Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind

by Tom Holland

Milingo’s belief in the reality of evil spirits, and his conviction that – with God’s blessing – they might be cast out from those they afflicted, had seen him, throughout the 1970s, perform spectacular feats of exorcism across Zambia. Summoned to Rome in 1982 by a suspicious Vatican, he had promptly established a no less successful healing ministry in Italy. That church leaders in Europe seemed to have stopped believing in the reality of the demonic was their problem, not his. To rid the sick of demons was no sin, after all. Rather than apologise for performing what Christ himself had repeatedly performed, Milingo preferred instead to charge European bishops with a faith grown too desiccated to accept the reality of the miracles and terrors revealed in the Bible. To be African was no impediment to fathoming the Christian message. Rather, it was a positive advantage. ‘If God made a mistake by creating me an African, it is not yet evident.’18 Implicit in such defiance was a conviction that Africa, far from owing the revelation of Christ’s light to white missionaries, had always been touched by its fire. Any notion that Ethiopians might never have heard of Christmas was worse than mistaken – it was grotesque. The Psalms themselves had foretold that Ethiopia would submit to God – and so it had proved.19 Christianity had been the country’s state religion since the age of Constantine. For 1700 years it had endured as a Christian realm. What European kingdom could claim as much?