American possessions : fighting demons in the contemporary United States /

American possessions : fighting demons in the contemporary United States /

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Bibliographic Details
Author / Creator:	McCloud, Sean, author.
Imprint:	New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2015] ©2015
Description:	1 online resource
Language:	English
Subject:	Demoniac possession -- United States. Spiritual warfare -- United States. Demoniac possession. Spiritual warfare. United States.
Format:	E-Resource Book
URL for this record:	http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/12540310

Hidden Bibliographic Details
ISBN:	9780190205362 0190205369 9780190205355
Notes:	Includes bibliographical references and index. Vendor-supplied metadata.
Summary:	'American Possessions' examines contemporary American religious culture through the themes of a 'consuming convert's republic', 'the haunted present', and 'the therapeutic'. The work argues that US religious culture in the twenty-first century can be characterised as immersed in and constitutive of an era of possessions - of both consumer goods and spirit entities such as ghosts and demons - and that these 'possessions' are thoroughly saturated with the reverberations of therapeutic discourse.
Other form:	Print version: McCloud, Sean. American possessions. New York : Oxford University Press, [2015] 9780190205355

Description
Summary:	Stories 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, watch movies, and also happen to fight demons.American Possessions examines Third Wave 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, McCloud argues that the movement provides an ideal case study for identifying some of the most prominent tropes within the contemporary American religious landscape. Drawing on interviews, television shows, documentaries, websites, and dozens of spiritual warfare handbooks, McCloud examines Third Wave practices such deliverance rituals (a uniquely Protestant form of exorcism), spiritual housekeeping (the removal of demons from everyday objects), and spiritual mapping (searching for the demonic in the physical landscape). Demons, he shows, are the central fact of life in the Third Wave imagination. McCloud provides the first book-length study of this influential movement, highlighting the important ways that it reflects and diverts from the larger, neo-liberal culture from which it originates.
Physical Description:	1 online resource
Bibliography:	Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN:	9780190205362 0190205369 9780190205355