Because so many indigenous religious specialists specialized in healing, the first Western missionaries were closely questioned on Christianity’s relation to health. People expressed particular concern about devastating diseases, such as smallpox, measles, plague, and influenza, that accompanied European conquest. They asked whether missionaries were superior to traditional practitioners in controlling these diseases. This challenged missionaries, who rarely addressed health concerns in their ministries and neglected scriptural references to healing and caused many people to prefer healer-prophets who invoked spiritual forces. Some of these healers incorporated traditional techniques, while others favoured Christian-based methods.
Measles and influenza swept through mid-nineteenth-century New Zealand, killing thousands more Maori than pakeha (Europeans). In 1860 pakeha and Maori populations both numbered roughly 75,000, while three decades later the Maori population had declined to fewer than 45,000. Many Maori concluded that their atua (‘gods’) could not protect them from the stronger European atua, who had sent the epidemics as punishment for Maori who clung to their old faith. Old Testament verses describing how Jehovah inflicted plagues on worshippers of false gods reinforced this interpretation. Te Hara rose to prominence as a healer after the spirit of one of her dead children and Moses appeared in a vision, directing her ‘to heal the sick and diseased’ She combined the traditional practice of placing patients on heated stones and medicinal herbs with a prayer imploring Christ’s assistance. Other healers stressed that belief in the European god, Atuaniu, paved the way to good health and urged Maori to discard the traditional ways in favour of ‘Christian practices’. The Wahi Tapu (Sacred Places) movement blamed sickness on ancestral spirits opposed to Christianity. Wahi Tapu’s solution was to recite scripture while building a fire and cooking and eating special foods to cleanse an area of tapu.
In contrast to the healing movements of the nineteenth century, twentieth-century prophet-healers like Mere Rikiriki firmly rooted their spiritual messages in Christian idioms. Although she came from a family of tohungas, she exhorted her followers to embrace Christianity. Her Holy Ghost Mission (Te Hahi o te Wairua Tapu) preached the ‘Holy Spirit’s agency as a mediator between God and man’. Mere Rikiriki’s prediction that a gifted prophet would appear was realized when her nephew Tahupotiki Wiremu Ratana answered God’s call to service during the devastating influenza pandemic of 1918. Though many converted Maori interpreted this disease as a sign of disapproval from Maori gods, Ratana preached instead that the gospel would bring people back to Jehovah. As the mangai, a mouthpiece of God, he set out ‘to cure the spirits and bodies of his people’. Known as the Maori Miracle Man, he engaged in faith-healing at Ratana Pa, his headquarters, and on a circuit around New Zealand. Those whom he healed had to sign an oath accepting their belief in the Holy Trinity and rejecting the Maori beliefs to which he attributed influenza and other devastating diseases. Although the non-denominational Ratana Church he founded in 1925 was repudiated by the Church of England, by the mid-193os it counted about 20 per cent of the Maori population as adherents. Unlike many prophet-healers, Ratana increasingly shifted his energies to secular matters, devoting his time to establishing schools and leading Maori to reclaim their rights enshrined in the Treaty of Waitangi of 1840, moves that reflected a general shift by Maori leaders from religious to secular authority. Ratana handpicked men who successfully stood for four Maori seats in Parliament to promote the land issue and win additional land rights.
When the influenza pandemic of 1918 killed an estimated 2 million people in Africa, a newspaper described Lagos, Nigeria, as ‘a veritable city of the dead’ and colonial officials shut down churches to prevent ‘dangerous gatherings’. The pandemic spurred the formation of Aladura (a Yoruba word for ‘one who prays’) churches, whose members invoked the Holy Spirit to receive the healing, prophecy, and the blessings of God. Church members also inveighed against demons, ancestral spirits, and orisa, Yoruba deities who interceded between the high God and humans. The first Aladura church is attributed to Joseph Shadore, an Anglican who established a prayer group within his church to ‘offer spiritual help against the plague’, and his relative Sophia Odunlami, who renounced traditional and modern medicine in favour of healing through drinking blessed water. Their prayer group, Precious Water, broke with the Anglicans in 1922 and renamed itself Faith Tabernacle after an American Pentecostal group. The church was popular among African government clerks and traders, who used their personal networks to found branches in administrative centres. During the Great Depression it received a boost from mass healings conducted by Prophet Joseph Babalola (Baba Aladura). The British, worried by Babalola’s pronouncements against taxation, sentenced him to six months in gaol for violating a law against witchcraft accusations. A young Yoruba girl, Christiana Abiodum Akinsowon, founded another healing church following a bubonic plague epidemic in Lagos in the mid-192os, adopting the name Seraphim after angels appeared to them. Another Aladura leader, Joseph Oshitela, split from the Anglicans in 1929 and initiated a ministry that stressed faith-healing and the gift of prophecy. Although Oshitela aroused suspicion because some of his pamphlets contained anti-colonial and antitax messages, British officials decided not to prosecute him.
Many southern African spirit churches formed connections with American Zionist and Pentecostal healing churches. John Alexander Dowie, who founded the Christian Apostolic Church in 1896 and established his headquarters at Zion City near Chicago, Illinois, stressed divine healing free from doctors and medication; he strictly prohibited his followers from eating pork or using alcohol and tobacco. Dowie’s message was spread to South Africa through Johannes Buchler, P. L. Le Roux, and Edgar Mahon. Following the 1906 Azusa Street, California, Pentecostal revival meetings held by the African American preacher William Seymour, American evangelical couples exposed to Dowie brought the Azusa Street message to South Africa. Pente- costalism was institutionalized with the formation of the Apostolic Faith Mission (AFM) in 1908, which quickly won followings among both Afrikaners and Africans. While early meetings were interracial, the movement soon split into white and black wings.
One white Pentecostal leader, Edgar Mahon, who maintained ties with the black community, tolerated polygyny and advised his followers, ‘Enter ye into the Ark with your wives and children; the Lord wants all of you. Repent.’ Mahon’s AFM representative in Basutoland, Edward Tau, better known as Edward Lion, took his admonition to heart and repented on many occasions. Around 1910 he began baptizing people in the Caledon River on the Orange Free State-Basutoland border, acquiring a reputation as a healer. After Lion founded his ‘Headquarters for the World’ seven years later at a site called Zion City in Basutoland, the AFM suspected him of separatist tendencies and eventually severed all links after charging that he had fallen prey to ‘hubris’ and was expecting his followers to treat him with ‘divine reverence’. Although Lion maintained amicable relations with local chiefs and headmen, colonial officials took umbrage with his ministry. A district officer reported that Lion attracted ‘all the blackguards in the country, and his village appears to be a general refuge for runaway wives’. Indeed, his Zion City defied both British and chieftaincy, but not for long. Lion’s downfall came after he practised sexual healing on a young woman and her father came to demand compensation for Lion’s liaison. When Lion beat him, officials seized on the incident to try him in the courts of the Paramount Chief and the Resident Commissioner and expel him from Basutoland in 1927.
Migrant workers and itinerant preachers took advantage of the openness of colonial boundaries to spread the Pentecostal-Zionist message to rural areas. African evangelists spread the AFM to Southern Rhodesia in 1915. When the influenza pandemic hit three years later, African religious leaders provided explanations and treatments that were comprehensible in traditional terms. They could dispense medicine, identify witches abetting the evil, and direct people to perform sacrifices to the ancestors at the Mwari shrine. However, when these methods failed to halt the pandemic, many turned to Pentecostalism, whose emphasis on healing and miracles provided an alternative. There is a direct connection between the AFM, the influenza, and the emergence of the two most successful Shona healer-prophets, Johane Maranke and John Masowe. After receiving the Holy Spirit in 1932, Maranke acquired the power to heal through laying his hands on people. In the manner of John the Baptist, Maranke carried a staff for performing miracles. This conformed to a belief in Apostolic circles that they had to receive the power of ‘divine authority’ from God because European missionaries had withheld it from them. Maranke enjoined his followers to abandon their protective medicine horns and ancestor worship, and shun the malevolent shavi spirits. At first his African Apostolic Church (also known as Vapostoris) was limited to Maranke’s extended family, but soon it spread to the Maranke Reserve and then to six neighbouring countries. In Maranke’s home area government officials tolerated the church, but in other districts officials and chiefs regarded him as a madman and restricted the movements of Vapostori evangelists. Shoniwa Moyo founded the Apostolic Sabbath Church of God after being summoned by God to be a prophet, changing his name to John Masowe because God called him to perform like John the Baptist and because he had gone into the wilderness (‘masowe’ is the Shona word for wilderness) to pray. Claiming that he died and was resurrected three days later, Masowe positioned himself as a messiah for Africa and prepared his followers for the imminent end of the world. Calling on the Holy Spirit to enter his body, Masowe emphasized his healing ministry and his ability to identify sources of witchcraft.
Although the Pentecostal-Zionist churches spawned many branches, some healing churches such as Isaiah Shembe’s Nazareth Baptist Church developed independently. While still a Wesleyan, Shembe dreamed that a man came to him and read from Mark 16: 18-19, declaring that those who are believers ‘will lay the hands on the sick, and they will recover’. Shembe founded his church in 1911 with headquarters at Ekuphakameni (‘The High and Elevated Place’) in the Inanda Reserve on the outskirts of Durban. Some people, observing that Shembe’s grandfather had been a diviner and healer, commented that his actions resembled those of a diviner. However, he emphasized that his calling to ministry came not from the ancestors (as would a diviner), but from God. While acknowledging Jesus Christ as saviour, he stressed the primacy of God the Father over God the Son.
Women were especially drawn to spirit churches because they recognized their prophetic gifts. Following a vision of an imposing church with twelve doors which she took to be the Temple of Jerusalem on Mount Zion, the charismatic healer Ma’ Nku left the Dutch Reformed Church for the AFM before establishing her own St John’s Apostolic Church near Johannesburg. When her prayers imbued water with healing properties, so many people flocked to her that she had to install a water-pump for mass healings and baptisms. However popular Ma’ Nku and other women prophets were, their movements, either during or after their lifetimes, were eventually headed by men, who structured a male-dominated hierarchy. The 1954 constitution of the Church of the Lord accepted women as prophets and preachers, but prohibited them from entering the altar sanctuary and, following 1 Corinthians 14: 14, required them to remain silent during services. Although spirit churches typically fit a patriarchal mould, women still found ways to carve out personalized spaces. In the Roho churches founded in the 1930s in western Kenya, hymns inspired by the Holy Spirit were the provenance of women, whose singing created an ‘expressive domain’ that men could not control. They built on the lang’o spirit possession cult that was predominantly made up of women and featured ecstatic song and dance. In the aftermath of their founder’s violent death in 1934 Roho women composed songs boldly proclaiming that they were the backbone of the movement. One hymn proudly asserted, ‘we are women of war, we are women of fire’. As these Christian soldiers roamed the countryside, their rapturous songs heralded their approaches to communities.
The healing practices of Zionist churches in southern Africa resonated with displaced and dispossessed women (and men) who drew connections between their own bodies’ well-being and their marginalization in a rapidly changing society controlled by whites. Jean Comaroff argues that ‘the notion of the body at war with itself’ and the ‘focus upon ‘‘healing’’ as a mode of repairing the tormented body’ became a metaphor for ‘the oppressive social order itself’. According to Carol Muller, in Shembe’s church, ‘barrenness becomes a symbol for fragmentation of the social order’ and the inability of women and men to procreate. Hence, Shembe’s Ekuphakameni attracted women and girls precisely because he set aside housing specifically for them and paid special attention to guarding their bodies and fertility. Shembe also established a secluded church meeting for women at the time— from evening on the thirteenth day of each month to the morning of the fifteenth—when women were believed to be most fertile.
In Southern Rhodesia women worried about fertility could consult Mai Chaza, who, in the mid-1950s, established her Guta re Johova (City of God) at a village near Salisbury. Her control of land within the white urban areas appealed to newly urbanized landless women who eked out marginal existences in towns. Renowned for success with people possessed by shavi spirits, Mai Chaza opposed the use of traditional medicines and expected her followers to give up money and tobacco. Barren women seeking her help had to bring their husbands and marriage certificates and to be screened by male assistants.