Spiritual Flows and Obstructions: Local Deliverance in The Universal Church of the Kingdom of God

Abstract

Every Friday, ‘strong prayers’ and violent spiritual confrontations can be heard coming from the Australian headquarters of the Brazilian Pentecostal megachurch The Universal Church of the Kingdom of God (UCKG). Deliverance services are where the UCKG’s predominantly disenfranchised migrant congregants battle malignant supernatural forces that ‘block’ the flow of prosperity to their lives in Australia. In the UCKG evil is hyper-mobile. Not only do evil forces move across the blurred boundaries between the physical and the supernatural realm, but evil is also personally and locally malleable. It can be inherited through generational curses, travels via routes of migration and through the transnational networks of the UCKG. Drawing on 2 years of ethnographic research in the Australian headquarters of the UCKG, I argue that the UCKG’s global and hyper-mobile supernatural nexus is characterized by spiritual ‘flows’ and ‘blockages’ manifested through the bodies and lives of its local congregants. In this chapter, my discussion of spiritual deliverance will show how local lived and embodied experiences are embedded within the currents and exchanges of globally mobile religions.