Ethiopian Church in AIDS Holy Water Brainwash
An Ethiopian Orthodox church just outside Addis Adaba claims its "holy water" has the power to cure AIDS. A British reporter says it's a scene which makes him think of the Holocaust:
"Naked men, women and children, some of them in chains to prevent them escaping, cower in front of the men in charge in a dimly-lit room in the church of St Mary on Mount Entoto....These people fear death, but they believe that coming here will prolong their lives. It is more likely to have the opposite effect...Every day, thousands of people with the virus come here to be 'baptised', though the act is performed without ceremony and in a way which seems brutal to outsiders. Plastic jerry cans are filled with water from a pool, and passed along a human chain to priests dressed like deep sea fishermen. The bright yellow waterproofs protect them from the drenching they administer to their congregation. They hurl the water over the mass of people kneeling in front of them who shriek and scream, either through devotion or the simple shock of the cold water hitting their naked flesh...Some cried out for the demons to leave their body, while priests hit them with wooden crosses. Many of them clutched their babies while the water was is shaken from the plastic containers. It is an extraordinary sight."
The brainwashing power of Orthodox religion at its worst.
Posted Apr. 3,2007 at 12:41 PM EST by Andy Towle in Africa, AIDS/HIV, Ethiopia, News | Permalink
It's false hope and a rather brutal ceremony, but orthodoxy at its worst? Not even close.
Posted by: scientitian | Apr 3, 2007 12:51:15 PM
"The church claims that more than a thousand people have been cured in the past two years. And yet the head priest Father Geberemedhen admitted to me that only the newly diagnosed are likely to be helped.
'People who come here just after they discover they are HIV positive, before their bodies are damaged, are easier to cure.'"
Delusional...I feel absolutely sick.
Posted by: FizziekruntNT | Apr 3, 2007 1:08:52 PM
Maybe it would be better to say orthodoxy lower case? I grew up in the Greek Orthodox church — part of the family of Eastern Orthodox churches, which doesn't actually include Ethiopian Orthodoxy, which follows the somewhat different Coptic Orthodox tradition (too complicated to get into) — and I wouldn't describe it as a brainwashing sort of religion. Orthodox churches are conservative in terms of their observance of age-old rituals, but they tend not to engage in preaching on social topics. That was my experience, at least. The churches of various nations are also decentralized; the Patriarch of Constantinople has nothing like the power of the Pope.
Posted by: Alex Ross | Apr 3, 2007 1:09:37 PM
Not just Orthodox religion -- the AIDS crisis in Africa wouldn't be as bad as it is now if it weren't for the influence of the Catholic church (no condoms for you!) or Bush's fundie friends' influence on the U.N.'s response (abstinence only!).
Posted by: John T | Apr 3, 2007 1:09:59 PM
Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
Posted by: vince | Apr 3, 2007 1:10:48 PM
Just Orthodox/orthodox religion, Andy? It's all brainwashing, wishful-thinking, fairy-tale nonsense. Anyone who has ever said a prayer to a "higher power" is engaging in the same childish behavior as the priests and the true believers in the above article. To quote a bumpersticker: Why be born-again when you can just grow up?
Posted by: GM | Apr 3, 2007 1:13:25 PM
Vince, I'm sure you meant to give credit to Martin Luther King, Jr., for having written,
"Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity."
Posted by: Leland | Apr 3, 2007 1:30:14 PM
Imagine that an Islamic sect, and not a Christian Church, was behind this insanity. It wouldn't be an opportunity to indirectly skewer our domestic political opponents.
Posted by: Atheist | Apr 3, 2007 1:32:27 PM
I think you are generalizing this quite a bit! I urge you to remove the last sentence...
Posted by: Alex | Apr 3, 2007 1:37:43 PM
"religion is the opium of the mass'"
What heart breaking rubbish...
Posted by: griffin1573 | Apr 3, 2007 1:42:50 PM
john yepp
Roman catholic church preaches in africa that condoms will damn you to hell.
The bush administration turned all family planning funding for africa into abstinance based.
Anyway; religion, who needs it
Crazyness
Posted by: pacificoceanboy | Apr 3, 2007 2:02:07 PM
So what if it doesn't cure AIDS, nothing does - not even here in the 'civilized West.'
I'm more disheartened by the smug and superior tone the British reporter (and some of the commenters on this post).
This ceremony offers no less 'false hope' or brainwashing than that offered by Western support groups, drug cocktails, and celebrities fundraisers.
The Ethiopian Orthodox church does not discourage condom use. That's a moot point, though - these people are already infected.
Posted by: page001 | Apr 3, 2007 2:49:32 PM
You're an idiot, Page001. The cocktails, while far from perfect, have prolonged the lives and life quality of thousands. I have at least six friends who would probably still be alive if they had lived until the cocktails came along. And condom use IS still an issue for the "infected" because it can help prevent them from infecting others.
FUCK YOU, and not in the good way.
Posted by: Leland | Apr 3, 2007 3:08:29 PM
Well, Leland, I have at least six friends who are/were on cocktails and dying or dead all the same.
I don't argue that condoms aren't an issue in preventing the spread of disease. I was referring to an earlier post where someone implied that what the people in this article need condoms.
Having condoms is not going to make these people any better. They are participating in this ceremony for all sorts of different reasons, the common one that they want to feel better.
I'm irritated by the presumption that we know more than they do, that what they really need to do is get rich, get a Western education, get insurance THEN figure out how to live with the disease.
These people are having an entirely appropriate cultural response.
Posted by: page001 | Apr 3, 2007 3:24:26 PM
Very few of "we" westerners can imagine what the AIDS crisis is doing to Africa. Here in America we have 1 million people living with HIV. In Africa there are 24 million people living with HIV. Their governments have failed them. We have failed them. Take away our health care, take away our meds. Take away all the things in the United States that make HIV more of a chronic condition than a death sentence and we might start looking for miracle cures too. Without being able to be in their situation and experience their desperation firsthand for ourselves we have no right to judge their faith.
Posted by: Samuel | Apr 3, 2007 3:35:35 PM
While this is absolutely horrifying, it is in no way even remotely comparable to the Holocaust, and invoking that term here (as in many other instances), cheapens Nazi Germany's systematic slaughter of Jews and gays during WWII. Surely there are other, more apropos expressions of outrage, and it couldn't hurt to try and dig a little deeper to find them.
Posted by: hill_w | Apr 3, 2007 4:13:39 PM
And my response to your hissy fit, Page001, remains entirely appropriate: you're still an idiot. These people are required to stop taking their meds in order to get the "treatment." Most will probably remain off their meds because they are being told they are now cured. Thus, many will die needlessly. I believe the legal term "manslaughter" might apply.
Further, there is all of the added Dark Ages mumbo jumbo about refraining from sex, women must be separated who are having their periods, in order for the "treatment" to work they must be naked ad infinretardum.
Barbarism is barbarism regardless of whether or not it is cloaked in religion. You keep wanting to make the issue about classism and First World versus Third World, when what you're actually saying is that they don't deserve any better. Who's the racist/classist now, Bitch?
Posted by: Leland | Apr 3, 2007 4:29:12 PM
Page and samuel must be priests. Why else defend crazy religion bilking the ignorant masses.
I am sure quite a few priests read towleroad. The same ones I have run into on the streets that like to wink at me and try to grab my butt.
"The priests of every age are the enemies of liberty"
Posted by: pacificoceanboy | Apr 3, 2007 4:36:12 PM
I seem to recall lots of wacky "cures" and "treatments" for AIDS here in the US back in the 1980's. Desparate people take desparate measures.
Posted by: anon | Apr 3, 2007 4:41:58 PM
PS Hill
There have been worse holocausts than the jewish one during WW2
Stalin killed far far far far far far more innocent people than hitler in his wildest dreams. And if you want to say, but stalin didn't try to wipe out an entire ethnic group, then remember the millions upon millions of American indians killed by the USA gobvernment, and we did try to wipe them out.
The word holocaust does not belong to the hebrew people alone. Please allow other people to mourn their holocausts as well, stop hogging the stage.
Posted by: pacificoceanboy | Apr 3, 2007 4:42:45 PM
tsk, oh Africa...
Posted by: FanGirlHater | Apr 3, 2007 5:37:32 PM
PACIFICOCEANBOY -
The article didn't say "A" holocaust. It say "THE" Holocaust. Capital H.
Yes, the word holocaust belongs to everyone. But the Holocaust is a specific reference.
Comparing horrors is ridiculous in any case.
Posted by: Gregg | Apr 3, 2007 6:50:05 PM
There are people doing the same sort of thing in the United States. But no one seems to mind the ripoffs practiced by the feelgood aids-ladies (you know who they are), Santeria practitioners, vegan herbalists and power-of-positive-thinking bullshit artists rampant in this country.
Posted by: Mike | Apr 3, 2007 7:47:32 PM
greg true
But the point of the comparison was in so many people being packed together naked while something is tossed at them (gassed at them if considering the jews during WW2)
I didn't get a "this is equal to" sense from the article, but rather just the imagery of so many naked crying people packed together. Which it is reminiscent of
Posted by: pacificoceanboy | Apr 3, 2007 9:02:18 PM
The problem with that is that the aforementioned have free will to be there or not, and the ppl in WW2 did not...
I don't think anything can be compared to WW2... there have been many atrocities committed in our history, but nothing comes close to the systematic murder of men/women/children seen in ww2!
again, ppl have free will to be there or not... in concentration camps, they did not!
Posted by: Alex | Apr 3, 2007 11:14:47 PM