This open access book presents fresh ethnographic work from the regions of Africa and Melanesia—where the popularity of charismatic Christianity can be linked to a revival and transformation of witchcraft.

1. Introduction: Pentecostal Witchcraft: Governance and Universalism in Comparison.-  2. German Pentecostal Witches and Communists: The Violence of Purity and Sameness.-  3. Becoming Witches: Sight, Sin, and Sociality in the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea.- 4. The Ndoki Index: Sorcery, Economy and Invisible Operations in the Angolan Urban Sphere.-  5. Branhamist Kindoki: Ethnographic Notes on Connectivity, Technology and Urban Witchcraft in Contemporary Kinshasa.-  6. Jesus Lives in Me: Pentecostal Conversions, Witchcraft Confessions, and Gendered Power in the Trobriand Islands.- 7. The Power of a Severed Arm: Life, Witchcraft, and Christianity in Kilimanjaro.- 8. Demons, Devils and Witches in Pentecostal Port Vila: On Changing Cosmologies of Evil in Melanesia.- 9. Turning the Tide: Visionary Children and Spiritual War on a Vanuatu Island.- 10. Learning to Believe in Papua New Guinea.- 11. Witchcraft Simplex: Experiences of Globalized Pentecostalism in Central and Northwestern Tanzania.

This open access book presents fresh ethnographic work from the regions of Africa and Melanesia—where the popularity of charismatic Christianity can be linked to a revival and transformation of witchcraft. The volume demonstrates how the Holy Spirit has become an adversary to the reconfirmed presence of witches, demons, and sorcerers as manifestations of evil. We learn how this is articulated in spiritual warfare, in crusades, and in healing or witch-killing raids. The contributors highlight what happens to phenomena that people address as locally specific witchcraft or sorcery when re-molded within the universalist Pentecostal demonology, vocabulary, and confrontational methodology. 

“Ingeniously entangling Christian demonology and local beliefs, Pentecostalism operates as a major universalizing force that assumes control over life and death, good and evil. This is the starting point of this well composed, mind-boggling volume. It traces the Pentecostalization of witchcraft in various locations in Africa and Melanesia through ten conceptually informed and grounded ethnographies. Framed by an excellent introduction and two concluding afterwords, this volume is a major contribution to the  understanding of the global appeal of the Holy Spirit and spiritual warfare in our time. Far from taking recourse to universal theoretical models and essentializing regional modes of comparison, this amazing intellectual project calls our attention to the operation of universalizing religious regimes in action.” (Birgit Meyer, Professor of Religious Studies, Utrecht University, Netherlands)

Juxtaposes case studies from Melanesia and Africa in order to better compare, contrast, and illuminate the effects of and engagements with Pentecostalism Focuses on chief themes of Pentecostalism and witchcraft while also bringing in discussions of globalization, visibility, movements of capital, and embodiment Presents rich and detailed case studies while also offering up wide-ranging theoretical analyses and critiques of established thinking/concepts Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras

Open Access This book is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this book are included in the book's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the book's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.