The African Church’s application of anointing oil: An expression of Christian spirituality or a display of fetish ancestral religion?

Joel K.T Biwul

doi:10.4102/hts.v77i4.6266

Abstract

The content of Christian spirituality that made waves since the inception of the early church soon took on different contours as the faith got adapted to different gentile contexts. The expression of this faith, along with its liturgical symbolism and sacramental observances, is still gaining momentum in African Christianity. The emerging practice of the use of ‘anointing oil’ in its religious expression is receiving more attention than the Christ of the Gospel. In this article, we argue that against its primitive intent, the use of the ‘anointing oil’ by the African Church is a mere display of fetish ancestral religion that expresses its unique African traditional religious root rather than a true expression of Christian spirituality. Our thesis is framed on the basis that the manner in which some African churches apply the purported ‘anointing oil’ is discriminatory vis-à-vis its ancient understanding and purpose. In our attempt to address this damaging practice to true Christian spirituality, also standing as a huge challenge for pastoral theology, we undertook a careful historical–theological analysis of the extant biblical data and its contextual interpretation vis-à-vis its distortion today. We concluded that what pastoral theologians have to deal with within the Christian community in Africa is offering the right biblical perspective against the distorted mode of the application of the contemporary purported ‘anointing oil’ that is falsely projecting the Christian faith and belief in a bad light. Contribution: The application of the anointing oil in contemporary Christian religion in Africa is, to say the least, not an inherent textually prescribed requisite criterion for Christian spirituality, but merely an outburst of fetish ancestral religious worldview that stands contra the hermeneutics of the biblical text and its ancient tradition. That no Old Testament prophet, not even Jesus nor Paul, mentioned the subject, makes its contemporary application textually and theologically suspect, and therefore, heretically infectious for the spiritual health of the community of faith. These insights sit quite well with the textual hermeneutics within the mainline transdisciplinary religious and multidisplinary theological perspective of this journal.

Highlights

The reality of oil and its various uses, such as for domestic, sociocultural and socio-economic purposes, have been with humanity since antiquity (Gn 1:29; 9:3; 28:18; 35:14)
Motivated by a theological and pastoral concern, this article endeavoured to address the contemporary application of the Old Testament-prescribed sacred ‘anointing oil’ within the Christian community, questioning whether such practices truly spring from an adequate understanding of its biblical context
It argued that the expression of Christian spirituality will always be in error and stand at the risk of heresy when readers forcefully eclipse the needed adequate contextual understanding of the biblical texts

Summary

Introduction

The reality of oil and its various uses, such as for domestic, sociocultural and socio-economic purposes, have been with humanity since antiquity (Gn 1:29; 9:3; 28:18; 35:14). The presence of soothsayers and disguised spiritualists in the church, and the increasing presence of fake prophets in African Christianity, readily makes desperate Christians seeking for spiritual solution to their existential needs easy prey This explains why, within the Christian religious context in Africa, the concept of what was known as the sacred ‘anointing oil’ in the Old Testament is being used as a healing balm, as an exorcist’s expellant, as a protective spell and, in some churches, as a means of fortune, wealth generation and prosperity. We seek here to articulate the argument that the manner in which many churches in Africa today construe and apply the purported ‘anointing oil’ as an expression of Christian spirituality is merely a blatant display of fetish ancestral religion that inescapably has several detrimental theological and doctrinal effects on Christian spirituality in Africa In this regard, Tiénou (1990:22) admits that a syncretistic practice of Christianity becomes an important pastoral problem. Unless pastoral caregivers settle down to give church members the basics of true Christian transformation and maturity in faith, character, life and personal conviction, more amongst them will believe and accept just anything that is thrown at them, even mundane things worse than the assumed efficacy of the purported ‘anointing oil’

Conclusion

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