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Healing, deliverance and Aids : women and the “disease of God” in the African Pentecotals Churches Volume 25, issue 4, Décembre 2007

Author
anthropologue, Centre d’Études des Mondes Africains (CEMAf-CNRS), Centre Malher, 9, rue Malher, 75004 Paris, France

The global phenomenon of the “deliverance” linked to the explosion of West-African Pentecostalism since the beginning of 1990s, contributed to place the healing inquiry at the centre of the conversion itineraries. However, the ambivalent position of certain Pentecostal Churches urges the sick to go to the healing-prophets who, modelling upon prayer ministries do not hesitate to rival with the Churches, asserting that their prayers can heal “all the diseases”, including Aids. If many studies about Aids mention the stigmatisation of the women, the place of the Pentecostal Churches in the healing itineraries has received less attention. This paper attempts to clarify the atypical methods under which this disease is designated and how the Christian categories of witchcraft and divine healing give women the principal role in social and magic representations of the disease.