— Brino Kumwenda

The audio version of this article is available here: YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.

There is pervasive fear among Africans, including professing Christians.  It is fear that is based on the African Traditional Religion and the misinterpretation of Scripture.  This is why modern-day prophets run the lucrative business of inflicting or solidifying fear in people and presenting themselves as men and women of God, who have the power to set the people free from their slavery of fear. 

The people run to them and are more than willing to “sow a seed” and buy their anointed objects like water and oil so that they can be set free. The business is thriving because traditional Africans have these fears and believe that mediums such as witchdoctors can set them free from them. 

When a traditional African becomes Christian, he simply transfers his belief in witchdoctors to belief in modern-day prophets.  Usually, many professing Christians trust in both witchdoctors and prophets!  On Sunday, they consult a prophet; midweek, they consult witchdoctors.  

In this article, I will address two prevailing fears among Christians in Africa that are informed by the African Traditional Religion.  

Firstly, the fear of spirits.  This is rooted in the traditional African Religion belief that the world is full of spirits that control the physical world.  Traditional Africans believe that nothing in this world happens without spirits.  When a person dies of malaria, they do not dispute the fact that he died of malaria, but they ask, “But who sent the mosquitoes to bite the victim so that he should die of malaria?”  

They believe that somebody manipulated the spirits to destroy their beloved.  For them, no one really dies of natural causes.   There is always the spirit of death behind it.  These spirits are believed to inhabit certain places like the graveyard, certain objects like trees and animals and birds like owls and cats, especially black cats!  That is why they fear these things.  In the evening, you pass the graveyard silently and quickly.  

Sadly, such a fear of spirits is commonplace among professing Christians.   “Fellowships” and neo-Pentecostal and charismatic churches dedicate a big section of time to casting out evil spirits from “Christians”.  They believe that Christians can be possessed by demons.   In addition, there is time for rebuking and binding the devil during the church service.  People are willing to part with their hard-earned money to buy anointed objects that can chase away evil powers and spirits from their lives.  

Such a fear of the devil and demons comes from ignorance of who and what God is.  He is all-powerful and all-present.  The devil and demons, on the other hand, are not all-powerful and all-present.  The Bible says that He who is in us is more powerful than he who is in the world (1 John 4:4).  Throughout the Scriptures, demons feared the Lord Jesus and the apostles, not the other way round. Moreover, much of the fear of the spirits is unfounded.  

For instance, nowhere does the Bible teach that a child of God can be possessed by demons.  A child of God is a habitat for the Holy Spirit.  He or she cannot also be the house of demons.  The Holy Spirit and demons can never cohabitate.  Most of the demons that are cast out by professing Christians are non-existent.

It is just that the belief in spirits is so deep-rooted in people that they go to such “deliverance” services expecting to be delivered from demons.  Moreover, the services are arranged in such a psychologically charged atmosphere that people lose their minds and believe and behave as though they are really demon-possessed and are being delivered by the “man or woman of God”.  

Notice that before the deliverance sessions, there is an interlude of slow music that is called worship music, which is said to be for inviting the Holy Spirit.  Deliverances rarely happen without such music.  It is so unlike the Lord Jesus and the apostles in the Bible, who didn’t need “worship music” to create an environment of inviting the Holy Spirit to manifest Himself.  

Secondly, the fear of curses.  There is a prevailing teaching common in the African neo-Pentecostal (ANP) circles that Christians can continue to suffer from curses, especially generational or bloodline curses. This belief has been exported from the African Traditional Religion’s belief that words are potent and powerful and can be effective on a person, community or country for years, and that the curse can prevail from generation to generation.  

The traditional African views continual financial problems, chronic diseases, premature deaths, repetitive accidents or injuries, continual business failure, barrenness, among others, as curses.  The most feared curses are those of mothers.   This is one of the reasons churches with “deliverance services” attract a lot of people.  People come not primarily to worship God but to be set free from their curses.  Churches without such services are viewed as powerless and useless.  

But a person who is truly born again has no need to fear generational curses, because God’s children are no longer under a curse.  Christ took their ultimate curse, the divine curse, on the cross so that they are no longer under condemnation (Romans 8:1).  No curse is effective on them.  To think that a child of God can still be under generational curses is to undermine the sufficiency of the death of Christ.  God will not have any of His children living under any type of curse. They are free indeed.  

In conclusion, Christians don’t need to live in fear of spirits because in Christ, they are no longer under condemnation, and they should not fear curses, because the Lord’s death has sufficiently set them free from sin and curses.