Is 21st Century Belief in REAL WITCHES Not Just Intellectually Incoherent, But SEXIST?
Thomas Muthee, when he prays over Sarah Palin, doesn’t talk about a spirit of “warlock craft” being broken over the nation, does he? And when he infamously, and literally, drove-off a person from Kiambu, a city in Kenya, that person was a woman. (Her name was Mama Jane; her crime was witchcraft). It thus would seem that the issue of mysogeny and sexism—the elephant in the room—cannot be avoided. Witchcraft hysteria is not just absurd—it is grounded in fear of the liberated woman—the woman who is not deferential to patriarchal religious authority and submission. A witch is someone who is not in alliance with a male sky god. Sarah Palin has risen in the male hierarchy of the Republican party, and is non-threatening to Thomas Muthee, precisely because she is utterly deferential to male lines of authority and male sensibilities in every important realm—both religious and political. And Mama Jane wasn’t.