Seminar: Spirit maps and warfare prayers

Spirit maps and warfare prayers: Pentecostalised evangelical engagements with Islam in the 1990s

Abstract

During the 1990s large numbers of American evangelicals and Pentecostals became fascinated with “spiritual warfare” —  the reclamation of persons, but also institutions, cities, and territories from demonic forces, through spiritual mapping, dominion-claiming prayer, and deliverance methods. 

This presentation explores how this turn to spiritual warfare was intertwined with a turn of missionary gaze to the Muslim world at the end of the Cold War, and asks to what extent spiritual warfare discourse contributed to a literal or figurative demonising of Islam in the evangelical imagination.  

About the speaker

Dr Christian Anderson is a historian and theologian of global Christianity. He specialises in American evangelicalism’s turbulent relationship with Islam in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Anderson's current research explores the influence of spiritual warfare theology on how American evangelicals imagined Islam between the Iranian revolution and the Iraq War. He has published on issues of religious conversion, Pentecostal theology and Christian-Muslim relations. His PhD thesis unpacked a divisive missionary controversy over whether Christian faith could be expressed in Islamic forms.

Christian grew up in Cambridge but has lived half of his life in Australia and the United States. Before graduate studies, he worked as a banker and an Anglican minister.

Part of the Inter-Religious Research seminar series, convened by Professor Esra Özyürek.

Practicalities

Due to works adjacent to the Faculty of Divinity, building access is currently via an uneven footpath. We therefore recommend that non-University visitors consider auditing the seminar series via Zoom rather than joining us on site in Cambridge.

Light refreshments will be available before the seminar.