n 1768, John Wesley expressed concern about the decline of popular belief in witchcraft and the supernatural: “The English in general, and indeed most of the men of learning in Europe, have given up all accounts of witches and apparitions as mere old wives’ fables. I am sorry for it. . . . They well know (whether Christians know it or not) that the giving up of witchcraft is in effect giving up the Bible. With my latest breath I will bear testimony against giving up to infidels one great proof of the invisible world; I mean that of witchcraft and apparitions, confirmed by the testimony of all ages.”
Actually, Wesley need not have worried. If Europe’s learned had abandoned witchcraft, and most nations accordingly had stopped prosecuting it, a great many ordinary people retained older ideas. In various forms, witchcraft beliefs persisted in the West until quite modern times. And as Christianity has spread around the world over the past century, it often has done so where such beliefs remain strong, above all in Africa; and where churches of necessity devote significant effort to dealing with such manifestations among the faithful. Witchcraft, surprisingly enough, is a pressing global and theological issue of the twenty-first century.
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