Charismatic Healers in Contemporary Africa: Deliverance in Muslim and Christian Worlds

by Sandra Fancello (Editor), Bettina E. Schmidt (Editor), Alessandro Gusman (Editor), Steven Sutcliffe (Editor), Amy Allocco (Editor)

Overview

Based on ethnographic studies conducted in several African countries, this volume analyses the phenomenon of deliverance – which is promoted both in charismatic churches and in Islam as a weapon against witchcraft – in order to clarify the political dimensions of spiritual warfare in contemporary African societies.

Deliverance from evil is part and parcel of the contemporary discourse on the struggle against witchcraft in most African contexts. However, contributors show how its importance extends beyond this, highlighting a pluralism of approaches to deliverance in geographically distant religious movements, which coexist in Africa. Against this background, the book reflects on the responsibilities of Pentecostal deliverance politics within the condition of 'epistemic anxiety' of contemporary African societies – to shed light on complex relational dimensions in which individual deliverance is part of a wider social and spiritual struggle.

Spanning across the study of religion, healing and politics, this book contributes to ongoing debates about witchcraft and deliverance in Africa.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781350295483
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	09/19/2024
Series:	Bloomsbury Advances in Religious Studies
Pages:	234
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Sandra Fancello is Research Director at the National Center for Scientific Research, France.

Alessandro Gusman is Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of Turin, Italy.

Table of Contents

List of Figures
List of Contributors
Acknowledgements
Introduction, Alessandro Gusman (University of Turin, Italy) and Sandra Fancello (CNRS-IMAF, France)

Part I – Deliverance and Spiritual Insecurity
1. Battling Satan's Minions: Christian-Muslim Entanglements in an Age of Spiritual Insecurity, Adeline Masquelier (Tulane University, USA)
2. Deliverance Centers, Spiritual Insecurity and a Pragmatic Approach to Healing in Ugandan Pentecostalism, Alessandro Gusman (University of Turin, Italy)
3. Everyday Deliverances in Tanzania, Martin Lindhardt (Syddansk Universitet, Denmark)

Part II – Charismatic Healing in the Markets of Well-Being
4. Kapopo, the “Incurable Illness” Structural Violence, Social Suffering and Spiritual Healers in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Edoardo Quaretta (University of Turin, Italy)
5. Resisting Deliverance: Majini Spirits, Matriliny, and Religious Change in Northern Mozambiqu, Daria Trentini (Drake University, USA)
6. Churches against Hospitals? Deliverance and healers in the field of public health, Sandra Fancello (CNRS-IMAF, France)

Part III – Healing and Social Change
7. Healers vs. Prayer Teams: Contesting Deliverance and Healing among Ugandan Charismatic Catholics, Alison Fitchett-Climenhaga (Australian Catholic University, Australia)
8. Staking out God's Kingdom: Moral Geographies, Land and Healing in Southern African Charismatic Christian Farming, Hans Olsson and Karen Lauterbach (University of Copenhagen, Denmark)
9. Possessed by the post-Socialist Zeitgeist: History, spirits, and the problem of generational (dis)continuity in an Ethiopian Orthodox exorcism, Diego Maria Malara (University of Glasgow, UK) and Bethlehem Hailu Dejene (NorthWestern University, USA)

Notes
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

The case thinking approach in this volume takes us into the intimate circle of families and couples, revealing the diagnoses of the unnamed and chronic evil that disturbs their spirits and gnaws at their bodies. With a focus on pandemic crises and deadlocks in hospital medicine, this book is strikingly topical.” —André Mary, Anthropologist and Research Director, National Center for Scientific Research, France

From the Publisher