I’ve noted that despite an almost universal conviction that witches exist and are able to do terrible things, there are significant numbers of believers who are not personally afraid of witchcraft. This is what I’ve been writing on thus far and what my research conducted among evangelical mission church leaders in northeastern Congo (DRC) has found. These…

While doing some research for a course in political theologies and mindful of racial tensions in recent days, I came across an article by Bishop Desmond Tutu, “Without Forgiveness There Really Is No Future.” He was reflecting on his visit to Rwanda a year after the 1994 massacre of thousands of members of the Tutsi…

“When you used to research witchcraft, we thought it was just something normal,” an old friend told me during a recent trip to Northwestern, Tanzania, we we lived for over a decade during our time in East Africa. “We didn’t think it was really important to research. But now all of the killing of albinos…

In my last post, “Identities of Accused Witches,” I listed the most common identities of those who are said to be witches. The question for this post is, “how do we know and identify a witch?” Basically, the question is that of epistemology and it is an important one in dealing with the whole question of…

One of the critical features of the way that people talk about “witchcraft” in African contexts is the idea that witches do not usually identify themselves publicly. After all, they are engaged in antisocial behavior, and so it is to be expected that they would want to remain hidden from view.[1] The challenge for ordinary…

From time immemorial, those that have been accused of causing suffering and pain through witchcraft have included: Widows, Parents of deceased, elderly people, children, women, and prosperous people. I’d like to briefly reflect on each group before providing some summary considerations. Widows In much of Africa, among the individuals most commonly accused of witchcraft are…

The Dhongo form an ethno-linguistic group who live in the Territoire (County) of Faradje in the Haut-Uélé District in the Democratic Republic of Congo. They are neighbors of my Lugbara people and share some “experiences” of witchcraft with this Lugbara people that I previously mentioned, in my “Aula: A Baby Disease Caused by a Witch.”…

Bishop “Moses” (names have been changed throughout) was a respected spiritual church leader from Rwanda. He spent decades building a strong church movement of nearly fifty churches across the Rwanda and Burundi borders into Tanzania. Although this area is a seven-hour drive from where I lived in Mwanza, Tanzania, I stayed overnight for up to…

Over 20 thousand street children, most of them orphans, roam the streets of Kinshasa. In response to the biblical call for God’s people to care for orphans, an organization of Congolese pastors led by Pastor Abel Ngolo called Equipe Pastorale Aupres des Enfants en Détresse (Pastoral Team for Children in Distress), and in partnership with…

In her book Our Religious Heritage, Bahemuka observes that, Witchcraft is partly inherited and partly taught from one generation to the next. Africans believe that witchcraft is in the blood of the witches, and, just like genetic inheritance, witchcraft passes from mother to daughter and father to son. The outward paraphernalia of witchcraft which is…

The Daily Guide is one of the most popular private newspapers in Ghana. Many of the sensational stories from such newspapers deal with the supernatural, especially witchcraft. Crash Landing and the “Arsenal” of Prayer In November 2013, the Daily Guide published an article with the headline “wizard crash lands.” The article was accompanied by the picture…

In many regions of the contemporary world, from New Guinea to Nigeria, health problems, death, infertility, and financial problems are blamed on neighbors or relatives thought to have caused these misfortunes through witchcraft. The accused, who are often widows, the elderly, or orphan children, are ostracized, exiled, beaten, or sometimes killed. How churches and church…