Pentecostal Exorcisms in Contemporary Society : An Ethnographic Study of Ritual and the Making of the Religious Other

This book examines Pentecostal exorcisms in contemporary society and offers a framework for understanding how demonization operates as a socially productive force.

This book examines Pentecostal exorcisms in contemporary society and offers a framework for understanding how demonization operates as a socially productive force. It focuses on practices within a Global South church with transnational reach, drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork carried out mainly within the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God (founded in Brazil), as well as comparative material from other Pentecostal contexts and digital environments. The book considers exorcisms as key ritual practices through which contemporary Pentecostalism can control members, construct enemies and sustain processes of religious expansion. It argues that exorcisms function as intercommunity rituals oriented not only toward believers but fundamentally toward outsiders. Combining classic and contemporary ritual theory with sociological approaches to social groups, power, and othering, the study demonstrates that spiritual warfare depends structurally on the demonization of non-members. Through participant observation, discourse analysis, and direct involvement in exorcism rituals, the author analyzes how demonology is articulated through the body, health and prosperity, gender and sexuality, race, politics, popular culture, and digitalization. This volume is relevant for scholars and advanced students working in the anthropology of religion, sociology of religion, and religious studies, particularly those with an interest in ritual theory, Pentecostalism, demonization, and contemporary forms of religious power.