Pentecostalism and Witchcraft

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xi

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2. Introduction to Pentecostal Witchcraft and Spiritual Politics in Africa and Melanesia

   • Knut Rio, Michelle MacCarthy, Ruy Blanes

   Pages 1-36Open Access

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3. German Pentecostal Witches and Communists: The Violence of Purity and Sameness

   • Bjørn Enge Bertelsen

   Pages 37-65Open Access

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4. Becoming Witches: Sight, Sin, and Social Change in the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea

   • Thomas Strong

   Pages 67-92Open Access

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5. The Ndoki Index: Sorcery, Economy, and Invisible Operations in the Angolan Urban Sphere

   • Ruy Blanes

   Pages 93-114Open Access

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6. Branhamist Kindoki: Ethnographic Notes on Connectivity, Technology, and Urban Witchcraft in Contemporary Kinshasa

   • Katrien Pype

   Pages 115-144Open Access

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7. Jesus Lives in Me: Pentecostal Conversions, Witchcraft Confessions, and Gendered Power in the Trobriand Islands

   • Michelle MacCarthy

   Pages 145-162Open Access

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8. The Power of a Severed Arm: Life, Witchcraft, and Christianity in Kilimanjaro

   • Knut Christian Myhre

   Pages 163-187Open Access

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9. Demons, Devils, and Witches in Pentecostal Port Vila: On Changing Cosmologies of Evil in Melanesia

   • Annelin Eriksen, Knut Rio

   Pages 189-210Open Access

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10. Spiritual War: Revival, Child Prophesies, and a Battle Over Sorcery in Vanuatu

    • Tom Bratrud

    Pages 211-233Open Access

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11. Learning to Believe in Papua New Guinea

    • Barbara Andersen

    Pages 235-255Open Access

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12. Witchcraft Simplex: Experiences of Globalized Pentecostalism in Central and Northwestern Tanzania

    • Koen Stroeken

    Pages 257-279Open Access

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13. Afterword: Academics, Pentecostals, and Witches: The Struggle for Clarity and the Power of the Murky

    • Peter Geschiere

    Pages 281-291Open Access

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14. Afterword: From Witchcraft to the Pentecostal-Witchcraft Nexus

    • Aletta Biersack

    Pages 293-305Open Access

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15. Back Matter

    Pages 307-311

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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. 

• Charismatic Christianity
• Holy Spirit
• Pentecostal witchcraft
• Pentecostal movements
• pentecostalisation
• demonology
• Pentecostal demonology
• ethnography
• Papua New Guinea
• Vanuatu
• Congo
• Mozambique
• Tanzania
• indigenous Pentecostal movements
• Christian evangelism
• sorcery
• Oceania
• Open Access
• religion and society

“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)

• University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway

  Knut Rio, Michelle MacCarthy, Ruy Blanes

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

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