African Diaspora Pentecostals Deliverance Practices and the Lived Reality in the United Kingdom
Nomatter Sande 
Issue: Vol.5 No.16 Issue Article 30 pp.3057-3066
DOI: https://doi.org/10.38159/ehass.202451630 | Published online 24th December, 2024
© 2024 The Author(s). This is an open access article under the CCBY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
In African diaspora Pentecostalism, spiritual warfare theology configures ‘spiritual deliverance’ as an integral aspect of healing, prosperity, and wellbeing. In the United Kingdom, deliverance practices, including exorcisms, are booming in immigrant communities, particularly the Pentecostal churches. African diaspora Pentecostals believe in a spirit-filled world consisting of the Holy Spirit, ancestors’ spirits, evil spirits, demons, and Satan. African diaspora deliverance practices proffer existential solutions in a spirit-filled world. This study used the desktop research approach to explore the lived tensions of African diaspora Pentecostal deliverance practices in the United Kingdom, where such practices are not generally part of the cultural and social worldview. The study findings were that African diaspora Pentecostal deliverance practices clash with scientific mental health approaches, and overtly can be abusive, especially around consent, ethical concerns and post-deliverance trauma. This article concluded that African diaspora Pentecostals’ spiritual deliverance therapy practices create tensions with the lived reality in the United Kingdom and recommended the need to negotiate questions about psychological well-being, dignity, and abuse on the part of the deliverance candidate. This study contributes to knowledge by highlighting the potential benefits and challenges of deliverance practices in a more scientifically grounded multicultural context of the United Kingdom.
Keywords: African Diaspora Pentecostalism, Migration, Spiritual Abuses, Spiritual Deliverance, Spiritual Warfare Theology, African Traditional Religion.
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Nomatter Sande (PhD) is a Research Fellow at the Research Institute for Theology and Religion (RITR) South Africa and a Research Associate at the University of Glasgow. His interests include religion, migration, transnationalism, disability studies and gender.
Sande, Nomatter. “African Diaspora Pentecostals Deliverance Practices and the Lived Reality in the United Kingdom,” E-Journal of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences 5, no.16 (2024): 3057-3066. https://doi.org/10.38159/ehass.202451630
© 2024 The Author(s). Published and Maintained by Noyam Journals. This is an open access article under the CCBY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
