From natural to supernatural

Angela Walker is a CMF member who trained in Liverpool and specialised in paediatrics. She has spent most of the last ten years in Uganda and neighbouring countries.

This is a dangerous book; dangerous because it will stir a hunger for God and challenge half-hearted discipleship or compromises with sin. The first and last chapters are particularly good on this. It challenged me.

Angela has been on a learning curve of discovering the spiritual roots to many common diseases. She has been practising what Paul Brand and others termed pneumo-psychosomatic medicine. She would concur with some of our American colleagues who have suggested that failure to take a spiritual history could be construed as negligent practice.

However, this is also a dangerous book because, having come face to face with all forms of demonic activity, Angela gives the impression (maybe unintentionally) that all diseases have spiritual roots, that experiences in Africa can and should be replicated in Western Europe (where the spectrum of pathology, spiritual as well as physical is overlapping but different).

Most seriously of all, she gives the impression (probably inaccurately) that her discovery of spiritual roots to disease has, for her, rendered her training in medicine and paediatrics irrelevant. This impression is enhanced by the oft-repeated phrase, 'I believe that...'

Read it with a warm heart and a discerning mind. Expect to be challenged and be prepared to respond to the Holy Spirit.