Colorful Times » Religion

Africa, Witchcraft and Us

Tuggstar — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 20:49:27 +0000

When I got the text about the Channel 4 documentary, Britain’s Witch Children, I knew before watching what was to come; a shameful indictment on African culture that would humiliate us in front of our non-African friends and relatives. It would make African Christianity seem primitive and fraudulent, and the belief in the ancient practice of witchcraft also irrational and naïve.

Juliana Oladipo goes undercover in Britain's Witch Children

So far as to say, it delivered in every aspect. Pastors claiming that they were a divine vehicle of the lord Jesus Christ, that they can rid evil spells from people, make the crippled walk. And above all, guard the congregation against the wicked spell of witches. For any African, it was cringe worthy viewing. It would not help strengthen the identities of Africans in the UK, and I hope it didn’t make me lose the argument to take my wife back to Ghana. Though, it would’ve been worse had I been a Christian. It was sad seeing small girls accused of being practitioners of witchcraft, families desperate to cure their child of an invisible spell. This wide-spread fear, makes easy work for self-ordained pastors to line their pockets. In fact, before the advent of Christianity, false traditional healers would adorn themselves with the attire of chiefs and say they could also guard people against evil powers. Herein lies the critical point, whether the chief priest or pastor is real or fake, both practitioners get frequent work in this industry. So in the minds of the congregation, there is something real to guard against. So the real question I ask is not about the practice, but how real is this threat of witchcraft?

REAL OR FAKE

Is it a real threat, or just a perceived one? Is there something to be afraid of, or is it a reflection of the backwardness of Africa? One more primitive battle we need to cure? Though it should be said, not everyone even in Africa believes in Witchcraft. I remember discussing the subject with an elder Uncle (on my father’s side) in Ghana. He didn’t believe in witchcraft. But at the same time, my great grandfather (on my mother’s side) was known for having special powers. My uncle experienced it, and even though he didn’t believe in it, he settled for the fact that my Great-grandfather had a gift. But what do we call this gift?

Whenever I visit Africa, I am explicitly aware of the belief of many of my relatives have in the existence of witchcraft. Back home, I don’t really delve into it too deeply, neither do I take the subject seriously. I know what human beings can and can’t do, cast spells and possess people are not among them. However, the stigma of being a witch is as potent as that of a paedophile in the West. The label has been put on people close to me, and I really did not appreciate the psychological impact that the accusation has on family members, and the community at large, until after the programme.

When I finished watching, I was incensed. I called my cousin, knowing she would attend similar types of churches and asked her to be careful of these charlatans that are breaking up families. She said, although she didn’t see the programme, she was aware of fraudulent practitioners. Though what surprised me thereafter was her whole hearted and unshakeable belief in the existence of witchcraft–the potential for people to become possessed, and equally, the power the pastor has to cure people of such ills. We argued back and forth until the battery on my phone died. I tried as hard as I could to get her to see the world from my point of view. She equally bombarded me with her evidence, and I tried rationalising from the point-of-view of my upbringing: Which essentially says, (a) the ability for someone to do supernatural things is a nonsense, and (b) the ability for someone else to cast a spell on another human being is equally bogus. Although, while in conversation, something told me to be quiet and listen. This feeling lingered a little longer. My frustration wanted me to solicit other people’s views on Facebook. And the feedback I got were more from people who had experienced a reality similar to my own and who felt somewhat embarrassed about how we were represented.

DISCUSSION

Some people focused on current media explosion concerning the negative depiction of Africa. True. Others pointed out that the media perception in Europe always focuses on the negative, which is equally true. Though it was also pointed out that this is a real subject, a real topic for discussion. Someone else also referred to this as part of a backward mentality that is crippling us. It was also mentioned how ludicrous it is that grown, educated, people believe in such practices. I know this from experience, and I really wanted to open the forum to contributions from people living in Africa as well as those who had lived in Africa. No one was forthcoming, though I got a couple of private messages from people saying that the understanding of this in Africa was completely different to that in the West. My cousin told me that because of my upbringing she doesn’t discuss these things with me. I could only imagine how intimidating it might have been to contribute to a discussion when we are so antagonistic to the opposing reality. Defending their position would have had us thinking that they are strange or crazy, or just embarrassed in much the same way as those of us born here who were thinking, “I hope my colleague Suzy won’t be watching this.” Essentially, I wanted a frank and honest exchange. As a result, I was inspired to write this article. Not a condemnation, but an honest commentary that tries to evaluate all sides of the argument. No answers, just an inter-locking of perspectives.

In Europe and America, we live in a physical world whereby everything has a clear and physical explanation. We feel pain because we have been hit, we have a sickness because of germs, infections, and so on, and almost everything can be explained by the medical profession. Almost. We acknowledge, even in the West, that certain things are beyond a doctor’s understanding or comprehension. I have met people who have been rendered paralysed or brain dead who have learned to walk and speak again. Just this week, I met a woman who said at 4-years old she was rendered brain-dead after a car accident and only after a group of SriLankan pastors prayed for her for 24-hours, did she begin to talk and walk again.

UNSEEN LAWS

Recently, with the popularity of The Secret and The Law of Attraction there has been a bigger interest and investigation to the understanding of the unseen laws that also govern the world, which are as real as electricity is to us, so how
deep do these laws really go and how does it tie in with witchcraft?

PERSPECTIVE

Firstly, witchcraft is not just an African phenomena. Many old societies, have some sort of belief in the relationship between the seen and the unseen world. It is seen in Chinese films, as well as Aboriginal and Asian culture, too.

One thing, however, that the programme, Britain’s Witch Children, didn’t do is to put into historical perspective how Africans practice Christianity, something that another of the contributors to my Facebook thread did. Though I can’t lie, I shuddered when it was said that “Christianity was passed on originally by Europeans to Africans with grace and integrity to offer spiritual enlightenment, the true path to a eternal relationship with God.”

HISTORY

European governments and societies organised hunts for alleged witches during the 15th to 18th centuries: accusing, torturing, and executing thousands of people.

Although European countries are not as old as other countries of the world, there is one reason and one reason only why Europeans do not have the same phenomena of witchcraft as Africans now do. And it isn’t because they discovered a higher way of living, it was actually their explicit belief in this other world why a widespread belief in it no longer exist in Europe. They went to war with the practice witchcraft precisely because they believed in its power and believed that it should be eradicated from society. So from the fifteenth to the eighteenth the centuries, in a chapter of history called The Witch-Hunts, taking place just prior to slavery and colonialism, and literally exterminating any and all people who had even the slightest predilection toward the practice or those suspected of being witches; meaning men, women, children, old, young, crippled. In a bloody chapter, all across Europe, witchcraft was wiped from the social reality through murder, exorcisms, and torture. This stopped the generational continuation of this practice to the point that we can look back today and say it was simply based on paranoia.

These same people, a few years later, went to Africa with the same prejudices and the aided belief that black was of evil and their evil practices were of the devil and the only way for these Africans to be saved was to accept white people, white culture and for white people to be their lord God and personal saviour, and only through this method, could a black man be accepted before God. So white Christians, when they had a foothold in the country, made traditional practices illegal. Anyone found practising traditional beliefs were sent to the local missionaries for exorcism and integration into the white Euro-Christian view of the world. What we saw on channel 4 were the things we had been taught, and these therefore had a massive impact on us psychologically. They completely turned a culture against itself. For example, Yoruba and many other traditional systems have a very sophisticated and complicated belief system, however, traditional African culture automatically means belief in the evil, and the practice of witchcraft. The missionaries didn’t have our best interest at heart–they had theirs. A conqueror never works on behalf of the conquered.

EFFECT ON THE PSYCHE

Unlike the rest of the conquered world, the effect of invasion has had a higher impact on Africa than anywhere else. When Europeans invaded Indian, for example, they found Sikhs and Hindus and left a seed of Christianity, but generally, indigenous practices still thrived. In Pakistan, Indonesia, and the Middle East, they found Muslims and left a seed of Christianity, but Islam still thrived. In Africa, they found Ashantis, Ewes, Yurobas, Nubians, Baganda, Zulus, and others, all of whom operated from their own cultural practices, but the invaders left them with Christianity–and an uneasy relationship with their own African cultural practices–seeing the world now through the conflicted eyes of their conquered selves.

So what do we do? Do we have a witch-hunts like the Europeans did not too long ago, and violate every human rights law in the book? Do we just cast the practice aside and say the ability to manipulate the unseen world is impossible, and leave it at that? The reality is that the power of belief is the biggest power there is. And believing it is possible, makes it real. People I know who are accountants, lawyers, doctors, nurses, directors, all with a high degree of education, will swear blind that this practice is real. So the question I ask is, whether the belief in this practice is sound or not?

HUMAN POTENTIAL

They say human beings use less than 10% of their brain’s capacity. Would it be strange to see what human beings could do if they learn to use 12%? Would that account for genius? What if these fuller-brained humans began to do things we just couldn’t fathom. What if they began to use 20 percent of the brain’s capacity? When I see the likes of Darren Brown or David Blaine operate, I realise their abilities have gone beyond illusionary activity. In Africa, these people would undoubtedly be seen as practitioner of witchcraft. Are they genetic remnants of the witch-hunt era, or have they managed to develop other faculties of the mind?

CAST-A-SPELL

One aspect of this practice I have struggled with is the belief that a person can cast a spell on another individual. My argument is this: If Africans hold such power there is no way we would have lost so many wars to invading armies. No way we would have remained in bondage for so long. How could we be defeated in any football match against non-African teams? I don’t understand. If the power of witchcraft is true, why does it seems to only work against poor struggling families? Why are only poor people condemned to poverty and doom? Where was this power when Mobutu was ruling Congo? Where was the power when the Belgians were mutilating people in Africa? Or when Mandela was in prison for 28 years, where was the power then?

POWER OF BELIEF

The power of belief, the power of culture and the power of a paradigm are extremely important. We who are born in the West usually do not believe in any of this ‘nonsense.’ We have grown-up in a society that has no remnants of its superstitious past prevailing in any arena of society, except perhaps in entertainment, on television, or at the circus. If we are fortune, our African parents have raised us without engaging with us in this practice. However, I would bet, even us born there, if we were to ask our parents with all their degrees. Would swear blind that its existence is true.

Herein lies the problem I had when communicating with my cousin. She, in her mind, had conclusive proof of witchcraft. She had admissions from practitioners, and victims, she claimed. She knew of people who went to hospitals only for the doctor to have no idea what was wrong with them, but for the local healer to identify the problem, cure them, and name the person responsible. What could I say in the face of such ‘evidence’? No amount of books can confront this real experience.

Furthermore, if pastors and priests are believed to have the power to battle against this, there is no way that you will go against them. These are the openings that fake pastors and charlatans can use to exploit the vulnerable searching for answers. Parents that go to pastors are actually trying to help their children not harm them. Which means the pastors can say, it’s your mother-in-law, your wife, your grandmother, or your mum. And it will be believed wholesale, if not consciously, subconsciously. That is the problem; everything that exists in your world becomes real as a result of this “spell.” Your finance, your marriage, your health, and when you ultimately fail, whoever was accused becomes the witch. (And why on earth is it always female?) The woes are being generated by the belief, and the mental power given to the belief that essentially says that what you fear most begins to manifest. That is my belief.

WITCHCRAFT FAKE OR REAL?

So is witchcraft, its existence and its power real? To be able to cast spells and possess others? Me, being born and raised in the UK, I would say absolutely not. To me, these star trek and superman stories of people flying, casting spells, causing death, and destroying people’s finances, is ludicrous. I just don’t see how these things can be possible. Though, at the same time, I had to ask myself whether I would be brave enough to challenge the world of witches to put a spell on me to prove it has no effect. The truth is I wouldn’t do that either. So I had to ask myself is that seed an element of belief or recognition that this could be possible? How much more would that be hardened if I was living in a society where evidence could be tallied, or I knew people like David Blaine, who did things beyond comprehension of the physical mind. As much as I say it’s false, the truth is, I wouldn’t put it to the test, would you?

I really don’t have the answers. I know belief holds a big sway on what happens to an individual. But I am willing to be open and to try and listen without being prejudice or judgemental. I would really like to know what people feel or think about this complex subject. Can you help me evaluate the evidence?

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Tuggstar

Natural Mystic: Coming from The Shouter Baptists Faith

Paul Boakye — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 19:11:24 +0000

Vibrant, evocative, expressive; a European Christian religion fuelled by the rhythms and traditions of West Africa, yet totally indigenous to Trinidad; the Shouter Baptist faith has emerged from a history of persecution to occupy a unique place in Caribbean culture.

Once ‘Shouter’ was a dirty word in Trinidad, a term imposed on its followers by a mainstream society that saw their practices – dancing, shaking, falling to the ground, loudly invoking the spirit of the Lord – as unseemly and anti-Christian. Today its status in Trinidadian life is reflected by the observance of an annual holiday on March 30th to celebrate the repeal of the Shouters Prohibitive Ordinance, the law that forced thousands of Shouter Baptists to practice their faith in secrecy for years, for fear of brutal reprisals by the police.

Much has changed. There is some dispute over the origins of the Shouter religion – various theories place its roots in Africa, North America, St. Vincent and Grenada – but what is beyond dispute is that it has evolved and grown over time to become entirely unique and indigenous to Trinidad, a rich conflation of the many, often competing, cultures of the island and unaffiliated to any foreign religious organisation.

While, at a local level, the organisation and hierarchy of the Shouter Baptist faith can be incredibly complex (with countless ranks and positions, such as Leader, Mother, Shepherd, Watchman, Captain and Healer), there has traditionally been no formal organisational structure. Churches – or ‘camps’ – were founded according to the guidance and instruction of the Holy Spirit. The faith blossomed as hundreds of independent churches were established all over
the island, each practising their own local variation of the faith. Today, a degree of organisation has developed, with the three main archdioceses being incorporated in 1985. However, many churches still remain autonomous, either under the umbrella of one of the archdioceses or functioning in complete independence. It is a religion that remains spontaneous, unpredictable and driven by the unseen hand of the Lord.

The once-shameful ‘Shouter’ label can be traced back to the influence of this unseen hand. Shouter services are at once highly ritualised and incredibly spontaneous. They traditionally begin with the ringing of a bell and the lighting of candles, followed by the recitation of a liturgy, the singing of hymns and ritual hand-shaking and the touching of all those gathered. The ‘Leader’ delivers a sermon and there is more singing and praying and, all the while, the worshippers clap hands, stamp feet and cry out in praise of the Lord. They clap, stamp and build up into a religious ecstasy until they ‘catch the Spirit’ – the Holy Spirit visits the worshipper, who begins to sway, shout, speak in tongues and eventually fall to the ground in a trance-like state.

Another fascinating practice of the Shouter faith is that of ‘mourning’, a period of ‘Godly sorrow’ lasting for seven days or more, in which the ‘mourner’ prays, meditates and is forbidden from speaking, eating, bathing or any other comfort, lying for the duration on the bare floor of a mud hut. In a ritual derived from the religion’s African influence, the mourner is ‘called’ by the Leader to go though the mourning period, which is meant to symbolise death and resurrection, a spiritual journey from which the mourner emerges cleansed of their ‘impure’ being and possessed of spiritual gifts. Or, as Archbishop Barbara Gray-Burke, of the Ark of The Covenant Spiritual Baptist Church in Laventille puts it: “In psycho-biological terms, the rite of ‘mourning’ actually involves a period of intense physical sensory deprivation as the initiate is deprived of light and movement and receives minimal sustenance.”

It was such practices as ‘mourning’, as well as the loud and expressive elements of Shouter services – which drew disapproval from mainstream society for ‘disturbing the peace’ – that led to the colonial government of the time banning the Shouter Baptist faith from 1917 to 1951. While conservative elements of society deemed Shouter rituals and practices barbaric and ungodly, it is now felt that underlying this was a sense of embarrassment and distaste for the vivid evocation of their African roots – now considered ‘uncivilised’ – that these practices involved. The shame and self-hatred bred by their colonizers led the Trinidadian people to suppress a unique and vibrant tradition in an attempt to flee from their past.

The Shouter Baptists suffered 34 years of suffering and persecution, forbidden from worshipping and beaten and arrested if suspected of doing so. Yet they survived, slowly organising themselves from a disperse company of individual churches into a body – The West Indian Evangelical Spiritual Baptist Faith, under the leadership of the Grenadan-born Elton George Griffith – that was able to successfully lobby for the repeal of the Shouters Prohibitive Ordinance in 1951.

Now they practice freely across Trinidad and have spread their unique brand of African-flavoured Protestantism across the Caribbean and beyond-to the United States, to Canada and to England. Singing, dancing, hollering: the Shouters are here now too. Catch the Spirit.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzdmTiWkq0I

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Paul Boakye

Writer, editor and marketing specialist who sat on The Power Inquiry. Former editor and CEO of the consumer lifestyle magazine, Drum (UK), and author of five plays published for an academic audience by Alexander Street Press, USA. Recipient of business and writing awards, including prestigious accolades such as advising British government, BBC radio and TV commentator, and invitation to meet Queen Elizabeth II in 2007. Currently works as a communications professional, creating contagious ideas to help great brands change the conversation to their advantage, across the entire Central and West African region.

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The Sanctified Church

Dennis Williams — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 19:36:53 +0000

When I was fourteen a school friend accompanied me to an evening service at my church. I won’t mention the denomination but it was then, and still is, the largest Black Pentecostal church in the UK. I watched her veer from sheer fright when “the spirit broke out” to complete amazement when the choir sang or the musicians jammed. Coming from a family of atheists and agnostics, this experience made the Black church especially exciting and appealing to her. “You’re so lucky to be a part of such an exciting church…” she chirped on the way home and incessantly everyday for three months.

My father was an assistant pastor in our church. My siblings and I had never known anything different. Church was our life. Our life was our church. My parents made sure we could never forget it. There was the fervent fire and brimstone preaching, the speaking in tongues; the rebuking of demons that occasionally had the audacity to walk in on one of my father’s sermons. Then came the prophesying, the healing, and the back benching of disobedient saints, the stringent rules, and the making up of testimonies. These all served to publicly demonstrate to the congregation that my father’s sanctification was still very much intact, which in turn ensured that he himself was never back-benched. Never swimming in the same pool as the opposite sex; girls never wearing make-up, trousers, or jewellery; and the constant reminders that we were born of the flesh and therefore into sin and could never be worthy, were all his absurd rules that seemed very natural to me. My attendance at prayer meetings, building programs, Sunday services and annual conventions, primarily consisted of studying music and making up cruel pseudonyms for elder church members. Children can be cruel, and for a while, the fusion of Afro-Caribbean and African-American spirituals seemed to make all the rules, dogmas and absurd assertions worthwhile.

This was the late 1970’s pushing into the eighties. I was a first generation British born Black man of Jamaican parents who were intent on never diluting the ‘word of God’. Until this point in my adolescence, I cannot recall ever-hearing sermons pertaining to sexuality. It was only over time that I became bored, aggravated, and paranoid by what I was now hearing, and had no doubt heard throughout my life. “God made Adam and Eve. He never make Adam and Steve. It is an abomination onto the word of God; the mark of the Devil; a lie.” This kind of rhetoric would reverberate, dictate, and gradually haunt me to this day. For all of my apparent ignorance, I could neither deny nor ignore what my eyes, my hormones, and my libido were telling me: I WAS A HOMOSEXUAL.

I masked my shame well. Much to my parent’s satisfaction, I threw myself into extra curriculum activities in both church and school. My ‘A’ level grades gave me ample choices for higher education. I chose The University of London and majored in Computer Science. ‘I flew the nest’ when my parents secured accommodation for me with a pastor in South London from the same denomination as us. University years flew by not in a blur of copious amounts of alcohol, drugs, or orgies, but with church, study, and sleep. My constant prayers, fasting, and repentance did little or nothing to eradicate my shame and so grew my depression and self-loathing.

Upon graduating, I secured a job with a well-known software developer for whom I still currently work. Another two years rapidly passed, as did my life, or rather lack of it. I decided to ‘bite the bullet’ and nervously ventured to the West End one night, got hopelessly drunk, and ended up in ‘Heaven’ (hmmm). This is still very much all a blur to me except my elation, surprise and disgust at seeing other Black gay men. I was not alone in my illness, deviation, possession, and disloyalty to God. Misery loves company. It would not be long before I found my way onto the Black gay circuit, which in 1987, primarily consisted of The Market Tavern (mixed – Black and white), Benjy’s on the Old Kent Road (mixed – Black and white), and numerous Black late-night house parties around London almost every weekend.

I saw countless men that I knew from the Gospel fraternity of our church. I had long since left religion behind with its piety, prejudice, and hypocrisy, but many of these ‘brothers’ are still actively involved. I knew that my eventual ‘outing’ was inevitable. In that I had no doubt, but from my own church brethren – that was a shock. Most of them, I know, have perfected the art of leading double lives. Being pleased on Saturday night by a man, and pleasing God in church on Sunday, made everyone happy. Or were they, are they, will they ever be happy?

I have seen church folks lay hands on a young Black man in an attempt to exorcise the demon of homosexuality. This, just three days after he had been discharged from The Maudsley Hospital for mental illness, barely lucid, and on a cocktail of Lithium, Imipramine, Amitriptyline, and Nortriptyline. Do you think that the church managed to convince him that he was possessed, or do you think that these bright, highly intelligent, well-educated people could see that they were only contributing to his illness? Two further nervous breakdowns ensued, as did two more exorcisms. He’s dead now.

If the Black church were to remove every homosexuals from its ranks there would be no more choir, half the pastors would vanish, and some of the sisters wouldn’t be getting it as regularly as they currently do. I know HIV-positive men in the church who refuse to wear a condom because it might suggest – what exactly? The Black church’s selective criminalisation of one sin over another is not only against its own doctrines it is wicked. How many more of brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, cousins, and children do we have to bury (or ostracise) before we see?

Dennis Williams

For the Bible Tells Me So

Paul Boakye — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 01:37:01 +0000

For a long time the Bible has been misused to support prejudice; apartheid, segregation, slavery, and the second-class citizenship of women.

Now it’s being used/misused to condemn gay people. It’s an old trick. Fundamentalist Christians have been using it throughout the ages. Now they’re doing it again. In viciously homophobic places like Jamaica, Uganda, and Nigeria, among others, you can be killed for same sex love by Christians preaching the Bible.

Winner of the Audience Award for Best Documentary at the Seattle International Film Festival, Dan Karslake’s provocative, entertaining documentary attempts to reconcile homosexuality and Biblical scripture, and in the process reveals that Church-sanctioned anti-gay bias is based solely upon a significant (and often malicious) interpretation of the Bible. As the film notes, most Christians live their lives today without feeling obliged to kill anyone who works on the Sabbath or eats shrimp.

Through the experience of five very normal, very Christian , very American families – including those of former House Majority Leader Richard Gephardt and Episcopalian Bishop Gene Robinson – we discover how insightful people of faith handle the realisation of having a gay child. With commentary by such respected voices as Bishop Desmond Tutu, Harvard’s Peter Gomes, Orthodox Rabbi Steve Greenberg and Reverend Jimmy Creech, For The Bible Tells Me So offers healing, clarity and understanding to anyone caught in the crosshairs of scripture and sexual identity.

Paul Boakye

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