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The
current furore over witchcraft and its thin association with the
modern Black church is enough to drive to slit your own throat on
the imaginary altars conjured-up by the right-wing press.
Somebody somewhere is having a laugh, while the voices eager to be
part of the chorus of condemnation are growing louder and more
willing.
You only need to thumb through the classified adverts of The Voice,
New Nation and Caribbean Times to understand what befell young
Victoria Climbié and (probably by accident) torso in the river
victim ‘Adam’.
Whilst it’s true, people all over the world – not just in the
deepest darkest Africa of Tarzan author Edgar Rice Burroughs –
believe in witchcraft and such likes. But the wholesale linkage to
the modern Black church is without foundation and should be viewed
with the level of contempt it deserves.
 Hackney
North MP Diane Abbott
was quick to jump on the bandwagon in a column
for London’s Evening Standard (7th June) and laid into
the pastors who she said ‘make a good living off their
congregations’ in churches that ‘distort fundamental Christian
teachings’.
She should really know better than to help the mainstream press blur
the lines between the facts and fiction of religion and other issues
within our community.
There is a marked difference between the organised religion helmed
by smooth-talking pastors and the backroom antics of the Obeah and
Voodoo priest and priestesses who offer to cure life the universe
and things as obscure as a rainy day – and now they’re doing so
on a no-win no-fee basis.
Whilst it may tickle some Daily Mail and Evening Standard readers to
think of the modern Black Church as something out Edgar Wallace’s
King Kong where followers make human sacrifices, they’re very much
mistaken.
Amazingly
while Britain’s parishes are selling church buildings to property
developers for flats and homes, the Black church is growing at a
phenomenal rate – a rate that is only bested in this country by
Islam.
Even the appointment of the Rt Rev John Sentamu to be Archbishop of
York shows that the Church of England, which has a larger following
on the African continent than it does worldwide, values its Black
people and there are no blurring of lines there.
That mainstream society is alarmed by the recent witchcraft torture
case of Child B is not surprisingly – any human being from any
cultural background would be. But let’s get things right and not
confuse issues.
That an every increasing amount of Black Brits has ‘faith’
cannot be a bad thing. But allowing the powers that are to shove us
all into one big melting pot of nut-jobs where the rule is that
‘if you go to one of these ‘African’ churches you’re into
witchcraft, and if you go to a mosque you’re a potential
shoe-bomber.
Thankfully our country’s police forces are not as easily led as
your average tabloid reader and trash-TV viewer, so there’s been
no publicised raid on churches.
They are aware that real problem lies behind the closed doors of
ignorance and superstition, and it’s not a just an
African-Caribbean thing, or something from some weird Hammer House
of Horror Whicker Man country village.
Wherever there is unjust human suffering – not that you can
justify any form of human suffering – it is wrong. When it’s
hidden behind ignorance and shrouded by obscure religious and
superstitious beliefs then educational enlightenment has to be the
key, even if it involves the punishment of incarceration and other
unmentionables.
But the scattergun witch-hunt approach fails everyone, and in turn
casts yet another unwelcome shadow over our community. More
qualified research should help establish which witch is which, but
as it stands we’ve all been left dancing around a fire in some
white man’s fantasy ‘Bongo-bongo land’ where young Black lives
again mean nothing.
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