Skip to main content
Palgrave Macmillan

Pentecostalism and Witchcraft

Spiritual Warfare in Africa and Melanesia

  • Book
  • Open Access
  • © 2017

You have full access to this open access Book

Overview

  • Juxtaposes case studies from Melanesia and Africa in order to better compare, contrast, and illuminate the effects of and engagements with Pentecostalism
  • Focuses on chief themes of Pentecostalism and witchcraft while also bringing in discussions of globalization, visibility, movements of capital, and embodiment
  • Presents rich and detailed case studies while also offering up wide-ranging theoretical analyses and critiques of established thinking/concepts
  • Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras

Part of the book series: Contemporary Anthropology of Religion (CAR)

Buy print copy

Softcover Book USD 31.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book USD 31.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

About this book

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. 

Similar content being viewed by others

Keywords

Table of contents (13 chapters)

Reviews

“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)

Editors and Affiliations

  • University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway

    Knut Rio, Michelle MacCarthy, Ruy Blanes

About the editors

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


Bibliographic Information

Publish with us