Children in the Congo are being imprisoned in churches because they are suspected of witchcraft.
There are around 50,000 children being held in churches in the Democratic Republic of Congo accused of witchcraft, a BBC film team has discovered.
Branded a Witch shows Kevani Kanda exploring the secretive world of faith-based child abuse, where children are physically assaulted because a church leader believes they possess “kindoki” or magic powers.
Most prayers in this room begin with a request to bow your heads. I would like to ask that you not bow your heads. I would like to ask that you take a moment to look around the room at all of the men and women here, in this moment, sharing together this extraordinary experience of being alive and of dedicating ourselves to working toward improving the lives of the people in our state. This is a room in which there are many challenging debates, many moments of tension, of ideological division, of frustration. But this is also a room where, as my secular humanist tradition stresses, by the very fact of being human, we have much more in common than we have differences. We share the same spectrum of potential for care, for compassion, for fear, for joy, for love.
Invocation, Juan Mendez, AZ lawmaker
Once upon a time, my wife worked with a woman who had fled Romania under the Ceaușescu regime. It was quite a story: Night-time border crossings, underground paperwork, refugee camps, bribes. The country was then rigidly Catholic, and women of child-bearing years were subject to compulsory gynecological examinations to investigate whether or not they might have had an abortion.
I’m reminded of that by learning this tidbit about the Virginia GOP’s nominee for Attorney General.
If a woman in Virginia has a miscarriage without a doctor present, they must report it within 24 hours to the police or risk going to jail for a full year. At least, that’s what would have happened if a bill introduced by Virginia state Sen. Mark Obenshain (R) had become law.
And yet, the Virginia Republican Party wants to make Obenshain into the state’s top prosecutor.
This is ugly stuff, and proceeds from a deeply un-American contempt for the right and ability of our fellow citizens to make their own decisions — but why, really, is anybody surprised? That is the inescapable implication of the things the Teavangelicals believe.
We are all, remember, no damn good, depraved, with hearts filled with an inexhaustible yearning toward evil.
If you actually believe that, that we are all innately wicked and deserving of only contempt and loathing, but also believe that your neighbors are worse off because you have at least been blessed with special cosmic insights denied those ‘others,’ then it inescapably follows that they require your supervision.
OK tornado hit 1 mile from OK Baptist Children’s Home yesterday. Praise God kids & staff are safe. (via @alabamachildorg)
— Russell Moore (@drmoore) May 21, 2013
The good intention is in plain sight — but so is the witlessness. After all, if He is to be praised because some people didn’t die, then He has responsibility for those who did.
I am reminded of all those tedious “Thank God”s when those three women in Cleveland were released from 10-years of imprisonment a few weeks ago. The all-knowing, all-powerful, all-good God didn’t lend a hand when they were abducted, didn’t help when they were chained to the basement walls, turned a blind eye when they were raped tens of dozens of times, and stood idle when they were beaten till they aborted. Why would any sane adult thank and praise Him, instead of that incoherent jailbird who dropped his lunch and ran to offer help the minute he saw they needed it?
