Pentecostalism and Witchcraft: Spiritual Warfare in Africa and Melanesia

by Knut Rio (Editor), Michelle MacCarthy (Editor), Ruy Blanes (Editor)

Overview

This open access book presents fresh ethnographic work from the regions of Africa and Melanesia—where the popularity of charismatic Christianity can be linked to a revival and transformation of witchcraft. The volume demonstrates how the Holy Spirit has become an adversary to the reconfirmed presence of witches, demons, and sorcerers as manifestations of evil. We learn how this is articulated in spiritual warfare, in crusades, and in healing or witch-killing raids. The contributors highlight what happens to phenomena that people address as locally specific witchcraft or sorcery when re-molded within the universalist Pentecostal demonology, vocabulary, and confrontational methodology. 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783319560687
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan
Publication date:	10/29/2017
Series:	Contemporary Anthropology of Religion
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	311
Sales rank:	263,122
File size:	585 KB

About the Author

Knut Rio is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Bergen, Norway
Michelle MacCarthy is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Bergen, Norway
Ruy Blanes is a Ramon y Cajal fellow at the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas in Spain

Table of Contents

1. Introduction: Pentecostal Witchcraft: Governance and Universalism in Comparison.-  2. German Pentecostal Witches and Communists: The Violence of Purity and Sameness.-  3. Becoming Witches: Sight, Sin, and Sociality in the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea.- 4. The Ndoki Index: Sorcery, Economy and Invisible Operations in the Angolan Urban Sphere.-  5. Branhamist Kindoki: Ethnographic Notes on Connectivity, Technology and Urban Witchcraft in Contemporary Kinshasa.-  6. Jesus Lives in Me: Pentecostal Conversions, Witchcraft Confessions, and Gendered Power in the Trobriand Islands.- 7. The Power of a Severed Arm: Life, Witchcraft, and Christianity in Kilimanjaro.- 8. Demons, Devils and Witches in Pentecostal Port Vila: On Changing Cosmologies of Evil in Melanesia.- 9. Turning the Tide: Visionary Children and Spiritual War on a Vanuatu Island.- 10. Learning to Believe in Papua New Guinea.- 11. Witchcraft Simplex: Experiences of Globalized Pentecostalism in Central and Northwestern Tanzania.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“Ingeniously entangling Christian demonology and local beliefs, Pentecostalism operates as a major universalizing force that assumes control over life and death, good and evil. This is the starting point of this well composed, mind-boggling volume. It traces the Pentecostalization of witchcraft in various locations in Africa and Melanesia through ten conceptually informed and grounded ethnographies. Framed by an excellent introduction and two concluding afterwords, this volume is a major contribution to the understanding of the global appeal of the Holy Spirit and spiritual warfare in our time. Far from taking recourse to universal theoretical models and essentializing regional modes of comparison, this amazing intellectual project calls our attention to the operation of universalizing religious regimes in action.” (Birgit Meyer, Professor of Religious Studies, Utrecht University, Netherlands)