Charismatic Healers in Contemporary Africa: Deliverance in Muslim and Christian Worlds
Ebook
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.
A contribution to ongoing debates about witchcraft and deliverance in Africa which cuts across the study of religion, healing and politics, and in addition looks at Muslims and Christians in a comparative frame.
The contributors are all renowned specialists in their field, all from different institutions, affiliated to various research networks, and working in different countries (US, Australia, UK, South Africa, France, Italy, Denmark)
Provides a comparative perspective on the phenomenon of Charismatic healing in Africa, presenting case studies from different areas of the continent and from different religious traditions
Focuses on the political impacts of healing and deliverance practices in the contemporary Christian and Muslim worlds in Africa
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
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.
- Title: Charismatic Healers in Contemporary Africa: Deliverance in Muslim and Christian Worlds
- Authors: Sandra Fancello, Alessandro Gusman
- Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
- Print Publication Date: 2022
- Logos Release Date: 2024
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Ebook
- ISBNs: 9781350295469, 9781350295445, 1350295442, 1350295469
- Resource ID: LLS:9781350295469
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2024-04-09T08:21:59Z
Sandra Fancello is Research Director at the National Center for Scientific Research, France.
Alessandro Gusman is Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of Turin, Italy.