by VorJack

I’ve occasionally complained about the spread of magical thinking and belief in angels and demons. It seems to me that such ideas, which were once unfashionable, are becoming more widespread in America, particularly among the Pentecostal sects.

I think the very extreme end of this spectrum are visible in parts of Africa. Graeme Wood at The Atlantic has the story, which he gave the punny title of Hex Appeal:

By some estimates, about 40 percent of the cases in the Central African court system are witchcraft prosecutions. (Drug offenses in the U.S., by contrast, account for just 12 percent of arrests.) In Mbaiki—where Pygmies, who are known for bewitching each other, make up about a tenth of the population—witchcraft prosecutions exceed 50 percent of the case load, meaning that most alleged criminals there are suspected of doing things that Westerners generally regard as impossible.

[...]

The classic study of witchcraft in Africa occurred among the Azande, who inhabit the eastern edge of the Central African Republic. The anthropologist Edward E. Evans-Pritchard found that the Azande attributed a staggering range of misfortunes—infected toes, collapsed granary roofs, even bad weather—to meddling by witches. Nothing happened by chance, only as an effect of spell-casting by a wicked interloper. That sentiment remains widespread among Central Africans, who demand that the law reflect the influence of witchcraft as they understand it.

[...]

I asked how one determined guilt in cases where the alleged witches denied the charges. “The judge will look at them and see if they act like witches,” [Bartolomé] Goroth said, specifying that “acting like a witch” entailed behaving “strangely” or “nervously” in court. His principal advice to clients, he said, was to act normally and refrain from casting any spells in the courtroom.