Unseen Worlds:
Dealing with Spirits, Witchcraft, and Satanism

by Bernhard Udelhoven

Available in two editions: the full edition (480 pages) and a study edition (188 pages) that introduces the case studies and the basic method.

Now available as a free PDF download

Book Review by Dr Toni Goertz, MISSIO

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Full edition (22.18 US$)   Study edition (12.99 US$)   Kindle (0.99 US$)

Price at FENZA:
Full edition: 350 Kwacha   
Study edition: 250 Kwacha

Witchcraft accusations and witchcraft experiences break apart and damage communities. In Zambia, as in other African countries, they give rise to much violence and abuse.

Christian churches can play an important role in addressing witchcraft related violence, if they manage to enter the social, symbolic and spiritual worlds in which witchcraft operates. However, they can also trap the helper in a maze of suspicions, fear and accusations. Church answers have often sidelined beliefs in witchcraft and spirits, placing them in a world of superstition. Or, to the contrary, they have magnified them within the idiom of spiritual warfare. Unseen Worlds offers a third way for the helper, which is person-centred, not demon-centred, building on people’s own experiences and concepts and moving towards transformation.

The book addresses pastors, teachers, counsellors, prayer companions, deliverance ministers, college students, historians, anthropologists, development workers and family helpers.

Unseen Worlds offers a culturally sensitive approach to spiritual healing and deliverance that does not divorce spiritual matters from corresponding human conditions, relationships and family issues. While categories of “true” and “false” are not easily applied to spiritual attacks, any experience that touches a person on a deep level always has a spiritual dimension that this book explores and responds to.

The approach was developed during a research period of eight years, commissioned by FENZA. It builds on relational experiences of life and Zambian notions of selfhood, going beyond the timeworn divide of the “superstitious” versus the “real”. Addressing the Christian pastoral ministry, the book proceeds from a Catholic and ecumenical perspective, while building on insights of the social sciences, of experienced charismatic ministries, but also of Zambian traditional healers, cultural experts and mediators in instances of witchcraft accusations.

Gap filled by the book: The reader will find concrete pastoral steps towards a deliverance ministry that works with African insights into the mysteries of life, not against them. The authentic case studies show the complexities of the deliverance ministry, which are rarely noticed in the available “prayer manuals” in which demons are merely prayed away.

Author: Bernhard Udelhoven, a Catholic priest who has worked in Zambia since 1989, studied theology and social anthropology. He headed the FENZA research project on Satanism in Zambia, of which this book is a fruit. Presently he works in Lumimba Parish, Chipata Diocese.

Contact:
Email: bernhard@fenza.org (author); director@fenza.org (publisher).