I took this class in university called Religion in the 21st Century. Within the first six hours, the Spaghetti Monster sect was mentioned. While this nearly turned me off the course, these new-age religions were more peripheral topics. Instead, we had the chance to dig into the bizareness and intrigue that defines any religion and its foundations.
At one point, we studied voodooism in the Dominican Republic. An anthropological ethnography, there were a lot of delicious descriptions of jars of herbs and tinctures for various functions. Long paragraphs on a voodoo practitioner that the ethnographer was working with. While the religious component was fascinating, the descriptions of a US-DR market for voodoo product was even more fascinating. Good money to be made.
A lot of our essays involved long paragraphs like this:
Harding focuses this chapter around a speech made by Falwell at Temple Baptist Church in Detroit. She’s attending one of her first ‘Moral Majority’ jeremiads. Her curiosity in the “Moral Majority stump sermon” (155) lies in the fact that, “it was, for one thing, a rite of political passage – it publicly enacted the end of the militant separation and the reenfranchisement of fundamentalists in America” (155). It also represented a fusion of “certain fundamentalist and evangelical public rhetoric” (155).
We had to read this book titled The Book of Jerry Falwell: Fundamentalist Language and Politics by S F Harding. It was my first introduction to the very weird role of people like Pat Robertson. Their work is almost fantastical – what society do they draw these crazy concepts from? Where are these thoughts incubating and how do they spread person to person? It can’t just be poverty, i.e. lack of educational opportunities.
I also had a fantastic time writing an essay based in Uganda:
A Born-Again Christian church in Bungatira in the Gulu district of Northern Uganda was found to have been keeping 200 children under illegal custody (Odongo and Candia, 2007). The children said they had been promised scholarships and the fulfillment of their basic needs by the church’s pastors. “The managers of the church claimed that they were looking after some children and had got a promise of funding from a Canadian religious organization,” explained one official, “so they rushed to the district and started inviting and keeping children whom they wanted to show to the Canadian when he comes to Uganda” (Odongo and Candia, 2007). The church hoped that through the temporary ‘capture’ of the children, the Canadian visitor would feel them a worthy recipient of a donation. This is one example of a new dimension to religion in Uganda: the emerging relationship between prayer and the acquirement of wealth and its effects of Uganda’s social structure.
The Born Again faith arose in Uganda during the dictatorship of Idi Amin in the 1970s, said Jimmy Otim (personal communication, October 20 2007), who was born and raised in Northern Uganda. Growing exponentially during the 1980s, the movement is accused of contributing to the breakdown of cultural and community values. The accumulation of wealth by the church leaders from the poor community and the distinct lack of investment into community-building programs, as well as the growing number of corrupt church leaders declaring themselves Born Again Christian pastors has contributed to this phenomenon.
This essay suggests an anthropological exploration of these emerging dimensions of the Born Again movement, which, according to several printed articles and interviews, emphasizes ‘financial’ gain while flaunting, in an unprecedented fashion, the church and pastor’s accumulated wealth. This essay compares qualities of the Born Again church in Uganda to Born Again churches in the United States in order to make a cross-comparison of the emergence of prayer for money in two different social environments.
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As confirmed by Marks McAvity, a Canadian member of the Anglican Church who worked in Kampala for several years in the 1970s, the Born Again movement has adopted a ‘new’ emphasis on the idea “that wealth and God’s blessing are linked” (personal communication, October 21, 2007). McAvity points out that this development has had dramatic repercussions, notably that Ugandans who declare themselves ‘Born-Again Christians’ experience “the subconscious belief that they are not blessed if the wealth does not come their way” which, in turn, “[rationalizes] pretty slippery practices” (personal communication, October 21, 2007). McAvity maintains that through this new rationale, prayer is no longer solely performed in reverence of God or for other basic needs like health or food. “At least with someone’s health,” states McAvity, “intention can be very genuine, but to pray for a Cadillac, or a stock market success, all seems a bit less altruistic” (personal communication, October 21, 2007). As McAvity pointed out, the Born Again movement has put a new emphasis on the connection of wealth, prayer, salvation and God. The “slippery” practices that are now endorsed through such an approach have had such results as the abduction of 200 innocent school children mentioned above.
Jimmy Otim, a native Acholi from Northern Uganda, described the Pentecostal Church as having, “thousands of links with the European and American states preaching heaven and earth,” while “extracting money from the poor folk with false preaching, [by saying] they will be poor now, but rich in heaven” (personal communication, October 22, 2007). Otim says their motto is “[give] what you have now because it is the ticket to heaven.” Although the idea of tithes or community / personal donations to religious institutions are not unheard of, Otim says pastors are continuously taking advantage of the disadvantaged positions of their congregations: “the pastors are getting richer and richer, some [have been accused of] snatching other people’s wives and sleeping with under-age girls” (personal communication, October 22, 2007).
Enough reminiscing about university. This potentially pointless post was to refer to this article on Voodooism in the New York Times.
