One of our goals at ESN is to support Christian scholars in pursuing their study and articulating their thoughts about an issue over time. Today we have the pleasure of featuring further reflection from one of our writers in the Lent Justice series. Drawing on her experience as lecturer and head of the Mission department at West Africa Theological Seminary in Lagos, Nigeria, Chinyere Priest contributed to our Lent series with a reflection on pursuing justice for those falsely accused of witchcraft within Nigerian society. You can read her first post on God as the defender of the accused here, and her second one on re-interpreting our explanation systems here. Here she provides more detail on the theological grounding of her post.Â
Examining the Scriptural Bases for Witch Accusation
Introduction
My first blog post, Navigating Justice: Defender of the Accused, raised comments via Facebook and other social networks. Ex. 22:18 was used as a scriptural basis to support belief in witchcraft and its heavy consequences for the accused. Two of the commentators claimed to have been involved in exorcising the spirit of witchcraft out of the witches. I do not dispute this claim but I would suggest we investigate such cases with all the explanation systems available to determine the true causes of the problem and not just conclude it must be witchcraft when other factors may frequently explain what is happening. [Read more…] about Navigating Justice: Followup to Defender of the Accused (Scholar’s Compass)