“Lord, you know the hopes of the helpless. Surely you will hear their cries and comfort them. You will bring justice to the orphans and the oppressed, so mere people can no longer terrify them.” Psalm 10:17–18   Stop Child Witch Accusations (SCWA) was formed in 2012 and is a coalition of predominantly Christian,…

The Lugbara people live in the Northeast end of the D.R.Congo and in the Northwestern West Nile region of Uganda. They belong to the Central Sudanic ethnolinguistic group. 500,000 Lugbara live in D.R.Congo; almost the same number lives in Uganda. Beliefs in witchcraft among this ethnic group are widespread. It is not surprising that most…

Yesterday I received an urgent email from a good friend, the President of an indigenous evangelical denomination among the Aguaruna of Peru, with whom I worked closely many years ago. I would like to translate his letter here into English, using pseudonyms, and provide commentary on the way witchcraft issues continue to play out among…

It is held that witches are organized into covens on local, national, and international levels. In the covens are kings, queens, messengers and executioners. At night, when witches sleep, it is believed that their souls fly out of their physical bodies to meetings. In my previous presentations–“What is Witchcraft?” and “Witchcraft: Physical or Spiritual?”–I attempted…

A Guest Post by Dr. Tim Stabell Hi Bob, I’ve done a couple of small-scale replication studies based on the information you sent me a couple of months ago, looking at how students in the two universities where I teach here in Congo respond to questions about their experience with accusations of witchcraft. I haven’t…