Bartholomew's Notes

For some reason, there is a sudden flurry of interest on American websites in Stojan Adasevic, the Serbian former abortionist who became a pro-life advocate some years ago. Adasevic, now an Orthodox Christian, explains that he had a change of heart following a series of strange experiences, beginning when he was a student:

Stojan Adasevic will never forget the day he was organizing the filing cabinet in the doctors’ room. He was a medical student at the time… A number of gynecologists entered the room. Paying no attention to the student crouched over a pile of papers in the corner, they began swapping stories about their medical practice…As the gynecologists went on discussing [one] woman’s history, Stojan, who had been listening in, suddenly stiffened. He realized that the woman under discussion — a former dentist at the nearby clinic — was his mother.

This apparently did not deter him from his career path, but while performing “between 48,000 and 62,000” terminations (up from “10,000” in this 2002 article), Adasevic began to have nightmares in which children and young people fled from him and called him a murderer. A “man in black” introduced himself as Thomas Aquinas – of whom Adasevic says he had never heard – and asked:

“Do you not know that here, on this side of the eschaton, children continue to grow?” The Doctor refused to yield: “But I have never killed a twenty-year-old boy”. “You killed him twenty years ago” replied the monk, “when he was three months old”.

After this, Adasevic claims to have performed an abortion in which

…upon withdrawing the forceps, now certain that he had reduced everything to a pulp, he produced a human heart! The organ was still beating.

Aquinas had written on fetal development in the Thirteenth Century. Many sources summarise his argument; here’s one:

In his Summa Theologica he divided the powers of the soul between “sensitive” and “vegetative.” In the section of that work labeled Question 118, “Of the Production of Man from Man as to the Soul,” he delcared that the vegetative soul exists from the moment of conception, but the sensitive soul, which is not procreated but rather created anew with each person, cannot be transmitted within the semen…He maintained that at approximately the end of the first trimester, when the soul enters the fetus, the fertilized ovum first becomes a full human being. (1)

Aquinas also argued that abortion before this period was still sinful, although not the same as homicide, and the “sensitive” soul entered later for females than for males – Adasevic believes Aquinas erred in following Aristotle on this rather than taking conception as the beginning of human life.

Adasevic repudiates Milosevic, and claims that the slaughter of the Balkans War was due to the “lack of respect for human life” that abortion engendered. However, a couple of 1993 quotes attributed to him  suggest a nationalist perspective. First, there’s this:

In order for the nation to survive, every woman must bear at least three children… “Those groups who praise free and planned parenthood, and the unchallengeable right of a woman to abortion, should not forget that in a state subject to the rule of law no one is the master of his own body, whether male or female. A woman must bear herself a replacement, and a man must go to war when the state summons him. (2)

Further thoughts appear in a letter re-posted here:

the feminists’ agenda did not really seek to free women from the hands of illegal abortionist, but rather, their aim was to assist the biologic destruction of Christians. When the enemies of Serbian people could not manage to destroy us by other means, they decided to do it by biologic means…they don’t fight at all to free women from the hands of illegal abortionists, but, in fact, they fight for the biologic destruction of Orthodox and especially Serbian people. (3)

Further religious context is provided in this 2004 piece from the Women’s Heath Research Network:

The Serbian Orthodox Church, as the religious community that constitutes the majority in Serbia and Montenegro insists on the need for increasing the birth rate and diminishing reproductive rights (particularly abortion)…The sovereign right of the woman to decide on abortion ought to be abolished, whereas the right of the state should be increased and the right of the father to decide about his posterity should also be introduced. Gynecologist Stojan Adasevic speaks in the same spirit and has also published a book called The Sanctity of Life, with the financial support of SPC [The Serbian Orthodox Church]. According to Adasevic, the problem lies in the moral and ideological approach to childbearing and sexuality. The concept that the aim of the sexual drive is reproduction, not pleasure, ought to be firmly established, as well as the notion that this drive is closely bound to an ultimate duty towards oneself, one’s environment, one’s nation and the state.

****

(1) William Petersen, From Persons to People: Further Studies in the Politics of Population, Transaction Publishers, 2003, pp. 113-114.

(2) Apparently this appeared in Vreme, 19 April 1993, p. 55, and is cited in Wendy Bracewell, “Women, Motherhood, and Contemporary Serbian Nationalism,” in Women’s Studies International Forum, 19 (1/2), 1996, p. 28.  Bracewell’s article in turn is cited by Jeremy Shiffman, Marina Skrabalo, and Jelena Subotic, “Reproductive Rights and the State in Serbia and Croatia”, in Social Science & Medicine, 54 (4), 2002, pp. 625-642. Bracewell calls him a “demographer”, but I’d be very surprised if it’s a different person.

(3) According to the website, this was published in Intime, p. 44 and Politika Ekspres, 28 September, 1994, p. 14.

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A pearl of spiritual advice from Abbot Ephraim (var. “Abbot Efrem”), the Abbot of the monastery of Vatopedi (var. “Vatopedion”, “Vatopediou”) on Mount Athos in Greece:

‘Athonite monasticism is both a signpost to Heaven and a bridge over which pass true spiritual provisions for the world.’

Perhaps those “spiritual provisions” include cheap land in Greece that once belonged to the church and has passed to the Greek state, in return for which the monastery has received some more valuable real estate. From the New York Times:

A scandal over more than 250 questionable land swaps is threatening to bring down the Greek government and tarnishing a storied Greek monastic society.

Two government officials have already resigned over the dealings, in which a wealthy Orthodox monastery traded cheap tracts of lakeside property for prime public real estate, including a housing venue for the 2004 Athens Olympics. An initial judicial inquiry put the loss to the state at $136 million.

Revelations by the news media of the deal details and grainy pictures showing government officials hobnobbing with Abbot Ephraim…have drawn furious accusations of corruption and breach of faith…

Ephraim, however, is unrepentent – Kathimerini reports:

Despite the intervention last week of a court inspector who found that 270 hectares of land around Lake Vistonida in northern Greece should never have been given to the Vatopedi Monastery, the latter has issued a statement saying that it is still entitled to the land. In a memorandum that was also sent to Ecumenical Patriarch Vartholomaios, the monastery’s head monk Ephraim claims that Vatopedi acted completely within the law when it swapped property with the state and that it is the legal owner of the land.

“Vartholomaios” is the Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew. The Archbishop of Athens has been quick to distance the Greek Church from the scandal:

The head of the Church of Greece, Archbishop Ieronymos, said he was “astounded” by the controversial land deal…The monastic community comes under the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Istanbul and, as such, Ieronymos is powerless to take any action. “The Church of Greece has no authority over Mount Athos, just at Mount Athos has no authority over the Church of Greece,” he said.

Ephraim is from Cyprus, and his brother Nikos Koutsou (var. “Nicos Koutsou”) is a politician there. According to the Cyprus Mail:

As the story unfolded, attention became focused on Koutsou after a letter, allegedly from a group of Mount Athos monks to the Greek parliament, which condemned the actions of the Cypriot abbot.

It also alleges that Efrem used, and continues to use monastery finances to fund Koutsou’s political career.

Koutsou questioned the existence of the alleged group of monks.

“Politically speaking, I have to say that it is only political dummies who, instead of having the courage to find reason to oppose me openly, hide behind a group of mentally ill people in order to attack their political opponents,” Koutsou said at a news conference yesterday.

Koutsou claims this is a ploy to discredit opponents of the 2004 UN peace plan for Cyprus. Ephraim is also under fire over another matter:

…This week , the monastery’s Cypriot Abbot, Father Efrem, has ordered confectioner Giorgos Thrasivoulidi to vacate the premises of his business, which have come under the ownership of Vatopedi.

During his last visit to Cyprus in 2007 Efrem visited the owner of Morello patisserie in Paphos with his financial adviser, informing Thrasivoulidi he was being evicted, as the Monastery planned to build an office block where his business is located.

Speaking to the Cyprus Mail yesterday, Thrasivoulidi said he objected to the eviction, pointing out that his lease contract did not expire until 2010, and threatened that legal action would be taken.

The Vatopedi monastery has a celebrity reputation, and Prince Charles has made a number of visits; Bloomberg News profiled Vatopedi, and Mount Athos in general, in 2005:

…Long before global paladins such as Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Citigroup Chief Executive Charles Prince embarked on their annual pilgrimage to Davos, Mount Athos was celebrated as the Western world’s most fashionable retreat where leaders came to ponder their souls and the state of the world.

…”Deciding on a monastery is a metaphysical management decision,” is how [Fund manager George Karaplis, the former chief financial officer of Hellenic Telecommunications Organization] describes the process of selecting a retreat. “The spirits, God, call it what you want, tell you what monastery to go to.”

“Every CEO needs to visit Mount Athos,” the 48-year-old fund manager adds. “I’ve accompanied senior executives from Lehman Brothers and Morgan Stanley, but the privacy of the experience, the transformation these men experience on Mount Athos prevents me from revealing their names.”

…”Vatopediou is the original [World Economic Forum],” explains Karaplis, who since 1991 has made 70 pilgrimages to Mount Athos.

…”I’ve spent hours listening to professionals, businessmen and politicians,” Father Irenaios recalls after an evening meal of grain and mountain grasses. “All of them have great problems in focusing on what is important. They all come to Vatopediou with a need to understand the difficulties they face in work and in their lives.”

Filling small glasses with a fiery eau de vie called “tsipouro,” Father Germanos, the deputy abbot, nods in agreement and adds, “All businessmen come to Vatopediou feeling a great emptiness.”

Maybe that “transformation” was a two-way affair…

The Greek Church was mired in a series scandals in 2005 that encompassed, according the Guardian, “skulduggery, sexual improprieties, trial rigging, drug and antiquities smuggling”. One newspaper published every tabloid editor’s dream: “photographs of a 91-year-old bishop naked in bed with a nubile young woman”.

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Palestinian Christian Zionist Walid Shoebat’s handler Keith Davies explains what the election of Obama means:

From: Shoebat.com
Date: Wed, Nov 5, 2008 at 11:00 AM
Subject: America’s challenges and next move forward

…pure vitriolic anti semitism will return over the rights and saftey of Jews in America. This is the “change we can believe in” and it is coming quicker than any of you can imagine…America voted for the man who will probably cause the worst plight for the Jewish people since the Holocaust…

So what can we do? Davies has the answer: send him and Shoebat some cash:

Walid and the Walid Shoebat Foundation will fight against the coming storm. We need your help morally and physically, with the staging of events nationwide and financial donations, so we can protect America and Israel, speaking for freedom and the rights and values that all Americans, even the misguided ones who voted with their hearts and not their minds this time.

This is shameless. More Shoebat and Obama fun here.

Meanwhile, Shoebat’s chum Hilmar Von Campe makes the same point he always makes, which is that Nazis are everywhere:

Because it has abandoned moral absolutes and its historic Christian faith, the U.S. is moving closer to a Nazi-style totalitarianism, warns a former German member of the Hitler Youth in a new book.

“Every day brings this nation closer to a Nazi-style totalitarian abyss,” writes Hilmar von Campe, now a U.S. citizen, and author of “Defeating the Totalitarian Lie: A Former Hitler Youth Warns America.”

…”Today in America we are witnessing a repeat performance of the tragedy of 1933 when an entire nation let itself be led like a lamb to the Socialist slaughterhouse. This time, the end of freedom is inevitable unless America rises to her mission and destiny.”

I blogged Von Campe here.

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Last night Channel 4 broadcast Saving Africa’s Witch Children, as part of its Dispatches strand. The programme focused on children accused of being witches by Pentecostal pastors in Akwa Ibom state in the Niger Delta area of Nigeria, and the work of the Child Rights and Rehabilitation Network. Several pastors were featured, including Helen Ukpabio, who has featured on this blog several times in the past, most recently here. The problem makes for grim viewing: we see children who have been horribly mutilated, and in one case left brain damaged after having had a nail driven through her skull; others appear withdrawn and tearful after being rejected by their families and threatened. We also see the hostility of aggressive and angry adults against the charity workers who challenge the witch teaching and offer support to children living rough.

The first pastor we meet is the rolex-wearing Bishop Sunday Ulup-Aya, who makes children drink a strange “poison destroyer” medicine made up of “African mercury”, his own blood, and pure alcohol. He explains, in a jerky and giggling manner, that

I have power here on earth that is bound in heaven…I killed up to 110 people who was identified to be a witch…We have 2.3 million witches and wizards in Akwa Ibom.

His services cost “400,000”.

Also featured are Prophetess Cecilia Udoyeo and Franklin Udoeyo, of the Covenant Global Mission. They have a group of subdued children in a room at the back of their church; the prophetess tells us that

In the night we have to tarry [i.e. fight] with them, so they may not go to the coven, so we have to tarry with them until it is 5 and we know they cannot move again. The Spirit of God has overwhelmed them. That is why we will allow them to sleep by daytime.

Franklin adds, regarding one girl:

She has grown up to a level of becoming a Queen in the coven, so one day the Lord helped me I was able to remove the crown, her power was removed.

The girl now sleeps in Franklin’s bedroom. Some of the children have been living at the church for three years.

Ukpabio herself is then featured, and we are treated to scenes from her Christian horror film End of Wicked, which shows witch children eating human flesh, flying around, and making an man’s eyes pop out. In 2000 only a few children were ever accused of witchcraft, but the upsurge since then – there are frequent arrivals at CRARN’s shelter – is blamed by a local community leader, Chief Victor Emet, on Ukpabio and her film. The filmmakers also visit a village where everyone has seen the film, and where a girl has been ostracised for witchcraft. The locals are outraged when the child is brought back into the village, one man smiling as he tells us “I want to kill that small girl”. Here’s an extract I found on Youtube:

Ukpabio, however, denies any responsibility:

Witchcraft is a problem all over Nigeria..I never hurt anybody. Be careful, mind your ways…We have about 150 churches in Nigeria. I am a voice in this country. So, a white man or a white woman cannot come into my country and say nonsense against me and mess up the whole situation.

She accuses the interviewers of not having seen her film, and demands to know why she is being targeted rather than J.K. Rowling. Ukpabio’s supporters have left similar defensive rants on this blog, as I noted here. And as for the Biblical basis of child witchcraft, Ukpabio tells us that

I can show you and teach you many places in the Bible.

The interviewers go on to meet Ukpabio’s denominational leader in the Pentecostal Fellowship, Apostle Dr Cletus Bassey, who is clearly an educated man. Bassey claimed not to know about Ukpabio’s films specifically, but agreed that such works are harmful:

We should be able to let our people know that that is not a true picture of what we should present, especially from our culture…It’s not presenting a true picture of a nation we are trying to build, it’s not presenting a true picture of children we are trying to raise, it’s not presenting a good picture of a society we are trying to sanitise. I think that such videos should be discontinued and should be discouraged. And we are doing everything in the Pentecostal circles to discourage such things, especially among those who because of money have tried to get themselves involced un issues like this.

Towards the end of the programme, children from CRARN protest outside the residence of State Governor Godswill Akpabio, one child poignantly telling the camera that

I want to ask the government to tell my parents I’m not a witch.

After some hours Akpabio agreed to see them, and he offered support and a (belated) promise to ratify the federal Child Rights Act. This law has now been adopted, but apparently ten children a week are still arriving at CRARN, and no pastor has yet been convicted.

One underlying social reason given for the upsurge in child-witch accusations is the juxtaposition of extreme povery with the obvious wealth of the Niger Delta oil industry. Also, the industry’s pollution of the environment has damaged the livelihoods of fishermen and others, to that there is a pervasive sense of things going wrong.

I’ve also blogged on child witches in Congo and on a minister famous for getting women to “confess” to being witches in Cameroon.

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Sunny Hundal, writing on Liberal Conspiracy in February:

Last week Tuesday Aaron linked to this blog post by Tim Ireland on Bloggerheads…Quick off the mark, although I didn’t read it until much later, I was sent an email by [Paul] Staines threatening to take me to court for the link. He was: “not minded to not pursue this just because you withdraw it at a later date.” That is quite a threat. I was asked to get in touch soon or else. “And I won’t leave the pistol in the holster this time,” he ended.

I cited this incident in a blog entry a few days ago. The blogger Staines (also known as “Guido Fawkes“) left a brief comment:

There was no threat to sue LibCon.

Tim now asks:

C’mon, Guido.

You made the claim. Can you back it up or not?

Sunny has emailed me from the USA to tell me he stands by the story.

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From the Telegraph:

The leaders of the Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca) have been “deeply frustrated” after lawyers advised them not to name 39 convicted criminals because it would breach the convicts’ right to a family and private life, and could amount to an “unfair” punishment.

…However, lawyers advised that a precedent set by a 2003 test case involving Essex Police meant that the criminals could not be named.

An agency spokeswoman said: “Soca is not entitled to punish and, where there have been no media reports of financial reporting order cases [which require offenders to provide monthly details of their bank accounts], the information cannot properly be said to be in the public domain.

“The information would therefore only become known to the public in this context due to the actions of Soca and we consider that, in unreported cases at least, there would be an interference with Article Eight rights.”

Two cases already reported by the media were allowed to be revealed.

Soca wished to publicise the criminals’ names so that “the public could inform the police if they suspected they were engaged in illicit activity which was not being declared”.

This advice seems to me to be bizarre. How can be it be allowed for “the media” to publicise the identities of criminals but not someone else? Also, Soca has provided a motivation other than “to punish”, while in contrast we all know that some newspapers are motivated by a punitive spirit – just yesterday I blogged on Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre’s claim that

Since time immemorial public shaming has been a vital element in defending the parameters of what are considered acceptable standards of social behaviour…For hundreds of years, the press has played a role in that process.

“Acceptable social behaviour” clearly includes refraining from criminality. And what counts as “the media”? There was a case a few months ago in which a controversial right-wing blogger was found guilty of drink-driving; he was also pilloried by other bloggers, and one even went along to the court to see for himself. The case was also reported in some newspapers; but what if it hadn’t been? Would the bloggers (presuming they found out about it by other means) who mocked and scorned him be regarded as “the media”, or as having breached his right to a family and private life and so liable for hefty damages?

There is already a limitation on reporting criminal convictions in the UK – in 1974 it was legislated that to disclose a “spent conviction” (an old minor conviction that had been removed from someone’s record after a period of time) could be libellous if “malice” could be proven as the motive. I’ve yet to find any actual libel case which has followed from this; this means it remains unclear how “malice” can be proven or disproven, or what exactly “disclosure” means when the media may have put information about a case in the public domain at the time of conviction – perhaps nationally and very prominently – or when the offence was some kind of public protest.

I discussed my own views on the right to privacy vs the right to free speech in a blog posting here. Although I’m not usually much of fan of his, I commended an essay on the subject by the right-libertarian Sean Gabb.

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A couple of bits of libel news in latest Private Eye (1223). First, an article (p. 26) that gives a bit more background to the New Statesman‘s decision to remove a blog posting that linked to suppressed articles about Iraqi billionaire Nadhmi Auchi reposted on Wikileaks, and to offer a public confession of the linked articles’ inaccuracy (I blogged on this here):

The American journalists who run Wikileaks checked out the Auchi story before putting it on their site. They watched the censorship in London in amazement and decided to act. According to a letter seen by Index on Censorship, they tell Jason Cowley, editor of the New Statesman, that any apology suggesting the reports contained “substantial inaccuracies” would be libellous. “Such a statement will defame the professionalism of our investigative reportes and writers,” they wrote. “These include editor Julian Assange and former Pentagon aide John Shaw”.

If this succeeds, it would mean that caving in to a libel threat would no longer be the cheapest option, with the result that the British media would be obliged to show a bit more backbone. However, while I can appreciate Wikileaks‘ intent, this seems to me ill-conceived, as I noted before. If I say that a certain book contains inaccuracies, does that mean that anyone who gave the same book a good review can now sue me on the grounds that I have “defamed their professionalism” by offering a contrary opinion? Or if someone writes inaccuracies about me (whether libellous or not), will I risk being sued simply for daring to put the record straight publicly, if I cannot prove my version of events? The report continues:

Anthony Julius, of Princess Diana fame, has offered his services free to journalists who are sued by Auchi or feel the need to protect their reputations by suing the Observer, the New Statesman or anyone else.

A second report in the Eye (p. 6) deals with another aspect of UK libel law: the absurd size of the costs involved. Recently the Guardian was forced to pay a out small amount in damages due to inaccuracies in a report about Tesco (as I blogged here) – according to the Eye “thought to be no more than £5,000”. However, the paper has also been presented with a bill from Tesco’s lawyers’ (the notorious Carter-Ruck) for £800,000:

On 22 April, for instance, Nigel Tait made £100 by “watching item on Channel 4 News“. On 12 June he spent 12 minutes “reading/considering” an article in the Eye, which earned him another £100…One item in the £808,000 bill reads “Purchase of Guardian newspaper, 80p”.

There was also the advice of a barrister, worth exactly “£94,00.01”.

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From the Press Gazette:

A High Court judge accused by Paul Dacre of bringing in a privacy law by the back door was defended today by Lord Falconer, the former constitutional affairs secretary.

Daily Mail editor Dacre has accused Mr Justice Eady of using the Human Rights Act to curb the Press’s freedom to expose the moral shortcomings of those in high places.

…But Lord Falconer, who left the Cabinet when Gordon Brown took over as prime minister, said: “I think society now puts a value on privacy. There are certain things in life that should be private,” he told Today.

“For example, if I am a singer or an actor and I have a miscarriage, is that something that people should know about in the world?

“Of course, if I’m acting hypocritically or I’m accountable, or there’s something that may affect what I do in my public life which emerges from my private life, that should be published.

“But there are things which are private and just as we don’t want the state to know everything about us, do we want things that are legitimately private to be made public? I don’t think we do.”

The background to this the “Max Mosley case”; Mosley, who heads Formula One racing, was photographed some months ago cavorting with prostitutes in an S&M scenario; the News of the World alleged, but was unable to prove, that there had been “Nazi” overtones, which was interesting for psychoanalyists as Mosley is the son of 1930s British fascist leader Oswald Mosley. Mosley successfully sued under privacy legislation, and was awarded £60,000 – more money than most people earn over several years. He’s now planning a libel action based on the “Nazi” accusation, claiming that in fact he was merely indulging in “German prison” roleplay.

Dacre’s attack on Eady was forthright, but also laced with pomposity:

But what is most worrying about Justice Eady’s decision is that he is ruling that – when it comes to morality – the law in Britain is now effectively neutral, which is why I accuse him, in his judgments, of being “amoral”.  

In the sporting celebrity case, he rejected the idea that adultery was a proper cause for public condemnation.

Instead, he declared that because family breakdown was now commonplace, there was a strong argument for “not holding forth about adultery” or, in other words, attaching no greater inherent worth to marriage than to any other lifestyle choice.

…Since time immemorial public shaming has been a vital element in defending the parameters of what are considered acceptable standards of social behaviour, helping ensure that citizens – rich and poor – adhere to them for the good of the greater community.  For hundreds of years, the press has played a role in that process.  It has the freedom to identify those who have offended public standards of decency – the very standards its readers believe in – and hold the transgressors up to public condemnation.  If their readers don’t agree with the defence of such values, they would not buy those papers in such huge numbers.

The idea of British tabloids “defending the parameters of what are considered acceptable standards of social behaviour” seems to me both laughable and sinister; however, I’m not keen on the likes of Justice Eady and Lord Falconer deciding what I shouldn’t be allowed to know about, either.

Dacre’s speech echoes an attack made by former Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey in July, which I blogged here. As Dacre notes, Eady is also responisble for a judgement in favour of a Saudi billionaire which has led to the US passing a law rejecting “libel tourism”.

I also wrote more about the subject of privacy and free speech here, noting some interesting hypothetical examples raised by (cough) UK right-libertarian Sean Gabb.

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I blogged on several anti-Obama neo-Pentecostal “spiritual warnings” that appeared in the run-up to the election; one that I missed was a warning from Rev. Mbijiwe Mwenda, whose thoughts on the subject were channelled to the US public by Lee J. Grady of Charisma magazine. Mwenda concentrated on Obama’s ties to Raila Odinga, who is presented as a malignant figure of whom “some say he is a Muslim secretly”. Of course, since Mwenda is a man of God there is no need to wonder if he has a political agenda of his own. Mwenda warned Grady that “something is about to go wrong in your country”; this can’t be a long-term problem, though, since according to Mwenda’s website “We are living in the last seconds of the last minute of the last hour of the endtimes”.

Mbijiwe Mwenda is also known as “Mwenda Muthuri Mbijiwe Wonders”; according to his bio, he

did his theological/pastoral training for two (2) years in the All Nations For Christ Bible Institute Int’l (ANFCBII), founded by the late Archbishop Benson Andrew Idahosa, in Benin City, Nigeria, West Africa. He also attended the Freedom Bible College (FBC), founded by Rev. Abraham Chigbundu, GO, Voice of Freedom Ministries Int’l, in the same city and graduated with a Deliverance Arts Diploma.

The late Benson Idahosa is famous in neo-Pentecostal circles globally; Chigbundu describes himself as “an outstanding teacher and preacher in Spiritual Warfare and Deliverance Ministry since 1981 with undeniable testimonies, signs and wonders following his ministry”, who “introduced systematic deliverance in Ghana and the black community in London respectively.”

Mwenda’s books include God’s Supernatural Power to Make Wealth, Understanding Dreams and Visions, and Identifying and Breaking Sexual Altars. Here are a couple of extracts I gleaned:

A lot is going on in this matter of sex in dreams. This simply signifies that a spirit husband or wife is in one’s life …There is this girl I had about, who has never made love with a man. But as far as sex is concerned she knows everything. This is because almost every night she made love to a certain man whose face she had never seen. She said that the penetrations were so real that she fears that the spirit broke her virginity.

There was this girl who loved to sleep more that anything. Almost 90% of her day was spent in bed because every time she slept her spiritual sex mate would make love to her, which was more than anything she ever desired. On the day of her deliverance serpentine spirits were manifesting, but she was set free…Sex in dreams has caused miscarriages and barrenness; it has hindered the unmarried from getting married. It also cause low sperm counts in men. If you are in such situation, I suggest that you go for deliverance.

Also:

I had in the other village that an elderly fried who was very rich. He said that his former friends, three in numbers, who were long dead, had appeared to him in dreams for a period of close to a month and each of them was complaining that he had abandoned their families since they died. “His fried” demanded that he must buy foodstuffs for their families and visit them. He did this to the three families. A few months later this elderly friend died too. Clearly, a death covenant and familiar spirits with the dead were the medium of contact for those demonic dreams.

Mwenda has also dabbled in political analysis, with America fear no evil-The world is counting on you. This book, which was published in 2007, commends the USA’s role in the world in opposition to terrorism. Mwenda commends three American “inspirations”: John Hagee, Joel Osteen, and Benny Hinn.

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