At the end of December the New York Times and Foreign Policy published pieces on African Pentecostalism, deliverance, and the demonic. Co-authoring the Foreign Policy article,
Jill Filipovic and Ty McCormick focused on the relationship between
Pentecostalism, witchcraft, and traditional African religion in the
small country of Malawi. For her part, Tanya Luhrmann
offered some observations on the role of demons and deliverance in
Ghanaian charismatic churches and attempted to compare it with general
observations about evangelicalism derived from her study of the Vineyard
Churches. Both articles discuss the role of the demonic among African
Pentecostals.
What are we to make of the role of demons in African Pentecostalism?
In Africa the Pentecostal understanding of salvation as deliverance
from sin, death, and the devil has become intensified in light of
traditional African religion coupled with the influence of British and
American charismatic teaching. Traditional African ideas about the
spirit world or various gods became Christianized by mapping them onto
Christian ideas about the devil and demons. Birgit Meyer has described
this as “translating the devil”
by which she means the way in which African Pentecostals have
re-described the African world of spirits in terms of the Christian
world of demons. Continue at Dale M. Coulter
