Sean McCloud, “American Possessions: Fighting Demons in the Contemporary United States” (Oxford UP, 2015)

Exorcisms and demons. In his new book American Possessions: Fighting Demons in the Contemporary United States (Oxford University Press, 2015), Sean McCloud argues that not only have such phenomena been on the rise in the last 30 or so years, they also reveal prominent tropes within the contemporary American religious landscape. More precisely, readers are introduced to the first in-depth study of demon fighting in the so-called “spiritual warfare” of Third Wave evangelical and Pentecostal Christianity, a movement that has global ramifications. McCloud examines Third Wave practices such deliverance rituals, spiritual housekeeping, and spiritual mapping. In short, demons are a central fact of life in the imagination of millions of Christians around the globe. Sean McCloud is Associate Professor of Religion at University of North Carolina, Charlotte.