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A few days ago I noted that neopentecostals in West Africa seemed to be turning to witchhunts, which appeared to be different from the Christian responses to witchcraft and sorcery found among Christians in Southern and Eastern Africa.According to this article, similar concerns are being manifested among neopentecostal churches in the African diaspora in the USA. They have also been reported from Britain.
| Founded by a Congolese couple, Spiritual Warfare is one of many ministries and congregations in the growing African diaspora in the United States and abroad grappling with witchcraft. In most other churches, Sangamay said, you could not even raise the issue, let alone pray to combat its effects.
Those other churches may argue that such a focus on witchcraft is a relic of Africans’ old beliefs, a dangerously pagan preoccupation. But scholars say this is Christianity made profoundly African. Spiritual Warfare considers itself Pentecostal, and like many other Pentecostals, worshipers see the battle between God and Satan, or what they also call the Bible against witchcraft, shaping the world. |
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6 Comments
24 February 2008 at 10:34 am
In a small town in Nigeria called Esit Eket Evangelical pastors are helping to create a terrible new campaign of violence against young Nigerians. Children and babies branded as evil are being abused, abandoned and even murdered while the preachers make money out of the fear of their parents and their communities.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/dec/09/tracymcveigh.theobserver
I have created three petitions protesting against this horrible act that these pastors are doing to these precious children. Please consider signing them.
Children are targets of Nigerian witch hunt
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/2/children-are-targets-of-nigerian-witch-hunt
Stop Liberty Foundation Gospel Ministries of Nigeria from hurting anymore precious children for money.
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/stop-liberty-foundation-gospel-ministries-from-hurting-anymore-precious-children-for-money
Stop the churches in Nigeria from endangering children’s lives to extort money from there parents.
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/stop-the-churches-in-nigeria-from-endangeringchildrens-lives-to-extort-money-from-there-parents
Thank you for your post.
Kelli
4 April 2008 at 10:41 am
As Kelli says (and you implied in your article in Theandros), these beliefs are a dangerous amalgam of the worst of tribal beliefs and the worst of Christian beliefs. African “witchcraft” beliefs are quite different from European ones (medieval or modern), so there is no analogy. European witchcraft persecutions were based on misogyny and caused by the dissolution of the monasteries (which had previously taken care of the poor, who were now left to roam and beg). See Keith Thomas’s magnum opus, Religion and the Decline of Magic. African “witchcraft” persecutions have very different social causes and different underlying beliefs.
4 April 2008 at 3:51 pm
Yvonne,
The more I study it, the more similarities I see between African and European witchcraft, at least in the premodern period. The differences between Africa and Europe are no greater than the differences between one part of Africa and another, and one part of Europe and another.
European understandings of witchcraft changed quite radically in the late medieval and early modern period, and changed once again after the Enlightenment. I believe we are seeing similar (though not identical) changes in African understandings of witchcraft, as modernity affects African society more deeply.
I find it hard to believe that European understandings were changed by the dissolution of the monasteries. One needs to look at the time frame. The Malleus Maleficarum was published before the dissolution of the monasteries, and monasteries continued in many places. I think rather that the changing understanding of witchcraft and the dissolution of the monasteries may have had common underlying causes.
6 April 2008 at 6:26 am
[...] There are also indications that Christian responses are changing, just as they changed in early modern Europe. In my article Christian responses to witchcraft and sorcery I noted that African initiated churches often had a more healthy and realistic approach to witchcraft and sorcery than Western-initiated churches. But there are signs that this is changing. There is a new breed of African independent churches, the Neopentecostal churches, that are modernist and modernising, and which have a different attitude to witchcraft and sorcery, and some of them, at least, seem to be promoting witch hunts. Zionists wear robes and beat cow-hide drums, the Neopentecostals wear Western suits and have expensive sound systems. See my earlier post on African neopentecostals battle witchcraft in the West. [...]
12 April 2008 at 7:51 am
Witchcraft is not about imposing your will onto others. It is certainly about influencing the energies to bring you what you desire - not at the expense of another’s free will or knowingly causing another harm. When you practice witchcraft you are to come from a place of positive intent.
14 April 2008 at 10:51 pm
[...] African neopentecostals battle witchcraft in the West - 24 December 2007 [...]
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