"Touch not my anointed” is a popular argument amongst Christian adherents – especially of the Pentecostal persuasion – every time someone threatens the bubble of invincibility built around their spiritual leaders. Those four words, taken from the Holy Bible, and shamelessly mangled out of context, are supposed to mean one thing: that God’s servants, by virtue of their “calling” and “anointing”, are above criticism, censure and accountability. When, last week, a young Nigerian woman posted on the internet an account of how she was allegedly emotionally manipulated and seduced by a rather high-profile Nigerian pastor (whom she named; she herself was not anonymous), many of the comments that followed in defence of the Pastor were based, not on a desire to know/find the truth, but on the belief that she, as a member of the flock, should not have tried to publicly call out a servant of God the way she did. In other words: It is simply not done. It was a similar reaction that followed the widely publicised video clip in which another servant of God publicly slapped a teenage girl, on the grounds of witchcraft. Anyone who publicly condemned that action was subjected to open hostility from those who firmly believe that it is not in the place of any human to question someone whose calling derives from divine agency. Regard that stance as a theological form of the controversial constitutional immunity that our politicians have since learned to abuse; existing to protect anyone who claims to be a servant of God from having to account to anyone but God. It is an ‘immunity’ I find problematic, and, frankly, unacceptable
Posted on: Tue, 27 Aug 2013 07:27:48 +0000
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