No abstract

Religion and life, both private and public, remain strongly linked in Africa. This was recently expressed in a prayer vigil organized by Ghana Airways when the staff and management invited a London-based Ghanaian evangelist, Lawrence Tetteh, to lead a 'healing and deliverance' service aimed at exorcizing evil spirits from the affairs of the airline and releasing it from its predicaments. The organization of a healing and deliverance session by a public corporation, it is argued, is symptomatic of the quick African resort to the sphere of religion in the search for solutions to life's difficulties. Religious functionaries including Pentecostal/ Charismatic pastors are important in Africa as purveyors of powerful prayers, potent medicines, and amulets for protection against evil. The Pentecostal 'healing and deliverance' ministry has become popular in African contexts like that of Ghana because it takes African worldviews of mystical causality seriously. This Christianity promises Christian alternatives to the search for security that drives people into the courts of other religious functionaries.

No abstract

The use of herbs has been the main means of curing diseases in traditional Africa and this continued through the colonial period to present times. Widely held traditional views that interpreted certain diseases as caused by supernatural agents meant that, although some ailments could be naturally caused, in most cases, shrine priests and diviners were needed to dispense herbal preparations for clients. Christian missionaries mostly – though by no means all – denounced herbal medicines as evil, looking on them as pagan because of the close relationship between herbs and agents of local divinities. At the emergence of the African independent church movement at the beginning of the twentieth century, herbal medicines acquired a sacramental value, and today they are obtained from churches and local prophets as therapeutic substances infused with spiritual power for healing. The sacramental interpretation of herbs has been extended to those obtained from prayer places and grottoes under the supervision of historic mission denominations, a phenomenon that has virtually transformed the image of herbs and herbal medicines in African therapeutic systems.

Childlessness is an issue of deep religious concern in Africa. Men, women and couples with problems of sexuality and childlessness make use not only of the resources of traditional African religions but also of the many Pentecostal/charismatic churches and movements that have burgeoned throughout sub-Saharan Africa in the last three decades. Initially this was the domain of the older African independent churches, as far as the Christian response to childlessness is concerned; the new Pentecostals have taken on the challenge too. Based on the same biblical and traditional worldviews that events have causes, these churches have mounted ritual contexts that wrestle with the issues of sexuality and childlessness. In pursuing this salvific endeavor, however, the needs of those who may never have children seem to have been neglected by the churches considered here and represented by the Pure Fire Miracle Ministries, a Ghana/Nigeria charismatic church located in Ghana. Th is partial approach to 'healing' childlessness has led to onesided interpretations of what it means to be fruitful and prosperous and deepened the troubles of the childless.