From the Gospels to the Modern Rite

In Christianity, exorcism has a direct scriptural basis: the Gospels present Jesus casting out demons as a central part of his ministry and a sign of the inbreaking of God's reign, and depict him giving his followers authority to do the same in his name. From this the early church developed a ministry of exorcism, and the office of exorcist became one of the minor orders. The Roman Catholic Church retains a formal Rite of Exorcism, revised in recent times, which may be performed only by a priest with the express permission of the bishop and only after careful investigation has excluded natural explanations, including psychiatric illness, a caution the church now stresses heavily. The Eastern Orthodox and many Protestant and Pentecostal traditions also practise deliverance from evil spirits, in forms ranging from the highly regulated to the spontaneous.

Outside Christianity, rites for expelling harmful spirits are widespread: Islam has the practice of ruqyah, the reciting of Qur'anic verses over the afflicted; Judaism preserves traditions concerning the expulsion of a dybbuk, a clinging spirit of the dead; and many other traditions maintain their own. The practice sits at a much-debated boundary with medicine and psychology, and the tension between attributing affliction to spirits and to mental or physical illness, and the real harms that can follow when the two are confused, is a recurring concern both within the religious traditions and in their encounter with modern secular understanding.