Exorcism and Deliverance by Kay William K.;Parry Robin;

Author:Kay, William K.;Parry, Robin;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: REL067090, REL099000
ISBN: 4573130
Publisher: Authentic Media
Published: 2009-11-04T00:00:00+00:00

Conclusion

The theoretical detour in this chapter shows different trends and schools in anthropological analysis. But that is not our primary concern. What does concern us is the question what these specific theories teach us about exorcism and deliverance.

From the ASC perspective we can deduce how deliverance of evil spirits can function as a way to correct individual deviant behaviour. Exorcism can be an aspect of a psycho-cultural arrangement. In that case it is a dimension of certain folk psychologies in which relations between human and spirit are normal or sometimes normative, although not necessarily common. The approach by Lewis shows that this folk psychology involves political relations too. What is seen as good, evil, or ambivalent is the outcome of a power struggle, a struggle about who has the right to define and describe. Lewis shows how deliverance works as a power mechanism to rule out unwanted forms of inspiration, here literally a controversial form of spirit intrusion that is dangerous to the status quo in a given society. In turn, the interpretive approach aims to understand exorcism as a cultural objectification of psychological problems, or, in the inspiring and more radical phenomenological view of Csordas, as the objectification of an experience which has its own irreducible efficacy. Lastly, modernization approaches in anthropology see deliverance foremost as a practice that signifies and accompanies the individual’s passage to modernity, understood as a ‘complete break with the past’. It is the closing off of an old world, deemed evil in the eyes of the born-again, which at the same time opens a door to the new, cleansed world of modernity’s blessings. An important insight that the modernization perspective gives us is that exorcism as a method goes beyond the healing of individual affliction and in fact includes a radical transformation of life worlds.

What is there to learn from anthropology? Perhaps the most important thing: that phenomena such as deliverance in a contemporary Christian context clearly have a family resemblance with practices and experiences of ecstatic religion in other times and places. I started this article by stating that in anthropology we cannot talk about exorcism without talking about spirit possession as well. Otherwise, we would ignore the contextual nature of practices toward the ‘world of the spirits’. By trying to see these diverse phenomena, we also begin to see the contextual and contingent nature of a certain religious experience and method, namely that beliefs about possession are specific ways of seeing and dealing with the indeterminacy of life, in particular when this involves pain and suffering. In a cultural and religious sense, consolation and coping with these difficulties can be worked out in many different ways. In the current age we see many different forms of spirit-beliefs emerging, including reinvented forms that are often called ‘neo-shamanism’. At the same time, we see a heightened interest in Christian circles in a more experiential and practical faith, often inspired by Pentecostal/charismatic praxis. More often than not this Christian variety includes explicit ideas and practices about spiritual warfare and deliverance.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.