they sought to have a church "monopoly" of Africans practicing the "proper" faith. In 1822, angry with the second class status given to them within the church structure, Nova-Scotian settlers broke with the British church and formed their own dependent church called the West African Methodist Society (232). The Society, led by Anthony O'connor, quickly grew to include 2,000 members and forty-three preachers. The new church would eventually gain endorsement form the British Colonial Government.Of particular concern to many British Ch...
