Witch Children of Africa Continued

Traveling Posts at The Why Man

Over the next week I will be traveling from Salem, MA to Asheville, NC and back with my wife, my mom, and Crash (my son's funny little mutt) in my 1986 Volvo 740 Diesel wagon. I will be pulling a 12 foot cargo trailer over-stuffed with my son and daughter-in-law's belongings down to Asheville and the fixer upper house they purchased.

I hope I make it - pray for us.

I hope I make it back - I understand if that is not as important to pray for.

You can follow the adventure at The Why Man

Advent Series Continues at Salem Gathering Blog

I have been doing a daily Advent series this last week of Advent at The Gathering Blog. Check it out if you haven't been following it.

The Last Week of Advent

During the last week of Advent I will be posting a devotional thought for each day connected to a work of art for meditative purposes. You will be able to follow this at the Blog for The Gathering. Of course some of you will receive this by e-mail already.

The Children of Pentecostal Theology

I am Pentecostal by belief system - pretty much. This is not the case if the point of determination is tradition, and praxis. I don't look typically Pentecostal - perhasp I wold look Charismatic, but that's a distinction to be made by those who know the finer points and care.

I do believe in the Baptism with the Holy Spirit, and am convinced that all the gifts of the Spirit are active today, and are necessary for ministry - especially evangelism. Yet I do not hold altar calls, nor do I feel that the gift of "Tongues" is necessarily initial physical evidence of the Baptism of the Holy Spirit.

I believe that Pentecostalism (and her sister, the Charismatic revival) has given more to the world of Christianity in the last hundred years than any other movement. This point would be difficult to disprove considering the phenomenal growth of the movement. What is has given unfortunately falls into the categories of both good and evil.

Enter stage right: The witch children of the Congo.

Pentecostal theology, and its step sisters have filled the cities, the villages, and the slums of Africa. Faith teaching, and deliverance ministries with their emphasis on spiritual warfare, and faith as thing of power are common theological traditions.

In Kinshasa's slums children as young as 4 or 5 are being accused of witchcraft and sorcery, and people claiming to have spiritual power to cast out demons charge money to deliver these children from the power of witchcraft. Often it does not work, and more money may be required to finish the task, or the parents may be encouraged to cast the child out of the home. These children are being blamed for the ills of the household or even of the neighborhood. Sick animals, sick people, the lack of food and water are all blamed upon them.

Are these children the children of our Pentecostal doctrines of spiritual warfare? Have the superstitions of American Pentecostals bred itself into 3 and 4 generations to bring us "God-fearing" parents who throw their own children out on the street because they believe that they are witches?

Some people are estimating there are 20,000 to 40,000 witch children in the slums of Kinshasa alone.

I think these are the children of American Pentecostal superstition. We are responsible, and we should clean up our mess.

That's what I think. What do you think?

Want to read their story?

Save the Earth?! Perhaps it will Save Us

As I continue to ponder the issue of geocentric Holydays, this thought comes to mind: Perhaps we need saving more than the earth does, and perhaps - just perhaps the earth is part of that salvific plan.

Christianity is growing greener each day. Christians are considering their part in the ever growing story of planetary struggle of pollution, famine, dwindling resources and all. In all this growing interest to save our planet from a demise, we are in some way seeking to save ourselves, and future generations from a self-induced second coming.

Yet in our sensitivity to the earth's groanings (see Romans 8 on this), I am not sure we are really sensitive to the planet and the heart of its groanings.

There is a holiness to the earth. Its created beauty is God infused, and it carries clues to God's greatness, and wondrous love. Should we become sensitive to this voice of glory crying out in creation, I am sure that our care for creation will increase simply by the ever growing sense of wonder, and the need to protect that wonder. At the same time our ability to discover the voice of God in creation will transform us as we read His story in His handiwork. Perhaps if we could really read the clues of creation it might save us from foolish ways.

This brings me back to considering the need to celebrate Geocentric Holydays. Times like the Solstice become Thin Places calling us into deeper places with God.

SynchroBlog - Geocentric Versus Anthropocentric Holydays: Solstice and Christmas

Here in America our Holidays tend to be based around the celebration of the activities of human beings. Labor Day, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the Fourth of July, Thanksgiving , even Easter and Christmas celebrate the activities of human enterprise and often the celebration of overcoming impossible odds. Christmas which is nearly upon us is the celebration of the coming of Christ, and even so it is the celebration of a man - although God - still a man who did great things.

These celebrations are good - needed - appropriate, and especially in the case of Christmas and Easter needed for the health off Christianity, but as we enter in to the time of Christmas and its near neighbor the Winter Solstice I wonder if we have lost the mystery of the geocentric holydays. In agrarian cultures days were celebrated around harvest and planting and seasons. The feasts of Israel include both geocentric holidays based in the harvest, and the anthropocentric/theocentric holidays such as Passover with the deliverance of the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt.

In my culture only Halloween, and New Year's Eve are calendrically based in the changes of the seasons, and even then nothing is remembered about these days which ties us back to the earth and changing seasons.

I believe that God has given us the seasons with beautiful lessons mysteriously hidden in the dynamic changes. I do not believe that we should stop celebrating th achievements of man, and certainly not the achievements of God through men, but a return to geocentric holyday celebrations may well yield a return to the mysteries of God as they are hidden in the seasons He has given us.


Redeeming the Season is the Topic for this month's SynchroBlog. Now there are a variety of seasons being celebrated at the end of each year from Christmas to Hannukah to Eid al-Adha and Muharram, from the Winter Solstice to Kwanzaa and Yule. Some people celebrate none of these seasonal holydays, and do so for good reason. Below is a variety of responses to the subject of redeeming the season. From the discipline of simplicity, to uninhibited celebration, to refraining from celebrating, to celebrating another's holyday for the purpose of identification with their culture the subject is explored. Follow the links below to "Redeeming the Season." For more holidays to consider see here


Recapturing the Spirit of Christmas at Adam Gonnerman's Igneous Quill
Swords into Plowshares at Sonja Andrew's Calacirian
Fanning the Flickering Flame of Advent at Paul Walker's Out of the Cocoon
Lainie Petersen at Headspace
Eager Longing at Elizaphanian
The Battle Rages at Bryan Riley's Charis Shalom
Secularizing Christmas at JohnSmulo.com
There's Something About Mary at Hello Said Jenelle
Geocentric Versus Anthropocentric Holydays at Phil Wyman's Square No More
Celebrating Christmas in a Pluralistic Society at Matt Stone's Journeys in Between
The Ghost of Christmas Past at Erin Word's Decompressing Faith
Redeeming the season -- season of redemption by Steve Hayes
Remembering the Incarnation at Alan Knox' The Assembling of the Church
A Biblical Response to a Secular Christmas by Glenn Ansley's Bad Theology
Happy Life Day at The Agent B Files
What's So Bad About Christmas? at Julie Clawson's One Hand Clapping

MacArthur and Emergent Pagans!?

I have a lot of contact with the Emergent Conversation, and I have a lot of contact with Neo-Pagans. Now John MacArthur tells me that they are the same. I'm not sure he knows either group very well. They don't look the same to me. I wonder what he's thinking. So, here's the quote.

Persecution of "Child Witches" in Kinshasa

This blog post is over a year old now, but it is worth a look. A couple days ago Brian McLaren was in town, and suggested I read the book "Planet of Slums." In it, Mike Davis writes of the rising superstitious and dangerous fears in the Kinshasa slums against children who are presumed to be Witches. Charismatic Churches are theorized to be partially (maybe mostly) to blame. I would not be surprised to find this blame to hit the mark. Who will rise up to stop this insanity?!

Check out the blog post at No More Big Wheels.

December 12th SynchroBlog

On Wednesday you will find a post on the subject of "Redeeming the Season" here at Square No More. My friends and fellow SynchroBloggers will also be posting on the same subject, but you can not be guaranteed to find a post on the subject of Christmas here.

Redeeming the Season is the Topic for this month's SynchroBlog. Now there are a variety of seasons being celebrated at the end of each year from Christmas to Hannukah to Eid al-Adha and Muharram, from the Winter Solstice to Kwanzaa and Yule. Some people celebrate none of these seasonal holydays, and do so for good reason. There will be a variety of responses to the subject of redeeming the season. From the discipline of simplicity, to uninhibited celebration, to refraining from celebrating, to celebrating another's holyday for the purpose of identifying with them the subject will be explored.