Kitgum: Exorcisms 
8th November 2006
Watching young kids worked up into a religious frenzy is not nice.
Seeing them chant religious phrases at young lady rolling and twitching
in the dirt is even worse.
This is what we saw though. My volunteer
buddies and I. We were witnessing an exorcism.
We decided to return to the night shelter
for a second night. Partly to hang out with the kids, and partly
to say that we did. Well, for me anyway.
I started to fear for the safety of the young girl. An older
girl that approached the edge of the circle with a big stick did nothing
to allay my fears. I found myself hanging around the fringes
hoping that things wouldn't get ugly...
The experience took me right back to my Born
Again days and some of the exorcisms I had witnessed.
Operation Jerusalem 
The first was at an OJ (Operation Jerusalem) training
day. OJ was a Christian outreach that I participated in one
year. The idea is that me and a group of Born Again types would
head off to a beach someone and run a holiday program for kids. We
would preach the word of God as part of the program.
I remember Kate Yoxall, a fellow Christian,
saying, "We're off to save the world," to her dad just as we
were leaving for the camp.
OJ was a massive effort all across the North
Island of New Zealand. Hundreds of Christians were involved.
We all gathered in a school in the North Shore
area of New Zealand for a training weekend. We learnt about what
songs to sing, what types of programs to run and what the protocols were
on a Marae (traditional Maori meeting house) if we ever found ourselves
on one.
There was one blind girl there and I remember
the head guy saying something like, "We believe that Jesus Christ
is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow! We believe in the
Bible, and that he healed the blind! And we believe he can do it
again today! We are going to heal this girl of her
blindness!!!" (Extra exclamation points added because
he seemed slightly mad).
That was midway through the retreat. We
never heard about the promised healing again...
Being a Christian event, there was lots of
praying. I attended a prayer meeting with about thirty or so
others. We all formed into our little holy huddle groups and
prayed with closed eyes. We prayed for OJ. We prayed for
ourselves. We prayed for those who we might reach.
One of guys in my holy huddle - who I didn't
really know - started growling and twitching. He kept shaking his
head and saying, "No. No. It's not true.
No." Then it started getting really weird as he started
saying stuff like, "Jesus is not the Lord. Satan is
king. Satan is the ruler of all."
I was a little freaked out. Those around
stopped saying things like, "Fill them with your holy spirit
Lord," to things like, "You have no power here Satan.
Leave this child. We cast you out in the name of Jesus."
Interesting. Not wanting to be left out
and look unrighteous, I began chanting my own stuff. "Jesus
defeated you on the cross. Be gone foul spirit!", and
anything else I could think of.
By this time the rest of the people had all
joined together and were singing religious songs. The demon possessed
guy was not impressed and started growling and shaking even more.
He glanced up and saw a break in the holy circle that had formed around
him and bolted for the door before anyone could stop him. He disappeared
off into the night.
I'm not sure what happened to him that
night. Some people went after him. The head dude from the
camp (the aforementioned non-healer of the blind) gathered those in my
holy huddle around him and prayed for us. Something about
protecting us from any powers and principalities that might be around us
and to keep our confused brother safe.
The guy returned to the
training the next day. He was acting a little unusual but nothing
like the night before. The story went that he was sent to OJ and
to church youth groups by some Satanist church with the express purpose
of confusing young Christians. Everybody was feeling good that the
power of God had broken through.
Manurewa Baptist
My second encounter with the occult occurred at Manurewa Baptist -
the local church that I attended. I was attending a youth group
one night that a traveling youth pastor and his wife were visiting.
The did all the standard youth group games
before sharing the Word of God with us and then moving onto prayer.
One guy there began doing the same sort of
stuff as our Satanist church friend above. He started growling
like and animal and uttering blasphemies.
Once again, a holy circle formed around him and
people started praying for him. Several members of the youth group
joined in, but I didn't. One of them was reading the commandments
over and over again. One was reading the story of Jesus' resurrection.
The guy just kept on growling and growling, but
eventually calmed down. I am unsure what the youth pastor and his
wife said to him at the end, but he eventually calmed down.
He hung around with the
church for a while, but eventually left because he didn't want to spend
his life "praying all the time".
Healing Services and
being the subject
My last encounter with the spiritual was at a Bill Subritsky healing
service. Bill Subritsky is a preacher in New Zealand famous for
his large wealth, his end-of-times preaching and his healing services.
I remember mentioning in a Bible study group
that I had never seen anyone healed miraculously and would like
to. So the Bible study group and I headed off to a Bill Subritsky
healing service.
At then time I felt I had some serious sin in
my life and felt that only the power of God could sort it out. So
I went along thinking that I would be having a serious encounter with
God.
After the initial welcomes were over, Bill
Subritsky said that there was someone in the audience who needed serious
healing and that they had some pain in their lower back. Immediately
a serious pain shot through my lower back. It was excruciating.
I felt I should stand up and acknowledge it was me that God was calling
by hadn't yet plucked up the courage.
Just then, two (!) ladies stood up in the
audience at the same time and gave each other piercing stares.
Bill Subritsky said something like, "That's okay. That's
okay. Both of you can be having lower back problems. Jesus
can heal both of you."
I realised then that God was calling for people
with lower back problems to be healed. He wasn't using immediate
and sudden back pain to identify people who needed some sin removed from
their life.
My back pain immediately left me.
The deep question though is what caused the
sudden back pain in me? It wasn't God, he was looking to heal someone's
back problems, not identify some foolish sinner.
I figure it could of only of been me. My
faith was that strong that I though could cause myself to experience
pain.
This event became pivotal in me losing my faith
in later years. I had an enormous faith in God, and I felt God had
wasted it. What use is great faith if God continues to ignore you
and you continue to suffer. What use is a omnipotent benevolent
God who allows bad things to happen to good people (to me!), even when
they have great faith in him?
I eventually concluded that their either was no
God, or if there was, He didn't care for me. Either way, I had had
enough of Christianity. I defined myself as Agnostic, as in
skeptical about the existence of God. Since then I have moved into
full fledged rampant Atheism. None of this wishy-washy
stuff. Most definitely not
Paoism though....
Many people were "slain by the
Spirit" that night. Bill Subritsky had laid his hands on
their head and they had fallen over. Catchers had been employed so
that the healed wouldn't do themselves a nasty injury on the way
down. People in the audience were being healed as well. Bill
Subritsky had said someone in the audience would be cured of Asthma and
before long someone in the audience was taking big deep uninhibited
breaths.
Which all made me feel a bit stink. I had
come to be healed, but felt that the train had somehow passed me by.
At the end of the service, the organisers
mentioned that there would be a healing service for those who wanted it
in an upstairs room. I was keen to be freed of sin and so I headed
on up.
I mentioned to some guys that I wanted praying
for, but didn't mention any specifics. I found myself at the
center of my own holy circle and the guys started praying for
me.
I tried to focus on God as best I could.
I closed my eyes and prayed that He might free me from sin. I too
started shaking a little bit. Much like the guy at the OJ
outreach. Much like the guy at Manurewa Baptist.
I heard one of the guys praying for me say,
"We might have a problem here guys," which immediately broke
me out of my religious fervor. I open my eyes and looked
around. Everyone except the guys around me had stopped praying and
were milling around. I felt a little stoopid, stood up and thanked
the guys for praying for me.
I left a little confused.
Back to Africa
So there I was, witnessing an exorcism Africa style. I
knew something of what the "demon possessed" girl might be
feeling like. I knew something of what the praying kids might feel
like.
Never before had I seen such fervor
before. The leaders of then night shelter had brought along
electrical guitars, a keyboard and an amplifier and had really got the
kids worked up. They would dance and then point at the girl on the
ground and chant some religious phrases.
The girl got up a couple of times and stumbled
around. The kids backed away. The didn't want to touch
her. By this time she was filthy from rolling around in the dirt.
Eventually, the leader of the group, placed his
hand on her head and claimed that his sister had been freed of demons
from the power of Christ. She was lead away and gently sat down on
a chair.
After a while, her baby was returned to her
(someone had taken it from her earlier) and she began to
breastfeed. She must of been all of sixteen. One of the
other volunteers said that they had held the baby for awhile. She
said that some parts of the baby's face were warm, and some were
cold. Obviously not a well child.
Africans are a very spiritual people. A
large percentage of them attend religious services, be they Catholic,
Protestant or Muslim. The same people will also see witch doctors
to heal themselves or loved ones.
One guy asked me what religion I was and I said
Atheist. He was surprised. He said it was important to have
a religion. It didn't matter what one, as long as you had one.
I can understand why a lot of them cling to
their religion so strongly. The promise of a better life after
this miserable one must be very appealing. That's cool. I
have no problem with that.
When I see a young frightened girl in the
middle of a group of kids, whipped into a frenzy by religious types, I
do have a problem. I was seriously concerned that the situation
would get out of control - particularly when the girl with the stick
appeared on the scene. I had some vague plans of jumping in and
dragging her out if things got out of control.
Luckily for me, and for her,
it didn't get out of control.
If you want to help the people of Kitgum, one
way you could do it is to purchase some necklaces that the ladies
have
made, sell them and send all the profits back to the ladies. This
will help them feed and educate their children. I am setting up a
website, www.GrassrootsUganda.com
that will coordinate this process. The site is not quite up and
going yet, so if you do want to help these ladies, just contact
me and I'm sure we can sort something out in the meantime.
This is a part of a series of pieces on
Kitgum. To see a list of other entries, click here.
Questions? Comments? Try contacting
me.
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(c)
2005 and 2006 Malcolm Trevena.
All the stuff on this site is written by me, Malcolm Trevena. Feel free to
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want. Just make sure you sight me as a reference.
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