Description
Book SynopsisStories of contemporary exorcisms are largely met with ridicule, or even hostility. Sean McCloud argues, however, that there are important themes to consider within these narratives of seemingly well-adjusted people--who attend school, go shopping, and watch movies--who also happen to fight demons.American Possessions examines Third Wave evangelical spiritual warfare, a late twentieth-, early twenty-first century movement of evangelicals focused on banishing demons from human bodies, material objects, land, regions, political parties, and nation states. While Third Wave beliefs may seem far removed from what many scholars view as mainstream religious practice in America, McCloud argues that the movement provides an ideal case study for identifying some of the most prescient tropes within the contemporary American religious landscape; namely the consumerist, the haunted, and the therapeutic. Drawing on interviews, television shows, documentaries, websites, and dozens of spiritual warfar
Trade ReviewIn an understudied field, McCloud's analysis is a welcomed addition due to his concise argument, fair criticisms, and well-organized work on a topic that is often dismissed. * J. Tyler Odle, Reading Religion *
Religious studies scholars will find much to appreciate in American Possessions ... American Possessions would make an excellent supplemental text for an upper division undergraduate/graduate religious studies or sociology of religion course. It is also an important scholarly contribution for examining lived religion in the American context. * Nova Religio *
Sean McCloud has long been a gifted analyst of discursive formations of 'religion' in American culture, and American Possessions is his strongest, most ambitious work yet. He engages the important but misunderstood presence of Third Wave spiritual warfare literature, subtly and creatively describing its intersections with and dependence on Gothic tropes of haunting, neoliberal conceptions of agency, and the ethos of the therapeutic. Historically nuanced, theoretically probing, and stylistically distinctive, this book will be deservedly much-discussed. * Jason Bivins, author of Religion of Fear: The Politics of Horror in Conservative Evangelicalism *
Highly recommended. * J. R. Stone, CHOICE *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ; Introduction: American Religion in an Era of Possessions ; Chapter 1: Delivering the World ; Chapter 2: Possessed Possessions, Defiled Land, and the Horrors of History ; Chapter 3: The Gothic Therapeutic ; Chapter 4: Haunting Desires: Agency in an Era of Possessions ; Conclusion ; Notes ; Bibliography ; Index
