African Christianity and the Intersection of Faith, Traditional, and Biomedical Healing

2020 ◽  
pp. 239693932096110
Author(s):  
Bernard Boyo ◽  
Michael Bowen ◽  
Scholastica Kariuki-Githinji ◽  
James Kombo
Keyword(s):  
Modern Medicine ◽  
Traditional Healing ◽  
Faith Healing ◽  
African Christianity ◽  
Bible Schools

Africa has witnessed an increase of clergy who favor faith healing but have little appreciation for modern medicine. The intersection between African traditional healing and faith healing remains unclear, with most curricula in theological and Bible schools failing to address these fundamental issues. Research was conducted to establish the intersection between faith, traditional, and biomedical healing. The findings show that faith healing is practiced by nearly three-fourths of the respondents and that African Instituted Churches give relatively more attention to practices of faith healing than do other denominations.

scholarly journals Revisiting ‘Translatability’ and African Christianity: The Case of the Christian Catholic Apostolic Church in Zion

2017 ◽  
Vol 53 ◽  
pp. 448-475
Author(s):  
Joel Cabrita
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Religious Practice ◽  
Faith Healing ◽  
African Christianity ◽  
North Americans ◽  
History Of ◽  
African Context ◽  
Complex Relationships ◽  
Late Modern ◽  
Regional Histories

Focusing on the ‘translatability’ of Christianity in Africa is now commonplace. This approach stresses that African Christian practice is thoroughly inculturated and relevant to local cultural concerns. However, in exclusively emphasizing Christianity's indigeneity, an opportunity is lost to understand how Africans entered into complex relationships with North Americans to shape a common field of religious practice. To better illuminate the transnational, open-faced nature of Christianity in Africa, this article discusses the history of a twentieth-century Christian faith healing movement called Zionism, a large black Protestant group in South Africa. Eschewing usual portrayals of Zionism as an indigenous Southern African movement, the article situates its origins in nineteenth-century industrializing, immigrant Chicago, and describes how Zionism was subsequently reimagined in a South African context of territorial dispossession and racial segregation. It moves away from isolated regional histories of Christianity to focus on how African Protestantism emerged as the product of lively transatlantic exchanges in the late modern period.

Pathways to mental health treatment in Ghana: Challenging biomedical methods from herbal- and faith-healing perspectives

2019 ◽  
Vol 65 (6) ◽  
pp. 527-538
Author(s):  
Eric Badu ◽  
Rebecca Mitchell ◽  
Anthony Paul O’Brien
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Mental Health Treatment ◽  
Financial Incentives ◽  
Service Providers ◽  
Clinical Pathways ◽  
Traditional Healing ◽  
Mental Illnesses ◽  
Faith Healing ◽  
Health Treatment ◽  
Treatment Pathways

Background: The clinical pathways for treating mental illness have received global attention. Several empirical studies have been undertaken on treatment pathways in Ghana. No study, however, has systematically reviewed the literature related to the pathways of mental health treatment in Ghana. Aim: This article aims to identify the pathways used to treat mental illnesses; examine the evidence about the possibility of collaboration between biomedical, faith and traditional healing pathways; and draw attention to the barriers hindering such collaboration. Methods: A search of the published literature was conducted using Medline, Embase, PsycINFO, CINAHL (EBSCO), Web of Science and Scopus databases. The search was limited to the articles that were published in English and released between 2000 and June 2018. The review synthesises both qualitative and quantitative data. Results: The findings showed that mental illnesses in Ghana are treated using a mixture of biomedical and faith-based and traditional healing services. Faith and traditional healing pathways are typically used as a preliminary source of cultural assessment before seeking biomedical treatment. There is an increasing desire for collaboration between biomedical, faith and traditional healing pathways. However, several individual factors (attitude or stigma, the perceived efficacy of treatment and differences in the treatment process) and health system factors (a lack of policy and regulation, a limited number of biomedical service providers, limited financial support and geographical isolation of services) jointly contribute to barriers precluding establishing such collaboration. Conclusion: This review recommends that policies, regulations, educational support and financial incentives should be developed to facilitate collaboration between biomedical, faith and traditional healing service provision.

African Traditional Healing Practices and the Christian Community

1993 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 275-288 ◽  
Author(s):  
Willem Berends
Keyword(s):  
Modern Medicine ◽  
Traditional Healing ◽  
Traditional Practices ◽  
Christian Community ◽  
African Churches ◽  
Traditional Healing Practices ◽  
Medical Programs

The article draws attention to the continuing popularity of African traditional healing practices, and asks whether African churches and modern medical programs can continue simply to denounce or to ignore such practices. The need for a further appraisal becomes apparent when it is shown that the purposes of these healing practices fulfill certain functions not met by modern medicine. When a comparison shows that the healing practices recorded in the Old and New Testaments often have more in common with African traditional practices than with modern medicine, the question whether the African Christian community should re-evaluate the traditional healing practices becomes unavoidable.

scholarly journals Unique collaboration of modern medicine and traditional faith-healing for the treatment of mental illness: Best practice from Gujarat

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 521
Author(s):  
Somen Saha ◽  
Ajay Chauhan ◽  
Milesh Hamlai ◽  
Vikar Saiyad ◽  
Siddharth Makwana ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Mental Illness ◽  
Best Practice ◽  
Modern Medicine ◽  
Faith Healing

scholarly journals What can traditional healing do for modern medicine

2014 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 9.1-9.6 ◽  
Author(s):  
James David Jr. Adams
Keyword(s):  
Modern Medicine ◽  
Traditional Healing

scholarly journals Attitudes and knowledge of nurse practitioners towards traditional healing, faith healing and complementary medicine in the Northern Province of South Africa

Curationis ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
K. Peltzer ◽  
L.B. Khoza
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Health Care ◽  
Complementary Medicine ◽  
Traditional Healing ◽  
Faith Healing ◽  
Northern Province ◽  
Registered Professional Nurses ◽  
Professional Nurses ◽  
Attitudes And Knowledge ◽  
Harmful Effects

Objective: To investigate the attitudes and knowledge of nurses towards traditional healing, faith healing and complementary therapies in the Northern Province in South Africa. Design: Survey of nurses. Setting: Registered professional nurses at health centres and clinics. Participants: 84 registered professional nurses Results: Nurse’s perceptions were basically positive toward ethnomedical therapy (traditional healing, faith healing and complementary medicine); this also included their integration into the primary health care system. Mean ratings for referral to a faith healer was 2.7, followed by complementary medicine (2.6) and traditional healing (2.2). Although low rates of referrals to ethnomedical therapists were practised, it was done so mainly in the patient’s interest and not as a last resort for chronic or terminal illness. Most did not discuss with a patient benefits of traditional healing but 71% discussed the possible harmful effects. However, the majority discussed the benefits rather than harmful effects of faith healing. With respect to mean ratings on knowledge, faith healing was considered the most important (4.3), followed by complementary medicine (4.2), and traditional healing (4.1). Conclusion: Faith healing was considered as more important than complementary medicine and traditional healing. Implications are relevant for nursing health care and policy.

Health-Seeking Nomads and Faith-Healing in a Medically Pluralistic Context in Mbeya, Tanzania

2018 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 245-264 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lotta Gammelin
Keyword(s):  
Traditional Healing ◽  
Faith Healing ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Church Community ◽  
Health Seeking ◽  
Full Control ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Made In

Abstract1The popularity of faith-healing in sub-Saharan Africa has been widely acknowledged in research, but mostly treated as a phenomenon apart, instead of being viewed in relation to other modes of healing. In this article I focus on the reasons why believers choose faith-healing in a medically pluralistic situation and how they see other healing options available in a locally founded Charismatic church community, the Gospel Miracle Church for All People (GMCL), in the Southern Tanzanian city of Mbeya. I propose that, in order to see the medically pluralistic context in Tanzania through the journeys of health-seeking nomads, the focus must lie on two intertwined aspects of faith-healing: first, it is inevitably based on the need to be healed and speaks of a failure of biomedicine to explain illness and provide healing; and second, the long journeys that are made in search of healing mean traversing boundaries and switching between parallel healing systems: biomedicine, traditional healing, and faith-healing. While health seeking nomads are in many ways in a vulnerable position, I suggest that their ability to move from one healing option to another speaks of agency: not in the sense of full control over their life situations but, rather, as a way of coming to terms with their illness.

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