Witchcraft Accusations Against Women: An Intersectional Analysis of the Experience of Spiritual Abuse by Christian Clergy in Ghana

Abstract

Witchcraft accusations involving Christian ministers in Ghana reveal a pattern of spiritualised violence shaped by intersecting structural inequalities. This article examines how gender, age, poverty, social isolation, and uneven access to state protection converge to make certain individuals uniquely vulnerable to accusation and harm. Drawing on ethnographic evidence and media reports, I show that Pentecostal deliverance discourses do not operate in isolation; they are embedded within broader political economies of care, authority, and precarity. By foregrounding intersectionality, the analysis moves beyond explanations that attribute witchcraft accusations solely to patriarchal control or cultural continuity. Instead, it shows how religious authority, economic transformation, and weakened kinship support interact to produce differentiated experiences of suspicion, violence, and exclusion. The article contributes to scholarship on witchcraft, African Pentecostalism, and spiritual violence by offering a relational, structural account of how vulnerability is produced and legitimised. Theoretically, it advances intersectionality as a critical framework for understanding spiritual harm as an outcome of layered, mutually reinforcing power relations. It highlights the need for policy interventions that address both gender inequality and the broader political economies that render certain individuals expendable.