Christian Extremism: Witchcraft, Murder and Child Abuse

Christian religious extremism hits the American psyche when a fundamentalist church-- Assemblies of God, which thinks Harry Potter is the gateway to Satanism, while facing charges of child abuse requests a $500,000 earmark from the federal government. Or when Sarah Palin is cleansed of witchcraft by a Kenyan Assemblies of God minister.

This form of religious extremism when exported to Africa kills people and causes rampant child abuse.

For decades, fundamentalist evangelical churches have sprung up throughout Africa. Some are affiliated with American congregations, while others are a bit more free form; all claim belief in Jesus. Many of them of share a common hysterical belief in "witchcraft."

"Witch" gets misinterpreted as anyone who is different, weaker, who can be scapegoated for one's troubles. Heck Sarah Palin and her pals "prayed a witch" out of Alaska. And the prayer group gleefully recounted the results.

In Akwa Ibom State, the center of the Nigerian child witch hysteria, the State Governor, Chief Godswill Akpabio, lamented:

The church will torture children and some of the churches will pretend to use oil to try and remove witchcraft from a child. So far we have we have 165 children some of them are not up to 9 months old who have been thrown away by their parents because the church said those children will bring them misfortune.

The Governor has taken a firm stance, declaring

The churches are busy deceiving people in many aspects including avoiding deaths. We have to do something to re-strengthen the Child Right Law. We must fight against the abuse of children and ensure proper education for them.

AllAfrica news service reports:

Analysts trace the phenomenon to poverty which drags parents to Churches and other spiritual centres to seek prosperity...Further investigations show that such parents are usually ready to pay anything to the spiritualists to "deliver" their children from the "grip of the devil."...In some cases, all that is needed for parents to begin to suspect their children of witchcraft, is a manifestation of certain "strange" behaviour. Others are "identified" any the presence of an "inexplicable" illness afflicting them.

Strange behaviors for the Assemblies of God?

Smoking
Drinking
Drugs
Homosexual behavior
Staying in room alone
Dressing in black (fingernails, lipstick)
Body piercings
Demonic symbols on jewelry & clothes
Music (Marilyn Manson, Godsmack, Korn)
Books (Majick, Harry Potter)
Unusual scars and burns on right hand

Time to send Trey or Tiffie to Teen Boot Camp.

Or time to crack down on "religious" abuse of children at home and abroad.

Lisa Derrick is La Figa at Firedoglake.com

Comments

[9jah]

As with most things in developing world, prejudices and harm are often tied to basic lack of information on a subject. Telling the aforementioned poor rural individual that he/she is wrong regarding their religious belief when they are fully aware of the crazy, dirty person who babbles incoherently about witches and God etc. (schizophrenic), the person who has wild mood swings and has inconsistent memory with wild swing (bipolar, dementia) or obsessively piles dirt in thier surroundings (OCD) is not only counterproductive, but myopic as well. Instead, educational emphasis discussing these things as illnesses and illustration about the effects of medication will eliminate any information deficit.

This is the issue and not simply "religious abuse" promoted by some ignorant people.

[9jah]

A big problem with all of this is that typically the West is the window through which many hear about stuff like this...and naturally, people reporting on something will see things through their own innate prism. The problem is forgetting that there might be additional context to any scenario and consulting with people who are an effective bridge.

This is less about "religious abuse" (sorry to burst your anti-religion agenda facilitating bubble) and more about simple poverty, informational education and economic greed.

Western religous actors (pun intended) descend on Sub-saharan African nations or elsewhere in the developing world purely intending to drive home as sensational a message as possible (not all) in a bid to draw paying crowds, sell books and form associations with local leaders that result in windfalls. A slick do-nothing who otherwise is a bum can make a decent sum even in the poorest countries. That's the economic aspect. They have names for these people in religious circles in many African countries.

Of course the poor, as happens everywhere across the globe, are none the wiser. If you have a spiritual belief, Christian or otherwise, with its associated notions of good and evil and someone tells you that taking out a "possessed" child will give you wealth, well you will do it in a heartbeat. Children are an easy sell because of the potential to thwart any evil before it becomes fully realized. This is the poverty aspect. (contd.)

[richdibo]

Recent polls reveal that 68% of Americans believe in angels and demons. What is the difference between a witch and a demon? As "real" beings, do they have the same or similar DNA?

Without our child protection laws and services, America would probably experience a significant increase in the horrific atrocities we see Nigeria and Kenya.

African pulpits foster pandemonium by victimizing little children. In America, ministers incite fear by branding gays, insubordinate women, unwed parents, non-Christians, and other transgressors of the bible's "moral" codes as the blasphemous destroyers of the fabric of god-fearing society. Our law enforcement prevents or curtails more of the victimization from the religious-incited fears that result in violence. Unfortunately, not always. We are not immune from religious extremism--many Americans are victims.

The African ministers, Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell have shown that there is money to be made in the bewitching business.

Christopher Hitchens is right, "God is Not Great-How Religion Poisons Everything."

[Zanti]

Of course, it's not remotely possible that Africa already had its own local superstitions concerning witches.

Next headline: Christians introduce zombie folklore to Haiti!

[Lisa Derrick - Huffpost Blogger]

"Zombie folklore" was introduced to Haiti by slaves who were brought to the island by Christians. So actually your mock headline is correct. In Africa the indigenous faiths (wherein there is active sorcery and passive witchcraft in that the people who possess the power they can't control--unlike in European cultures where the two are pretty much the same) are being deeply twisted and perverted by these hideous versions of Christianity, which as both Boston 1775 and Michael point out are straight out of the Dark Ages

[Zanti]

Yes, good point--Christians did bring voodoo to Haiti because they brought the people who believed in voodoo from Africa as slaves. But that's not quite the same thing as introducing it through Christianity, which is what I meant.

Regarding your second claim, a scholarly cyberjournal piece entitled "Witchcraft in Ghana" http://www.pctii.org/cyberj/cyberj10/onyinah.html convincingly maintains that Pentecostals have, in fact, been attempting to dispense with such beliefs by way of first incorporating them--a tactic that, according to the article, has backfired. That is to say, if the extreme, evil, backward, and horrible folks you decry have made the situation worse, it was not by intention.

I get the impression from your piece and this thread that no claims against Christianity are likely to be challenged in this setting. When we pass judgment in advance of gathering data, the data gathering becomes a mere formality.

[MichaelRedEagle]

Sorry Boston1775 and to Lisa Derrick, but, you are both just noticing this?

warriorwitches dot com has been around for quite awhile and has thousands of stories of people being persecuted and killed as witches.

I should know, I'm the webmaster for the site.

The Dark Ages never ended.

Michael RedEagle

[Lisa Derrick - Huffpost Blogger]

Michael, I have been writing for HuffPo and Firedoglake for just 3 months, and while this is my first post on the subject, I have for decades "noticed" the marginalizing of US teens by frantic, fanatic fundamentalists who twist typical teenage behavior into something to scare their parents beyond reason. And I have been following the rise in Nigerian and Kenyan abuse for a couple years now as a reader. I apologize if you don't think I've jumped on this fast enough to suit you, and commend you for having a site dedicated to this.

The violence and systematic abuse of children, condoned and encouraged by evangelical churches and funded in part through tax dollars is reprehensible and grotesque and flies in the faith of any decent belief system.

[Boston1775]

Morning after morning, day after day, I wrote about this subject on the other site with which you are affiliated. No response. Nothing.

The United States is giving tax dollars to abuse children, the mentally ill, the addicted and homosexuals.

I wish I believed in hell. When George Bush made an executive order to fund faith based initiatives he set this country on a path back to the Dark Ages.

When Sarah Palin accepted the laying on of hands from an African witch doctor and spoke of him admiringly, she condemned more children, more mentally ill, more communities to the equivalent of the Salem Witch Trials.

Click every link. Read every word, Huffington Post community. In the name of Jen, a little girl who identifies as a boy and was sent to Texas, I ask you to get angry and do something.

[anachoret]

Absolutely chilling.

This piece makes most of the "witch" superstition so much more horrifying.

[pogo]

Schizophrenia and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is jim-dandy as long as it's socially sanctioned. As long as the voice in your head and your "heart" come from God-Almighty, and if you suffer from a nagging terror of having your soul, along with, presumably, your nerve endings and pain receptors cast into the burning flames of hell for all eternity unless you perform certain rituals and refuse to question the validity of your beliefs, you are allowed to demand that any sane people you encounter "respect" said beliefs and do not "blasphemy" your "God". Best tool for social control ever devised, and the one singly responsible for dead-ending our species.