The faith-healers of the Assemblies of God in Burkina Faso: Taking responsibility for diseases related to "living together"

The author shows that curing and healing services which are offered by the Assemblies of God Church (Pentecostal church) in Burkina Faso-a church which recruits mostly low-income urban dwellers and rural peasants-are based primarily on a therapeutic procedure that has two parts, which together are able to treat various ailments that are in turn connected to transformations occurring in the nature of the relations between people and their families, friends and neighbours, or between individuals and the various groups they belong to. The problem is to show that prayers for deliverance from demons, far from being reducible to a miraculous event, actually form part of a long conversion process. Through collaboration between pastors and certain faith-healers, a new therapeutic attitude arises, which is coherent, effective and well adapted to the current transformations of everyday life - and more doctrinally mixed in its representations than the official Pentecostal position could admit