Here's an interesting post from the blog
Prometheus Unbound about this Thomas Muthee fellow that might give you some pause... The original post contains image scans from Peter Wagner's book; I've transcribed those into quote tags.
This basically tells the tale of the witch-hunt. Does anyone else hear echoes of the Salem Witch trials here?
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Did the Actions of Sarah Palin's Exorcist, Thomas Muthee, Lead to the Murder of Mama Jane, the "Witch" of Kiambu?September 22, 2008
Posted by santitafarella in Uncategorized.
Tags: Barack Obama, Fuller Seminary, Halloween, John McCain, Mama Jane, Peter Wagner, prayer, Sarah Palin, The Vineyard, Thomas Muthee, witchcraft Former Fuller Seminary professor Peter Wagner, in his book,
Praying with Power (published in June of 2008), provides a rather detailed--and frankly chilling--description of Sarah Palin's exorcist and witch hunting political ally Thomas Muthee.
Specifically, Wagner recounts the start of Muthee's career and his encounter with the "witch" known as "Mama Jane."
Who is Peter Wagner? Here's a quote from
his Wikipedia page:
In 1982 Wagner teamed up with John Wimber, a founder of the Vineyard Movement, to create a new course at Fuller called "Signs, Wonders and Church Growth". Since that point, Wagner has been formally associated with Charismatic teaching and theology. Wagner describes himself as a Charismatic Evangelical. During the 1990s he also taught a Sunday School class with a strong focus on the charismatic gifts, known as "120 Fellowship", at Lake Avenue Church in Pasadena, CA.[/list]
Below I quote and discuss various passages on Thomas Muthee from Wagner's book.
It's important to note that Wagner knows Muthee personally, and works with him on various projects.
This first quote is from page 23 of
Praying with Power:
Thomas was no stranger to the devices of satan. He was an experienced intercessor, and in his evangelistic work he had confronted the enemy in power encounters on a variety of levels. He had learned that the devil assigns certain specific demons over towns, cities, and nations, as well as families. He said, "Over this extended time of prayer and fasting, I wanted to know exactly what was keeping Kiambu so politically, socially, economically, and spiritually depressed."
The term many of us are using for the quest that was engaging Thomas Muthee at the time is "spiritual mapping."
Notice that Muthee links politics, economics, and religion.
There is, in other words, no church-state separation for Muthee. Economic and political battles are undergirded by spiritual battles against demons.
One can only wonder whether Sarah Palin thinks of economics and politics in similar terms.
Notice also that Wagner positions Thomas Muthee as someone who has unusual spiritual powers. In any other context, we would say that Wagner is attributing to Muthee magical or psychic powers--but in the lingo of charismatics, these are called the "gifts of the Spirit."
One of Muthee's gifts, apparently, is the ability to discern things in the spirit realm, for he "had learned that the devil assigns . . . demons over towns, cities, and nations, as well as families." This is a curious thing to discover, and if true, is an extremely important piece of information to communicate to an American vice-president or president.
Do you suppose that Sarah Palin would give weight to Thomas Muthee's words for her, whenever they might meet or talk by phone?
YouTube clip:
Sarah Palin's Alaskan Armageddon (Clips)The second quote is from p. 24 of Wagner's book:
God answered, this time through a vision. In the vision, Thomas clearly saw the principality over Kiambu, and its name was "Witchcraft." He also saw many other demons around Witchcraft and under its command. From that point onward, the prayers of Thomas and his wife were much more specifically targeted, and they sensed in the Spirit that considerable damage was being done in the invisible world to the dark angels that had enjoyed such a free reign over Kiambu for generations.
Notice that Wagner presumes that witchcraft is something real--and he exercises no skepticism in the recounting of this story.
God is also presumed, without evidence, to be the source for Muthee's vision.
The next quote from Wagner's book, from page 26, brings us to a characterization of Kiambu's local "witch," Mama Jane:
The way I am narrating this case study might sound as if the first couple of years of The Prayer Cave were a piece of cake--no problems, no heartaches, no setbacks. On the contrary, the spiritual counterattack was fierce. Thomas soon discovered that the human being whom the principality over the city, Witchcraft, was using the most was a notorious sorcerer named "Mama Jane." She did her witchcraft and fortune-telling in a place she had perversely named "Emmanuel Clinic." She was considered by many as the most powerful person in the city, and both politicians and businesspeople frequented Emmanuel Clinic to have their fortunes told and to receive Mama Jane's blessing.
One more thing--the Emmanuel Clinic happened to be located near an open market and precisely at that part of the city where the mysterious fatal traffic accidents had been occurring month after month!
Notice the adjectives used in the passage. Mama Jane is "notorious," "perverse," and "powerful." The car accidents are "mysterious."
The exact same narrative template could have been used by medieval Europeans to describe Jews in their community and a cluster of, say, drowning deaths in a particular part of town.
In other words, if this kind of talk was directed at Jews, and diabolical happenings were attributed to them, we would recognize immediately the mind of an anti-semite. What we see, instead, is the mind of a mysogenist.
The next passage appears on page 27:
Every Saturday night Mama Jane went to Thomas' church site, performed magic, and cast her spells and curses. She let it be known to the city officials that she could not help them with her fortune-telling as much as she used to because this new church seemed to be "cutting her lines of communication." Consequently, one of the outcomes was that not only the city authorities, but also the pastors of other Christian churches began attacking the ministry of The Prayer Cave. That part of it was no fun!
Notice here that Wagner is setting up Mama Jane as being in a contest with Thomas Muthee's group, and that she is provoking confrontation.
Whether she was engaging in such confrontation is open to question. Another way to interpret her behavior is that she was simply a woman with animist or magical beliefs, and that she was practicing her religious beliefs in proximity to Muthee's group, which they interpreted as a challenge.
Or it may be that Wagner's characterization of the situation is accurate, and Mama Jane was provoking a confrontation with Muthee's group.
But if this is the case, we can only wonder whether or not Mama Jane, as a woman besieged and outnumbered, was simply fighting back in the way that she knew how--by counter gestures of magical thinking.
But even this explanation sounds fishy. A woman facing the paranoia of her community, and the violence it could entail, is unlikely to act out public gestures that would provoke further paranoia.
In short, Mama Jane's provocations may be akin to a story teller's rationalization after the fact.
It would be hard to justify harrassing a woman who mostly kept to herself.
In any case, the encounter between Muthee's group and this unfortunate woman appears to have been one saturated with paranoia, superstition, and magical thinking, perhaps from both sides.
And it got worse:
By now the word was spreading around to the city officials that Mama Jane did not seem to have the power she used to have. Her clients were embarrassing her by openly burning fetishes and renouncing curses. Some began pointing out that it could be no coincidence that her Emmanuel Clinic was right next to the area where the serious accidents were occurring. The whole process was brought to a climax when three young children were killed in one of the mysterious accidents. The people of the city were furious. They suspected that it was Mama Jane's black magic that was causing the accidents. They wanted to stone her!
Yes, you read that right.
Stone her.
And yes, this is the 21st century, not the 16th.
And yes, it appears that no explanation but deviltry ("it could be no coincidence") could be fathomed, by Muthee's followers, for Mama Jane's proximity to a dangerous traffic area.
On page 30 of Wagner's book is this description of Muthee's demand that Mama Jane leave the community:
In Thomas Muthee's opinion, adding the serious intercessors to the prayer ministry of The Prayer Cave was the decisive turning point in the spiritual battle for Kiambu. An increasing number of Mama Jane's clients were becoming Christians and publicly burning the charms and fetishes she had sold them. The way was now open for Muthee to issue a public ultimatum: "Mama Jane either gets saved and serves the Lord or she leaves town! There is no longer room in Kiambu for both of us!" In plain terms, Thomas Muthee had challenged Mama Jane to a power encounter, much as Elijah had challenged the priests of Baal.
By the way that Wagner describes it, it is hard to tell if these were individual or collective public gestures of iconoclastic burning and destruction.
And one can only wonder what else was deemed worthy of burning that Wagner does not mention.
Books?
Whatever exactly went on in Kiambu, Muthee's cruel and arrogant behavior, and that of his agressive and frightened followers, must have been terrifying for Mama Jane to behold.
And Wagner might have, with the exact same evidence, depicted Muthee as a fanatic and hysteric trampling on the basic human rights of another human being.
But instead, Wagner makes Muthee into a modern day Elijah in the process of vanquishing a Satan-driven follower of Baal.
Wagner's triumphalism reaches a still more feverish and absurd pitch in this next passage, from pg. 31 of his book:
The police were called in, and they entered Mama Jane's house to investigate. In one room of the house they were startled to find one of the largest pythons they had ever seen. They immediately shot the snake and killed it. That natural act caused the spiritual battle to end. Mama Jane was taken by the police for questioning and was later released. She quickly and wisely opted to leave town for good. Instead of a preacher's graveyard, Kiambu had miraculously been transformed into a witch's graveyard!
Mama Jane's arrest and detention is simply described by Wagner as "questioning."
But Kenya is not the United States, and the police may well have threatened, intimidated, or even tortured her.
Her quick exit from the town, and her complete disappearance from the narrative, suggests that she may well have been threatened with death.
She may even have been killed, inside or outside the city, perhaps by the police, who then said that she "left" the community.
Why, one wonders, given the high degree of paranoia and superstition that Muthee had generated in the town, should we take for granted that Mama Jane got out of the community alive?
Wouldn't the rumor of her being a witch have followed her?
Does it really make sense that she just went away and lived somewhere else in peace?
Wouldn't her life, after her encounter with Thomas Muthee, have been forever precarious?
Wagner's gleeful statement that Kiambu became a witch's graveyard may, in literal fact, have been true.
I hope that Mama Jane got out of Kiambu alive.
But I don't trust the narrator of this story, or Thomas Muthee's version.
Something seems improbable here.
As Judge Judy used to say, "If it doesn't make sense, it probably didn't happen that way."
Wagner's telling of Thomas Muthee's rise to power in Kiambu ends on this note:
When Mama Jane left the city, things began to change quickly and dramatically. The unbelievers in the city also recognized the cause-and-effect relationship between the power encounter and the subsequent changes in the community.
Economically, the city is now prosperous. Government officials, instead of allegedly paying bribes so as not to be assigned to Kiambu, now are said to pay bribes to get the assignment.
And they all lived happily ever after--except Mama Jane.
