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Of demons and Hollywood: Exorcism in American culture

1998; SAGE Publishing; Volume: 27; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1177/000842989802700407

2042-0587

Michael W. Cuneo,

Religious Studies and Spiritual Practices

As the related phenomena of exorcism and deliverance ministry vividly attest, the popular entertainment industry in the United States possesses a tremendous capacity for influencing religious beliefs and behaviours. Since the early 1970s, cinematic and popular literary treatments of demonic possession and affliction have helped create recurrent demands for exorcism within various sectors of American society. This paper examines the peculiar dynamics by which markets for exorcism have been created and sustained by the entertainment industry, and also the various ways in which these markets have been satisfied by religious entrepreneurs within the respective worlds of neo-Pentecostalism, Protestant evangelicalism and Roman Catholicism.