Who is Responsible for Witch Burnings in Africa?

I have often written before about how I'm afraid that the fundamentalist Christians are taking us back to the dark ages. Among their beliefs are torture, racism, and of course witchcraft. Now I'm not saying the fundamentalist Christians practice witchcraft. The very opposite! No, they believe witchcraft must be stopped. The way they stopped witchcraft in the medieval times was to burn witches at the stake, after torturing them for a confession.

We are not really close to burning witches in Canada yet. Maybe most Europeans got it out of their system burning thousands of witches for Christ in the dark ages. But in Nigeria, apparently it's a novelty that is gathering adherents. Apparently thousands of children have already been killed or mutilated for being witches, and Christian Fundamentalists' dogmatic belief that witches do exist is partly responsible for these atrocities.

http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=TheYoungTurks#p/u/2/JrG9A_pV-Rs

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/dec/09/tracymcveigh.theobserver

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/oct/22/channel4-television

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/10/17/world/main5392572.shtml


For a start, we need to try to make the Christian fundamentalists stop preaching about the evils of witchcraft in Africa. How likely is that, however, given that the Fundamentalists believe in a lot of other non-scientific stuff and have not been convinced by mountains of evidence?

As far as I know, the Catholic Church does not preach about the existence of witchcraft, and they are very reluctant to endorse miracles/magic by God or the Devil alike. There are lots of other decent Christian churches out there, but the key thing is to not spread around accusations of witchcraft. Apparently since I was in Africa there has been a proliferation of these Evangelist/Fundamentalist churches that believe in magic (black and white) and are anti-science (except when it serves their purpose).

I personally would prefer that African development was left to secular organizations like CUSO, but I also recognize that some faith based organizations can help. But for God's sake, spare us the burning children alive for witchcraft.