The Sunday Mail
WITNESSING “holy men” and “holy women” locked in a primitive tussle for “holy oil” is quite a spectacle in supposedly modern-day Zimbabwe.
The stakes are high.
It is claimed that the oil has the capacity to change misfortune into fortune, bad luck into good luck and a curse into a blessing.
It is precisely for these reasons that many have been prepared to trade their rationality for unquestionable belief.
But what is disconcerting to many is that the boundaries between religion and superstition have become increasingly blurry.
And modern-day prophets have been stoking the flames.
For their new oil, Prophetic Healing and Deliverance Ministries (PHD), which is led by Prophet Walter Magaya, claims that they received “an instruction from God” and for everyone who gets it “God will act on their situations”.
Equally, Prophet Emmanuel Makandiwa has been preaching from the same sheet, telling hordes of congregants that they will be “the first to enjoy the fruits of the glory that is coming. Nobody will outrun you and by the time they arrive, you will be enjoying already”.
Followers have literally been eating from their palms.
And this is the natural result of zealotry, fundamentalism and superstition.
It seems that Zimbabwe has been thrown back to the Dark Ages where the men of the cloth, who were largely regarded as the earthly ambassadors of an omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent God, together with the ruling classes — often the monarchies — held sway.
Does Zimbabwe need a renaissance of some sort, a new wave of rationalisation of Christian thought?
It’s not only in Zimbabwe, but South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya and other countries as well.
In January, South African preacher Pastor Lesego Daniel made congregants eat grass to be “closer to God” before walking — literally — all over them.
Unsurprisingly, most of the grass-eating church folk fell sick. Also unsurprisingly, people started calling them “lawn again” Christians rather than born again.
Before the 18th century, Europe was plagued by the same disease to such an extent that the difference between believing and non-believing became a matter of life and death.
Anything construed to be a heresy usually carried a death sentence, something some religions still adhere to.
It took a raft of philosophers and scientists who, whatever their religious persuasion, to show that people had to be rational.
In fact, it was Martin Luther and his theses which started the reformation, leading eventually to the Renaissance.
They began to question and demand justification for many doctrines that they believed retarded human progress.
Notable among these personalities was Sir Isaac Newton, whose ground-breaking work set the tone for major technological developments that continue to impact modern science and thinking.
There were also luminaries like John Locke, Sir Francis Bacon, Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
Most of their thinking was collated in 34-volume encyclopaedia (1751 and 1772).
The encyclopedia – which attacked all that was considered cruel, superstitious, obsolete, unequal and unjust in the constitution of European society – became an influential piece of work.
As a result, these thinkers were condemned as “militant atheists” and deists whose works were dangerous to society in the same way that those who question miracles in modern churches are often regarded as heretics.
However, the European church benefited immensely. For moderate Christians, it meant a return to simple scripture.
In fact, historians claim that John Locke abandoned the corpus of theological commentary in favour of an “unprejudiced examination” of the Word of God alone. Thomas Jefferson, one of the founding fathers of the United States, went further and compiled the Jefferson Bible which dropped any passages dealing with miracles, visitations of angels, and the resurrection of Jesus after his death.
He tried to extract the practical Christian moral code of the New Testament.
Voltaire actually believed that without belief in a God who punishes evil, the moral order of society was undermined.
Such thinking was revolutionary to Europe.
It liberated science and development followed, including strides in political administration.
Questioning the order of things beyond the prejudices of religious doctrines and superstition had the aggregate effect of redefining the boundaries of what was considered achievable in life.
In Germany, the biggest economy in Europe then and now, such ideas inspired the literature of “Aufklarung” – the literature of confidence and hope.
It was simply a belief that people were capable of pushing the frontiers of human achievement.
And this is reflected in how Germans view themselves even today!
In Zimbabwe there is a danger that superstition — rather than religion – will limit our capacity to think, work and develop.
In essence, superstition substitutes human industry and thought with the belief that things will miraculously work themselves out.
This means there is need for a Zimbabwean Renaissance, a re-examination of local church doctrine just as the French did to “improve the quality of French Christianity”.
Churches need to redefine the way they pitch the Word because it seems that currently it is just the gospel of fortune seekers and treasure hunters.
The jury is still out.
