Abstract:
This article uses ritual healing theory to explore the meaning and
function of healing rituals performed by Jesus, the Galilean healer, and
to raise alarm concerning some healing rituals found in a number of
African Pentecostal churches. Using ritual healing theory, a
subdivision of the discipline of social anthropology, the study argues
that healing rituals are communicative practices that function to reveal
the contradictions (unhealthy to healthy; possessed to normal) within
a patient’s life and to symbolically overturn the existing condition. The
study discovers that the lack of supposed contradiction in some rituals
by African Pentecostal healers, evident in rituals such as kissing or
feeding the congregants grass or snakes, makes it imperative to ask
and critique the efficacy of such healing rituals. The article concludes
with an exegetical section on the healing rituals found in Mark 1, with
the intention to reveal the meaning and efficacy of each healing ritual.
