spirit and healing in africa - University of the Free State

The notion of transformation resulted in a redefinition of medicine because the missionary
approach created a new link between illness etiologies, sin, bodily healing and spiritual
regeneration. According to the missionary thinking, illness was an indication of one’s sinfulness,
and the only way to overcome the illness was by moving away from the ‘evils’ of the indigenous
environment and closer to Christ, the ultimate Healer. Megan Vaughan states that “for medical
missionaries the healing of the body had always to take second place to the winning of the soul
and the fight against the ‘evils’ of African society” (1991:65). The African patient had to realize
that he or she had sought refuge in a deceitful enemy — the African healer, traditional medicine,
charms for protection and other elements of indigenous healing, were all perceived by the
missionaries as representatives of the devil. The good news offered by the missionaries could
only be effective if the African patient would distance him- or herself from the past and from
their family network. The patient’s rejection of other traditions of faith and medicine was
perceived as the beginning of a healing process. Turning away from a sinful past and accepting
Christ were the keys to salvation, of which healing was a clear indicator. Summarizing a journal
fragment published by a missionary sister at the UMCA hospital at Kota-Kota in Nyasaland,
Vaughan (1991:64) contends that “the physical transformation of patients was taken as a direct
sign of the spiritual transformation which a stay in hospital could apparently bring about”.
The quality of restoration of a patient’s bodily health — and therefore of the patient’s spiritual
transformation — was indicated by the level of individuality that the patient had developed.
Since sin manifested itself as illness in a patient’s body, this body became the site for treating the
illness. Missionary medicine moved away from treating social relationships (as was the case in
indigenous treatment, and at a later stage also in secular or colonial medical treatment), and it
focused on the patient as an individual who was solely responsible for (the removal of) his or her
illness. Landau (1996:274) states that “such a location perfectly reflected Protestants’ (and
especially dissenting tradition's) understanding that conversion was a result of an inner conflict
and turmoil”. The individual and inner conflict that the soul was supposed to undergo was
projected on the body: the often painful surgical treatment that resulted in the removal of the
cause of illness had a deeper, religious meaning. In other words, the (surgical) removal of
physical impurities stood for the removal of spiritual immorality through a process of inner
transformation.
Another way in which the notion of transformation changed essential features of biomedicine so
that it became a Christianized instrument for missionary purposes, was its clash with African
indigenous therapeutic traditions. According to the missionary perspective, healing and inner
salvation could only be achieved after the African patient had fully committed him- or herself to
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