Religious child abuse?

I'm there... This happens where I live in Malawi - and it happens often.

You would be amazed at the newspaper headlines here which read things like:

"Child witch flies through window at 3am"

"Witch takes children on spirit ride to graveyard"

"Man appears beaten and naked in field after encounter with evil spirits"

And many other things just like this.

The problem is not Christianity per se, the problem is an ineffective gospel message that is preached... The problem is that the harmful tribal practices and beliefs aren't confronted head on by those with education who have come to tell these people about Christ. Ultimately, the problem is people.

The poster a few before me noted that if education were improved this would happen less and less and I believe he is completely right. Many of the beliefs in the activity of witches come from a lack of education which enables one to determine that there might be another source for the problem or occurrence other than the spiritual. Let me give you an example that is common here...

In Malawi most houses have tin roofs rather than tiles. We have no insulation in the roofs so any movement on the roof is loud, almost amplified inside the house. We also have some very large crows in Malawi... Early in the morning it is not uncommon for the crows to be attracted to the light shining off the tin roof and to the many bugs that are also attracted to the same phenomonen. When a crow bounces across your roof it sounds not unlike a person running on the roof. Accordingly it is common for people here to believe that witches send evil spirits in the form of people who run across your roof early in the mornings to curse your house. People get very scared and so they seek the counsel of a witch doctor who is then costly and gives them all sorts of ineffective remedies to fix the problem which ultimately don't work as the problem is crows and bugs and not evil spirits.

And this isn't just uneducated villagers that believe this - it is city dwellers as well - those in business, in management and in other positions within society. Witchcraft is accepted as real and in the sense that anything associated with it has great power to confuse, terrify and cause confusion - it IS very real here.

All this is not to say that what you are talking about is not wrong. Truly it is very wrong. It is just to say that what is to blame is not Christianity but fear. When the early Christians came they did not teach people why certain practices were wrong and why they were harmful. Accordingly people would say they are Christians, go to church on a Sunday, and then get involved in local beliefs in the afternoons. Witchcraft has great power over them when a Christian should believe that it has no power over them. People attend witchdoctors to get cures when Christianity has no witchdoctors and even speaks out against them as frauds and charlatans. Do you see what is happening here? The local beliefs in the power of the Spirit world have not been dispelled but have been maintained. And now you have the sense that there is an ultimate goodness that ought to be fought for and so people try to fight that battle in the spiritual realms by invoking traditional cures, medicines, suffering methods and all sorts which they now proclaim to do to invoke the power of the good spirits who they are convinced are on their sides because they believe in the true God.

The problem is that their beliefs are often a million miles from Christianity and it is a common saying that Christianity is a mile wide and an inch deep here in Africa. Being a Christian means very little to you or the way you live - the only impact it has is where you go on a Sunday (and then church often becomes more like a talent show than what we might think of as church in the UK where everyone comes one after another to perform their own special song to the congregation and receive applause for it).

So I agree - let's save children and adults from the snare that is an overemphasis on the spiritual world. But I fear that you might need to enlist the help of Christians and Jews who can all help point to a God that does not require they do the things they are doing but requires justice, love and mercy of them. The people want to believe in a God and so they will (at least for a little while yet)... the choice then comes as to how you will handle this. This is why spiritual education is as important as mental education. People here will not naturally conclude that there is no God because you have taught them something. Belief is a part of the fabric of their culture. Instead we must direct their beliefs towards something that has an impact on them in terms of compassion, love, mercy, justice and kindness; towards a God who is just as concerned with what they do here and now as He is with anything 'spiritual' and even would rather they focus on getting their own house in order before they try and fix someone else who needs no fixing in the way they desire to do the fixing.

If you want to understand more, you will need to come to live in Africa for a few years among the people (and not just among an expatriate community). It truly does open your eyes to things you will find initially unbelievable... but soon, nothing amazes you any more...

Let me give you another example:

An eight year old girl comes to an HIV/AIDS clinic that is being run in a village where my friend is helping out. The young girl is clearly sexually active. When asked why she replies simply 'I need my daily dosage of vitamin K'. Not wanting to push things my friend continues with the consultation without trying to get to the bottom of what vitamin K is although she does some research after the clinic.

It turns out that the elders and chiefs in that area are telling the community that young girls who are not married need a daily dose of vitamin K otherwise they will die. They say that they heard this from the doctors who come to the village. The problem is that vitamin K is found only in the sperm of the chiefs and elders and so all young girls must have sex with them on a daily basis if they want to live.

WHAT!!!! Seems crazy yes? But it happens... And unless you understand that the elders and chiefs are more trustworthy than outsiders you could spend years trying to educate the villagers against this but they will always trust their chiefs and elders who will tell them that you just want to watch them get the illness because then you will have customers to treat who can pay you money. You have to educate the chiefs and elders first so that these vicious lies stop.

And this is where the problems begin. Many of the expatriate individuals who work for organisations in Africa spend no time in the villages themselves. They do not understand the culture difference between the country they are in and their own country. They have no idea about how things work or why things happen and so they are unable to effectively tackle the issues. Indeed, finding this information can be difficult in itself because communities often won't talk to outsiders about things that are precious to them such as their beliefs and their traditions. Often such societies are secret and anyone speaking about them to an outsider risks death.

I have spent two years working with Malawians and working into the village communities. I know only a fraction of what is needed to be known in order to make a positive impact in the right way. African culture is like an onion - you think you have understood it but then you realise that you have only pealed back one layer and there are many many layers left to go. Often, unless you immerse yourself in the culture and country the chances of you ever understanding even a fraction are slim and I have seen this to be the case in many expatriates here who simply think that Malawians are idiots who can't understand simple instructions when the reality is that the simple instructions aren't so simple because they make no sense and the reasons for them are never understood properly because they are never explained properly.

There is so much more I could say about Africa but I would warn you not to blame anything that happens here on Christianity or any other religion. The problem is more often than not fear and lack of education and the reason no difference has been seen in the last 50 years of foreign aid is because we are trying to bring education in a way that westerners would understand and not a way that Africans can understand...

What you've witnessed is what I call "transference and interpretation" within religions. I'm sure there's an accepted anthropological term for it, but that's what I call it.

In tribal religions, where witchcraft, possession, demonology, and spell casting are acceptable parts of the animist tradition, an influx of Christian teachings is made to fit the existing schema for belief.

It's rather like what happened to Christianity. Part of the development of that faith was to co-opt existing belief traditions, so instead of Zeus and Jupiter, we have the generic "God". On the other hand, believers in Zeus and Jupiter found in Christianity many ideas and philosophies that resonated with what they felt was right. In reverse fashion, Christian thought became co-opted to fit the existing schema of belief.

That's what's happened here, with your African example. The animist faith that includes belief in spirit possession, witching, spell casting, and curses comes into contact with a belief system that includes a holy spirit and the myth of the Pentecost (possession), blasphemy (cursing oneself), and other related ideas...the end result is the horror and tragedy you've witnessed.

It isn't Christianity that's to blame, or the animism that blended with it. The problem is that people the world over are too stuck in a need for problems to be solved by a deity instead of accepting responsibility for themselves. The more education is spread throughout the world, the less we will see a need for zealousness and religiosity, and the less we will see terrible events such as the ones you've pointed out.

Answer: Religious indoctrination alone is not child abuse. Many children are taught their religion as well as critical thinking at the same time. It is only when the religious indoctrination is done in such a way as to suggest that all other viewpoints are invalid that it begins to approach abusive. This of course does not apply if the religious indoctrination is being used as the excuse for or in conjunction with other forms of abuse

I'm glad you brought this up. I had seen a video and article on adults who were labeled as witches, but I wasn't aware this was happening with children.

Among Christian proselytizing you will often hear truisms such as, "You have to believe it to see it."

I call that a truism because it is seen throughout human societies, that believing is seeing, and what we believe is real affects how we interpret the world.

Believe there are witches, you will look for them, and find them. Believe there are demons, angels, God and Satan, you will see them. Believe there is only good or evil, you will categorize people as either good or evil. Believe we are born sinful, you will see people as fundamentally wicked, etc., etc., ad nauseum, ad infinitum.

And the victims of these views often have no idea what you're seeing, except that you must be an absolute, moon-howling lunatic.

I must say that it has been through discussions here on R&S that a belief has crystallized with me; that the ultimate standard of religion, law, government and society is Humanism, and where our social device do not stand to that measure, they must change.

Don't blame God for the works and words of man.

In teaching, show people how to distinguish between the two.

There exists both evil (or sin) and right(-eousness, or good)

And between those two, lies that awful gulf of judgment.

When people start trying to be God, or playing along with (d') evil,

isn't that where we all went wrong in the first place?

No, these little children are not witches.

(sweetjane, eh, maybe.) But not these little ones.

Nor are teachers of evil to be confused with Christian.

"Writing a check in Somebody's Name without the Authority to do so is not going to endear you with the Bank, OR with the One whose Name is being Taken."

Don't try identity theft with God! It's Ba-ad JuJu!

Im sorry I didnt read the whole thing, but yeah this has been going on for a while, here is an article I read about it a while back:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/dec/09/tracym...

Yeah and people had to set up camps to take in this kids who were beaten and disowned.

Yeah Christians have expoited these poor people all for $ at the cost of children's live.

Also what they are doing with the whole "condoms are evil" thing is equally disgusting.

Religion poisons everything, its sad people behave this way.

Ghandi said "I like your Christ, but I dont like your Christians, they are so unlike your Christ"

I know many good Christians, but anyone who uses their religion to promote segregation or hatred, I think they are absolute scum. And this is how a big percentage of Christians behave.

That is very sad, and upsetting :-/ But unfortunetly, there are always going to be things like this ous there. It's so easy for people to twist what the Bible says and make it into what they want to hear. A lof of Christians are tested that way. What they are doing does not define Christian. Even though Christians make mistakes just like everyone else, this is beyond acceptable. They can call themselves Christian, but that clearly is misunderstood, just as they are misunderstanding what the Bible is saying. Satan is the one who wants them doing all of that, and if they can't see that Satan is behind what they are doing, they are blinded to what Christianity really is. Nothing is going to change their hearts and minds unless they come to see the truth. Sadly, I don't see that happening anytime soon.

Thank you for sharing that. It is defanitly a wake up call.

It's horrible, I agree. Although they are doing this under the guise of Christianity, let's face it, it is Christianity intermixed with lots of tribal and pagan superstition.

I can't believe someone would say they fell asleep rather than read this -- WAKE UP, people! Children are sex slaves right here in the USA, and children all over the world are being horribly sexually abused. We should not tolerate this.

Money making. Is there any other reason for this kind of continued corruption? Personally, what I would do is go down there with a gun and shoot all those low life religious leaders in the head for drilling this kind of mentality in their people. And that woman? Force her to donate 80% of her earnings to stopping this crisis. Shes just another religious leader looking to profit from the murders going on.

This is so sad and unfair on those poor children :(

Personally I think religion is partly to blame- also corrupt religious leaders and uneducated followers who don't know any different.

I had actually heard a documentary about this previously on the BBC World Service. But thanks for sharing this- I will try and watch it later on today.

Wait, YOU fell asleep? Come on man! This is very serious!

I understand what you are saying, I really do. It almost made me cry just reading what you said, so, sadly I cannot watch the video.

But, I don't see how little children can be witches. They don't really understand it much. I mean, some may but, what if they have demons? I'm being serious here, think about it. They most likely had demons in them, and if they did, NO ONE had the right to...to...do this stuff to them. At all. No right whatsoever. And, even if they were into witchcraft, the people should've taught them that it was bad and told them it wasn't right. Goodness but beat them? Do these things to them?

So, those are my thoughts.

God bless.