Such a fear of the devil and demons comes from ignorance of who and what God is.  He is all-powerful and all-present.  The devil and demons, on the other hand, are not all-powerful and all-present.  The Bible says that He who is in us is more powerful than he who is in the world (1 John 4:4).  Throughout the Scriptures, demons feared the Lord Jesus and the apostles, not the other way round. Moreover, much of the fear of the spirits is unfounded.  

There is pervasive fear among Africans, including professing Christians.  It is fear that is based on the African Traditional Religion and the misinterpretation of Scripture.  This is why modern-day prophets run the lucrative business of inflicting or solidifying fear in people and presenting themselves as men and women of God, who have the power to set the people free from their slavery of fear. 

The people run to them and are more than willing to “sow a seed” and buy their anointed objects like water and oil so that they can be set free. The business is thriving because traditional Africans have these fears and believe that mediums such as witchdoctors can set them free from them. 

When a traditional African becomes Christian, he simply transfers his belief in witchdoctors to belief in modern-day prophets.  Usually, many professing Christians trust in both witchdoctors and prophets!  On Sunday, they consult a prophet; midweek, they consult witchdoctors.  

In this article, I will address two prevailing fears among Christians in Africa that are informed by the African Traditional Religion.  

Firstly, the fear of spirits.  This is rooted in the traditional African Religion belief that the world is full of spirits that control the physical world.  Traditional Africans believe that nothing in this world happens without spirits.  When a person dies of malaria, they do not dispute the fact that he died of malaria, but they ask, “But who sent the mosquitoes to bite the victim so that he should die of malaria?”  

They believe that somebody manipulated the spirits to destroy their beloved.  For them, no one really dies of natural causes.   There is always the spirit of death behind it.  These spirits are believed to inhabit certain places like the graveyard, certain objects like trees and animals and birds like owls and cats, especially black cats!  That is why they fear these things.  In the evening, you pass the graveyard silently and quickly.  

Sadly, such a fear of spirits is commonplace among professing Christians.   “Fellowships” and neo-Pentecostal and charismatic churches dedicate a big section of time to casting out evil spirits from “Christians”.  They believe that Christians can be possessed by demons.   In addition, there is time for rebuking and binding the devil during the church service.

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