Toxic Sanctuaries: Exposing Abuse and Manipulation in African Pentecostalism

By Ernest Musekiwa

Across Southern Africa, thousands of believers are wrestling with a painful reality: the places meant to nurture their faith have become sources of spiritual trauma, manipulation, and fear. Toxic Sanctuaries exposes this crisis with clarity, compassion, and theological depth. Drawing from African scholarship, biblical insight, pastoral experience, and survivors' testimonies, Ernest Musekiwa uncovers how abusive leaders, distorted doctrines, and unaccountable prophetic movements have wounded souls and distorted the gospel.
This groundbreaking work traces how fear-based preaching, violent deliverance practices, sexual exploitation, prosperity manipulation, and authoritarian leadership have become normalized in many Pentecostal and African Indigenous Churches. It examines the psychological effects of these systems-trauma, anxiety, shame, spiritual confusion-and shows how cultural, economic, and political pressures have fueled abusive spirituality.
Yet this is not a book of despair. It is a call to healing, justice, and reformation.
With pastoral sensitivity and academic rigor, Musekiwa offers a biblically grounded, African-centered path toward restoration. He explores how survivors can rebuild faith after betrayal, how communities can become trauma-informed and spiritually safe, and how leaders can embrace accountability, humility, and Christlike character. He challenges churches to recover the liberating heart of the gospel, cultivate ethical leadership structures, reform harmful deliverance practices, and uphold God's justice and compassion for the vulnerable.
Grounded in Scripture, enriched by African theology, and strengthened by psychological research, Toxic Sanctuaries is both prophetic and deeply hopeful. It calls the African Church to rise from the ashes of abuse and rediscover its identity as a place of refuge, healing, and truth. For survivors, leaders, pastors, scholars, and all who long for a healthier church, this book is a powerful invitation to courage, integrity, and Spirit-led transformation.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0G4RQ1H2D
• ISBN13: 9798277025369
• Release Date: January 2022
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 282 Pages
• Weight: 0.84 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.0" x 9.0"