Abstract
The article aims to engage with the reception of biblical discourse in Africa and will show how the Bible was transmitted in Africa. It will show how the Bible was successfully used as a spell to control the unsuspecting or a bewitched African believer. The article will try to argue that the Bible has been treated as a ‘holy’ book that cannot be questioned, translating into insanity, irrationality and magical-ity. To achieve successful witchcraft, institutionalisation became critical to identify those who did not belong or were classified as ‘heathens’. The article shall use the logic of Gabriel Setiloane to argue that Africans still believe in the Bible and Christianity because they are simply bewitched.
Contribution: This article showed the suspense of rationality, and found answers in that suspense. The Bible was treated as a tool that was used for witchcraft.
Keywords: witchcraft; institutionalisation; Bible; corruption; colonisation.
Introduction
The article aims to argue that the Bible was never innocent, but a tool of witchcraft. The Bible has been used as a tool to bewitch unsuspecting or innocent Africans. The witchcraft came by institutionalising African believers. The Bible thus became a tool of oppression and suppression. Institutionalisation thus became a mechanism to systematically mistreat people based on social identity, supported and enforced by a particular society (maybe Christian or the church) and its institutions.
The objective of this article is to identify the problem associated with the second coming or the deutero-arrival of the Bible in Africa and its negative motives aimed at bewitching the minds and beliefs of African believers. After the identification of the problem, an argument shall be advanced to show how the Bible was used by the institution called Christianity or the church to force believers to submit to the idea of the innocence and neutrality of the Bible, yet advancing the idea that one group and its culture is better than others and has the divine right to control the other.
The point of departure and the gist of the argument is captured by Gabriel Setiloane (cited in Maluleke 2004:186), arguing that: ‘For myself, first I am like someone who has been bewitched, and I find it difficult to shake off the Christian witchcraft with which I have been captivated’. Witchcraft in this context should be understood as meaning the unfair elevation and suppression or oppression of others using spiritual and/or religious methods to control people or events. According to Encyclopedia.com (n.d.:n.p.), ‘the word witch derives from the Old English noun wicca (sorcerer) and the verb wiccian (to cast spell)’. The original concept of witchcraft corresponds to what anthropologists call sorcery: the attempt to influence the course of events by ritual means. Two other, quite different, phenomena have been called witchcraft. The first is the alleged diabolical witchcraft of early modern Europe and its colonies; the second is Neopagan witchcraft, a 20th century revival.
Agbanusi (2016) argues that:
[W]itchcraft is defined as the use of magic powers, especially evil ones. It is the activity of witches and wizards. A witch is a woman who is believed to have magic powers, especially to do evil things. A wizard on the other hand, is a man who is believed to have magic powers, especially to do evil things. In other words, witches and wizards carry out the same operation of witchcraft, differing only in gender. Thus, in Igboland, we often hear people make reference to ‘amoosu nwanyi’ (witch) and ‘amoosu nwoke’ (wizard). ‘Amoosu’ is the Igbo word from witchcraft, and also for a person who practices witchcraft. In the West African belief system, witchcraft is believed to take place mainly at night. (p. 117)
Setloane (cited in Maluleke 2004), was very clear. He was following and affiliated to a religion that under normal circumstances he should not have affiliated to because of its negative history with Africans, yet at the same time he understood that it was now part of the Africans’ life. In a broader context (religion as a whole instead of Christianity alone), Karl Marx’s ([1843]1970) argument of a religion as an external force (the society or the state) dictating to the believer, he argues:
The foundation of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man – state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d’honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion.
Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.
The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo. (p. 171, bold font added for emphasis)
Witchcraft in Africa acts as something real and has pragmatic tasks in society that were like the role of opium in an ill or wounded human being. Witchcraft decreases people’s current agony and offers them pleasant fantasies which give them the muscle to persist. The Bible thus becomes, indirectly or directly, a tool to suspend the immediate suffering and pain of Africans or becomes the means to such an end.
To understand and grasp how the Bible is used or understood in Africa, one must grasp the reality of an African believer, as described by Mwombeki (2001):
The Bible has manifold appeal to Africans and is used in a variety of ways. Firstly, to many African Christians and even to some non-Christians the Bible is seen as a symbol of God’s presence and protection. A mother puts a Bible in a cot besides her sleeping child to send off evils. People sleep with the Bible under their pillows in order to be assured of God’s protection in the night … Secondly, Africans read the Bible for practical utilization. It is a book of life, neither a book of fiction nor one of history. It is not read for curiosity or fun. In this book, the reader listens to God speaking: giving comfort, instruction, exhortation, even condemnation. Today! As Timothy [2 Tim 3:16–17] was taught, ‘All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work’ … Thirdly, the Bible does not always have to be understood rationally. It is quite alright if the complicated verses are simply read, even without explanation, and a prayer is said. People will feel the presence of God and say ‘Amen!’. The biblical reading is appropriately spiritually, emotionally, mystically. The historical setting of a text is not significant, and even less the identity of its author. African spiritualism supersedes intelligibility. Most often, the Bible is appropriated worshipfully, by heart, not necessarily, by mind. (pp. 121–122)
This is the reality of Africa; it might sound unreal and illusory, but it is what it is. The unconscious and conscious choice to subscribe to religion inherits the Bible, which has its own challenges for an African believer. The author argues that the problems that come with the inheritance of the Bible and show the Bible as a tool of witchcraft. It is further shown how institutionalisation works in religion or organisations and how those who are institutionalised become less able to think and act.
The Bible in Africa
Although the ‘arrival’ of the Bible in Africa by the missionaries has been a tale of terror, the Bible has become an African book. The Bible has played a critical role in suppressing and undermining Africans. A Bible thus can be classified as a book of terror. Africans have survived a dangerous or frightening experience brought upon them by the Bible; however, they have lived to tell the tale of terror. And because Africans are to tell the tale, equally they have succeeded at using the Bible as a liberating book by rewriting it and interpreting it differently, through an African lense. Of course, the arrival of the Bible and it becoming an African book have not come without questions and problems. It must be noted that the Bible is considered a book of superstition concerned with the supernatural, which leads to irrational fear, false belief and misdirected reference, and that it was written in an unenlightened era based on mystical beliefs rather than reason and human consciousness. The Bible ‘brought’ with it contradictions; therefore, it appears unreliable. Logically, if two statements are contradictory, at least one of them is false. The Bible has been viewed as a risky colonial fraud (to confuse the recipient) meant to appease the African and pave the way for their subsequent looting and plunder. Therefore, the Bible becomes a tool of violence against the African. Even worse, there is a view that the Bible is a book of white people as a representative of the white system and whiteness. Colonialism is based on the developed world’s belief in the sufficiency of Scripture and the efficiency of the Bible to combat idolatrous practices and introduce (developed world) civilisation. The doctrine of the sufficiency of Scripture is an essential principle of the Christian conviction (specifically Calvinism). To pronounce that the Scriptures are sufficient implies that the Bible is everything we want to prepare us for a life of devotion and maintenance. The sufficiency of Scripture also suggests that we want no additional resource of unique disclosure for devotion and life in supplement to the Bible. It offers a strong exhibition of God’s objective to repair the shattered bond between himself and humankind through his Son, Jesus Christ, our Saviour, through the reward of devotion. No other texts are essential for this goodness to be understood, nor are any other texts mandatory to prepare us for a life of devotion. Ward (2001) argues that:
Although the doctrine of the sufficiency of Scripture has been central doctrine in Protestant orthodox theology, it is, along with the general Reformation principle of sola scriptura, and confessions of related attributes of scripture (clarity, perfection and necessity), regularly treated superficially in both scholarly and popular contemporary writing. It is often rejected hastily, with little acknowledgement made of its fundamental place in Christian theology and belief both before and after the Reformation. It is often confessed unreflectively, without due recognition that it is a confession which must be argued for, and located carefully in relation to the fundamental trinitarian, Christological and pneumatological doctrines of Christian theology. (p. 155)
There is an acknowledgement that the doctrine of sufficiency and the principle of sola scriptura are Western and have inherent theological limitations. But equally, the limitations and successes should be traced historically, contextually and post-Reformation. Moreover, there is an acknowledgement of the contribution of theology in general rather than in isolation. But what we should contend and make clear is that in the discipline of Bible interpretation and analysis, contextualisation is the procedure of allocating sense as a method of explaining the atmosphere contained by a texter activity (the context of composing the message and executing is accomplished). Albert Nolan of the Institute for Contextual Theology (cited in Kaufmann 2001) argues:
Wants to do theology quite explicitly and consciously from within the context of real life in South Africa. It wants to start from the fundamentally political character of life in South Africa. It wants to take fully into account the various forms of oppression that exist in South Africa: racial oppression, the oppression of the working class and oppression of women. And finally, it wants to start from the actual experience of the oppressed themselves. (pp. 23–24)
The starting point of theology is from below, which is the opposite of from above. Faith is not only to be understood based on Scripture and tradition alone but from the sociopolitical realities of the believer. Contextual theology then helps us to pause and question the doctrine of sufficiency and the equation of the Bible with the Word of God. Maluleke’s (1996) argument on this point is as follows:
I propose that the equation of the Bible with ‘the Word of God’ is not only naïve but it is a dangerous form of naivete. Furthermore, I propose that this equation has been and will continue to be more debilitating for Black African theologies than any of the dangers highlighted by Bediako, Sanneh, and Mugambi (1995) combined. The equation of colonialism with Christianity if and where it has occurred, has done far less harm to Black and African theologies than the equation of the Bible with the Word of God. (p. 12)
The Bible, perceived or positioned as the Word of God, denies any scrutiny of it and how it is brought to the believer and nonbeliever, because it possesses the authority of not being questioned. Therefore, a culture of not questioning inherently blinds its followers and makes them to submit without questioning. Moreover, and problematically, this ‘Word of God’ conflicted with and had a negative attitude towards our way of life as Africans. According to Maimela (1985):
This negative attitude towards African Traditional Religions, based on selective use of Scripture in order to prove that God was beyond reach of Africans, illustrates to what extent missionaries were children of their time. As children of their time, their reading of the Scriptures was far from being neutral, because they approached the Bible with presuppositions, shaped and informed by their culture and class; these influenced what they found in the Scriptures in support of their belief that other religious traditions were not adequate vehicles of salvation for their adherents. (p. 65)
Missionaries were mandate-driven and had a colonial agenda to promote and advance. Therefore, the claim that missionaries were neutral was a lie and a myth, but missionaries claimed neutrality so that they had a claim to equally request their converts to be neutral in the wars that would eventually benefit and advantage the conqueror. But above this, the biggest victory for the missionaries was to deny, distort and dismiss African theology and reality to claim superiority and preach that salvation could only be attained through the interpretation of the missionaries.
Of course, illustrations of associations and persons asserting a right to differentiate in the name of creed are not original. Several missionary organisations played an inventive role in the colonisation of Africa; it is not startling that social Darwinism maintained that God created a racial pyramid in which white (or European) people were at a superior level and that black people of the different non-European continents were inferior on the social scale. In general, the theory of evolution contended against the doctrine of creation but at the same time substantiated that humanity began in Africa. This is the argument between miracles and evidence or creationism and evolution. Creationism reasons that belief should take precedence over science, grounding its beliefs on one book for guidance, the Bible. God created the Earth and everything on it, taking six days. Evolutionists suppose that the Earth is much older than the Bible pronounces and that plants, animals and humans are a result of a natural progression called evolution. But the missionaries used the creation argument to claim superior creation. On the other hand, Europeans attempted to combine and further justify the theory of superiority by adding the story of Noah’s curse of Ham, which they used to justify black servitude to white people. The Book of Genesis records an instance of Noah cursing his son Ham’s descendants to be slaves. Genesis 9:20–25 tells the story of how drunken Noah accidentally exposed himself, his son Ham sinfully looked at him and as punishment, Noah cursed Ham’s son Canaan with servitude (‘A servant of servants he shall be to his brothers’). Over time, this story was understood to say that black skin was part of the curse, the so-called ‘Curse of Ham’. All these instances portray the discrimination of black people through or by colonialism and racism.
It is for these reasons that black people opted (Ukpong 2001) for a contextual theology, because:
[I]n contextual Bible study, the Bible is read against a specific concrete human situation, in this case, the situation of racial oppression and poverty in South Africa, within the context of faith, and with a commitment to personal and social transformation. In this, it shares the same goal as Black Theology except that the starting point of Black Theology is Black Consciousness. (p. 23)
The Bible as a tool of witchcraft
The point of departure and understanding is that an attempt and act of vandalising or demolishing others’ culture is an act of witchcraft. Cultural vandalism means, among other things, the destruction and looting of cultural heritage. The religions of Africa are part of its cultural heritage. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o (1986) argues this point, stating:
The biggest weapon wielded and actually daily unleashed by imperialism against that collective defiance [of the colonised] is the cultural bomb. The effect of a bomb is to annihilate a people’s belief in their names, in their languages, in their environment, in their heritage of struggle, in their unity, in their capacities and ultimately in themselves. (n.p.)
The cultural bomb is man-made and causes a cultural explosion, damage, deaths, injuries and so on. The point is that cultural imperialism has negative values and forcefully extends authority of its way of life over the ‘other’. Of course, Binyon (1937) was correct in his argument that:
The word ‘imperialism’ does not, of course, occur in the Bible, but if imperialism exists wherever any nation is not independent but under some other rule, it is mentioned in the Bible, as in the ironical lament over the fall of Babylon (in Isaiah XIII and XIV):
How hath the oppressor ceased! …
that ruled the nations in anger, …
with a persecution that none restrained (XIV, 4–6). (p. 359)
The Bible does not explicitly mention colonialism or imperialism, but we must take into account that there were, of course, empires in the ages of the Bible. But we cannot disregard the fact that Christianity and the Bible were employed to rationalise the activities of the colonialists. Toyin Falola (2001) refers to Jan H. Boer of the Sudan United Mission as stating:
Colonialism is a form of imperialism based on a divine mandate and designed to bring liberation-spiritual, cultural, economic and political-by sharing the blessings of the Christ-inspired civilization of the West with suffering under satanic oppression, ignorance, and disease, effected by a combination of political, economic and religious forces that cooperate under the regime seeking the benefit of both ruler and ruled. (p. 33)
On the one hand, colonialism had been a practice, and on the other hand, imperialism is an idea behind the practice. The two words, colonialism and imperialism, have differences but are equally related. Imperialism as a concept is driven as a policy that is aimed to diplomatically extend a country’s power, while colonialism is the direct acquisition of another country, fully or partially. Because the one is a practice and the other a concept, it can be argued that colonialism is imperialism, but at the same time, imperialism is not always colonialism. In this context, Christianity or its theology could be regarded as imperialism, while missionaries could be thought of as direct agents implementing colonialism.
Edward Andrews (2009) pens:
Historians have traditionally looked at Christian missionaries in one of two ways. The first church historians to catalogue missionary history provided hagiographic descriptions of their trails, successes, and sometimes even martyrdom. Missionaries were thus visible saints, exemplars of ideal piety in a sea of persistent savagery. However, by the middle of the twentieth century, an era marked by civil rights movements, anti-colonialism, and growing secularization, missionaries were viewed differently. Instead of godly, historians now described missionaries as arrogant and rapacious imperialists. Christianity became not a saving grace but monolithic and aggressive force that missionaries imposed upon defiant natives. Indeed, missionaries were now understood as important agents in the ever-expanding nation-state, or ideological shock troops for colonial invasion whose zealotry blinded them. (p. 663)
Invasion is imposition, and imposition is witchcraft. It must be clarified that social or legal imposition on colonised communities constitutes witchcraft. Of course, the understanding is that imposition is the forcing of oneself, one’s presence or one’s will on another or others without a right or invitation; it is a strategy to control, and the Bible was used as such. Takatso Mofokeng, in his article ‘Black Christians, the Bible and liberation’ (1988) observes the Bible as an ‘instrument of social control’, which the author calls witchcraft. It must be argued that no sober person or nation can donate their land for free or in exchange for the Bible unless they are bewitched. Mofokeng (1988) argues that:
No statement in the history of political science as well as that of Christian missions expresses the dilemma that confronts black South Africans in their relationships with the Bible with greater precision and has whipped up more emotions than the following: ‘When the white man came to our country he had the Bible and we had the land. The white man said to us ‘let us pray’. After the prayer, the white man had the land and we had the Bible’. (p. 34)
The Bible, through configuration, proposal and selection of substance, is employed as a valuable instrument for social management. The Bible persuades its disciples not to trust in themselves but in God, thus producing an emotive and psychological reliance. In this way, the Bible has power over the believer and carries with it the acceptance of beliefs otherwise called faith. Similarly, witchcraft involves wielding power over or controlling others. It must be admitted that witchcraft encompasses a broad assortment of trends that goes further than description and justification. Beyond definitions and the use of magical powers, witchcraft carries certain consequences. Ntloedibe (2000) sustains this argument that boloi [witchcraft] causes bolwetse [illness]:
The Setswana concept of ‘illness’ is used to describe the symptoms of physical disease, but in addition it also describes the state of a person who is not physically ill, but whose family, livestock, crops or land, or even the wild plants around them are suffering misfortune. (p. 49)
Agbanusi (2016) adds that:
Apart from health hazards such as sucking of blood of victims, causing illness and accidents, it is also believed that witches and wizards can hinder the socio-economic or the socio-political progress of their victims. There are many cases of where witchcraft members, while dying, confessed to being responsible for the social or political failure of some other people, sometimes, their own blood relations. (p. 118)
As Africans know, the arrival of the Bible by colonialism brought with it the spread of disease, economic instability and ethnic rivalries to Africa, and the consequences was a misfortune in relation to the land, plants, livestock and crops. Many of the postcolonial world’s economic and political difficulties (including corruption, poor economic productivity and violence) are directly linked to colonialism and the geopolitical system it created. This adversity introduces a mix between the Bible and colonialism, and between racism and witchcraft. We hereby acknowledge (Mofokeng 1988) that:
The paradoxical nature of the Bible is not inherent. It is also external. It derives from another concrete paradox, that is the paradox of racist oppression and the exploitation of the exploitation of the black people by white people. It also derives from a religious paradox that the overwhelming number of people from both races are Christians who swear on the Bible and pledge allegiance to Jesus the Messiah and his teachings. (p. 37)
Racism has converted to race art, equivalent to witchcraft. Witchcraft is no longer about the belief that witches ride on brooms, but those races have power that we should fear. In the past, witches were known or accused of flying on broomsticks. It was claimed that they would use the broom to journey to orgies known as Sabbats, where they would frolic with demons and beasts. Of course, this does not discount that witchcraft has as invisible side, identified by Agbanusi (2016) that:
It is generally believed in West Africa that, apart from the onwards material appearance, there is the experience of an immaterial invisible reality. Witchcraft is part of such reality. However, there are still a lot of controversies about the nature of witchcraft. (p. 116)
It must be explained that existence is the ability to interact with reality as opposed to that which is only illusory. By this is meant the total sum of all things that exist and are experienced, no matter what or where they are. These would be real things, meaning as opposed to imaginary or illusory.
This invisible reality translates into an unquestioned power and power of the unquestioned. Schoenherr (1987) argues that:
Power and authority in organized religion are characterized by two countervailing forces. One of the forces seeks to preserve the definitiveness of the foundational religious experience by means of external authoritative mechanisms of centralized control. The other attempts to preserve the living relationship of the core religious encounter through an internal dispersion of religious power. (p. 52)
Institutionalisation
From the day there is institutionalisation, there is an act of witchcraft. The one who is institutionalised or becomes institutionalised is bewitched.
Institutionalisation plays a critical role in shaping and reshaping one’s thinking and behaviour. The institutionalised Christian will tend to unconsciously acknowledge that anything is the philosophy of his or her institutional church. Of course, there are cases where the institutionalised will challenge the institution and its practice and ideas. At the same time, even those who know the Bible and have mastered or studied it, fall into the same trap of institutionalisation. It is for this reason West (2001) argues that:
We as African Biblical scholars have mastered the masters’ methods too well! We may need to be reschooled and retooled (and re-mythologised) by the ordinary African ‘reader’ of the Bible (and experience its power) with them. (p. 49)
Of course, literacy and illiteracy have strengths and weaknesses. There might be an argument that literacy is a strength, but hypnosis is a weakness; the bottom line is that hypnosis is equally scientific. But let us go back to the fundamental question of what institutionalisation is. Institutionalisation is the conception and description of customs to legalise the most important components of social conduct. By institutionalisation, the author means all methods of establishment of the congregations of believers, whether they be described by a few as ‘traditional churches’ or ‘house churches’ or para-church ministries. Yongyi and Yan (2012) argue that:
The institution is designed to regulate behaviours of human beings, so as to create a normal economic order; for enterprises, the institution is to build an enterprise institutionalization management atmosphere, through a series of policies and regulations, rules and regulations, and other legal relationships, and in combination with psychological factors of human beings, so as to promote implementation and realization goals [2]. The institutions can be divided into three types, that is formal institutions, informal institutions and regular execution mechanism. (pp. 574–575)
According to Olsen (2009):
Institutionalization is both a process and property of organizational arrangements. Institutionalization as a process implies than an organization’s identity is developed and that acceptance and legitimacy in a culture (or sub-culture) is built. There are:
- Increasing clarity and agreement about behavioural rules, including allocation of formal authority. Standardization and formalization of practice reduce uncertainty and conflict concerning who does what, when, and how […].
- Increasing consensus, concerning how behavioural rules are to be described, explained, and justified, with a common vocabulary, expectations and success criteria […].
- Increasing shared conceptions of what are legitimate resources in different settings and who should have access to, or control, common resources. The supply of resources required to act in accordance with behavioural prescriptions becomes routinized and ‘taken as given’. (p. 10)
Thus, institutionalisation is a procedure aimed to legalise company conduct (i.e. supra-individual conduct) within groups or whole associations. At least three acts in the procedure can be notable: rulemaking or repayment; rule modification or creating best methods and rule transformation; or substituting old regulations with innovative ones. This explains that institutionalisation entails the formation and definition of standards to legalise the major elements of social conduct and association. The institutional ecosystem that they concentrate on incorporates both the regulations and belief systems and the interpersonal links that develop in the wider systems and the interactive webs. Regarding institutional change, ‘new institutionalists are more comfortable in explaining continuity rather than change because the logic of their approach focuses on institutional reproduction rather than transformation’ (Lecours 2005:11). Reproduction is the process by which organisms make organisms like themselves. It is a method by which the manufacturer offers growth to children, and which primarily entails the discrimination of a segment of the paternal form. We must then concede, as contended by Sieweke (2014), that:
In the first stage, individuals perceive institutions as being external. Although institutions’ existence depends on being continuously reproduced by actors, individuals perceive them as existing independently of any particular individual (externalization). In the second stage, institutions attain the status of an objective social reality, which means that they are no longer questioned, since they are natural and not socially constructed (objectivation). (p. 27)
Externalisation compares to outside insemination that happens outside the form of an organism. Externalisation is an involuntary method by which a particular person ventures their own inner attributes onto the external world, mainly onto others. It is the coming or resulting from a source outside the subject impacted. Therefore, institutionalisation corrupts. Institutionalisation goes beyond the conventional definition of corruption as bribery to embody a type of corruption that happens when institutions create inappropriate inclinations and destabilise the efficiency of the affiliates. Prins (2017) quotes Thompson defining institutional corruption, saying:
Thompson coined ‘institutional corruption’ as he observed that increasingly complex institutions call for a different idea of corruption. Take the example of the news reporting. There is no direct individual of the news reporting. There is no direct individual bribery for instance. From the perspective of traditional corruption, the first thing to notice is that institutional corruption does not only touch government institutions but concerns the private sector too. Secondly, institutional corruption takes place at more general level than at the individual level. An institution can spread over communities, organisations, societal sectors, societies, et cetera. Thirdly, institutional corruption does not require quid pro quo exchanges. The reporters have no direct reciprocal relations with anyone to motivate their actions. (p. 5)
Just to clarify and make a distinction, Prins (2017) defines traditional corruption, arguing:
Regarding traditional corruption, Jain observes that there is consensus that corruption refers to acts on which the power of public office is used for personal gain in a manner that contravenes the rule of the game. This conception is almost entirely derived from political corruption theory. Political corruption has been a subject of research since ancient times and deals with corruption in the political […]. In current conceptions of traditional corruption, the most common distinction is between ‘grand’ and ‘petty’ corruption. Petty corruption is a corruption at a low level […] Grand corruption is corruption at a higher political level […]. (p. 4)
By implication, institutionalisation as externalisation cripples the individual into a group that determines or dictates the outcome of the final product and thereby corrupts. And in a context of the institutionalised Christian, the institutionalised will tend to unconsciously acknowledge anything as the doctrine of their institutional church; hence, what we examine is that institutionalism leans in the direction of decreasing frankness and self-assessment. This brings us to a limited conversation of religion’s institution. What we must recognise or what must become a point of exodus is that religion is the effective belief in God (the external). It must be realised that in religion, divine existence is the characteristic of a deity’s character and control that is entirely independent of the physical cosmos, past all common bodily laws. Divine existence can be credited to the divine, not only in its being but also in its knowledge. In this context, institutionalisation does not recognise personal liberty, does not foster religion’s competence to be a strength for public good and human rights and promotes docile, conservative inclinations.
Conclusion
It is noticeably clear that the Bible bewitches the believer. It influences the life of an African believer. It activates and deactivates them, depending on the intent and modus operandi. It had a positive and negative impact as a result of colonialism and missionaries. It has successfully used the institution of religion to institutionalise the believer, thereby shaping and reshaping them. The believer is thus tamed and captured and thus bewitched.
Acknowledgements
Competing interests
The author declares that they have no financial or personal relationships that may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article.
Author’s contributions
B.B.S. is the sole author of this research article.
Ethical considerations
This article followed all ethical standards for research without direct contact with human or animal subjects.
Funding information
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.
Data availability
Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analysed in this study.
Disclaimer
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any affiliated agency of the author.
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