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TL;DR:
Christian missionaries should approach beliefs about demons and evil spirits without falling into either of two extremes: denying their existence or blaming them for everything. Drawing on insights from C.S. Lewis and missionary anthropologist Paul Hiebert, the page explains that Western rationalism often creates an “excluded middle,” dismissing intermediate spiritual realities like ancestral spirits or magic. Such denial, theologian Leslie Newbigin warned, can secularize missions and hinder ministry to people who feel oppressed by unseen forces.
Let's explore how Christian missionaries should navigate beliefs about evil spirits in ways that avoid both secular skepticism and spiritual over-attribution.
In The Screwtape Letters, author C. S. Lewis, who also wrote The Chronicles of Narnia, expressed disapproval of two opposing views on demons and evil spirits:
Christian missionaries have sometimes gravitated toward one or the other of those views. Neither position adequately reflects what Scripture teaches.
Missionary anthropologist Paul Hiebert said that the first view—demons do not exist—has created a "flaw of the excluded middle." Hiebert noted that believers who have been heavily influenced by a rationalist worldview generally acknowledge only two kinds of reality:
One result is that beliefs and experiences occupying the "middle"—such as ancestral spirits, the evil eye, magical forces, astrology, local demons, and ghosts—are excluded from being "real" in people's minds. Thus, outsiders may simply dismiss people's fears of evil spirits rather than proclaiming the power of Christ over them. Hiebert said that dismissing things in that middle as not real makes it difficult to minister to people feeling beset by invisible spiritual forces.
Missionary to India and noted theologian Leslie Newbigin further argued that denying the existence of middle-domain supernatural forces actually turns missionaries into a secularizing force in the lives of the very people they are trying to serve.
The Bible clearly affirms the reality of the spirit world. At the same time, passages in Mark's Gospel1, Romans2, and 1 Corinthians3 make clear that there are definite limits to what evil powers can do.
The second view denounced by Lewis—in which all negative things in life are attributed to demons—leads to an expanded rather than an excluded middle. This "expanded middle" is especially evident when people attribute their own behavior to a "demon of discouragement" or a "demon of procrastination" or when they veer off into promoting the idea of "territorial spirits."
If C. S. Lewis was right—and I believe he was—the challenge for cross-cultural missionaries today is to refrain from forcing Scripture to conform to one of the two extreme views. If we genuinely allow Scripture to determine our worldview, we will avoid those extremes of:
I like my Haitian friends' approach to the "middle" domain. They acknowledge that there are evil spiritual forces active in the world. Many testified that, when they became Christians, Christ delivered them from spiritual forces they had feared. They know clearly from personal experience that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is far more powerful than any other force out there. That seems to be a biblically shaped approach that, in Hiebert's way of speaking, neither excludes nor expands the "middle" category of reality.
—Howard Culbertson, hculbert@snu.edu
This article originally appeared in the "Mission Briefing" series in Engage, an online missions magazine.
Scripture quotations are from the Holy Bible, New International Version, 2011.
In Western thought, there's often a strict division between the physical world governed by natural laws and the supernatural dimension that includes spiritual beings and divine interventions. This dichotomy can make it challenging for Westerners to comprehend the ways other cultures integrate various spiritual forces into their understanding of everyday life.