Spiritual mapping

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Spiritual mapping refers to the 21st-century belief among some Christians that specific demons, known as territorial spirits, are associated with specific locations and can be conquered through strategic spiritual warfare by plotting out geographical areas and their perceived problems in order to pray on-site. Spiritual mapping is part of the first of three steps in spiritual warfare, defined by sociologists Brad Christerson and Richard Flory as research, prophecy, and intercession. [1] Religious studies scholar Sean McCloud has referred to spiritual mapping as a "Third Wave [Charismatic] version of geomancy that discerns where and why demons control spaces and places, ranging from houses and neighborhoods to entire countries." [2]

Contents

Concept and history

The term spiritual mapping was coined by missiologist George Otis in 1990. Community or city transformation are also used in relation to spiritual mapping goals as adherents believe they can effect large-scale social change through spiritual warfare. Otis and influential New Apostolic Reformation and spiritual warfare leader C. Peter Wagner helped define and spread the concept. [3] [4] [5] [6] [1] Wagner claims that this type of spiritual warfare was "virtually unknown to the majority of Christians before the 1990s". [7]

Spiritual mapping is part of the broader spiritual warfare movement, particularly common in neo-Charismatic Christian circles such as Independent Network Charismatic Christianity. Spiritual mapping occurs on both the local and regional level with super-demons known as territorial spirits seen as laying claim to whole swathes of the globe. Influential New Apostolic Reformation leader and spiritual warfare proponent C. Peter Wagner claimed that a particularly powerful entity known as the Queen of Heaven, for example, controlled the equatorial regions. [8]

Spiritual mapping involves research and prayer, either to locate specific individuals who are then accused of witchcraft, or to locate individuals, groups, or locations that are thought to be victims of witchcraft or possessed by demons, against which spiritual warfare is then waged. [9] Practitioners note areas on maps with relevant history, spiritual and otherwise, and connect them with lines. "These lines are seen as demonic corridors of power—demons travel back and forth along the transit routes. The connecting lines are seen as a 'demonic stronghold.'" [1] Ley lines, straight lines between buildings or landscape features, are seen as being useful in detecting such demonic strongholds. [10] Prophets then use this information to determine the territorial spirits' names and more specific information about the type of spiritual attacks they believe are occurring in an area. [1]

Adherents of spiritual mapping believe that these demons are the reason for lack of success in Christian missions work and that they can use prayer and other religious practices to counteract and drive out these demons. This, in turn, will accelerate the Second Coming of Christ. [11] [8] The Christian missiological concept of the 10/40 window, a region between 10 and 40 degrees north of the equator, found to have high rates of poverty and little access to and conversion to Christianity, is thus part of spiritual mapping. It is seen as one of the last areas to receive the Christian message, therefore requiring much effort to defeat the "last and 'very powerful' undefeated demons" controlling it. [12] Also underlying the belief in spiritual mapping is the idea that "demonic powers have deceived millions of people by supernaturally animating human systems", as Otis claimed in his 1991 book Last of the Giants. [13]

Spiritual mapping aims at answering the following three questions, according to Otis: [14]

  1. What is wrong with my community?
  2. Where did the problem come from?
  3. What can be done to change things?

Wagner was a key figure in the concept's growth. According to The Christian Science Monitor , Wagner, who founded the parachurch mission organization Global Harvest Ministries, "[was] in the vanguard of the spiritual warfare movement." [15] Wagner's basic methodology is to use spiritual mapping [9] to locate areas, [16] demon-possessed persons, occult practitioners such as witches and Freemasons, or things they deem occult idol objects like statues of Catholic saints, which are then named and fought, using methods ranging from intensive prayer to burning with fire. "[T]hey must burn the idols… the kinds of material things that might be bringing honor to the spirits of darkness: pictures, statues, Catholic saints, Books of Mormon, pictures of former lovers…native art, foreign souvenirs... [T]he witches and warlocks had surrounded the area… When the flames shot up, a woman right behind Doris [Wagner's wife] screamed and manifested a demon, which Doris immediately cast out!" [17] Wagner's conceptions about spiritual mapping were opposed by his collaborator John Wimber with whom he had developed many of his earlier spiritual warfare concepts. [8]

In 1994, Christianity Today mentioned spiritual mapping among a growing Christian prayer movement, also covered in other media in the lead-up to the second millennium. [18] The process of spiritual mapping was described as follows:

This process involves researching a city's history and, through prayer, waiting for spiritually intuitive impressions or visions that 'reveal' a city's spiritual condition. So in Call, Colombia, for example, one of the discerned spirits might be drug addiction; in Portland, Oregon, individualism; and in Jeremie, Haiti, it might be voodoo. These broad characterizations are seen as parallels to biblical characterizations of cities such as Sodom and Gomorrah that had reputations for immorality. [19]

One scholar describes the influences on spiritual mapping as a belief:

As a concept and a movement Spiritual Mapping behaved like a symbiont. It did not develop a school or movement of its own but rode waves like the American Dream and Manifest Destiny, their popular spirituality, Neo-Evangelicalism, the Church Growth movement, elements of the Charismatic Renewal and later dominion teaching. It rode the waves of institutes like Fuller's School of World Mission, the AD2000 movement and its 10/40 Window and during its later transformation the wave of the [New Apostolic Reformation]. [20]

Events, media coverage and spread

As the concept began to grow, cases of Christians spiritually mapping their communities or communities abroad were covered in the media.

Kenyan pastor Thomas Muthee undertook spiritual mapping and strategic spiritual warfare in the late 1980s. After a crusade in a Nairobi suburb which led to the founding of a church there, they drove out a local diviner known as Mama Jane, in whom they identified the "spirit of witchcraft" they believed had power over the area. [21] [22]

In the early 1990s, spiritual mapping began to spread, including in influential New Apostolic Reformation prophet Cindy Jacobs' Charismatic circles in the Dallas–Fort Worth area, one of the first regions where the concepts took hold before spreading more widely in Evangelicalism. [23]

George Otis, coiner of the term spiritual mapping, had visited dozens of countries by the early 1990s in an effort to gather on-the-ground information about evil activity around the world in the spiritual realm. In a 1993 article on Otis, the Calgary Herald described his research: "Why is it that, historically, some regions of the world are more prone to evil activity?...For instance...Why is Haiti the eyesore of the western hemisphere? Why has Mesopotamia produced a succession of tyrannical rulers? Why is there such a high incidence of demonic worship and manifestation in the Himalayas?" He collected maps, photos, and over 40,000 pages of interviews to plot out areas prone to demonic activity. [13] Also mentioned in the article on Otis was a group of Christians in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, who spiritually mapped their city for evangelistic purposes. [13]

In 1997, the International Consultation on Spiritual Mapping conference was first held, with 450 people from 31 countries attending. [24]

Ted Haggard's New Life Church, who worked closely with Wagner, engaged in then-new spiritual mapping, spiritual warfare, prayer walking, and anointing in villages in Mali as well as their hometown of Colorado Springs, Colorado. Dutch missionary René Holvast and American radio journalist Alix Spiegel, observing this in Mali and Colorado, respectively, found themselves discovering what Holvast termed a "new paradigm" in Christian missions. Holvast would later go on to write his dissertation on the topic and Spiegel covered it in a radio episode. The church opened its World Prayer Center in 1998, which included an office devoted to spiritual mapping and a "spiritual 'war room'"; Haggard considered the center a "spiritual NORAD". The locations were "for roughly a decade, the epicenter of an ongoing, radical redefinition of Christianity." [25] [26] [27]

Tools

Geographic information system (GIS) software and GPS are used in the movement to put together, analyze, query, and visualize geographic data. [28]

Influence

Overlapping with NAR prophet Cindy Jacobs' circles was a local school superintendent who promoted school prayer, to combat societal ills, at the same religious conferences. Scholar Benjamin Young has described the spiritual mapping movement as "[tilling] fertile soil for [ See You at the Pole]", a Christian prayer event in which students gather at their school flagpoles to pray. [23]

See also

Related Research Articles

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References

Notes

  1. 1 2 3 4 Christerson, Brad; Flory, Richard (April 27, 2017). "The Product: Supernatural Power and Social Transformation". The Rise of Network Christianity: How Independent Leaders Are Changing the Religious Landscape. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190635671.003.0004. ISBN   978-0-19-063567-1.
  2. ↑ McCloud 2015, p. 10.
  3. ↑ de Korte, Hannah; Onnekink, David (May 28, 2020). "Maps Matter. The 10/40 Window and Missionary Geography". Exchange. 49 (2): 110–144. doi: 10.1163/1572543X-12341558 . ISSN   0166-2740.
  4. ↑ McConeghy, David W. (2013). Geographies of Prayer: Place and Religion in Modern America (Thesis). University of California, Santa Barbara.
  5. ↑ Holvast 2008, p. 65.
  6. ↑ McCloud 2015, p. 51.
  7. ↑ Wagner, C. Peter (1996). Confronting the powers: how the New Testament church experienced the power of strategic-level spiritual warfare . Ventura, Calif.: Regal Books. p. 27. ISBN   978-0-8307-1819-1 – via Archive.org.
  8. 1 2 3 Bean, Alan (September 7, 2021). "Angels from Africa: Reckoning with the New Apostolic Reformation". Baptist News. Retrieved February 23, 2023.
  9. 1 2 Wagner 1993.
  10. ↑ Holvast, René (2009). "The self-understanding of the spiritual mapping movement". Spiritual Mapping in the United States and Argentina, 1989-2005: A Geography of Fear. BRILL. doi:10.1163/ej.9789004170469.i-370.38. ISBN   978-90-04-17046-9.
  11. ↑ McAlister, Elizabeth (2012). "From Slave Revolt to a Blood Pact with Satan: The Evangelical Rewriting of Haitian History". Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses. 41 (2). Studies in Religion/Sciences Religeuses: 187–215. doi:10.1177/0008429812441310. S2CID   145382199. Archived from the original on 2014-07-16.
  12. ↑ Holvast 2008, p. xii.
  13. 1 2 3 Legge, Gordon (February 27, 1993). "Supernatural Detective: Documenting the Demonic". Calgary Herald . p. 96. Retrieved September 15, 2024– via Newspapers.com.
  14. ↑ Waymire 2000, p. 2–2.
  15. ↑ Lampman, Jane (September 23, 1999). "Targeting cities with 'spiritual mapping,' prayer". The Christian Science Monitor . Retrieved September 22, 2008.
  16. ↑ Territorial Spirits, C. Peter Wagner, ed., 1991
  17. ↑ Wagner, C. Peter (1999). Hard-Core Idolatry, Facing the Facts . Wagner Institute of Practical Ministry. pp. 51–52 – via Archive.org.
  18. ↑ Tapia, Andres (November 2, 1994). "Prayer warriors: Millions turn to prayer to change the world". The Mountain Eagle . Pacific News Service. p. 6. Retrieved September 15, 2024– via Newspapers.com.
  19. ↑ Tapia, Andres (November 1994). "Is Global Great Awakening Just around the Corner?" . Christianity Today . Vol. 38, no. 13. p. 80. Retrieved 2024-08-11– via EBSCOhost.
  20. ↑ Holvast 2008, p. 216.
  21. ↑ Lampman, Jane (September 23, 1999). "Targeting cities with 'spiritual mapping,' prayer". Christian Science Monitor . ISSN   0882-7729 . Retrieved September 8, 2024.
  22. ↑ Holvast 2008, pp. 98–99.
  23. 1 2 Young, Benjamin J. (July 2023). "See You at the Pole: Evangelicals, Public Schools, and 'Student-Initiated' School Prayer in 1990s America". Modern American History. 6 (2): 156–177. doi: 10.1017/mah.2023.13 . ISSN   2515-0456.
  24. ↑ Holvast 2008, p. 79.
  25. ↑ Kovach Caldwell, Deborah (September 19, 1998). "Evangelical Christian soldiers plan to wage spiritual warfare". The San Francisco Examiner. p. 6. Retrieved September 15, 2024– via Newspapers.com.
  26. ↑ Wilson, Bruce (June 22, 2009). "Fighting Demons, Raising the Dead, Taking Over the World". Religion Dispatches . Retrieved September 8, 2024.
  27. ↑ Spiegel, Alix (September 26, 1997). 77: Pray – Exodus (Radio broadcast). This American Life. WBEZ.
  28. ↑ Waymire 2000, Working With Maps.

Sources

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