One of the problems of American Christianity is that it's gotten too spiritual. That is, the concerns of the Church have gotten other-worldly, with Christians focusing their affairs on where they're headed (heaven or hell) and with the state of their individual souls upon death. (See NT Wright's critique of this mentality in his Surprised by Hope.) Such a focus tends to miss the political, social, and economic implications of the Kingdom of God and how the "Kingdom come on earth" might come into conflict with the way Babylon does business.What strikes me about this other-worldly mentality is how foreign it is to the New Testament itself. The biblical writers consistently conflate the political/economic and spiritual. That conflation is what they call "the principalities and powers". Those powers can be religious structures (especially the religious undergirdings of stable ancient and primitive societies), intellectual structures ('ologies and 'isms), moral structures (codes and customs), political structures (the tyrant, the market, the school, the courts, race and nation). The totality is overwhelmingly broad.
Take a close reading of Acts, for example. Many (all?) of the riots associated with the proclamation of the gospel had nothing to do with spiritual issues, with who was going to heaven or hell. Rather, the threat of the gospel was in the area of economics. The scandal of the gospel had to do with its effect on the marketplace. One example:
Once when we were going to the place of prayer, we were met by a slave girl who had a spirit by which she predicted the future. She earned a great deal of money for her owners by fortune-telling. This girl followed Paul and the rest of us, shouting, "These men are servants of the Most High God, who are telling you the way to be saved." She kept this up for many days. Finally Paul became so troubled that he turned around and said to the spirit, "In the name of Jesus Christ I command you to come out of her!" At that moment the spirit left her.That's right: Exorcism with an economic twist. Demon possession as economic exploitation. Evil spirits at work in the marketplace. God's Kingdom affecting the bottom line.
When the owners of the slave girl realized that their hope of making money was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace to face the authorities. They brought them before the magistrates and said, "These men are Jews, and are throwing our city into an uproar by advocating customs unlawful for us Romans to accept or practice."
The crowd joined in the attack against Paul and Silas, and the magistrates ordered them to be stripped and beaten. After they had been severely flogged, they were thrown into prison (Acts 16.16-23a, emphasis added).
Or, for another example (lest someone think I'm making all this up):
About that time there arose a great disturbance about the Way. A silversmith named Demetrius, who made silver shrines of Artemis, brought in no little business for the craftsmen. He called them together, along with the workmen in related trades, and said: "Men, you know we receive a good income from this business. And you see and hear how this fellow Paul has convinced and led astray large numbers of people here in Ephesus and in practically the whole province of Asia. He says that man-made gods are no gods at all. There is danger not only that our trade will lose its good name, but also that the temple of the great goddess Artemis will be discredited, and the goddess herself, who is worshiped throughout the province of Asia and the world, will be robbed of her divine majesty."That's right: The conflation of idolatry and economics. Worshipping false gods is good for business. When when the Kingdom comes, the line on the economic graph dips. The national gods are praised ("Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!") but the root motive for that religious devotion is economics ("You know we receive a good income from the business"). So, one biblical example of defending the god of the nation because that god provides the moral, religious and traditional warrant for the way your nation does business. (Sound familiar? Think the US's devotion to capitalism and its creation of a civil religion.)
When they heard this, they were furious and began shouting: "Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!" Soon the whole city was in an uproar. The people seized Gaius and Aristarchus, Paul's traveling companions from Macedonia, and rushed as one man into the theater. Paul wanted to appear before the crowd, but the disciples would not let him (Acts 19.23-30, emphasis added).
Economics and demon possession. Business and spiritual slavery. National idolatry and the marketplace. It all mixes together in the biblical imagination. (Not a surprise, for those whose imagination has been shaped by things like the Exodus event, or by Jesus' crucifixion.)
Exorcisms, it seems, are about economics.