Women from all walks of life thronged The Blue Shade — PHD Ministries’ headquarters in Waterfalls, Harare on Friday night.
BY CONELIA MABASA
Thousands of them from all corners of the country converged at this huge tent, where the church conducts services on Sundays. The women had answered Prophet Walter Magaya’s call for deliverance from all manner of marital afflictions, particularly the anti-marriage spirits. It was dubbed a Ladies All-Night Prayer meeting with the supporting scripture being Psalm 103: 3 [Who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases . . . .]
The Waterfalls women’s congregation comes just a week after President Robert Mugabe castigated Pentecostal churches for promoting laziness and taking money from the poor through manipulation of scriptures. The President was addressing delegates at the Kutama centenary celebrations last week. This new form of religion baffled him, he said, but he reckoned the prophets were out to make a quick buck out of the desperate and gullible.
Churches have been known to be the bedrock of families. Many couples have sought sanctuary at church or have benefited from the counselling services of pastors and their wives.
Some churches assign days on which families facing troubled times can visit for a chat with the pastor. Generally the church claims to build strong families by encouraging the youths to enter into holy matrimony and for one man to stick to one woman.
The call to assist marriages (made in full-page newspaper advertisements) was accompanied by pictures of bottles of anointing oil that were for sale to the faithful during the All-Night Prayer. The oil is supposed to aid in the healing process for whatever marital ailment, diseases or other sources of discomfort.
But is the woman the sickness in every unstable family? I was quite taken aback that PHD ministries invited only women to the prayer to fight the anti-marriage demons. Our society generally lays the blame for failed marriages on the woman.
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It’s either she is lazy, she can’t give the man heirs to the throne, she is a witch, she can’t cook or she can’t give the man enough pleasure in the bedroom, among other reasons that are difficult to prove.
Why is Magaya perpetuating the suppression of women by inviting women only to his All-Night prayer to save or open marriages for those he believes are cursed? Our courts are having to deal with many cases of Gender-Based Violence and some of the reasons for which women find themselves on the receiving end are just flimsy.
Why has Magaya assumed that the anti-marriage spirits target just women? Isn’t he stoking the blame game in families? A marriage is a two-part covenant and I believe if anyone wants to address the problems therein, then both parties must be present and answerable.
And for all reasons that can lead to broken families or failure to start one, demons cannot rank the highest. If there are anti-marriage spirits, I am sure they also target men because there are some men who do not have spouses.
Most of the women who attended the prayer session have a genuine need to save or start families, but what message is being sent out there? That they came to PHD Ministries so Magaya could rid them of spirits that cause problems in families; they are the carriers, the causes, the bad apples, the windows to hell? For all the efforts that women’s groups have made to empower women and to equip them, one man says they are a cursed lot. Depressing.
It is also a dangerous assumption that all unmarried women are cursed and projecting such a message leads to discrimination. Some want to be on their own for personal reasons. Some are running away from the suppressive dictates of our patriarchal society. Some are not yet ready for marriage, and who says a woman’s success is measured by marriage? The church must teach people that it’s still okay to be on your own, if it gives you peace of mind.
The church must teach couples that not all problems are caused by spirits. To lay the blame on spirits all the time leads people to abdicate responsibility. Families that can sit and confront their issues are among the most stable. Some causes of break-ups are self-inflicted and the culprits must be made to own up.
Some families are struggling because the head of the house has a roving eye. Could this be interpreted as the woman’s problem? Does one need anointing oil to take care of that? Problems in marriages are wide and varied and it’s time the church confronted them each on its merit. The church has a duty to protect women, not to further their oppression.
Women should be warned that “miracle marriages” will not last, just like miracle money, or will suffer sudden deaths like miracle babies.
