Powerful Devices: Prayer and the Political Praxis of Spiritual Warfare

by Abimbola Adunni Adelakun

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.

210 pages, Paperback

Published October 14, 2022

Reviews

[Starla Gooch · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hard to rate this book. Many insights about support for Trump among African Pentecostals were very interesting, but the writing style was so dang cumbersome that this was one of the least enjoyable books I’ve read over the past year. Be sure to have a dictionary nearby if you choose to partake in this journey.