demagogue on 18/10/2009 at 18:57

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Africans (in villages) are superstitious, cruel, and barbaric (edit: or are at greater risk of having a worldview that sanctions cruel behavior, anyway). It's an ancient observation. This has nothing to do with Christianity and everything to do with having a broken social infrastructure ... education, basic health services, a viable economy... to get their heads into the modern world (edit: by that I mean rooting out the kind of worldview that sanctions genital mutilation or acid-drinking as reasonable ways to deal with social problems). My take is don't get distracted by what's really the problem here. We should be investing in their infrastructure, the Millennium Dev Goals, etc, and riling up complacent suburban Christians isn't very helpful (IMO), unless you find a way to get them to send money for the Millennium Goals under whatever guise they'll go for, then a little tactical riling might be useful.

As for the sociology of this itself, they use the term "renegade branches" like these groups are really doing their own thing, detached from history and established practice, and they have integrated a lot of indigenous religious elements into Christianity. Every big cross-cultural practice goes through this kind of assimilation, and as an academic question it's interesting to see how it's played out with African Christianity (I read half a book on it once). But as a practical moral matter, yeah, it's pretty clearly unacceptable and the best way to help out is developing the socio-economic conditions and get people educated.

Melan on 18/10/2009 at 19:36

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I'm sure he would like nothing more than to go out in a blaze of glory riding an A-Bomb down to darkest Ubuntu while waving his hat. :cool: Alas, the best opportunity for that in Suburbia is internet posts.

daniel on 18/10/2009 at 20:25

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Not true. The most radioactive isotopes from a nuclear weapon detonation decay away within a week. Of course, everyone exposed to that radiation will stick around for a couple years, and some might not show symptoms for a long time.

Starrfall on 18/10/2009 at 21:26

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Of course there's nothing superstitious, cruel, or barbaric in the bible and christians have never done this sort of thing before. I'm not trying to cast blame here but neither can you completely divorce this from christianity and the kind of religion it is and what the book says.

In fact in a shocker I think CCCtoad has the right idea: particular characteristics of both "sides" (plus a dose of get-rich-quick) are combining for a particularly nasty result.

edit: Here's more on one the people mentioned in the article, from wikipedia.

demagogue on 18/10/2009 at 22:39

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Ok, "Africans in villages" is just a (bad) shorthand for people growing up in poverty-stricken regions rife with superstition and no outlets to break out of that world-view; their worldview will give them a pass on cruelty if it isn't checked.

It's not supposed to be unique to Africa or villages, actually it has nothing to do with the real continent of Africa or a single real village there, just a sensationalist way to make a completely different point, so actually I disclaim it, it's anyway such a hideously ham-fisted way to explain the sociology of it that it's worse than worthless; but I don't want to edit it out now since then it's like wtf are people talking about. I honestly do want to learn more about different African ways of life, and know how complicated things can get in real-world practice.

(Another point while I'm on this though; I wouldn't want to equate development with "Westernization", either; and that is something I've been sensitive to with foreign aid and investment in Asia, so I know it's going to be a similar story in the Middle East, Africa, etc... At the same time, I think the criticism shouldn't be a bar to development, foreign-assisted or otherwise, either, and that it can be done sensitively. E.g., I know indigenous human rights groups working in Asia like Asia and China using their own indiginous norms to push human rights norms, blasting the myth that "human rights" or "democracy" is only a Western idea with support in only Western philosophies and no Asian or African ever developed the concepts. On "democracy", though, that soulds like the J-Curve argument that people have to learn democratic norms before you hand them the reigns to do it or you get it Milosovic-style, where people win elections on race hate or whatever. I think living under a liberal democracy is a human right, but I get that kind of problem isn't easy.)

But I do tend to be functionalist about these things, which was supposed to be my original point. It's actually on a similar line as that criticism... This whole thread to me looked like a bait and switch that all Christians should feel ashamed at asshats like this story being "one of them". But I think stuff has to always be situated and just because they use the same name for their religion doesn't mean they have to have anything in common. You look at the belief system itself, and if it has a different evolution, different functional development, and the context it's in, it's a different belief system, and you shouldn't white-wash that, or it's not helpful. I have been to a few African villages (North Africa anyway) ... I certainly have never met anyone "cruel or barbaric" in any; though I do recognize a different worldview, too easy to say it's more "superstitious" (that's what strikes a foreigner) and too apparently blase at things that strike me as atrocious (but would have to explore that more to be sure what's going on), but in what I've read they have their own mix of tradition and transformation like any society, which is what makes anthropology books always go into crisis mode when they try to explain what they think they'er doing... Mmm, can't go off on an essay. There's a completely different track I'd want to take with all of this to begin with, and this really isn't the right context for it, so I guess I'll save it for a better place.

Edit: About the only thing I could say about this story on its own terms is that it's clearly an awful practice and if a person is a Christian and they think this has to do with Christianity then they are (or should be) wrong, and the answer they should give to these guys is "You're doing it wrong", and any interpretation of the bible that could possibly advocate it would be wrong. I don't know what most real suburban American Christains would actually say if confronted with the question or the cognitive dissonance of it. But I never was really sure they actually care much about finding the best way to practice Christainity, or what the true nature of their religion is. So I don't care much trying to understand their thinking any time I try to think about religious stuff myself, since whatever they think they're talking about, I'm not sure it has much to do with religion itself if you look at what they're actually saying. For similar reasons, I don't see criticisms of them having much to do with religion either; just easy pot-shots at people that either haven't learned to deal with modernity or have a mental block over it or whatever. But this is already getting into other stuff...