spirit and healing in africa - University of the Free State

CONCLUSIONS . GATHERING FRAGMENTS
Grace Banda’s quest for healing and well-being is the quest of many believers in Africa. Her
story mirrors the challenge faced by Reformed believers: to make sense of the daily
confrontation with illness and suffering in a context where illness and suffering are all-pervasive
and life-threatening, and where multiple secular and religious health understandings flourish. As
a Christian, Grace Banda received a particular, yet one-sided, understanding of healing from
Reformed theology. Within the Reformed tradition the theme of healing is barely addressed,
because health and healing are mainly associated with the work of medical doctors. One’s
physical condition belongs to the medical realm, such is the implicit idea within most missionary
churches. The Reformed impotence to include aspects of physicality and healing in the pastoral
message of the faith community often leaves Grace Banda with the idea that she is to look for
answers elsewhere. She is looking for who God is amidst her illness, her sorrow, her life and
death. She is looking for possibilities to create a link between God and her quest for healing in
the broadest sense of the word.
The situation of the fictitious person Grace Banda forms the background of the research problem.
Reformed believers in Southern Africa witness how mainline churches fail to address the
relationship between God and healing in such a way that this relationship makes sense to them.
The reason for the Reformed lack of effectiveness can be found in the dichotomy between
spirituality and physicality, in the underdevelopment of substantial reflection on the God who
heals, and in the absence of a clearly outlined idea of health. Reformed church and theology in
Southern Africa lack a meaningful, contextual approach to the theme of health and healing, and
that is why they are faced with the challenge to search for new ways of articulating the link
between God and healing.
One way of exploring new expressions of the link between God and healing is by focusing on the
Holy Spirit. In the African context, the role of the Spirit/spirits in relation to healing is of great
significance, and thus it seems worthwhile to embark on a journey, exploring the possibilities
and impossibilities of the link between Spirit and healing from a Reformed perspective. The
specific problem of this research is to find out whether a pneumatological exploration, sensitive
to multi-layered understandings of health, could open productive avenues for Reformed theology
in Southern Africa.
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