spirit and healing in africa - University of the Free State

those churches, where the spiritual warfare concept is manifested in conversion, deliverance, and
other tangible works of the Spirit, a certain change has transpired that can be characterized as an
emancipation-movement within ecclesiological structures.
It is perceived that the call upon the power of the Spirit inaugurates a shift within the
conventional authority or power relations: spiritual healing practices imply that the believer is
endorsed to denounce all forms of evil. This means that the believer, through the power of the
Spirit, has received the authority to take responsibility in his or her personal relationship with
God, and to actively reject the devil. The lay person becomes an emancipated believer, because
he or she does not need any other authority than the Holy Spirit in order to be liberated and
restored. The office of every believer is manifested in the emancipation process of the believer,
who instrumentalizes his or her spiritual authority in order to fight along with the Holy Spirit in
the spiritual warfare.
5.5 CONCLUSIONS
Many believers in the Southern African context adhere to a distinctive approach towards health,
illness and healing. This approach is manifested in the healing ministries developed by many
churches since the end of the nineteenth century. In response to the missionary-founded
churches, new churches and faith communities emerged, emphasizing something that had been
neglected in the theology and the praxis of the missionaries: the tangible link between faith and
well-being. All written and unwritten texts related to the relationship between faith and wellbeing
in African Christianity contribute to the church-based healing discourse in the African
context.
The specifics of the church-based healing approach is highly determined by the concept of
power. On the one hand, the concept of power within the faith-based healing ministries displays
a strong similarity with how ‘power’ is construed within African traditional religious
frameworks: power is a vital force that every living being needs in order to exist and to develop.
Vital force, or vitality, is a basic need for existence, thus: gaining vital force is to grow whereas
loosing vital force implies one is ill or even dying. In order to acquire vital force, one has to
engage oneself in relationships with others who are more powerful, since power is derived from
power. On the other hand, the concept of power has been developed according to the distinctive
lines of Christian thinking: power is simultaneously linked directly with the power of the Holy
Spirit. In the light of the Holy Spirit and Jesus Christ, an absolute and totalizing dimension is
attached to the concept of power: power is not only something that evolves, and subsequently
can change quantitatively or qualitatively depending on the relationship within which it
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