MATHETΩN

“The nine-year-old boy lay on a bloodstained hospital sheet crawling with ants, staring blindly at the wall.

“His family pastor had accused him of being a witch, and his father then tried to force acid down his throat as an exorcism. It spilled as he struggled, burning away his face and eyes. The emaciated boy barely had strength left to whisper the name of the church that had denounced him— Mount Zion Lighthouse, part of the powerful Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria.

“A month later, he died.

” ‘Witchcraft’ has taken on new life because of a rapid growth in Evangelical Christianity. Their parishioners take literally the biblical exhortation, ‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.’ Campaigners against the practice say around 15,000 children have been accused in only two of Nigeria’s thirty-six states over the past decade and around 1,000 murdered. The United Nations Children’s Fund says tens of thousands of children have been targeted throughout Africa.

“Church signs sprout around every twist of the road snaking through the jungle between Uyo, the capital of the southern Akwa Ibom state where Nwanaokwo lay, and Eket, home to many more rejected ‘witch children.’ Churches outnumber schools, clinics and banks put together. Many promise to solve parishioner’s material worries as well as spiritual ones—eight out of ten Nigerians struggle by on less than $2 a day. ‘Poverty must catch fire,’ insists the Born 2 Rule Crusade on one of Uyo’s main streets. ‘Where little shots become big shots in a short time,’ promises the Winner’s Chapel down the road. ‘Pray your way to riches,’ advises Embassy of Christ a few blocks away. It’s hard for churches to carve out a congregation with so much competition, so some pastors establish their credentials by accusing children of witchcraft.

“Sam Itauma of the Children’s Rights and Rehabilitation Network said it is the most vulnerable children—the orphaned, sick, disabled or poor—who are most often denounced. In Nwanaokwo’s case, his poor father and dead mother made him an easy target.

” ‘Even churches who didn’t use to “find” child witches are being forced into it by the competition,’ said Itauma. ‘They are seen as spiritually-powerful if they can detect witchcraft, and then the parents pay them money for an exorcism.’

“That’s what Margaret Eyekang did when her eight-year-old daughter Abigail was accused by a ‘prophet’ from the Apostolic Church. A series of exorcisms cost Eyekang eight months’ wages. The payments bankrupted her. Members of two other families said pastors from the Apostolic Church had accused their children of witchcraft, but asked not to be named for fear of retaliation. The Nigeria Apostolic Church refused repeated requests made by phone, e-mail and in person for comment.

“At first glance, there’s nothing unusual about the laughing, grubby kids playing hopscotch or reading from a tattered Dick and Jane book by the graffiti-scrawled cinderblock house. But this is where children like Abigail end up after being labeled witches by churches and abandoned or tortured by their families.

“There’s a scar above Jane’s shy smile: her mother tried to saw off the top of her skull after a pastor denounced her and repeated exorcisms costing a total of sixty dollars didn’t cure her of witchcraft. Mary, fifteen, is just beginning to think about boys and how they will look at the scar tissue on her face caused when her mother doused her in caustic soda. Twelve-year-old Rachel dreamed of being a banker but instead was chained up by her pastor, starved and beaten with sticks repeatedly; her uncle paid him sixty dollars for the exorcism.

“Israel’s cousin tried to bury him alive, Nwaekwa’s father drove a nail through her head, and sweet-tempered Jerry—all knees, elbows and toothy grin—was beaten by his pastor, starved, made to eat cement and then set on fire by his father as his pastor’s wife cheered it on.

“The children at the home run by Mr. Itauma’s organization have been mutilated as casually as the praying mantises they play with. Home officials asked for the children’s last names not to be used to protect them from retaliation. The home was founded in 2003 with seven children; it now has 120 to 200 at any given time as children are reconciled with their families and new victims arrive.

“Helen Ukpabio is one of the few evangelists publicly linked to the denunciation of child witches. She heads the enormous Liberty Gospel church in Calabar, where Nwanaokwo used to live. Ukpabio makes and distributes popular books and DVDs on witchcraft; in one film, a group of child witches are depicted pulling out a man’s eyeballs; in a book, she advises that ‘sixty percent’ of the inability to bear children is caused by witchcraft. In an interview with us, Ukpabio was accompanied by her lawyer, church officials, and a personal film crew. ‘Witchcraft is real,’ she insisted.

“After he publicly identified Liberty Gospel as denouncing ‘child witches,’ armed police arrived at Mr. Itauma’s home accompanied by a church lawyer. Three children were injured in the fracas. Mr. Itauma asked us not to reveal other churches identified by children, to protect their victims. ‘We cannot afford to make enemies of the churches around here,’ he said.”

God damn Christianity.

A recent bard has lamented that he has not the requisite central digits to salute the world as it deserves to be saluted.

Now, where he would employ a finger I would employ a sign of the cross—however, that requires even more digits and makes me even less able to do the task.

We are told that Jesus shall return with ten thousand angels—let us not waver in a belief that this will be as many as can adequately curse the world.

“Otty Sanchez ate her three-and-a-half-week-old son’s brain and some other body parts, early yesterday. She told police officers the devil made her do it, according to the San Antonio sheriff’s department. …

“The crime mirrors several other cases in Texas in recent years. Andrea Yates drowned her five children in her Houston-area home in 2001, saying she had tried to save them from hell. In 2004, Dena Schlosser killed her ten-month-old daughter in her Plano home by slicing off the baby’s arms; she later testified that she had wanted to give her to God.”

God damn Christianity.

“In A.D. 340, the Synod of Gangra condemned the Manichean sect for their urging that slaves should be liberated: the canons of the Synod declared that anyone preaching abolition should be excommunicated. …

“Later, the Council of Chalcedon — regarded by Christians as one of the most important doctrinal councils — declared that these canons of the Synod of Gangra were ecumenical (i.e., conclusively to be believed by the whole church) … .

“Several prominent early Fathers advocated slavery. For example, Augustine insisted that slavery is part of the natural order. … By the Middle Ages, all the most powerful and influential Christian voices had united in favor of slavery. Pagans and Muslims were enslaved — indeed, Muslim slaves carried out the grand construction of the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. St. Thomas Aquinas taught that slavery is ‘morally justifiable’. The Teutonic Order of Christian Knights objected strongly when Lithuania’s rulers coverted to Christianity, in the fourteenth century, since it meant the end of lucrative slaving … .

“Meantime, the papacy increasingly hardened itself against slaves. The seventh-century Pope Martin I condemned ‘unjust slavery’ (suggesting a just slavery also). But in the early thirteenth century, slavery and the slave trade was incorporated into canon law by Pope Gregory IX. Popes subsequently sometimes ordered the enslavement of excommunicated (‘interdicted’) populations. In the 1450s, Pope Nicholas V instituted hereditary enslavement of nonbelievers in two papal bulls, while in a third he  demanded the populations of South America convert on pain of slavery or death. Popes are known to have owned slaves, bought them in bulk, or distributed them as gifts to cardinals and nobles.”

“Protestant opposition to slavery was unknown before the eighteenth century. … The Protestant Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts bought the Codrington plantation in Barbados comprising several hundred slaves; all slaves in the plantation were then branded with ‘Society’ to signify their new ownership.”

“A consensus had come to prevail throughout the ages of European Christendom that Christians must not keep other Christians as slaves. This was broken by the slave-holders of the North American colonies, where religious justification for slavery changed from slaves’ unbelief to a doctrine of God-cursed races. Africans were taught to be the descendants of Cain, Ham, or some other biblical villain. In 1667, Virginia’s assembly decreed that baptism could no longer grant freedom to a slave.”

“George Whitefield, the English itinerant preacher already famed for his sparking of the ‘Great Awakening’ of American evangelicalism, campaigned for a recognition of the morality of slavery, in Georgia where it had been outlawed; due to his efforts, slavery was re-legalised in 1751.”

“By the 1830s, tension had begun to mount between Baptist churches in the North and South over slavery. In 1845 a ‘disunion’ was announced in Augusta, Georgia, and slaveholding pastors formed the Southern Baptist Convention. …

“According to an internal census in 1968, ninety percent of Southern Baptist churches forbade membership to African-Americans.”

“Members of the Christian Reconstructionist movement have said that biblical doctrine would justify slavery today.”

God damn Christianity.

I am resolved, after thorough consideration of all things, to use “damn” much more often.

She stands at the register, flint-eyed and limp-jowled, a woman of a certain age. She badgers the waitstaff in her Noo Joisey accent. “Speak English! You’re in America now.”

Tonight she extends into the kitchen. “I know what’s going on in here. All the lounging around. Turn that music off!

“I know what’s going on in here―all the deceitfulness. Speak English―everything you say―so I know what’s going on.

“Turn that music off! I never want to come in here and hear it. I don’t like your music.

“If someone doesn’t turn that thing off I’ll break it. I don’t like your music. You’re in America now.”

She returns to the register, and I go to pay for my meal. I walk so my heels ring and stand so straight I’m in pain.

My words are clipped, more than an Englishman’s, like cutting glass. “The pen you are looking for is to the left of you, madam.” I steadfastly do not look at her.

I walk to my car and start breathing hard. It makes me cough. I think, I do not know how to be angry―I was never taught. I breathe harder and harder.

I take off my hat and pray. “Father, cure her and if she will not be cured curse her so she can’t do more harm. Lift those up she oppresses―don’t let your oath be in vain, that you will care for the oppressed. And teach me how to speak, how to be, how to change things― In the name of your son. Whom they killed.”

I feel at peace for a while, but as I climb the hill home I push the gas, and the tires scream for a half-block. Once I am at my desk I write about it.

No the question isn’t: Is his necessity a ruse? but: Have I wherewithal to spare him? A bountiful Universe offers: to him, perhaps an opportunity to damn himself; to me, certainly an opportunity to be blessed. Quibble at this cosmic largesse betrays a mean mind.

Sons of belial urging me toward the Church of Mammon have the affront to be anxious for my soul, as though I declined a virtue, not a sin. Do they think it on accident that Christ only spoke of damning the religious? Do they suppose that grace—or sunbeams—can be locked in a vault or ledgered in a book?

Editors:

Some months ago my dear mother sent me World as a gift subscription. In its pages I have learned of a new Christ: one awash in others’ blood, one a-cavort with Mammon. Paul Apostle would say to you: Anathema maranatha; I will say to you that I dare not renew my subscription.

[Exoristos]
New York, N.Y.