Freedom from Demons

This paper explains why practices aimed at “freedom from demons” play a significant, poorly understood role in Pentecostal/Charismatic Christianity, and it illuminates how U.S. practices emerged though multi-staged, cross-cultural interactions. Despite the centrality of exorcism/deliverance to the ministry of Jesus—and widespread popular belief in demons today—the subject is controversial, or ignored, in most U.S. churches. A U.S. leadership vacuum is filled by maverick, self-styled exorcists whose sensationalism exacerbates suffering. Meanwhile, deliverance is well-integrated into many Global South churches. Spiritual cosmologies can obscure or facilitate awareness of structural injustices. The same term—liberación in Spanish, liberação in Portuguese—can denote spiritual and social freedom. Historically, as U.S. missionaries observed indigenous evangelists perform exorcisms, some missionaries became convinced of the reality of demons. At first discounting the problem as irrelevant to “civilized Americans,” later encounters with similar phenomena in the United States convinced missionaries that North Americans also need deliverance.