There is a great need for healing in Africa. This need is in itself no different elsewhere in the world, but it is greatly determined by the involvement of religious communities and traditions. Faith communities and religious institutions play a major role in assisting African believers to find health, healing and completeness in everyday life.

In Africa as well as in Europe, many spirits and their mediums are part of local as well as global cultures. Christian spirits named Hitler, Mussolini, or King Bruce (Bruce Lee) flourish in a pantheon of new holy spirits in Uganda waging war against the government. Spirits of airplanes, engines, guitars, and angels are found in Central Africa; and thunder, snakes, and rain as well as playboys and prostitutes inhabit the spirit world in West Africa. Spirit possession cults have continued to proliferate, even in the secular West, and continue to be a subject of intense interest. Despite the continuous expansion of the field, some problems are only now beginning to be explored. The experts in this volume focus on questions of power, the history and inner dynamics of cults, the role of gender and images of the other, based on research conducted during the last fifteen years in Africa. The contributors document changes taking place across the continent as possession beliefs and practices respond to new circumstances and address the shifting local implications of an increasingly global socio-economy. Gender, ethnicity, and class are examined as intersecting forces and features of spirit phenomena. The case studies presented are richly contextualized: history, social organization and upheaval, alternative religious options--all are considered relevant to an understanding of possession forms. Contributors: Leslie Sharp, Heike Behrend, Adeline Masquelier, Mathias Krings, Jean-Paul Colleyn, Alexandra O. de Sousa, Susan Kenyon, Tobias Wendl, Ute Luig, and Linda Giles Co-published with James Currey Publishers, U.K. The Wisconsin edition is not for sale in the United Kingdon, the traditional British Commonwealth (excepting Canada), nor in Europe.

These essays are an account of disease, health and healing practices on the African continent. The contributors all emphasize the social conditions linked to ill health and the development of local healing traditions, from Morocco to South Africa and from the precolonial era to the present.

The Covid‑19 pandemic was global in its spread and reach, as well as in its medical, social and economic effects. In many respects, the global effort to “flatten the curve” produced a flattening of experience around the world and a striking coincidence of similar experiences in countries the world over. The identity, simultaneity and uniformity of experience were also manifest in common concerns at the intersection of law and religion in many nations around the world, including Africa. The lockdowns and closure of religious worship centres – churches, mosques and religious organisations of all sorts – raised questions of freedom of religion and the related concern for freedom of assembly, along with concerns about the relation of religion to science and public health, religious channels of communication and religious provision of social services. After all, health, communications and social services are all areas in which African religious organisations play key roles. Potential tensions around these issues raised further considerations about the nature of religion-state relations, the status of religious authority and whether religious and state actors would work together or at odds in addressing the Covid‑19 pandemic.

Revision of author's thesis (Ph. D.)--Baylor University, 2007 under title: The material in salvific discourse: a study of two Christian perspectives.

With over 50,000 distinct species in sub-Saharan Africa alone, the African continent is endowed with an enormous wealth of plant resources. While more than 25 percent of known species have been used for several centuries in traditional African medicine for the prevention and treatment of diseases, Africa remains a minor player in the global natural

The belief in curses is widespread in Africa, impacting the lived reality of both Christians and non-Christians alike. In this book, Godwin Adeboye provides practical, biblical, and contextual guidelines for addressing the African conception of cursing, and for ministering to the fear and confusion such cursing elicits. He argues that African evangelical theology must begin by understanding, and valuing, the unique experiences of African Christians if it is to offer relevant answers to the real dilemmas they face. To this end, Adeboye draws on African traditional beliefs, empirical research, and the teachings of popular African pastors to provide insight into the religious and cultural contexts of the contemporary African church. Against this backdrop, he explores biblical passages on cursing and utilizes the evangelical positions on biblical authority, the atonement, personal conversion, and active mission to evaluate cultural beliefs and bring them into alignment with the gospel. While this text is an excellent resource for students of theology, missiology, and biblical or cultural studies, it is also immensely practical and deeply pastoral. Ultimately, it is a book to empower believers to confront their fear of curses equipped with the truth of Scripture.

“A beautiful blend of folklore, botanical science, acquired wisdom, and spiritual guidance.” —from the foreword by Luisah Teish “If you want to learn about the reciprocal spiritual connection between humans and trees, you’re going to love this beautiful book.” —Tess Whitehurst, author of The Magic of Trees Reclaiming traditional botanical and herbal practices has never been more important than it is today. So much of our future depends on our ability to use ancient earth knowledge. In this crucially important book, author Stephanie Rose Bird recounts the story of the sacred wood: how to live in it, learn from it, and derive spiritual enrichment from it, as well as how to preserve and protect it. The Healing Tree offers functional, accessible recipes, remedies, and rituals derived from a variety of African and African American traditions to serve mind, body, soul, and spirit. The Healing Tree celebrates the forest: its powers, spirits, magic, medicine, and mysteries. Bird shares how trees have provided her with personal healing, then allows us to share in that process for our own benefit. Bird’s book follows her own personal journey, but Africa is always her touchstone—the persistent and tenacious ancestral mother wisdom and spiritual foundation that refuses to fade away. The Healing Tree preserves this knowledge, presenting it as relevant and viable and demonstrating in intimate detail how vestiges of that knowledge took root in the Western Hemisphere, in African American culture, and more broadly in American culture in general. Previously published as A Healing Grove, this updated edition includes a new preface by the author and a source guide for the botanicals discussed within.

Where does 'the self' in 'myself' begin and end? And what do ideas of 'spirit' tell us about the nature of human selfhood? To investigate these poorly understood matters, veteran anthropologist, neo-shaman and paranormal healer Roy Willis spent five months in a remote part of northern Zambia exploring human consciousness in a fascinating and sometimes terrifying series of adventures. This absorbing book tells the story of Willis' and his three local colleagues' quest, as they participate in and film rituals of ecstatic union with nature spirits and talk in depth with experts in managing the awesome powers of a world beyond the ordinary. The narrative follows the research team's day-to-day involvement with rituals of spirit revelation, healing, and exorcism, their encounters with the evil powers of sorcery, and the sometimes troubled relations between team members. The African healers in this book emerge both as exceptional individuals and as pioneering explorers of consciousness. Their experience is surprisingly congruent with our present sense of multiple and shifting selfhoods in the age of global electronic communication.

In recent decades, there has been considerable interest in writing histories of medicine that capture local, regional, and global dimensions of health and health care in the same frame. Exploring changing patterns of disease and different systems of medicine across continents and countries, A Global History of Medicine provides a rich introduction to this emergent field. The introductory chapter addresses the challenges of writing the history of medicine across space and time and suggests ways in which tracing the entangled histories of the patchworks of practice that have constituted medicine allow us to understand how healing traditions are always plural, permeable, and shaped by power and privilege. Written by scholars from around the world and accompanied by suggestions for further reading, individual chapters explore historical developments in health, medicine, and disease in China, the Islamic World, North and Latin America, Africa, South-east Asia, Western and Eastern Europe, and Australia and New Zealand. The final chapter focuses on smallpox eradication and reflects on the sources and methods necessary to integrate local and global dimensions of medicine more effectively. Collectively, the contributions to A Global History of Medicine will not only be invaluable to undergraduate and postgraduate students seeking to expand their knowledge of health and medicine across time, but will also provide a constructive theoretical and empirical platform for future scholarship.