The Sunday Mail
Dr Deke
THE twenty first century church has been flooded by demonic manifestations, more than any other church age.
We have more demons attending church than the believers themselves.
Most affected are the women.
Various questionable religious theories of exorcism and deliverance have been advanced on women. Some methods of deliverance have resulted in total abuse. For the past five years, I have been compiling print and electronic information on deliverance in the church in Africa. Women have been the most abused.
One pastor sucked women’s breasts in order to deliver them from rejection. The other asked them to eat grass, others walked on their bellies, then there is “holy sex”, the list goes on.
The common denominator for people joining Christianity is to have eternal life. Others become Christians because of problems (Matthew 11:28). In every religion, generally people want solutions to survive and to overcome life’s challenges.
Demon possession
Demons don’t discriminate on possessing people. In most cases, a demon possessed person may not be recognised by people around him or her. Some possessed people may be completely unaware about it. This is because the possessing spirit does not reveal its presence as it serves its purpose to keep the possession undisclosed. Other possessions take place during channelling sessions. Once a possession is disclosed, there is a possibility that the possessed person will voluntarily make active efforts to be delivered.
Non manifesting demonic possession When we say the possessing spirit is non-manifest, we mean that the spirit has not revealed its presence. Here the consciousness of the person is to the fore but it can be manipulated and controlled by the spirit whenever it wants.
Many people fall under this category as reflected by their behaviour patterns or presenting problems. Undisclosed possession tends to manifest when confronted by a superior power.
Reasons behind manifestation of demonic possession
Most of the manifestations are directly linked to the African Traditional Religion. Spirits manifest many times to intimidate, scare or disrupt social or family life by causing unnecessary fights and divisions. Sometimes they manifest wilfully to seek attention, to intimidate or to disrupt the environment of the affected person or seekers of God in a given place.
Sometimes, spirits possessing a person are forced into manifesting and exposing themselves. These manifestations range from violence, uncharacteristic inhuman behaviour, talking in strange languages, distortion of human physical features, calm manifestation, unusual display of talent such as dance, display inhuman power and contorted movements as in extreme pain or agony. Others display animal like movements.
Demonic possession is a universal phenomenon and not new to the African context. Some researchers allege that a larger percentage of women in church manifest more than their male counter parts. They allege that women find it harder to forgive, women are quicker to believe things; and women look for solutions more than men do. Women are also more religious than men. So it is a normal occurrence that more manifestations of demons will happen in women than in men. It seems men forgive quicker than women.
But this analogy is a perception and stereotype advanced by male religious chauvinists. There is no biblical support to this reasoning (Col 3:12-14).Forgiveness is for all. The same applies with the unforgiving spirit. Whoever fails to forgive (male/female) will be affected by the matching consequences.
A close look at the New Testament narratives on the issue of spirit possession and deliverance, we note that we don’t have more than seven cases of deliverance of women by Jesus and the disciples. Ironically we have more than eighteen cases of men needing deliverance. This shows that demonic possession has no gender bias. However, a number of factors are contributing in the influx of women manifestations than men in the church today.
Culture as spiritual warfare
Diverging points of culture lead to spiritual warfare. Christian faith within human culture struggle to be faithful as it engages in spiritual warfare. Most affected are women. This spiritual struggle, felt within every human heart and every cultural context, is not optional. It is rooted in the reality that the kingdoms of God and Satan stand opposed to one another through cultural friction. Christian faith, however, cannot reject the good side of human culture.
The church however is uncritically accepting the practices of all cultures, even if those practices contradict the Bible or harm people. When matters of faith fail to address the cultural land mines, confusion and demonic activities will take centre stage. The transition from traditional religion to Christianity by women needs to be revisited. In traditional religion, men generally have their areas of specialisation such as hunting.
On the other hand, women take care of the home. While the male is in control of the visible, physical and formal power, the female controls the invisible, non-physical and informal. African gender construction bestows tremendous power on women. Women sustain and generally are the custodians of traditions of Africa.
The domestic activities of women during most ceremonies cover washing, cooking and cleaning.
These are construed as ritual activities that carry spiritual connotations and reward. In short, women are the heart beat of traditional religion in Africa. In this case, we see society giving them high honour. In Shona culture when a child beats the mother, that results in ngozi (avenging spirit). When social justice needs compensation, normally the spirits demand a girl child. Due to this background, the African women go through a lot, which we see mostly manifesting in deliverance services.
In most of the deliverance services, we see familiar spirits of families manifesting through women. Here we can simply say poor transitional change from traditional religion to Christianity has resulted in many women showing demonic manifestation. But this does not rule out men.
To minimise demonic manifestations from women crossing over to Christianity, African governments must amend abusive traditional laws so as to protect women traditional abuse. There is need to stop using the girl child as compensation for avenging spirits.
Traditional healers who prescribe human parts to business people wishing to enhance their businesses and many other evil acts must be banished. Most tradition-related crimes only see the perpetrator being arrested while the person who prescribed (n”anga) walks free.
The church, Government and society at large need to assess functional substitutes of culture in order to minimise unnecessary burden on women. Christian faith may retain certain local patterns and practices while giving new believers a new content, meaning or purpose. This entails introducing functional substitutes in order to avoid creating a cultural vacuum in the lives of the believers. Most deliverance ministries place much emphasis on removal of demons without considering filling the vacuum with Christian education. The result of such anomalies has been repeated abuse.
I strongly believe the influx of demonic manifestation by most women is a direct effect of unresolved cultural issues which the church is also failing to properly address. Major deliverance mechanisms used by prophets is a direct replacement of witchdoctors and this has caused further confusion on those seeking deliverance.
Dr Deke is an adjunct Professor at Team Impact Christian University and also lectures at Zimbabwe Theological Seminary.
