Pentecostalism and witchcraft [electronic resource] : spiritual warfare in Africa and Melanesia / Edited by Knut Mikjel Rio, Michelle MacCarthy, Ruy Llera Blanes.

Includes index.

Introduction to Pentecostal witchcraft and spiritual politics in Africa and Melanesia / Knut Rio, Michelle Maccarthy and Ruy Blanes -- German Pentecostal witches and communists : the violence of purity and sameness / Bjorn Enge Bertelsen -- Becoming witches : sight, sin, and social change in the eastern highlands of Papua New Guinea / Thomas Strong -- The Ndoki index : sorcery, economy, and invisible operations in the Angolan urban sphere / Ruy Blanes -- Branhamist kindoki : ethnographic notes on connectivity, technology, and urban witchcraft in contemporary Kinshasa / Katrien Pype -- Jesus lives in me : Pentecostal conversions, witchcraft confessions, and gendered power in the Trobriand Islands / Michelle Maccarthy -- The power of a severed arm : life, witchcraft, and Christianity in Kilimanjaro / Knut Christian Myhre -- Demons, devils, and witches in Pentecostal Port Vila : on changing cosmologies of evil in Melanesia / Annelin Eriksen and Knut Rio -- Spiritual war : revival, child prophesies, and a battle over sorcery in Vanuatu / Tom Bratrud -- Learning to believe in Papua New Guinea / Barbara Andersen -- Witchcraft simplex : experiences of globalized Pentecostalism in central and northwestern Tanzania / Koen Stroeken -- Afterword : academics, Pentecostals, and witches : the struggle for clarity and the power of the murky / Peter Geschiere -- Afterword : from witchcraft to the Pentecostal-witchcraft nexus / Alena Biersack.

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.