Powerful Devices

Powerful Devices studies spiritual warfare performances as an apparatus for disestablishing structures of power and knowledge, and establishing righteousness in their stead. Drawing on performance studies’ emphasis on radicality and breaking of social norms as devices of social transformation, the book demonstrates how Christian groups with dominant cultural power but who perceive themselves as embattled wield the ideas of performance activism. Combining religious studies with ethnography, Powerful Devices explores Nigerian Pentecostals and US Evangelicals’ praxis of transnational spiritual warfare. By closely studying spiritual warfare prayers as a “device,” Powerful Devices shows how the rituals of prayer enable an apprehension of time, paradigms of self-enhancement, and the subversion of politics and authority. A critical intervention, Powerful Devices explores charismatic Christianity’s relationship to science and secular authority, technology and temporality, neoliberalism, and reactionary ideology.

By analyzing spiritual warfare prayers, author Abimbola A. Adelakun shows how the rituals of prayer enable an apprehension of time, paradigms of self-enhancement, and the subversion of political authority. A critical intervention, Powerful Devices explores charismatic Christianity’s relationship to science and secular authority, technology and temporality, neoliberalism, and reactionary ideology.

ABIMBOLA A. ADELAKUN is an assistant professor in the Department of African/African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. 
 

Preface
Introduction: Spiritual Warriors: Powerful Devices and the Devices of Power
Chapter 1: Aborting Satanic Pregnancies: Prayer as Apocalyptic Devices
Chapter 2: Rehearsing Authority: Spiritual Warriors as God’s Human Weapons
Chapter 3: The Noisome Pestilence: COVID-19 Pandemic and Conspirituality of “Fake Science”
Chapter 4: Churches Going Virtual: Empty Auditoriums and the Essential Services of Prayer
Conclusion: Jesus Has Won
Acknowledgments
Bibliography
Index

"A dazzling portrait of the contemporary Nigerian Pentecostal spiritual warfare prayer “showdown” with 'the new demons that modernity has vomited.' Adelakun shows how the rise of Pentecostalism is imbricated with neoliberalism, giving rise to new subjectivities, identities, and imaginaries ready for apocalyptic battle."