With Magick On Her Side
Arthur columnist Erik Davis comments on Sarah Palin and African witchcraft.
Last week, a YouTube video of a Christian blessing given in 2005 started making the rounds. The prayer in question was given by a famous Pentecostal bishop from Kenya who wore a nice suit. The prayeree was none other than Sarah Palin, and Bishop Thomas Muthee laid hands on her and prayed to keep her safe, not only from Satan, but from "every form of witchcraft." Here is the video:
This explicit mention set the liberal blogs a roiling--our potential president believes in witchcraft! etc. In response, more conservative chatterers pointed to comments made in the Boston Herald by some Harvard religious profs, to the effect that, in the context of both Pentecostalism and African Christianity, such comments are pretty boilerplate.
"His prayer reflects his own background and his own training and his own world view," said Jacob K. Olupona, an African studies scholar.
"America may not believe in witchcraft, but witchcraft is a reality (in Africa)." Olupona is right: witchcraft practices--animal sacrifices, ritual spells, evil eyes and other voodooish arcana--are widespread in Africa. It pervades the business of love, family, money, and soccer. Just last month, a Congolese goalkeeper on the losing side ran up to the opposing team's goals and tossed his supposedly juju-laden jersey into the goals, sparking a fight and then a riot that killed around a dozen folks.
Still, the ironies are only intensified with Olupona's line of explanation. Conservatives who defend Christianity harp on endlessly that Christianity is the only force able to prevent the drift of moral relativism, and it does so because, unlike New Agers or Neo- Pagans or secular rationalists, it stands on a firm set of values and truths. This is not true, of course--abortion only became a hot-button issue a few decades ago. And here these same conservatives are invoking the academic principle of cultural relativism, acknowledging that Christianity is as divisive and diverse as any other religion or creed. The implication is that we shouldn't worry because Muthee's invocation of witchcraft is just cultural, rather than a claim about Sarah Palin's view of reality.
But is magic part of reality? Does it effect change? Well, if you remember that reality is in part composed of our cultural practices and perceptions, then you betcha. By shaping the collective imagination, witchcraft can alter the cultural story in a deep way by organizing the ever-shifting if nebulous energy that charges and pervades our bodies and minds and social worlds. In other words, magic is part of anthropological reality--it's part of the glue of human perception. If you think that rationality and science have allowed you to slip out of your tribe's magical thinking, just spend a few moments considering how "the world" is shaped in times of, uh, catastrophic political and economic shifts. When conventional reality starts to break down, or is being intensely re-engineered, all the sprites and meme demons start scuttling out of the cracks. Just pay attention to the news; just listen to the whisper of your own fears.
The real shape-shifting force we need to be talking about in this tale is not witchcraft and Satan, but Christianity. Though Palin's faith has been presented as a relatively garden variety "nondenominational evangelism," she spent years in the decidedly weirder--and enormously popular--Pentecostal church. A new phenomenon in Christianity--barely over a century old--Pentecostalism is now the fastest growing breed of religion on the planet, and it is radically transforming--on the scale of hundreds of millions--the religious composition of Central and South America, the East (particularly Korea and China), and most especially Africa. These places, rather than secular Europe or even fundy America, will insure that our century is a Christian century. That's the thing: Muthee's Christianity is not just reflective of Africa. Its reflective of the transformative force of 21st century Christianity, which is why weird mad dog Sarah would dip into its bag of blessings in the first place.
Once, a rational Europe believed that Christianity could be assimilated to modern knowledge and a modern worldview. This has not happened: that Christianity has lost its blood, its life. In order to gain power today, at least in Africa, Christianity must acknowledge the power, or at least the reality, of the devils. (It must also promise concrete rewards; much of the Protestant and even Catholic Christianity in the developing world carries an entrepreneurial "prosperity gospel" message.) The Biblical commandment "Thou shalt have no other Gods before me" is already an explicit acknowledgement that there are, at least tacitly, other gods. Muthee's Christianity trumps witchcraft not by disbelieving it--in other words, by dousing it with the holy water of secular rationalism and skepticism, like mainstream Euro-American Christians have done for a couple centuries. Instead, it tries to beat witchcraft at its own game, using what one can only think of as a rival spell--the spell of the Word. It's all about power and manifestation, the shape-shifting of social perception. But notice this: the game only really works if witchcraft remains, as the professor said, a reality.
As for Palin, we cannot assume that she believes in witches the way that Muthee does. But she was certainly not fazed by their banishment, which was, of course, also an invocation. Politically speaking, it's not ultimately a big deal. We have had wacky Christians in power before, and though it was unfun, their wacky Christianity was--with important exceptions like John Ashcroft and Reagan-era James Watt--not the major problem.
Instead, I'd suggest reading this little blip as a golden opportunity, even a clarion call. To the neo-pagans, witches, warlocks, santeristas and other shape-shifters of the United States: get thy mojo working! Put the mad dog back in her pen! (But maybe try to find a vegan replacement for the goat-slaying and stuff.)
Author Erik Davis has a pretty spiffy website at techgnosis.com. He writes a column for Arthur, the free, all ages counterculture magazine.
