[1][2][3][4][5] His missionary zeal, unconventional and fiery ministry helped entrench Methodism in the Ashanti and Brong-Ahafo Regions of Ghana, through a large-scale spiritual awakening and revival.

[10][11] Born Kwame Oppong in a slave family, he was owned by a wealthy man named Kofi Dom in Akuntanim, a Bono village near Berekum and the Ivorian border, about 64km (40 miles) west of Sunyani, the capital of the Brong Ahafo Region of Ghana.

[1][2] In an interview with his biographer, Hans Werner Debrunner, a Swiss German historian, Samson Oppong traced his ancestry to the Upper Volta, known today as Burkina Faso.

[1] Oppong's father, Yaw Kyerema was a Grunshie slave who had been a captive of Samory Touré, a nineteenth-century fearsome adventurist and warrior who founded a kingdom from modern day Guinea to Burkina Faso.

[1] Oppong father was eventually sold to Kofi Dom at Akuntanim in the Bong-Ahafo Region and held an important position in his master's household.

[13] In his childhood, Oppong was influenced by the brother of his Ashanti step-mother, a fetish priest and a traditional healer or shaman who adhered to the native Akan religion.

[13][14] In time, Oppong came to acquire the knowledge of herbal medicine through sorcery which had a spiritual basis in Akan religious thought for protection from foes, wealth acquisition, display of power, harming opponents and withstanding unrequited love.

In the course of time, I gained the following medicines or amulets (aduru, suman): The Anglo-Ashanti Wars between the British and Ashanti empires, along with the subsequent colonisation of the region by Britain, resulted in the abolishment of domestic slavery in Asante sometime between 1896 and 1901.

Tasked with collecting weekly wages and distributing various sums to his co-workers, he misappropriated and bolted with the group's salaries to a faraway village where he was accused of having affairs with a policeman's wife as well as many other women.

[13][14] He then went through cycles of imprisonment, admonitory experiences, dreams of being freed, actual release from prison, short acquaintances with Christians, return to traditional healing and then back to jail for a third time.

In less than two years, more than ten thousand Ashanti had been baptised and hundreds more were in the point of deciding for Christ.”[5][14] He was said to have accosted powerful chieftains and troubled the British colonial authorities.

[14] His evangelism was compelling as it combined humour and manipulation to downplay the “uncanny, fanatical, hypnotic power” of tribal fetishes he wanted destroyed.

A local newspaper, the Gold Coast Leader, provided the following commentary in its 27 October 1923 issue, “This man, an uneducated peasant…saw the vision of the cross of the risen Jesus, and was compelled to preach to the Ashantis.

He surprised Cape Coast.”[19][20] The theology and missiology scholar, M. A. Kwamena-Poh further observed, “At this time Sampson Opon had some similarities to John Wesley (1703-91), the English founder of the Methodist movement.

Like Wesley, too, he won converts by using appeals to fear and pity, with threats of hell fire, promises of Heaven, wildly emotional oratory, and hymn singing.

If you do not change your ways, God will let fire rain down upon your village.”[5][14] His approach proved to be effective as ten thousand people, including Asante royalty and fetish priests (akomfoɔ) were baptised in the first two years of his ministry, and in 1923, Oppong hit the 20,000-convert milestone.

Overall, he baptised 110,000 of which sixty thousand remained with the Methodist church by the end of his ministry, which far exceeded the modicum of success achieved by European missionaries.

[15] Oppong's usage of crude language or profanity led to accusations by the Basel missionary, W. Schafer, of him being a fraud, engaged in witchcraft and sorcery through subjective visions.

[14] External factors that aided Oppong's ministry include the development of roads and railways in Asante, making transportation easier and the opening of schools by the colonial government.

Echoing the Biblical Samson who lost his legendary strength under the influence of Delilah, the English Methodist minister, Arthur Eustace Southon explained that alcohol was Oppong Achilles’ heel.

[24] Lacking discipline and spiritual preparation, he lost his electrifying preaching and prophetic abilities and the power to read the Bible using the black stone.

Southon surmised that “Pride and deep-seated hatred of the Fante people, finished what the subtle scheme of the fetish priest had begun and Sampson Oppong fell to yet lower deaths of shame.”[13] Given that his village was under the jurisdiction of Dormaa, the paramount chief summoned him to his court and as a subject and he had no choice but to obey the king.

[13] As a result, he was ostracised and expelled by the Wesleyan Methodist community, the mission compounds or Christian village[25] and the coastal Fante ministers, whose uppity and elitist mannerisms Oppong particularly disdained.

The Basel missionary, W. Schafer remarked that Samson Oppong “lived in the bush with two or more wives, cultivated cocoa and drank a great deal of palm wine.”[13] He eventually returned to the Methodist church and became an itinerant preacher in his hometown, Akuntanim, albeit with less zeal.

True inclusivity is not a program, but a result of welcoming people into the family.”[14] In the broader context, the phenomenal growth of Methodism in Ashanti mirrors the evangelical ministry of an educated Liberian Kru native of Glebo ethnicity, William Wade Harris (1850-1929) who was a spirit Baptist.

Other independent evangelicals in West Africa were Moses Orimolade, Babalola Ositelu, Simon Kimbangu, Peter Anim, Garrick Braide (Delta) and T.J. Marshall, a Methodist pioneer in Porto Novo.

Commenting on the multiethnic, trans-colonial, non-denominational nature of Harris’ ministry, a French missionary stated, “His faith is nourished by verses borrowed by the Scriptures.

[33] He wore a “flowing gown and carrying a cross, a Bible and a bowl of baptismal water like his teacher and model” and proselytised in the northern hinterlands of the Western region of Ghana.

[33] His work caught the attention of the Anglicans who licensed and ordained him an itinerant preacher in Nzema country, with his headquarters planted in his hometown, Beyin.

[33] He left his factory job due to persistent illness and returned to Boso, his hometown where he married an Akan woman and raised four daughters.