spirit and healing in africa - University of the Free State

INTRODUCTION
1. Research background
There is a great need for healing in Africa. This need is in itself no different elsewhere in the
world, but it is greatly determined by the involvement of religious communities and traditions.
Faith communities and religious institutions play a major role in assisting African believers to
find health, healing and completeness in everyday life. In fact, it is generally expected of
religious institutions that they guide believers in word and deed in their search for healing, and
lead the way to deliverance from suffering and affliction. Their involvement can be explained by
the fact that therapeutics in Africa is not confined to the hospital-based medical practitioner
(Patterson 1981:28; Ranger 1981:267; Ekechi 1993:298; Bate 1995:15; Good 2004:10;
Kabonga-Mbaya 2006:188; Kalu 2008:263; Rasmussen 2008:11).
However, churches founded by missionaries seem to fail in addressing the believers’ needs for
healing. One explanation for this omission is found in the historical background of the
missionaries themselves: they were heavily influenced by scientific medical discoveries in
nineteenth century Europe, so that theology and biomedicine grew apart and became two clearly
separate disciplines. In the modern era, science became the prevailing model that allowed people
to approach society with an objective, critical, and progressive frame of reference. The
implication was that science and medicine challenged religion in making sense of human
existence, and that their cultural authority sped the medicalization of life and death (Porter
1997:302). In embracing modern medicine and supporting its expansion for the benefit of global
health, mainline theology added other perspectives to its view on human existence. Missionary
churches assimilated biomedical perspectives on healing and treatment, and accepted a clear
division between body, mind and soul.
The result of this dichotomy is illustrated in the fictional tale of Grace Banda 1 , a member of the
Reformed Church in a Southern African country. Grace Banda’s husband passed away four
years ago, after a prolonged illness, and she was left with their three children, two daughters
1. Grace Banda is a fictitious person, who represents the many female as well as male members of the mainline
tradition in Southern Africa. Everything described here in relation to Grace Banda is based on personal stories of
people whom I met during my stay in Zambia, Africa. An additional source is the article by Noerine Kaleeba,
‘Excerpt from We Miss You All: AIDS in the Family’, in Kalipeni, E et.al. (eds) 2004. HIV and AIDS in Africa.
Beyond Epidemiology. Malden: Blackwell Publishing. 259-278. The person of Grace Banda will return in the second
part of this research.
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