Abstract
Without a doubt, an overenthusiastic focus on rupture, as a way of coping with neoliberal trauma, has shaped the conversation about recent religious change in Africa. Yet, rupture remains at the heart of what African charismatics understand themselves to be doing. In this paper, we attempt to nuance this conversation about rupture in religious change in Africa by discussing that various ontologies of spiritual warfare are encountered, made legible, reframed, and redeployed, through direct interactions between Africans and Americans in the context of missionization. We illustrate the patterns of these reciprocal flows through two case studies drawn from our larger research projects. One study illustrates the case of Matthew Durham, a young American missionary who, when accused of sexually assaulting children at an orphanage in Kenya, adopted the spiritual counsel of a Kenyan missionary that the reason he had no memory of the attacks was because of his possession by a demon. Another study discusses the example of a Navajo pastor who applied charismatic techniques of spiritual warfare when under metaphysical threat during a mission trip to Benin, but simultaneously focused on building ontologically protective social networks with Africans. Americans and Africans involved in the flows of global Pentecostalism are equally sympathetic to charismatic renewal. However, the reality of threats presented by malicious spiritual forces are echoed and amplified through concrete missionary networks that belie traditional North–South flows.
Highlights
The threat of “Voodoo Spirits” is often deployed within American popular culture as a stereotype of African religions, reflecting both a deep misunderstanding of actual African religious worlds and a chasm of disconnection between African and Judeo-Christian ontologies that has allowed these stereotypes to spiral out of control
Some of the literature on spiritual warfare has focused on the way in which spiritual warfare has been localized by Pentecostal/charismatic converts, arguing that even religious change as dramatic as that represented by Pentecostal/charismatic Christianity is fundamentally localized in practice (Amster 2009; Chua 2012)
Begay’s focus on reciprocal networks among missionaries promoted the continuous circulation and adaptation of ontologies about spiritual warfare and the shape it takes in particular locales
Summary
The threat of “Voodoo Spirits” is often deployed within American popular culture as a stereotype of African religions, reflecting both a deep misunderstanding of actual African religious worlds and a chasm of disconnection between African and Judeo-Christian ontologies that has allowed these stereotypes to spiral out of control. Through these two case studies—the Durham case and the case of a Navajo missionary pastor traveling in Benin—we explore several concrete instances of contact. This approach allows us to see how mutually constitutive and reinforcing the local ontologies of spiritual warfare are, and to highlight the ways in which they are made legible in the context of global flows and networks This approach sidesteps the debate about rupture and continuity in the Pentecostal/charismatic literature, within which the prominence of demons and other malicious non-human actors is used by both sides: both as evidence of Christianity’s localization and as evidence of Christianity’s assimilative properties—depending on the theoretical preference of the author. We argue that this flow of spiritual warfare ideas and practice across linked networks has the potential to seriously challenge our long-held assumptions about the Christian mission, from North to South or from core to periphery
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