ABSTRACT
Based on fieldwork developed between 2013 and 2016, this article discusses the “deliverance from demons” among Catholics in the city of São Paulo, Brazil, aiming to describe that deliverance does not necessarily imply so-called ritual forms. By taking this into account, the article highlights some issues related to the recurrent analytical interweaving between deliverance and the anthropological concept of ritual. It is argued this concept has little analytical reach in the face of Charismatic Christians forms of life because, by invoking the replication of a pattern, it hazes something crucial for them: divine actions cannot be subsumed within a class of events characterized by ordered successions, sequences, or repetitions.
KEYWORDS:
Deliverance; ritual; pattern; ethnography; Christianity