At home in Nigeria, the Pentecostal preacher Helen Ukpabio draws thousands to her revival meetings. Last August, when she had herself consecrated Christendom’s first “lady apostle,” Nigerian politicians and Nollywood actors attended the ceremony. Her books and DVDs, which explain how Satan possesses children, are widely known.
So well-known, in fact, that Ms. Ukpabio’s critics say her teachings have contributed to the torture or abandonment of thousands of Nigerian children ”” including infants and toddlers ”” suspected of being witches and warlocks. Her culpability is a central contention of “Saving Africa’s Witch Children,” a documentary that made its American debut Wednesday on HBO2.
Welcome to the new hellenistic world. One of the points that Ramsay McMullen made in “Paganism in the Roman Empire” was that Christianity became acceptable because it’s exorcisms were so successful. The American cable industry notwithstanding, consider the context of the story. Ask if the people involved are newly Christianized, ask if the local animistic mind-set is wholly gone. Nigeria may be part of the Fourth West–Western Africa…the first being Western Europe, the second being the Western Hemisphere, the third being the Western Pacific…but it may also be going through a time of troubles. Have some compassion for a country that may be going through a bad cultural patch.
This is a perfect example of the battles that Anglicans in Africa have to face everyday. On the one side, you have Christians of this view and on the other, you have Radical Islam, both of which are more than happy to breath down your neck.
“a Nigerian [exorcist/deliverance minister] Explains Herself
I wish that article had actually quoted her more instead of small out of context snipets…
And the criticism sounds oddly familiar. Let’s take this quote:
“critics say her teachings have contributed to the torture or abandonment of thousands of Nigerian children…”
“critics say [Archbishop Bob Duncan’s fundamentalists] teachings have contributed to the [discrimination and hatred] of thousands of Nigerian [homosexuals]…”
This woman could be a wacked out, banging gong, self-preaching ‘Pentecostal’, or she could simply be an annointed deliverance minister who has particular authority over the occult. But I wouldn’t know from this article.