Spiritual Warfare
A good friend recently e-mailed me this. Note to all my other friends: yes, articles about people battling witches need to be sent to me. I am, after all, “the wandering anthropologist of the occult.”) I think this group is absolutely fascinating. In fact, an excellent dissertation could be written on them by someone like me. If I’m ever in DC, I definitely want to attend a service.
One an aesthetic level, I find this type of service is very moving. The early Christian church was engaged in a supernatural battle against evil. Mainline Protestants have emasculated Christianity to the point where only talking lions and hobbits get to battle spiritual evil. In fact, one reason I’m proud of the Catholic Church is their position on the supernatural: “Yes, these things happen. They just don’t happen to you. Here is the number of a good psychiatrist.”
And midnight shadow-boxing sessions in the church? I have already stated that if I were to start my own church, boxing would be an essential element of the spiritual training. Good religious experiences like good pedagogical experiences should incorporate the kinesthetic. Bodhidharma and the Shaolin monks knew that.
The theology beneath the service is more troubled. I found it very telling that the founders are Congolese. Death and The Invisible Powers by Simon Bockie describes just how prevalent the tradition of witches and sorcerers is in the indigenous religions of the region. Traditionally, some people are just born with powers. All such being are dangerous, but they part of the world and you also need to have a few in your village as protection. The idea of witches as servants of the devil who are wholly antagonistic to the community is a Christian idea.
Bockie also explains that most Congolese Christians practice an amalgam of Christianity and indigenous beliefs. However, the Spiritual Warfare church seems to have some highly unusual elements—namely the idea that Africa, and indeed, Africans are cursed because their ancestors were not Christian.
I ponder how the church leaders arrived at such a conclusion. It is easy to imagine how someone who has not studied colonialism and neo-colonialism might see Africa as cursed. As Sarah Silverman said, “It’s like they took everything bad and put it on one continent!” Spiritual Warfare has clearly turned to religion for an explanation to this problem, but unlike most colonized people, they seem to place all of the blame on themselves and none on the colonizers.
Now, I am better acquainted with the invisible powers than with critical theory, but this seems to me like perfect manifestation of Foucauldian power. You have a whole church of Congolese immigrants who have bought into the imperialist narrative that they are pagan children of the devil. And why do they buy it? Because it empowers them! They now have an explanation of all their misfortune and a way to combat it. I can’t imagine going to a midnight service four nights a week. This level of dedication shows just how bad this community’s problems must be. As Professor Olupona states, their religion is utilitarian.
Finally, with some guilt, I cannot help but speculate if the shadow-boxing will spill over into actual violence. Bockie states that Congolese witches are not abstract forces—they are your neighbors. What would happen if this church found out that a Santero or Palermo lived next door? Would they pray for them or kill them?
The sex trade part V: the Kenyan Connection
So today I read this: If you’re too lazy to read the article yourself, it says that older, white women from America and Europe have been coming to Kenya specifically to sleep with young Kenyan men. Apparently, 1 in 5 female tourists in Kenya is a sex tourist and the government has become concerned about this problem.
I have to say, as a progressive, white male, I’m not sure how I feel about this. As a man, this relieves some of my guilt over sexual oppression. Here are women engaged in the same shallow, disgusting behavior men have always engaged in. Now I don’t have to be ashamed of my gender, only my species. However, as a Caucasian, I feel even more guilt over this. This has the same stench of de facto racism as the sex trade in Thailand and Cambodia.
I’m sure some will cheer on these sex tourists as empowered women. And, indeed, they are empowered. For a rich white woman to sleep with a poor black man solely for sexual gratification has historically been a rather serious taboo––especially here in America. But what freedom has been claimed? The freedom to be as shallow as a man? It seems to me a truly liberated woman would screw a man old enough to be her son in her own country.
It is also true that what these women are doing absolutely pales in comparison to the rest of the Kenyan sex trade. Their boy-toys are not prostitutes, there is no pressure put on them to pursue their occupation, and they seem to motivated entirely by greed. The article also states that while these women are sleeping with men 30 years younger than them, they are not interested in minors. All of this is a far cry from going to Kenya to perform unnatural acts on children. Still, this is evil in the same way that the entire sex-trade is evil: sex + capitalism = human misery. It is even more evil because it is occurring in a third world country. As a professor states in the article: “This is what is sold to tourists by tourism companies — a kind of return to a colonial past, where white women are served, serviced, and pampered by black minions,”
Despite this, the response of the Kenyan government does seem odd to me. Why concern one’s self with white sugar mammas while child prostitution goes on in your country? The official quoted in the article states only that the practice is “unwholesome.” Could this be about honor? Is it somehow more shameful to have your men serve the sexual whims of colonists than your women?
