Lessons from Uganda about taking spiritual evil seriously
Recently, Allison Johnson wrote about the “Etsy witch” phenomenon, which began last year when a TikTok influencer commissioned a witch on the craft-selling platform to “provide a form of insurance for the weather on her wedding day.” Her experience led many of her followers to try Etsy spellcasters’ services for themselves, seeking assistance with “jobs, relationships, finding love, or removing obstacles.” Some clients sought perfect weather for birthday parties and weddings; others asked for assistance with “court cases and legal proceedings,” with varied results.
I experienced a profound sense of deja vu while reading Johnson’s article. Many of the services offered by Etsy witches are the same ones my husband and I see advertised by witch doctors on our walks through Uganda’s capital city, Kampala. Like their Etsy counterparts, witch doctors in this East African nation offer assistance with lost love, business success, infertility, court cases, catching thieves, and “removing obstacles.”
But while partakers in the Etsy witch trend view the practice as either harmless fun or a low-cost way to “put positive energy into the universe” and reap material success, those who consult Ugandan witch doctors fully believe in their power to influence the future.
And many witches and their clients go to terrible ends in their pursuit of wealth and success.
An ancient evil in a new form
For almost twenty years now, Pastor Peter Sewakiryanga, one of our ministry partners, has sought to end the practice of child sacrifice in Uganda. While this horrendous practice is not part of Ugandan traditional medicine, it has become an epidemic over the last two decades. Witches who commit ritual murder, along with their clients, believe that the sacrifice of a child to local gods brings wealth, power, and success.
Child sacrifice takes place in every social class, from rural families who sacrifice one of their own to wealthy businessmen and would-be politicians looking to influence elections and enrich themselves. (These links, along with others in this section, contain descriptions of this practice. Please click with discretion.)
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Child sacrifice may be new to Uganda, but, tragically, it is not new in the course of human history. Ancient peoples across the world, including the Inca, Aztecs, and Maya in the Americas and the Celts in Europe, sacrificed children to bring prosperity, military success, and favorable weather. Closer to ancient Israel, the Canaanites and Ammonites sacrificed children to gods like Molech for similar reasons.
Despite God’s warning not to “follow the abominable practices of those nations” (Deuteronomy 18:9), the Israelites, too, fell into child sacrifice under wicked kings like Manasseh (2 Kings 21:6) and Ahaz (2 Kings 16:3). Because of this, God allowed them to be taken into exile by Assyria and Babylon (2 Kings 17:7).
In Scripture, particularly in the Old Testament, witchcraft and child sacrifice go hand in hand. When God forbids witchcraft in Deuteronomy 18:9-12, the first practice he names–before fortunetelling, sorcery, and necromancy–is child sacrifice. This is because it is an extreme means to the same end as other forms of witchcraft: usurping the authority that is God’s alone, with the aid of demonic forces.
Notably, there is no question in Scripture over whether witchcraft “works.” Exodus 8:7 describes Pharaoh’s court magicians being able to mimic Moses’ miracles. In 1 Samuel 28, Saul goes to consult a medium. And in Acts 16, Paul encountered “a slave girl who had a spirit of divination and brought her owners much gain by fortune-telling.”
God forbids witchcraft not because it is a silly diversion, but because it involves worship of and communion with supernatural forces of evil. It is supremely offensive to him, and incredibly dangerous to us.
My African friends—from Uganda and elsewhere on the continent—recognize this because they’ve seen it at work. Ugandan believers in particular are constantly confronted with just how evil witchcraft can be. And unlike Western Christians, who might be tempted to dismiss the practice as an outworking of primitive tribal superstition, they recognize that more than mere human wickedness is at play. These are the “principalities and powers, the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12) that prey on the innocent and seek the overthrow of God’s kingdom.
Two errors regarding devils
As C.S. Lewis wrote in the preface to The Screwtape Letters, “There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them.”
In the West, we often fall into the former error. The Enemy’s main strategy in America and Europe, to paraphrase Lewis, is concealment (though that’s started to shift with increasing interest in witchcraft and the occult). After all, disbelief in supernatural evil makes it much easier to disbelieve in God.
Of course, Lewis writes in the character of the demon Screwtape, concealment has not always been the devil’s “policy” in the West. And it isn’t the policy in Uganda, which, like much of Africa, has a very different perspective on the unseen realm–a perspective which is much more in line with that of Scripture than that of our materialist society.
The Bible reminds us that the spiritual realm is every bit as real as the material world. Throughout Jesus’ earthly ministry, he healed those oppressed by demons (Luke 8:26-33; Mark 1:34; Matthew 8:16). In Ephesians 2:2, Paul describes how Jesus liberated us from slavery to “the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience.” At the close of this letter, Paul reminds believers to “put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood” (Ephesians 6:11-12).
Not only is the spiritual world real, but there are forces within this realm that are in rebellion against God–forces that seek our destruction.
Witchcraft is one way that Satan seeks to entrap us. The allure of witchcraft is found in its ability to grant us control over our future—control which belongs to God. As such, God likens the practice to “rebellion” (1 Samuel 15:23) and repeatedly forbids it in both the Old and New Testaments (Deuteronomy 18:9-12; Leviticus 20:27; Galatians 5:19-21).
The existence of atrocities like child sacrifice—in ancient times and in the modern world—should remind us that witchcraft is not a cute joke or a silly Halloween costume. It is a sin and an “abomination,” one that we should take no part in.
At the same time, we must be mindful not to fall into Lewis’s “second error”—“to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest” in witchcraft and devilry. The One who lives in us “is greater than he who is in the world” (1 John 4:4), and in Christ, we have “overcome the evil one” (1 John 2:13-14).
We do not need to fear Satan or the workings of witches, and we shouldn’t become distracted by them, either. We are called to “stand strong in the Lord and in his mighty power” (Ephesians 6:10), advancing God’s kingdom wherever he calls us—be it the Ugandan bush or our own American suburb.
Standing firm against spiritual evil
When Pastor Peter, my husband, and I returned from a meeting in Kampala last month, a neighbor flagged Peter down as he approached his house. As they conversed in Luganda, Peter’s young son explained to us that local witch doctors had climbed a neighbor’s fence and cut the power to their home. “At night, they stand in the street outside our house and praise their god,” he told us.
And yet he didn’t seem afraid. Given the nature of his father’s work, and the sheer prevalence of child sacrifice in Uganda, this eight-year-old boy is doubtless aware of the spiritual darkness around him. But he has also seen God’s power at work through his family, his church, and his community.
Kyampisi used to be the capital of child sacrifice in Uganda. But as believers like Peter and his team began “taking their stand” (Ephesians 6:11) against this horrible form of witchcraft, God transformed their community into a safe haven for children and families. And the same story is being written all over the country by countless faithful Christians.
The Enemy’s power is real–but so is the power of God to transform, working through ordinary believers’ faithful resistance to the powers of darkness.
How will you stand firm in God’s mighty power today?
