Deliverance Ministry in an African Cultural Perspective, by Jim Harries
Relations with other people also tend to be antagonistic. Close family and neighbours form your closest relationships, and in rural areas the two tend to coincide. These are the first to be accused should some evil happen. For example, should food be stolen, a house be broken into or animals become unexpectedly sick—the first to be suspected of causing these things are immediate family and neighbours. The members of your family are your most likely enemies. This may be a surprising perspective to a Westerner, but it is commonplace in parts of Africa.1
Recent media attention given to child witches demonstrates that Africans can be as wary of the evil in their children as they are of evil elsewhere. Children are loved, but they are also feared. They are rarely seen as ‘innocent’. Their potential for ‘evil’ is related to the troubles they can cause to their parents once they have grown—boys beating their mothers or girls who can embarrass the family should they become sexually promiscuous. But it is more than this. Children may be considered inherently evil, and therefore inherently needing to be oppressed, put down, and sometimes tortured or even killed. All too easily they can be considered dangerous to the well being of the family if they are perceived as being witches or sorcerers.2
My purpose for mentioning the above features of African life is not to confuse or trick my readers. Neither is it to put Africans down. It is to point to a context that ought to make a Westerner think before rushing into a deliverance ministry. Before going on, please note that I do not claim objective truth for the above account. The search for objectivity has, it seems to me, been too unhealthy a straight jacket for academia too long—that has kept too much actual ‘truth’ out of view. Not every African person will agree with all of the above. But many will, I believe, strongly identify with it as a general perspective.3
How should a missionary from the West respond to such contexts? How will such contexts affect the way in which one ministers?
Missionary Responses to the African Spirit World
This is a time when the spiritual awareness of many Western churches is rising. That is, there is an ever growing Pentecostal/charismatic movement or emphasis, amongst Western churches.4 Because this is ‘new and exciting’ for Christians in the West, Westerners can be the most enthusiastic about transporting the same to the ‘mission field’. But how should deliverance ministry be applied to such an already spiritualised context? How does the secular context with which many Western missionaries are familiar impact how they approach spiritual warfare?
The following are just a few components of deliverance activities by African churches that I have personally witnessed: The possessed person, typically a girl or woman, may have the undivided attention of a group of three or more men shouting at demons to leave—for perhaps several hours. A patient can be thumped with a Bible, soaked with water, hit with leafy branches or other objects. The patient may be stood in the middle of a circle of people and spun around till they are so dizzy that they keep trying to fall, but are instead thrown back and forth by the circle. They can be ordered to run around the church. An incision can be made in their skin and a ‘substance’ sucked out.
Category: Ministry, Pneuma Review, Winter 2011
Followers
Fans
