aar review essay-tracking global evangelical christianity

8/3/2019 AAR Review Essay-Tracking Global Evangelical Christianity

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REVIEW ESSAY

Tracking Global

Evangelical ChristianityManuel A. Vasquez

Evangelicals andPolitics in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. By Paul FrestonCambridge University Press, 2001. 344 pages. $59.95.

Between Babel andPentecost: Transnational Pentecostalism in Africa andLatin America. Edited by Andr Corten and Ruth Marshall-Fratani. Indiana University Press, 2001. 311 pages. $22.95.

The Globalisation ofCharismatic Christianity: Spreading the Gospel of Prosperity. By Simon Coleman. Cambridge University Press, 2000. 264 pages.$59.95.

Pentecostalism andthe Future ofChristian Churches: Promises, LimitationsChallenges. By Richard Shaull and Waldo Csar. William B. Eerdmans,2000. 236 pages. $25.00.

EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANS have always taken very seriously the

Great CommissionJesus' injunction to "go therefore and make disciples

of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Sonand of the Holy Spirit" (Mt. 28:19-20). At a time of widespread global-

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158 Journal ofthe American Academy of Religion

ization and the crisis of secular modernity, it is not surprising that evangelical Christianity is experiencing rapid growth worldwide, particularlyin the so-called Third World. At its most powerful, evangelical Christianity

links radical personal renewal with a universal eschatological message andoperates simultaneously at the local and global level through dense transnational networks of churches and the strategic use ofmass media. Evangelical Christianity, thus, is not merely an example of how religious practicesand institutions adapt creatively to globalization but rather is, in fact, a keyconduit for globalizing processes usually associated with modernity.

The four books reviewed here grapple with the polysemous characterof contemporary evangelical Christianity. The books reflect a shift in

Christianity's center of gravity from North to South, as transnationalchurches like the Brazilian neo-Pentecostal Igreja Universal do Reino deDeus, with temples in England, Portugal, the United States, Mozambique,and South Africa, become the new key players. Except for Richard Shaull,the books' authors and editors are not based in the United States (andShaull himself has spent much of his career in Latin America). This facthas important scholarly consequences. It makes it possible to move beyond the earlier emphasis on the U.S. role in spreading evangelical Christianity as part of a dominion theology or a global American culture(Brouwer, Gifford, and Rose; Diamond; Stoll;). Recent studies attendmore to the variegated ways in which evangelical Christianity is localizedand to the complex relations that these local embodiments sustain withglobal processes.

Evangelical Christianity's multifarious expressions are best representedin Paul Freston's Evangelicals andPolitics in Asia, Africa, and Latin Americaa meticulously researched and well-written survey covering twenty-sevencountries, chosen on the basis of variables such as the size of the evan

gelical population and the impact of evangelicals in national politics.Masterfully handling an impressive assortment of sources, ranging fromdirect observation and interviews with political and religious leaders toextensive bibliographic research, Freston has written an indispensable andtimely book. Brazil, with the second-largest evangelical population in theworld, receives an extended and detailed chapter. Freston also devoteschapters to Korea, where a "pentecostalized Presbyterianism" (62) hasbecome a central player in mainstream politics, and Zambia, which former

president Frederick Chiluba named as "a Christian Nation that will seekto be governed by the righteous principles of the word of God" (158).Th i l d h t G t l t t li i ilit di


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Vasquez: Tracking Global Evangelical Christianity 159

substantial influenceRos Montt belonged to Church of the Word (a.k.a.El Verbo), a mission of the California-based Gospel OutreachProtestants were divided. The book also includes helpful regional introductionsand a thoughtful conclusion identifying general patterns and key issuesin the study of evangelical politics in the Third World.

One of the main benefits of Freston's cross-continental approach isthe debunking of reductive and essentialist readings of evangelical Christianity. By showing how global evangelicalism is always subject to whathe calls "local subversion" (286)a process of grassroots indigenizationthat results in the formation of hybrid doctrines, practices, and forms oforganizationFreston undermines conspiracy theories, which see the

spread of evangelical Christianity as simply part and parcel of Americanimperialism in the Third World. He writes that although "the Americanright does indeed try to use evangelical religion (and other religions) inits own interests . . . such activity cannot be assumed a priori to accountfor a great deal of what Third World actors actually do. The autonomy ofThird World evangelicalism, or at least the autonomous appropriationof messages, should be assumed unless proved otherwise, and not viceversa" (284). By the same token, Freston cautions us not to equate the

discourses and practices of church leaders with the religious and politicalbehavior of rank-and-file evangelicals. This is particularly true given thetradition's tendency for decentralization and schism.

In highlighting the worldwide heterogeneity of evangelical Christianity, Freston also rightly warns against privileging theology too much. Alltoo often the assumption is made that all evangelicals share a deeply conservative and dualistic worldview that translates directly into either a totally apolitical otherworldliness or a quest for a postmillenarian Christiandominion. Others hypothesize on the basis of sweeping macrohistoricalcomparisons that, in the long-term, evangelical Christianity will producein the Third World the same effects it has in Europe and North America,increasing religious and political pluralism and encouraging voluntarism,egalitarianism, and civic participation. Sociologist Peter Berger exemplifies this argument when he writes that evangelical Protestantism "promotes what Max Weber called the 'Protestant ethic'a morality singularlyappropriate for people seeking to advance in the nascent stage of moderncapitalism" (8). The spirit of this religion, Berger continues, expresses

"unmistakably Anglo-Saxon traits, especially in its powerful combinationof individualistic self-expression, egalitarianism (especially between men


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Without discounting these potential outcomes, Freston calls for moreempirical research: "We need to know what is actually happening beforewe jump to conclusions about what it all means. Before anything else, weneed to become immersed in the specificities of the religious and political fields, and the interactions between them, in each national context"(281). For Freston,

Evangelical organisation, religious location and socio-political locationare more often important for understanding its politics than is evangelical theology. Theology is important, but as one factor amongst manywhich may affect evangelical politics in any given context. A study ofpolitical behaviour must start out from realism about the actual situa

tion of the churches and the political possibilities and dangers inherentin each context. Size, social and ethnic composition, position relative toother confessions, internal church structures and conflicts, the sociological "type" (church, sect, denomination) of each group, the degree oflegitimacy in relation to national myths, the presence or absence (andnature) of international connectionsall these constrain political possibility and affect behaviour. Talk of "evangelical politics" globally mustnever lose sight of the fact that local church reality has been very determinant in actual performance. (282)

The question arises, then, If evangelical Christianity is so diverse, socontext-sensitive, can we make any metalocal claims about it? Whatenables Freston's own comparative approach? If it is important not toessentialize evangelical Christianity, it is also crucial to avoid falling intoan "extreme anthropological relativism" (Freston: 287). In order to avoidthese twin dangers, Freston suggests that we develop a "meso-approach"to evangelical Christianity, focusing on churches as dynamically evolvinginstitutions, negotiating their entry and operation vis--vis other religious

and secular institutions in particular historical settings. This approachreveals that the closer evangelical Christians get to power, the more likelyit is that they will adopt a global pan-Protestant identity, whose gospel ofhealth and wealth bears a strong elective affinity to triumphalistic neoliberal capitalism.

If the stress in Freston's work falls on national specificities, AndrCorten and Ruth Marshall-Fratani's edited volume entitled Between BabelandPentecost: Transnational Pentecostalism in Africa and Latin America

seeks to elucidate the central characteristics of the Pentecostal imaginaire(1). The contributors to this edited volume recognize the danger of maki i li i li i b P li hi h i h


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though, they believe that this conceptual construct points to a global setof discourses and practices that share a close family resemblance, a constellation of tropes and narratives that constitute coherent notions of time,space, and agency that can be articulated with local variations. Freston isright to emphasize the fact that evangelical Christianity, and Pentecostalism in particular, is not primarily about building orthodox theology inthe sense of a codified, systematic canon. Pentecostalism is fundamentally a lived religion, whose ethos and cosmos are embodied in the renewedbody of the believer and inscribed in the spaces of everyday life as territory reclaimed for the glory of God. The contributors to Between Babel andPentecost, however, make a good case that theology does matter in under

standing the diverse ways in which Pentecostalism responds to the localchanges generated by globalization. For all the nuances of his approach,Freston tends to view evangelical politics in instrumental terms, concluding that "on the whole, rather than being ideological, much evangelicalpolitics has shown a calculated caution based on the desire to maximisebenefits" (294). In contrast, focusing on some of the same countries in LatinAmerica and Africa, contributors to Corten and Marshall-Fratani's volumeargue that the Pentecostal imaginaire plays a determining role in the forg

ing of collective and individual identities in an increasingly deterritorializedworld with permeable national borders.The best chapters in Between Babel andPentecostshow the links be

tween Pentecostal narratives and the widespread social dislocation experienced by poor rural migrants in large cities in the Third World and bydiasporic communities in European cities. For instance, Brazilian sociologist Waldo Csar finds in Pentecostalism a "language which blendswhat is immanent in the world with the transcendental; the 'experienceof the sacred' reveals itself in concrete situation in everyday life.... Thisintermingling of the transcendental and the quotidian in Pentecostalismhas the immediate effect of giving plausibility to the hostile world in whichthe poor live" (in Corten and Marshall-Fratani: 27). Csar attributes Pente-costalism's emphasis on language and oral performance to a narrativehorizon that originated in the dispersion of languages at Babel and culminates with the melding together of multiple human languages undersacred speech (glossolalia) in Pentecost. As Csar puts it: "Whereas thetower of Babel created confusion and the dispersion of nations, Pente

cost announces the possibility ofa new unity among people. This unity,which transcends linguistic differences and gives communal value to the


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gave rise to the early Christian community, their horizons are unavoidably transnational and global. However, this cosmopolitan regard is cutdown to size, manifested most poignantly in the charismata, the gifts ofthe Holy Spirit, which link the divine with the body and daily life, exorcizing the demons of alcoholism, drug addiction, prostitution, and domestic violence.

In his illuminating chapter on the success of Pentecostalism in the faceof globalization, anthropologist Andr Droogers also finds that there is"a certain 'narrative compulsion' felt by Pentecostals" (in Corten andMarshall-Fratani: 46), as they are compelled to share with others theirtestimonies of conversion. These testimonies evince "Pentecostalism's

capacity for the paradoxical combination of opposite characteristics....There is an eschatological, even apocalyptic, tendency in Pentecostalism.Pentecostals live in expectation of the imminent coming of the Kingdomof God on earth. They also hold a long-term view of human history, although there is no question of postponing the treatment of affliction inthe anticipation of that moment" (Droogers, in Corten and Marshall-Fratani: 48). Other paradoxes include the "simultaneous presence of spontaneity and control, or of individual expression and social conformity"(Droogers, in Corten and Marshall-Fratani: 48), and the juxtapositionof the antistructural egalitarianism of the Holy Spirit and hierarchalpatriarchalism. In addition, Pentecostals have a tensile relation vis--visthe world, which they must at turns avoid and at turns save. In a world inwhich rapid flows of people, goods, capital, and ideas disrupt our taken-for-granted cognitive maps, these paradoxes give Pentecostalism greatflexibility, allowing it to stress different aspects of its imaginaire in responseto local conditions. Whether we are talking about reconstructing the selfbesieged by a chaotic world, or providing a "place where the believer can

feel 'at home,' meet fellow believers, and make converts" (Droogers, inCorten and Marshall-Fratani: 54), or embedding the believer in transnational communities of the elect and in the universal salvific project ofthe Kingdom of God, there are "internal religious characteristics in Pentecostalism" (Droogers, in Corten and Marshall-Fratani: 59) that make itresonate in a globalized world.

Drawing from fieldwork in Nigeria, Marshall-Fratani demonstrateshow Pentecostalism's internal religious characteristics are disseminated

globally through media technology. Here she draws from the work ofanthropologist Arjun Appadurai. According to Appadurai, one of the

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to a growing number of private and public interests throughout the world,and to the images of the world created by these media" (35). These mediaprovide "large and complex repertoires of images . . . narrative-basedaccounts of strips of reality [that] offer to those who experience and transform them... a series of elements (such as characters, plots, textual forms)out of which scripts can be formed of imagined lives" (Appadurai: 35).Marshall-Fratani argues that Pentecostalism is a key player in these media-scapes, providing recentering and reordering scripts to Africans dislocatedby globalization. She writes that "it is not so much the individualism ofPentecostal conversion which leads to the creation of modern subjects,but the ways in which its projection on a global scale of images, discourses

and ideas about renewal, change and salvation opens up possibilities forlocal actors to incorporate these into their everyday lives" (in Corten andMarshall-Fratani: 89). In this context, churches become sites where theuniversal message of deliverance and healing is staged locally, showplaceswhere global scripts are performed, reenacted, and, in the process, amendedso that they can be once again circulated through mediascapes for other localchurches to use.

Along the same lines, in a provocative essay on Pentecostalism in Costa

Rica, Jean-Pierre Bastan argues that "by managing at the same time to rootthemselves in 'archaic' traditional religiosity through the practice of healingsand exorcisms, and to use hypermodern musical and media techniques totheir own profit, Pentecostal movements have become a hybrid form ofreligiosity" (in Corten and Marshall-Fratani: 178-179). Bastan uses cultural theorist Nstor Garca Canclini's reading ofhybridity: the juxtaposition of hitherto distinctive codes, times, and spaces, deterritorialized byaccelerating global flows. Because ofits hybrid characterits high degreeof improvisation,flexibility,and adaptabilityPentecostalism is extremelycompetitive in increasingly transnational religious markets. Because in theAmericas this transnationalism occurs in the context of growing religiouspluralism, Bastan contends, it "is informed by a market logic which, bycreating a competitive environment, forces religious agents and organizations to innovate unceasingly, in order to stimulate demand. The resort tothe most modern means of communication has become a privileged instrument to achieve this" (in Corten and Marshall-Fratani: 179).

All this demonstrates that Pentecostalism cannot be categorized as an

antimodern, fundamentalist movement. As Dutch anthropologist Rijk vanDijk writes in an excellent chapter on Ghanaian Pentecostals, Pentecostal


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the bondage of sin, including tradition and his or her past. In particular,by being born again, the Pentecostal repudiates local kinship relations andthe moral economythe ancestral cursesthat sustains them. As vanDijk puts it: "Deliverance appears to emphasise a form of individualitywhereby, on the level of both the immediate past and the longue dure,ties are being cut. There is a constant sealing off from those influences,circles and family ties that would make the individual prone to evil" (inCorten and Marshall-Fratani: 226). Often this deliverance takes place at"international breakings" (van Dijk, in Corten and Marshall-Fratani: 227),prayer in camps at which people are brought to Ghana from abroad. Especially for young men with few possibilities for socioeconomic mobility,

the transnational linkages built by churches in Ghana and among theGhanaian diaspora provide an invaluable resource. Van Dijk notes:"Prayer camps introduce the person to transnational and transculturalrelations as an emergent stranger; as somebody detached from the bondswith the family, as protected from witchcraft and envy emanating fromthat circle of relatives and therefore unconstrained in the attempts to'make it to the West,' to 'get papers' and to become prosperous" (in Cortenand Marshall-Fratani: 228).

This affirmation of individuality against corporatism seems prima facieto fit neatly into the narrative of modernization and secularization, confirming Berger's Weberian hypothesis that as part of cultural globalization, evangelical Protestantism contributes to

individuation: all sectors of the emerging global culture enhance the independence of the individual over against tradition and collectivity. For peoplecaught in the early stages ofthe modernization process, there is above all anew sense ofopen possibilities and an aspiration for greater freedomthe

sense of burden usually comes later. Thus the emerging global culture isattractive to all those who value the individuation they have already experienced and aspire to an even greater realization of it. (9)

However, in another paradox, van Dijk shows that in diasporic Pentecostalism the process of "subjectivation," to use Foucault, is not unidirectional. For when the Ghanaian immigrant finally makes it to the West,there is reaffirmation of corporatism and social conformity, as "churchmembers are expected to define their identities in terms of what is shared

by the leader" (van Dijk, in Corten and Marshall-Fratani: 229). AmongGhanaians in the Netherlands, van Dijk notices an "attachment to the


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of the corridor, the spiritual coverage provided by the Pentecostal leadersin the diaspora refers back to the location where the desire for transnationaltravel actually originated" (van Dijk, in Corten and Marshall-Fratani: 231).Thus, individuality is accompanied by "dividuality" (van Dijk, in Cortenand Marshall-Fratani: 229) and the break from tradition and local ties by arecovery of memory and collective national identity abroad. This, in turn,leads to the creation of particularistic collective identities that challenge thesupposedly cosmopolitan pluralism of modern European societies.

As a group, the chapters in Between Babel andPentecostadd to thecomplex picture of evangelical Christianity already sketched by Freston,but they do so by focusing on the internal logic and historical evolution

of this religious tradition. In this evolution Corten and Marshall-Fratanidetect a momentous shift from '"speaking in tongues' and the retreat from'the world' which characterized early Pentecostalism" toward a new wavein post-1980s Pentecostalism that emphasizes

the miracles of prosperity and "divine healing" (understood in the broadest sense of alleviating the causes of suffering, be they physical, financial,spiritual or social) and "global spiritual warfare." It is with this shift thatwe see the enormous growth of transnational networks, the privileging

of transnational connections and experiences in the operation and symbolism of local organisations, and the embracing by converts of the representation of a transnational Pentecostal community. (6)

In The Globalisation ofCharismatic Christianity anthropologist SimonColeman, of the University of Durham, offers a full-fledged analysis ofthe gospel of health and wealth, focusing on the case of Word of Life (LivetsOrd), a transnational charismatic Christian group with headquarters inUppsala, Sweden. Word of Life is part of what is known as the Faith Movement, which had its immediate origins in the United States in the teachings of Oral Roberts, Gordon Lindsay, T. L. Osborn, and others, who sawrevival and conversion as inextricably tied to healing, well-being, and financial prosperity. These teachings were refined by Kenneth Hagin, aformer Baptist and Assemblies of God minister from Texas. Hagin set upin the late 1960s a media-sawy ministry in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which included a Bible training center that attracted would-be pastors throughout the United States and the world. Ulf Ekman, the founder of Word of

Life, studied at Hagin's center in the early 1980s. From its foundation in1983, Word of Life has grown rapidly, boasting the largest church in Eu

( i h i f l ) d h l ibl h l h


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ous languages. Word ofLife conducts missionary activities throughoutEurope and has subsidiary ministries in Moscow, Tirana (Albania), andBrno (the Czech Republic).

By focusing on an independent transnational ministry like Word ofLife, Coleman demonstrates that when tracing the connections betweenevangelical Christianity and globalization, scholars need to go beyondethnographic analyses of particular congregations and institutional studiesof national religious dynamics. These two approaches presuppose theexistence ofterritorialized and self-contained social and cultural units,unaffected by the deterritorializing forces of globalization. Instead, Coleman proposes to examine "the workings of a globally dispersed charis

matic network from the viewpoint of one its more notable points. Withinthe network as a whole, there exists an internal market involving the production and consumption ofparticular goods as well as the promotionof highly mobile preachers who circulate between numerous, widely distributed workshops and conferences" (13).

On the surface, Word ofLife appears as a straightforward transplantation ofa U.S. variety of conservative and pro-capitalist evangelical Christianity to the godless, secular, and socialist Swedish society. This, in fact,

has been the reading of the local media, politicians, and intelligentsia.However, Coleman shows that Word ofLife appropriates a strong "discourse of spiritualized nationalism whereby entrepreneurial, conservativeProtestant values are presented as essentially Swedish" (16). In imagining Sweden as a Christian nation, Word ofLife appeals to a strong doctrine ofmanifest destiny, in which Sweden becomes a country especiallyblessed by God and charged with the Great Commission. The irony is that,in contrast to the case in the United States, this discourse ofspiritualizednationalism does not resonate with mainstream constructions of Swedish

identity. Thus, Word of Life simultaneously terrritorializes itself, grounding its mission in a contested idea ofnation, and deterritorializes itself,plugging into a global project ofevangelization that transcends nationalborders. Within this framework, the nation retains some importance as a"conveniently bounded moral community" but only as part ofa "widersystem of transnational practices" (Coleman: 225). In other words, whilenational peculiarities shape Word of Life, "any national territory is only asmall part of an infinitely wider whole" (Coleman: 229). This is why, in

distinction to Freston and Corten and Marshall-Fratani, Coleman argues,particularly in the case ofthe gospel ofhealth and wealth, for a focus on" l b l l d f f ith t d f l di t l d k


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flows as somehow 'additions' to essentially Swedish, or North American,or Nigerian, organisations" (236).

As we have seen above, Between Babel andPentecostintroduces theuseful notion of imaginaire to understand what Droogers calls the "diversity in unity and the unity in diversity" (in Corten and Marshall-Fratani:43) that constitutes Pentecostalism. In The Globalisation ofCharismaticChristianity, Coleman deepens this analysis considerably by borrowingPierre Bourdieu's notion of habitus: a system of durable embodied dispositions that generates practices and categories of perception/cognitionadjusted to the person's social location. According to Coleman, Word ofLife cultivates and reinforces a globalizing charismatic habitus. Coleman

writes: "Charismatics construct an attitude towards the global circumstance that is composed of specific aesthetic and embodied elements aswell as conscious thought. Much of this attitude is deliberately orchestrated, especially by leading preachers, but much of it emerges more implicitly out of forms of worship and evangelization" (51). Word of Lifeinculcates its global habitus through what Coleman calls "narrative emplacement," "dramatisation," "internalisation," and "externalisation"(118).

Narrative emplacement refers to the construction of evangelical identity by placing oneself within a story of sin and redemption that is part ofGod's plan. Through narrative emplacement the believer comes to see hisor her life history as intersecting with Christian eschatology, which is"translocal and transhistorical" (Coleman: 124). Dramatization, in turn,is the ritual enactment of biblical texts: "The Bible is not only Scripture,but equivalent to the script of a play, with roles adopted by those who takeits words to heart" (Coleman: 126). Thus, the Bible becomes a timeless,universal repository of "stories that can be applied directly and indexicallyto the self, encouraging the believer to take a particular form of action,remain firm in the faith, discover the reason for a particular event and soon" (Coleman: 126). Internalization takes this dynamic a step beyond: Thetext is not just performed by the believer; it becomes embodied in thebeliever, who is now the arena where the cosmic struggle between Godand Satan takes place. The body becomes a hermeneutic artifact, the outersign of either sinfulness and brokenness or redemption. As Coleman putsit, "The body in this charismatic culture indicates and exemplifies divine

favour [;] illnessa state of bodily imperfectionbecomes a problem offaith as well as a physical condition" (130). This accounts for the image


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zation, "the deployment of language as a performative force in order tochange physical, social and material circumstances" (Coleman: 118). Wordof Life discourses and practices "materialise the sacred not only within them

selves . . . but also in their immediate environments" (Coleman: 152), particularly in the lived spaces the group builds. The strong, muscular Jesusnot only is a model for healthy and prosperous believers but also is a tropefor Word of Life's successful and rapidly expanding ministry, which ismaterialized in the large well-equipped temples. For Word of Life, "thespatial order of the construction echoes the ideal charismatic body not onlyin its strength and capacity for further development, but also in its attemptsto remove all barriers to seeing, hearing, 'receiving' and broadcasting a single

Truth with utmost clarity" (Coleman: 157).The aesthetic of the bodybuilder illustrates most clearly Coleman's

claim that Word of Life inculcates a global habitus. The body of the individual believer and the congregation as Jesus' body are turned toward theoutside, becoming a spectacle. They are given an "expansive agency" thatstands for a ministry capable of overcoming any obstacle (Coleman: 187-207). The world becomes the stage where the believer and the group flextheir muscles through the use of global media. Proselytizing, thus, proceeds by equating faith and conversion with the commodities of health,power, youth, progress, and wealth. In Coleman's own words:

The Word is projected into the world through speech and writing, but alsothrough less obviously discursive means. Experiencing the selfas both areceptacle for and a transmitter ofgeneric power; perceiving congruencesbetween an aesthetic of spiritual self-development and the constant growthinherent in divinely ordained language and money; constructing socialaction not only as "dramatised" exemplification of biblical precedent, butalso as a resource to be commodified, replicated and reconsumed in elec

tronic media; all these elements of evangelical practice contribute toglobalising processes that can only be understood through an appreciationof the ritual forms and ideological assumptions of charismatic Christianity. (233)

As compelling as the case of the Word of Life is, we should be cautious not to assume that it represents the whole, or even the most dynamicsectors, of global evangelical Christianity. At the risk of stating the obvious, empowerment has vastly different connotations among the urban

poor in Brazil than among affluent Swedes. The late Richard Shaull, a professor emeritus of ecumenics at Princeton Theological Seminary, andW ld C l t ib t t B t B b l dP t t d i thi


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concerted effort to understand from within the reasons why poor people(in this case Brazilians) are attracted to Pentecostal churches like the IgrejaUniversal do Reino de Deus, with its widespread practices of exorcism andof linking tithing with divine cures. The results are revelatory. Indeed, oneof the book's main virtues is that we get to hear the voices of ordinarypeople recounting their dramatic histories of conversion.

Although Shaull and Csar do not expressly state it, their reading ofthe rapid growth of Pentecostalism challenges the "social pathologymodel," which is still favored by many social scientists. For instance, anthropologists Jean Comaroff, who has written insightful studies aboutChristianity and social change in Africa with John Comaroff, argues that

there is a connection between the spirit of neoliberal capitalism, withits simultaneous commodification of the life world and its "alchemictechniques [that] defy reason in promising unnaturally large profitsto yield wealth without production, value without effort" (23), and theproliferation of "occult economies" (19). As people face an increasinglybaffling world, marked by "the sense of impossibility, even despair, thatcomes from being left out of the promise of prosperity, from having tolook in on the global economy of desire from its immiserated exteri

ors" (Comaroff: 25), they search for compensators, for the vicariousgratification offered by the mass media and neo-Pentecostal movements.Thus, neo-Pentecostal churches function as contemporary cargo cultsand chiliastic movements, which fulfill a neoliberal urge for a "privatized millennium, a personalized rather than a communal sense ofrebirth; in this, the messianic meets the magical" (Comaroff: 24). Moreover, people attribute the breakdown of the community and family produced by the transition of capitalism from a centralized Fordist regimeto decentered, flexible production to "arcane forces" beyond their control. Thus the current obsession with witchcraft and with demons andevil spirits that must be cast out. This line of analysis is, of course, notnew; it has its roots in Marx's notion of the fetishism of commodities.Although analyses of this kind undoubtedly shed light on elective affinities between the evangelical Christian ethos and the spirit of latecapitalism, they carry a strong reductionist bias. Even those who rely oneconomistic language (with notions like religious monopolies and commodities) to study religion, such as rational choice theorists, refrain from

reducing the dynamics of religious markets to the logics of capitalism.Shaull and Csar are keenly aware of the damage wrought by neoliberal


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Shaull writes in his section ofPentecostalism and the Future of ChristianChurches that the poor are consumed by a

preoccupation with making it through each day.... At the same time,the most basic forms of life in the communitythe family, local neighborhoods, social, economic, and political structuresare becoming un-glued, leaving masses of poor people in both rural and peripheral urbanareas without stable work, medical care, or opportunities for education,in a situation of almost total abandonment, without any supportive extended family and community. (116)

Under these conditions, poor Brazilians seek to reconstruct human life

at the most basic level. They "are seeking for power to heal sick mindsand bodies, to reorganize broken lives, to overcome addition to alcoholor drugs, to give them a sense of their own identity and worth, and to helpthem overcome feelings of impotence, experience a taste of joy, and lookto the future with hope" (Shaull and Csar: 116).

In contrast to Comaroff, however, Shaull and Csar argue that conversions to Pentecostalism are not primarily due to false consciousness.It is not a case of religion as "opiate of the masses." While aware ofsocio

economic determinants, Shaull and Csar stress poor people's creativeagency, seeing in Pentecostalism a positive vehicle through which poorBrazilians are rebuilding self, family, and community. In Cesar's words,"Converts to Pentecostalism may have found a way of overcoming the day-to-day hazards of the poor," a way to carve out "new spaces oflife" in themidst of anomie and suffering (65-78). The penetration of the Holy Spiritin the life of the believer and the intense personal relation with Jesus, whoexperienced the starkest forms of human suffering and yet triumphed,helps the Pentecostal to transmute the spirit-numbing routines of every

day life. In Pentecostalism, religion is an "instrument of the survival-transcendence relation" (Shaull and Csar: 34), where the act of survival andaffirmation of the integrity of self and family in the midst of marginalitybecomes a miracle itself.

Lest all of this sound too abstract and naive, Shaull and Csar showthrough the vivid personal testimonies of the believers how estrangedyoung men lost in a world of drugs and violence have experienced liberation through the asceticism and intimacy offered by Pentecostalism and

how women gain voice and curb the destructive excesses of machismothrough Pentecostal churches. In these cases, Pentecostalism offers ani i i f f i li b il f h b


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can be the primary agents of such reconstruction, whether or not theyperceive their struggle in this way" (Shaull and Csar: 230). Pentecostalismis contributing to the

creation ofa more human and more just society [in] the formation ofnew types of extended families, initiatives in the informal economy onthe part of individuals and groups that could point the way to alternatives to the present economic system, initiatives of young gang leaderstoward reconciliation and toward the creation ofworkfor their members, the formation of groups of Evangelicals in the worst slums and inprisons in which their members help each other to survive in the midstof violence and work to diminish it. (Shaull and Csar: 230)

Shaull and Cesar's arguments are important. In the context of radical dislocations generated by globalization, particularly in its economicform, and of precarious and disorderly democratic transitions in LatinAmerica, Asia, and Africa, evangelical Christianity is indeed a valuableindigenous resource to reweave the torn social fabric, building moral,civil agents and bonds of solidarity and reciprocity (Peterson, Vasquez,and Williams). Shaull and Csar, however, go further: Pentecostalism

does not just carry the foundations of an alternative social order, but italso is a "new way of being Christian and living in the world" (xiii). Itpoints to a "new theological paradigm" (Shaull and Csar: 120), a newway of encountering the sacred in the here and now and of experiencing transcendence within immanence. It then behooves Catholics andmainline Protestants concerned with liberation to accompany, support,and learn from poor Pentecostals.

It is true that historic churches must abandon polemical rejections ofevangelical Christianity (John Paul II, for example, has occasionally referred to Pentecostal "sects" as "ravening wolves" that "prey" on "poorand simple folk") and enter into ecumenical dialogue. However, there isa danger in eschatologizing any religious movement. In the 1970s and1980s Catholic base communities were considered as the seeds of a newchurch and society. These expectations weighed heavily on the strugglesof progressive Catholic activists and eventually contributed to widespreaddisillusionment in the face of a conservative turn in the Vatican and thedeepening of the structural inequalities that the base communities sought

to address as part of the project of building the reign of God (Vasquez). Itmay be impossible for liberationist theologians not to read eschatology


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character of this movement. Essentializing evangelical Christianity, albeitin a positive way, recapitulates precisely the mistake that Freston criticizes.

Evangelical Christianity, and Pentecostalism in particular, representsa challenge for all ofus because it destabilizes all the modernist dichotomies that have defined the field of religious studies, including traditionversus modernity, sacred versus profane, community versus society, agencyversus structure, base versus superstructure, religion versus politics, domination versus resistance, local versus global, and the universal versus theparticular. In view of the complexity and heterogeneity involved, we needto approach evangelical Christianity through truly interdisciplinary perspectives and self-reflexive standpoints aware of the multiple levels of

analysis involved, including the personal, familial, communal, national,transnational, and global. As postmodernists would argue, we cannot haveequal or privileged access to all these levels and produce a definitive meta-narrative on evangelical Christianity. We can, however, strive towardfallible and situated yet empirically rich studies of evangelical Christianity. We must be aware of the level of analysis that we deploy, always remembering that no level of analysis is self-contained and, thus, always seekingto elucidate open-ended linkages with other levels. Depending on howand where we approach evangelical Christianity, we obtain partial but stillvaluable pictures of this variegated tradition. In showing us the multipleinflections of global evangelical Christianity, the books reviewed here pointtoward the complex roles religion plays vis--vis the current episode ofglobalization.

Appadurai, Arjun1996

Berger, Peter L.2002

Bourdieu, Pierre1977

REFERENCES

Modernity at Large: The Cultural Dimensions ofGlobization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

"Introduction: The Cultural Dynamics of Globalization." In Many Globalizations: Cultural Diversity in tContemporary World, 1-16. Ed. by Peter L. Berger andSamuel P. Huntington. New York: Oxford UniversityPress.

Outline of a Theory of Practice. New York: CambridgeUniversity Press.


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Comaroff, Jean2001

Diamond, Sarah1989

Peterson, Anna,Manuel A. Vasquez,and Philip Williams

2001

Stoll, David1990

Vasquez, Manuel A.1998

"Millennial Capitalism: First Thoughts on a SecondComing." In Millennial Capitalism and the Culture of

Neoliberalism, 1-56. Ed. by Jean Comaroff and John

Comaroff. Durham: Duke University Press.

Spiritual Warfare: The Politics ofthe Christian Right.Boston: South End Press.

"Introduction: Christianity and Social Change in theShadow of Globalization." In Christianity, Social Change,andGlobalization in the Americas, 1-22. Ed. by AnnaPeterson, Manuel A. Vasquez, and Philip Williams. NewBrunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Is Latin America Turning ProtestantiBerkeley: University of California Press.

The Brazilian Popular Church and the Crisis of Moder-nity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.


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