jason price
and prodding the spirits to the surface. One woman spews saliva onto newsprint an usher wearing white latex gloves has laid out before her. Another woman has had the lower half of her body covered by a baby blue sheet to keep her decent. Pastor Jiya hands his microphone to an usher nearby. He removes his jacket. He loosens his tie. He unbuttons the top of his pressed pink shirt. He rolls up his sleeves. His cufflinks shine. He gets the microphone back, then points to the woman he first laid out. Her body is rushed to the spot. “In the MIGHTY Name of Jesus, GET OUT!!!” The words are like a bolt of electricity shot down the woman’s spine. A pause follows, which the music fills. Down on one knee, Pastor Jiya gets a good grip on her hair, pulls back her head, and peers deep into her eyes. “WHO ARE YOU? AND WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO THIS GIRL?” Nothing. The demons are being evasive, uncooperative. They are hiding. Pastor Jiaya gestures to the band to stop; the music cuts out. The silence, after so many minutes of irrepressible noise, is powerful. “WHO ARE YOU? WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO THIS GIRL?” He pulls back on the woman’s hair again, she cries out. Another pause follows. “LOSE HER! LOSE HER NOW!” He throws the woman to the ground. She covers up. He rushes over – “FIRE FIRE FIRE…FIRE ALL OVER YOUR BODY” – and pokes her up and down her abdomen. She braces herself and cries out, though slightly. The demons are there, but they are refusing to speak. This is a serious matter. If the demons do not speak, they can not be known. If they can not be known, then they can not be named. If they cannot be named, then Pastor Jiaya can claim no power over them.
And if he can claim no power over them, then the woman will not be delivered. And if the woman is not delivered, she will never be set free. Pastor Jiya needs help bringing the demons to the surface. “ HOLY GHOST… FIRE! ” he suddenly screams, pointing directly to the band. Within an instrant, they break out immediately into HOGEM’s signature song: Holy Ghost…FIRE! Holy Ghost…BURNING! Holy Ghost…FIRE! Holy Ghost…BURNING!
people chanting: Holy Ghost…FIRE! Holy Ghost…BURNING! Holy Ghost…FIRE! Holy Ghost…BURNING! This is enthralling, at least the first time. But like anything else, it becomes mundane over time. There must be hundreds of deliverances at HOGEM every week, and they all conform to the same general pattern. This is why, in the midst of a heated deliverance, you might look towards the band only to find one of the musicians lost in a daydream – bored – waiting for the service to end. It won’t matter than an attractive young woman is writhing on the ground as anointing oil is rubbed all over her womb while demons scream through her, “No! No! I will never leave her!” It is, to some degree, a routine. Slowly but surely the demons will surface and speak – offering clues to their identities and the nature of their nefarious work – before diving down again into the depths of a person. This is when Pastor Jiya calls upon the congregation, through sound, to force them back up again. This is the function of “ Holy Ghost... FIRE! ” This is what my wife and I heard those first few weeks after we moved into the university house – a collective effort by an assembly of believers to assist a Pentecostal pastor in the practice of delivering malicious spirits from possessed people via the productive capacities of sound – sounds which impel the Holy Ghost to intervene in life and death battles between evil spirits and men and women of God; battles which are not abstractions, but which consistently unearth particular struggles suffered by actual people who are genuinely labouring to construct meaningful lives in the real world.
BURNING…CONSUMING! BURNING…CONSUMING!
Holy Ghost…FIRE! Holy Ghost…BURNING! Holy Ghost…FIRE! Holy Ghost…BURNING! FIRE BURNING FIRE BURNING FIRE BURNING FIRE BURNING… The entire congregation, many of whom have formed a circle around the woman, sing along. As they sing, they raise their hands and bat them down again with every rhythmic mention of the words ‘fire’ and ‘burning’. It is an act of invocation. They are calling upon the Holy Ghost to attend to this woman, to come to HOGEM and chase out the evil demons inside her. The woman goes into a frenzy, as if being spiritually immolated from the inside out. She rolls along the ground, leaps to her feet, then runs about in a haze. Pastor Jiya is reinvigorated. He licks his lips, rolls up his sleeves. The contest takes on the feel of a boxing match with the contender is on the ropes. He slips in behind her, gets hold of her hair, whips her around in a circle, and then flings her towards the congregation. Caught by the crowd and laid onto the ground, she shakes off the spiritual blow, gets up, and keeps fighting. All the while,
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