Independent church healing : the case of St Elijah cum Enlightenment School of the Holy Spirit in Zimbabwe (original) (raw)
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This article tackles one of the most interesting subjects in African Christianity and African traditional religions. There have been concerted efforts to supplant traditional religion and its various institutions for over a century now. Yet these same institutions persist to this day. In this article, I study how Christianity, from the moment missionaries settled in Zimbabwe, sought to uproot the traditional health delivery system. With the help of hindsight, I observe how missionaries failed to relate the health delivery system to the Shona cosmology and thereby failed to uproot the system. Further, I also note how the rise of African Initiated Churches (AICs) seems to have attempted to do what missionary churches had failed to do, that is, challenge the diviner-healers. However, even these attempts have not uprooted the traditional diviner-healers. It is my observation that the continuous re-branding exercises undertaken by the diviner-healers, as well as their perception of the living-dead, is central to its persistence and that it is there to stay.
An Understanding of Healing in African Christianity: The Interface between Religion and Science
2019
Most of African Christian Churches place a lot of emphasize on healing practices as a response to the teaching of Jesus Christ. This explains why churches or crusades that practice healing in Africa are very popular and command the greatest numbers of adherents. According to these churches, the Lord commanded them to heal, and so they heal. Although some of these churches do not discourage the use of modern medicine, they are convinced that spiritual healing is a higher method than the effort to compete with God and yet there are others that completely discourage the use of modern medicine. Seen from the modern Kenya where science is understood to be the foundation of development and progress and religion as an important stand. This paper assesses African Christian Church believe on the relationship between religion and science. It also explores African Christian Church’s attitude spirituality has had on African Christian Church healing practices.
2018
This study focuses on a critique of healing ministry, conflict and Methodism: the case of Mabelreign, Epworth and Mbare (MEM) societies of the Methodist Church in Zimbabwe (MCZ). The project seeks to find out the nature of the healing ministry practiced by MCZ and the extent to which MEM societies respond meaningfully to the healing needs of their members within the local cultural context. The research uses the missio-cultural framework as postulated by Roderick Hewitt (2012), with the aim of analysing how mission and culture 1 can come into dialogue in the theology of healing ministry in MCZ. Using the inculturation lens of Edward Antonio (2006) to converse with this discourse, the thesis argues that healing ministry is intrinsic to the missional calling of the MCZ in its given cultural milieu, however, this mission has been severely neglected because it has not been taken seriously in the church's ministry. This situation has resulted in dual membership, syncretism and/or the total transfer of membership from MCZ to either African Initiated Churches (AICs) or newer Pentecostal churches. The research notes that healing ministry in the MCZ dates back to the time of John Wesley in the eighteenth century England and his hermeneutical emphasis on biblical texts that gave priority to the healing ministry of Jesus amongst the poor. Wesley's theology was grounded in healing ministry, however, the Methodism that was transported and transplanted to Zimbabwe xi 5.8.3 The MCZ's Engagement and Disengagement on HIV and AIDS .
Studies on Ethno-Medicine, 2015
The social work scholarship in Zimbabwe and South Africa has neglected issues to do with religion and spirituality. This study focused on an African initiated church called Johane Masowe Chishanu (JMC) in Zimbabwe where it originated and in South Africa where it is visibly growing. The study sought to examine the healing practices in Johane Masowe Chishanu Church. Data was collected from the church's prophets (N=15), assistants to prophets (N=6) and chronically ill people (N=9) who sought assistance from the church, through interviews from a community in Buhera District in Zimbabwe and Seshego Township in Limpopo Province, South Africa. It was found that assumed causes of illness among the members of Johane Masowe Chishanu Church include among others, avenging spirits, witchcraft and punishment. Methods employed to heal illnesses include stones, leaves of the hissing tree, burying the problem, singing and pointing to the east.
Verbum et Ecclesia, 2016
There are different streams of healing praxis in Africa today, namely African traditional healing, biomedical healing and spiritual healing (which includes the more recent �touch your TV screen� healing method) among others. These streams offer contemporary African people diverse alternatives with regard to healing. As much as the hegemony of Western biomedicine, as endorsed by missionaries in the past, can no longer serve as a norm in the area of healing, we can also not use the African traditional healing methods and or any other alternative presented to Africa without discernment. This suggests therefore that Reformed mission ecclesiology and missionary practitioners should critically engage the African context, worldview and culture on the matter of healing. It should also engage other forms of spiritual healing methods on offer in the African soil.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: The use of an indigenous knowledge system when coming to healing in the Afr...
African Traditional Healing Practices and the Christian Community
The article draws attention to the continuing popularity of African traditional healing practices, and asks whether African churches and modern medical programs can continue simply to denounce or to ignore such practices. The need for a further appraisal becomes apparent when it is shown that the purposes of these healing practices fulfill certain functions not met by modern medicine. When a comparison shows that the healing practices recorded in the Old and New Testaments often have more in common with African traditional practices than with modern medicine, the question whether the African Christian community should re-evaluate the traditional healing practices becomes unavoidable.
International Bulletin of Mission Research, 2020
This article examines current practices of divine healing of Pentecostal Africans. It provides insights into current developments by using the explanatory concepts of innovation, competition, and agency. The article draws on data obtained through an interdisciplinary, transnational, and multisite investigation of eight Pentecostal churches in Kampala, Nairobi, Cape Town, and London. Methods used included ethnographic observation, visual ethnography, and semistructured interviews. Pentecostal Africans in Africa and the diaspora, this article argues, are simultaneously reenacting centuries-old faith-informed healing practices and creatively reinventing aspects of these practices to assert their relevance in a postmodern world characterized by religious plurality, competition, and secularism.
African Christianity and healing: Implications for pastoral care
In die Skriflig / In Luce Verbi
The rapid rise of Christianity in the developing world, and specifically in Africa, has asked renewed questions about pastoral theology and pastoral care. The African worldview, as a possible explanation for the increase in Christianity, is one of the most cited reasons for this growth. Pentecostalism and the Charismatic movement are referred to as ‘new’ Christianity. The new Christianity is influenced by the practices and characteristics of the African worldview. Wholistic healing derives from the African worldview perspective that reduces the dichotomy between spiritual and science, or spirit and body. This approach to healing, differs from the Western worldview that approaches healing from a biomedical perspective. The disparity in worldviews and subsequent different approaches to healing, are assessed against the backdrop of the implications for pastoral theology and pastoral care.Contribution: The African worldview and ‘new’ Christianity contribute by engaging critically with t...