In just over a decade, the Brazilian faith healer known as John of God has become an international superstar. Oprah Winfrey, Ram Dass, Wayne Dyer, and Shirley MacLaine have all visited him, as have the wealthy and the desperately ill. Renowned for performing surgeries using rudimentary tools such as kitchen knives and scissors, without anesthetics or asepsis, John of God allegedly channels "entities," or spirits, and goes into a trance-like state in order to heal his visitors. In recent years, a transnational spiritual community has developed around John of God, comprised of the ill, those who seek spiritual growth, healers, tour guides, and, according to followers, even spirits whose powers transcend national boundaries.
Cristina Rocha offers the first ethnographic account of this global spiritual movement. Drawing on a decade of fieldwork in Brazil, the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, and New Zealand, Rocha examines the social and cultural forces that have made it possible for a healer from Brazil to become a global "guru" in the 21st century. She explores what attracts foreigners to John of God's cosmology and healing practices, how they understand their own experiences, how these radical experiences have transformed their lives, and how the healer's beliefs and healing practices are globalized and localized in different ways in the West.
Industry Reviews
"It is a joy to watch important intellectual agendas develop across a scholar's body of work. John of God continues Cristina Rocha's project of recalibrating our understanding of transnational religion by showing "that global flows do not emanate solely from the Global North". It should be required reading for scholars of new religious movements, especially those attentive to their transnational dimensions. The book's ideal setting would be graduate
anthropology and religion classes...But excellent writing and clear argumentation ensure that undergraduates will be able to follow any assigned chapters. The book is a remarkable achievement." -- Justin Michael
Doran, Middlebury College, Novo Religio
"An important account of the Brazilian spiritual healer. Bringing great impact and extreme relevance to the field of religious globalization ... The methodological discussion is another highlight of Rocha's work ... The author indeed accomplished through the chapters what she proposed in the introduction: the importance of globalization and transnationalism in the shaping of new ideas and spiritual practices in late modernity. The book revealed, through a
veryprecise methodological work, a complex cartography of religious globalization" -- Suzana Ramos Coutinho, International Journal of Latin American Religions
"This book does what all good ethnographies do: it tells gripping stories. Rocha has a gift for taking simple moments between people and showing how complex they really are."--L.L. Wynn, The Australian Journal of Anthropology
"Rocha's book is richly detailed and persuasive... [H]er ability to integrate a variety of relevant concepts and theoretical frames into her analysis is exceptional. The book is clearly written and engaging, and the analysis is original and valuable. Highly recommended for specialists, for libraries, and for students and scholars of religion interested in Latin American religions, religious healing, spirit incorporation traditions, and/or the globalization of
religions."--Steven Engler, Religion
"This book does what all good ethnographies do: it tells gripping stories. Rocha has a gift for taking simple moments between people and showing how complex they really are, informed by a range of philosophies and belief systems as well as a global political economy. But fundamentally, this book is a deeply respectful account of people's beliefs that never reduces them to a placebo effect or false consciousness, even as it shows the structures underpinning
their pilgrimages."--The Australian Journal of Anthropology
"This is one of the most insightful and engaging accounts of spiritual healing in recent years. By focusing on one of the most intriguing spiritual healers of our time, João de Deus, Rocha illuminates the enduring relevance, despite significant secularization in the West, of curing through faith. This book belongs on the top shelf of everyone interested in 21st-century religion, spirituality and globalization." --R. Andrew Chesnut, author of Devoted
to Death: Santa Muerte, the Skeleton Saint
