AG Khathide in his doctoral thesis writes:
In many African traditional societies, the felt needs of people are usually met by the services of the shaman or other traditional medicine specialists. These needs vary and they could include the need for protection against witchcraft and evil spirits. Another need in Africa is for psychical health. These needs are felt by many Africans inside and outside ecclesiastical structures. Despite centuries of western influence and teaching by missionaries, these felt needs have not gone away. The sensitivity to the spirit world and its impact on the human and material world still remains a firm belief in the African socio-spiritual reality (Abstract: 2003).
The same sentiment is shared by John Wimber as indicated by the questions he asks after sharing a story of one Dr Paul Hiebert who for thirteen years was professor at Fuller Seminary School of Missions. Hiebert went to India to do missionary work. Before India, he subscribed to a view that healing ceased after the establishment of the church. However he was not to maintain that view for long as his experiences in India challenged it. Wimber describes at length the Indian village scene, the ordinary people, the healers, etc. which made Hiebert change his mind. He writes: "when an Indian person becomes a Christian, he substitutes the missionary for the saint (one of those Indian gurus). Christ replaced Krishna or Siva as the healer of their spiritual diseases. For the illnesses they had, they went to western doctors or village quacks. But what about the plagues that the magician cured? What about the spirit possession, or curses, or witchcraft, or black magic? What was the Christian answer to these? Because of western assumptions; the only conclusion one had was 'they do not exist!' But to the people who really experienced these phenomena, there had to be an answer. So even the Christians turned to the magicians for cures" (Wimber 1992: 138).
The western mind is itself conditioned by its socio cultural background. The Enlightenment and the subsequent industrial revolution have made a mark on how westerners perceive and interact with the world. Rationalism almost banished faith as it refused to accept the spiritual realities. Things existed only to the degree that the senses could perceive them and their qualities be 'scientifically' established. The advances in the field of medical science brought relief from a lot of sicknesses. They also challenged psycho-spiritual basis of sickness. As bacteria, gems and viruses were being discovered, it became almost difficult to maintain a belief in the existence of the demonic and the role thereof in sickness. Western Christians more and more saw a vast gap between the world of the bible and theirs. Scripture could not be read anymore without the need to 'demythologise' it. With increasing reliance upon the medical establishment, it became inconceivable that one should pray for cure of any illness. And this is the world that produced the missionaries who went all over the globe with the gospel. An interesting question is: what kind of gospel was being taken into the rest of the world by people from such a background?
This then explains the situation that Kathide writes about. This is the reason that those Indian Christians Wimber talks about become syncretistic. They find the gospel 'mutilated' and therefore insufficient for their needs. However, the gospel of Jesus Christ as written in the scriptures is not mutilated. For some Christian practitioners, God is seen as the healer even today. Bonnke (1994:120) writes: 'to deny miracles is to deny the character of the gospel … for healing is integral to the gospel'. He argues that the charismata in 1 Corinthians 12 were part of Pauline ecclesiology thus gifts are the basic feature of the church (1994:119). Consequently in his services he prays for people so that they might be healed.
For Bonnke and others who believe that God still heals today, they do not see the point of demythologising scripture. They belong to a tradition of the Christian faith which shares the horizon of understanding with the writers of the New Testament. The people they preach to in the two-thirds world as well as most of the poor in the first world also share a similar horizon of understanding. Because of this, the bible is read and applied rather literally and holistically. These simple and uneducated folks attend healing services in their numbers ….(MacNutt 1988: 23). When they read that Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever (Hebrews 13:8), that he went about doing good.... healing all who were oppressed by the devil (Acts 10:38), that he gave a command to his disciples (and they understand themselves as his disciples today), "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to the whole creation. He who believes and is baptised will be saved; ..... And these signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up serpents, and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover" (Mar 16:15-18). They do not only regard these as valid in the 1st century but they hear a word that speaks to them today.
Thus despite the aversion of the modernist paradigm to the supernatural, other cultures remain open to and do acknowledge the possibility of the supernatural interacting with the natural. The attempts made to render the gospel intelligible to subscribers of modernist paradigm are not wrong in themselves. However, it becomes problematic when a 'gospel' to that world is touted as 'the gospel' to the rest of the cultures of the world. Concluding this section one has to acknowledge the following:
1) That it is the circumstances of the modern 'man' that make them ask questions which can only be answered sensibly by demythologising Scripture.
2) That his circumstances are in no way superior to other people's, only different.
3) That as a consequence, his demythologised world-view and its theological opinions are not the norm for what is universally valid.
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