God’s punishment – divine justice?

On the “multimodality” of religious interpretations of epidemics in Africa

By social anthropologist Dorothea Schulz

At a time when the populations of a growing number of African countries are facing a third coronavirus wave, this time in the form of even more dangerous variants, different interpretations of the epidemic continue to compete there. Religious, scientific and esoteric interpretations, as well as conspiracy theories, circulate, partially overlap, and sometimes inspire each other, and exhibit varying degrees of instability and innovativeness. They are not coherent or stable schemes of interpretation, but operate as “multimodal” discourse elements. For example, the first months of the epidemic in Mali saw interpretations of the disease as a just punishment for Westernized, corrupt elites being combined with local discourses of legitimacy, as well as with conspiracy theories that branded Corona as a “feint” on the part of a government that was only out to grab money from international aid organizations. At the same time, those religious leaders who favoured the “discourse of punishment” claimed – and still claim – that their own orthodoxy and attachment to traditional values also serve to protect their followers, meaning that they do not have to follow the normal protective measures. This specific religious interpretation of the causes of the Covid-19 pandemic was and is therefore closely tied to a discourse on orthodoxy and cultural authenticity.

Mosque, church, Christian prayer (Kenya)

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Which of these interpretations, or recombinations of different interpretative elements, prevail in a country or region, and how strongly, for example, the discourse of divine punishment dominates, depends less on ostensibly ingrained cultural or religious ideas and on how far local communities are bound to tradition. Rather, as in contemporary Europe and North America, the interpretations and their capacity to prevail should be interpreted as reflections of the experiences that these people have had in dealing with state regulation of religious life and the organization of health care.

For example, the perspectives on the Corona epidemic articulated by people in rural areas in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea draw on their experiences of the Ebola epidemic in 2014-2016, experiences that were exacerbated by the stigmatizing effects of state-imposed measures (often implemented by international organizations), which saw those ill being isolated and burial rituals banned. Whether or not religious explanations for the causes of the Corona epidemic (as a punishment or divine justice) currently prevail in these countries depends largely on whether religious actors and networks offered convincing interpretations and acted appropriately in the situation then, thereby proving themselves to be a more credible alternative to state actors. The interpretation itself, i.e. whether or not Corona is interpreted for example as a just punishment for adopting Western cultural values and lifestyles, also depends on whether religious actors use their power of mobilization and existing social freedoms to present themselves as a moral alternative to the lack of legitimacy of state institutions and actors, or whether, integrated into state structures, they offer a combination of religious and scientific interpretations.

A significant example of the latter, and of the mobilizing and persuasive power of religious networks, was provided in the 1980s and 1990s by the leaders of many religious communities – imams, sheikhs, pastors, bishops, and also a rabbi – in Uganda, whose state-controlled information campaigns down to the village level were a key factor in the country’s successful fight against the HIV virus. On the other hand, recent developments in Mali show that very specific interpretations of epidemics as God’s punishment can develop an enormous protest potential. Here, interpretations that had been circulating since March 2020 of Corona as punishment for the infidels played a not insignificant role in the religiously hued protest against the then president Ibrahim Boubacar Keita and his overthrow in August 2020. However, the fact that precisely these religious interpretations were able to prevail depended, as already discussed, on complex socio-political constellations and institutional conditions. One thing is clear from this: that the prevailing religious or non-religious explanations for the causes of an epidemic in a society do not simply reflect how secularized that society is.