Practicing the Faith: The Ritual Life of Pentecostal-Charismatic Christians 9780857450487

Citation preview

PRACTICING THE FAITH

Practicing the Faith The Ritual Life of Pentecostal-Charismatic Christians

Edited by

Martin Lindhardt

Berghahn Books New York • Oxford

First published in 2011 by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com

©2011 Martin Lindhardt

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Practicing the faith : the ritual life of Pentecostal-Charismatic Christians / edited by Martin Lindhardt. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-84545-770-9 1. Ritual. 2. Pentecostalism. 3. Public worship—Pentecostal churches. I. Lindhardt, Martin. BR1644.P72 2011 264’.0994—dc22 2010029874

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Printed in the United States on acid-free paper.

ISBN: 978-1-84545-770-9 Hardback

Published with the generous support of the Religion in the 21st Century Publication Fund, University of Copenhagen.

cC Contents

Introduction Martin Lindhardt

1

CHAPTER 1

The Obvious Aspects of Pentecostalism: Ritual and Pentecostal Globalization Joel Robbins

49

CHAPTER 2

Laying Our Sins and Sorrows on the Altar: Ritualizing Catholic Charismatic Reconciliation and Healing in Fiji Jacqueline Ryle

68

CHAPTER 3

Healing and Redomestication: Reconstitution of the Feminine Self in South Korean Evangelical Cell Group Ritual Practices Kelly H. Chong

98

CHAPTER 4

Ritualization of Life Thomas J. Csordas

129

CHAPTER 5

Adventure and Atrophy in a Charismatic Movement: Returning to the “Toronto Blessing” Martyn Percy

152

CHAPTER 6

The Ritual Use of the Bible in African Pentecostalism Paul Gifford

179

v

vi

Contents

CHAPTER 7

Voices: Presence and Prophecy in Charismatic Ritual Simon Coleman

198

CHAPTER 8

When God Interferes: Ritual, Empowerment, and Divine Presence in Chilean Pentecostalism Martin Lindhardt

220

CHAPTER 9

Quiet Deliverances Jon Bialecki

249

CHAPTER 10

Imperfect Vessels: Emotion and Rituals of Anti-Ritual in American Pentecostal and Charismatic Devotional Life Gretchen Pfeil

277

CHAPTER 11

Public Rituals and Political Positioning: Venezuelan Evangelicals and the Chávez Government David Smilde

306

Notes on Contributors

330

Index

333

cC Introduction Martin Lindhardt

Over the past thirty to forty years, Pentecostalism and charismatic revivalism within mainline Protestant churches and the Catholic church have proved to be the fastest growing religious movement in the world. This movement is characterized by an emphasis on the continuous manifestations and gifts of the Holy Spirit (the charismata),1 on personal salvation, the immanent return of Christ, and not least by high degrees of ritual activity. The worldwide growth and expansion of this form of Christianity has been paralleled within the last two decades by a significant growth in academic literature on the topic, fueling existing critiques of classical secularization theories. Pentecostal-charismatic Christianity is frequently considered an example of the limitations of these theories, inspiring scholars instead to explore local experiences of modernity or multiple modernities and global neoliberal capitalism as ambiguous, contradictory, and very much enchanted (Meyer 1998a, 1999a, 1999b, 2004a; Marshall-Frantani 1998; Corten and Marshall Frantani 2001; Oro and Semán 2001; van Dijk 2001; Comaroff and Comaroff 1999, 2001; Lindhardt 2009a). While an abundance of scholarly literature is now available on Pentecostal-charismatic Christianity, the detailed study of ritual seems, as noted by Joel Robbins, to be “the greatest lacuna in the work done so far” (2004b: 126). This lacuna is especially remarkable in the literature on the global south, where the majority of the world’s Pentecostals/ charismatics live. Important and innovative work on Pentecostalcharismatic ritual in North America and to a lesser extent in Western Europe has been conducted by anthropologists, sociologists, and anthropologically/sociologically minded theologians (McGuire 1982; Csordas 1990, 1994, 1997; Percy 1996, 1998b; Albrecht 1999; Stringer 1999; Coleman 2000a, 2000b; Coleman and Collins 2000; Steven 2002; Shoaps 2002; Luhrmann 2004). Yet their numerous colleagues who 1

2

Martin Lindhardt

work on Pentecostal-charismatic Christianity in Africa, Latin America, and Asia have, with a few notable exceptions (Meyer 1998b, 1999a; Lindhardt 2004, 2009a, 2009b, 2010b; Robbins 2004a; Lehmann 1996), largely ignored the topic. One reason for the partial neglect of ritual in much of the existing literature may be that many Pentecostals/charismatics themselves insist on the absence of ritual from their church life. As Coleman notes in his contribution to this volume, “ritual” seems to be a kind of a dirty word among Protestant charismatics. These groups generally associate ritual with what they consider to be the prescribed, formal, and spiritually empty liturgy of mainline churches—a fundamental theological contrast to the spontaneous, informal, and experiential forms of worship characteristic of Pentecostal-charismatic communities. Some scholars have, however, argued that academic analysis should not necessarily be informed by such emic uses of terms and that it does indeed make sense to regard many Pentecostal-charismatic cooperative and spiritually oriented church activities as rituals (Robbins 2001a, this volume; Albrecht 1999). Another possible reason why scholars have not paid more attention to the topic may be that much of Pentecostal-charismatic church life tends to evade analysis based on more classical perspectives on ritual. Anthropologists and other scholars of religion have, not unlike Pentecostals/charismatics themselves, tended to of conceive of ritual as formal, prescribed, and essentially public behavior with little scope for spontaneous emotional expression. One classical anthropological approach sees ritual as embodying the essence of a culture and dramatizing basic values and moral truths upon which the world rests. Since cultural orientations tend to be unsystematic, diffuse, and general, it is through ritual that they are shaped, systematized, and rendered more relevant to actual social life (Ortner 1978; Geertz 1973; Leach 1964, 1968). As Stringer (1999: 26–27) and Coleman (2004: 42) point out, this approach raises questions about the direction of ritual communication, as well as of interpretive authority and consensus: Exactly who communicates what, and to whom? Does everyone involved understand the meaning of ritual in the same way? And is the anthropologist the ultimate decoder of ritual meaning? Other anthropologists have ascribed the social efficacy of ritual to its formalism and conventionality that diminish the range of individual expression. Maurice Bloch argues that the formality of ritual speech serves to perpetuate authority by reducing propositional force, consequently leaving very little room for alternative formulations (1998). Stanley Tambiah sees ritual as conventionalized social behavior that expresses public meanings but is not designed or meant “to express

Introduction

3

the intentions, emotions, and states of mind of individuals in a direct, spontaneous, and ‘natural’ way” (1979: 124). According to Roy Rappaport, the social power of ritual derives from its ability to insert persons into a public order. This occurs as the formalism of ritual makes whatever intentions and inner states individual participants might have irrelevant (1999; Robbins 2001a: 598).2 Given the absence of prescribed liturgy; the spontaneous, emotional, informal, and improvisational styles of worship; and the blurring of boundaries between ritual and everyday spheres of activity in Pentecostal-charismatic religious life, it is perhaps not surprising that conventional theory does not adequately explain what is going on. In fact, for some time now anthropologists, including many of those working in non-Christian societies, have emphasized the limits of conventional theories of ritual (Comaroff and Comaroff 1993; Humphrey and Laidlaw 1994; Tomlinson and Engelke 2006). Some of the more recent work on ritual is informed by phenomenology, several scholars arguing for an acknowledgement of the power of embodied presence and the importance of practical knowledge or skills (Hughes-Freeland and Crain 1998; Mitchel 1998; Bell 1992; Jackson 1983). A phenomenologically inspired critique of classical approaches to ritual is found in the work of Talal Asad who argues that such approaches create unfruit ful distinctions between feelings as private and ineffable, and ritual as public and legible—or between expressive symbolic activity on the one hand and technical activity on the other (1993: 72, 126). According to Asad, the contemporary emphasis on meaning, symbol, and representation within anthropological theory has a specific “modern” Christian history. He pursues this argument by exploring differences between medieval and post-Reformation Christianity, pointing out that the former was more driven by problems of discipline and coercion than of meaning. In medieval monasteries, he argues, there was no radical disjunction between inner motive or sentiments and social ritual, since specific emotions and moral dispositions were organized by performances of conventional behavior and disciplinary rites (1993: 34, 79). In a discussion with Tambiah, Thomas Csordas argues along similar lines. He points out in relation to Catholic charismatic ritual utterances that it is problematic to make a theoretical distinction between ritual language as conventional and culturally elaborated, and spontaneity and intentionality as circumstantial, incoherent, contingent, disordered, and “natural” (1997: 256–57). In Csordas’s groundbreaking work on charismatic ritual (1990, 1994, 1997), he sees ritual as creative yet clearly coordinated bodily and rhetoric practice, through which enduring dispositions for certain kinds of inspired action, or a whole new way of being-in-the-world is developed (see also Bell 1992).

4

Martin Lindhardt

This has proven to be a more fruitful and inspiring approach to Pentecostal-charismatic ritual (e.g., Luhrmann 2004; Collins and Coleman 2000; Coleman 2000a; Robbins, Ryle, Chong, Lindhardt this volume) than approaches that stress formalism, the irrelevance of individual intentions, or the systematization of prior ideas and moral truths. Csordas and other scholars have tried to come to terms with the apparent contradiction between Pentecostal-charismatic forms of worship and conventional understandings of ritual by demonstrating how religious practice collapses analytical dichotomies, e.g., between spontaneity and control, informality and formality, immediacy and structure, as even the most informal, spontaneous behavior and experiences of spiritual flow are in fact culturally prescribed, taught, and coordinated within a controlled and structured ritual environment (McGuire 1982; de Witte 2003; Lindhardt 2004; Pfeil this volume).3 The ideal of spontaneity in Pentecostal-charismatic ritual life is, as noted by Robin Shoaps, closely tied to questions of authenticity (2002: 41, see also Steven 2002: 98–99). Pentecostals/charismatics take spontaneity and personal involvement as indications of “a specific relationship between language use and the speaking subject that is a prerequisite to the true “communication” with God” (Shoaps 2002: 42). They see this as a truer way of worshipping than what they consider to be the impersonal liturgical scripts, confining formulae and empty routine of mainline church worship. Thus, most Pentecostal-charismatic congregations reduce to a minimum or cut out completely the recitation of standardized confessions of faith or prayers such as the Lord’s Prayer. As Pfeil argues (this volume), affectively marked performance within charismatic and Pentecostal churches is seen as a sign of real, authentic, and heartfelt experience. Emotional performance and other spontaneous expressions, understood within a larger “modernist” language ideology as closer to the true interiority of the subject,4 gives charismatic devotional practice what Pfeil calls a certain “anti-‘Ritual’ quality.” Repeating standard liturgical phrases invented by someone else in the past is perceived by Pentecostals/charismatics as an inadequate way to articulate personal experience, open oneself to spiritual in-filling, or sincerely expressing individual here-and-now desires of closeness and communion with God or Jesus. Interestingly, the features that make individual states and emotions irrelevant and prevent their spontaneous expression are interpreted in radically different ways by Pentecostals/charismatics and scholars of ritual. The latter see the conventionality and stereotypy of these features as the source of the social efficacy and power of formally prescribed ritual. Among Pentecostals/charismatics, on the other hand,

Introduction

5

the theological emphasis on a personal and unmediated relationship with God makes it clear why these very same features are considered the main weakness of formalized worship.5 Scholars have noted how Pentecostals/charismatics tend to describe their communion with God or Jesus in terms of an intimate friendship or even a romantic love relationship (see Steven 2002; Luhrmann 2004; Lindhardt 2004, 2009c). Given that informal and quotidian forms of interaction are crosscultural characteristics of human-human friendships and romantic love relationships, it should not be too surprising that those same characteristics are valued in the relationship between Pentecostalscharismatics and God.6 The sincere, transparent agency of spontaneous ritual actions is not just perceived by Pentecostals/charismatics as deriving from the true interiority of human participants. Spontaneity is also a fundamental phenomenological criterion for manifestations and experiences of the sacred (Csordas 1997). Pentecostals/charismatics believe in a living God who actively intervenes in human affairs and moves among his people. Too much human, “manmade” liturgy is seen as impeding God’s intervention and movement. Loosely guided and spontaneous services, on the other hand, allow for the intervention and guidance of the Holy Spirit (Shoaps 2002: 42). In fact, many Pentecostals/charismatics distinguish carefully between the spontaneous behaviors that emanate from human emotions and those driving from divine inspiration (see Shoaps 2002: 41–42; Lindhardt 2004, this volume). Spontaneity as an index of divine inspiration is a characteristic feature of Pentecostal-charismatic ritual language. Particular utterances or speech acts such as glossolalia, prophecies, and inspired teaching or witnessing are central in much of Pentecostal-charismatic ritual life. These are seen in various degrees as originating from God rather than the human speaker (Csordas 1990, 1997; McGuire 1982; Engelke 2006; Coleman 2000; Lindhardt 2004). Csordas argues that spontaneity must be a requisite of felicitous prophecy “insofar as the sense of sudden inspiration out of the blue assures the prophet ‘I am not making this up’” (1997: 257). Sermons are also commonly attributed to divine inspiration in Pentecostal-charismatic churches (Shoaps 2002: 40), and it is not unusual for preachers to preach for up to an hour or more without the support of written notes, explaining their ability to do so in terms of the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Perceptions of external authorship serve to downplay the symbolic and ambiguous character of language and to invest spoken words with authority and certainty. Such understandings of ritual language are, obviously, not a Pentecostal-charismatic peculiarity but can be found

6

Martin Lindhardt

in other religious traditions. Thus Bloch (1998) describes how certain kinds of formalized ritual speech among the Merina of Madagascar are seen as originating from deceased ancestors rather than from living speakers.7 What distinguishes Pentecostal-charismatic ritual language is that spoken words are invested with authority and autonomy not through formalized, invariant, prescribed liturgy but through apparent spontaneity—indicating sudden and immediate inspiration rather than careful human preparation.

From What to How We have established that coordinated spontaneity and informality are prevalent features of Pentecostal-charismatic ritual life. We have emphasized the relevance of viewing ritual as social bodily rhetoric practice through which new practical skills and new ways of relating to oneself and the social world are created. However, we still need to adequately address the question of why Pentecostal-charismatic ritual is so important that a whole edited volume should be dedicated to studying it. First and foremost, and if not for other reasons, we should pay attention to Pentecostal-charismatic ritual because of the amount of time that a good number of church adherents spend on it. However, as I argue below, and as the chapters of this book clearly demonstrate, there are several other reasons why we should focus on it. Though scholars rarely provide their readers with quantitative data on church attendance (see Chesnut 1997 for an exception; Robbins this volume), there are several indications that degrees of ritual activity among Pentecostals/charismatics are considerably higher than among other Christians. Catholicism is the majority religion all over Latin America, but according to Brian Smith, there may be more Pentecostal than Catholic churchgoers on an ordinary Sunday in many Latin American countries (1998: 2). In Chile, a national census from 2001 showed that almost twice as many Evangelicals (a term that includes both Pentecostals and mainline Protestants) as Catholics attend church at least once a week (see Lindhardt 2004: 144). In some of the Chilean Pentecostal churches where I did my field work, many members attend church meetings five to six times a week and in addition to this participate in other church-related activities such as choir practice and preaching on the street. Given the prominent status of ritual as an anthropological topic, and considering the abundance of ethnographic studies of specific rit-

Introduction

7

uals (such as rites of passage) performed only on particular occasions, it is remarkable that anthropologists studying Pentecostal-charismatic Christianity have paid so little attention to ritual activities that take place several times a week, though possible reasons for this partial neglect have been suggested above. A stronger theoretical argument, made quite explicitly by Robbins in his contribution to this volume but implicit also in several of the other contributions, is that it is clearly in our interest to focus primarily on ritual when studying Pentecostal-charismatic Christianity (see also Csordas 1997). This is not just because Pentecostal-charismatic ritual is interesting in itself, but also because it provides us with a window onto other topics. The studies in this collection do not view ritual as a separate domain to be studied in addition to other important aspects of Pentecostal-charismatic Christianity. These aspects could be the construction of religious identities or selves, empowerment and healing, fostering of discipline, individualism, responsible ascetic behavior, gender dynamics (empowerment of women, domestication of men, etc.), community building, globalization and local appropriations, transitions from revival movement to church institution, demonologies, adoption and recast of popular cultural modes of expression, social retreat and critique or public political outreach, and so forth. By contrast, the studies here illustrate how original knowledge can be produced by studying many of those aspects from a ritual perspective. The potential of this perspective lies in carefully shifting our analytical focus from why people convert and remain active members of Pentecostal-charismatic communities or from what Pentecostalcharismatic Christianity does (or what people do with Pentecostalcharismatic Christianity) to how Pentecostal-charismatic Christianity does what it does (or how people do what they do with Pentecostalcharismatic Christianity). The studies in this volume do not negate that ritual may serve to affirm and reproduce existing cultural structures, values and institutions. Yet all contributions emphasize the creative aspects of Pentecostal-charismatic ritual as a particular, though not always clearly demarcated, kind of practice that people actively engage in, and from which something new is generated. In this aspect, the ritual perspective advocated in this volume has a certain affinity with generative or processual models of identity as connected to doing rather than being (Butler 1990; Ferguson 1999). A partial shift in focus from the meaning and substance of ritual to different aspects of transformative participation (Hughes-Freeland and Crain 1998) enables us to address a number of crucial questions

8

Martin Lindhardt

in the study of Pentecostal-charismatic Christianity: How or through which processes does Pentecostal-charismatic Christianity spread with such apparent ease? How do Pentecostal-charismatic communities emerge, reproduce, or transform themselves over time? How are new religious dispositions that blend into the sphere of everyday life constituted? How do converts become intimate friends with God in the divine persona of Christ and learn to experience his presence? How do spoken words sometimes appear to have divine authorship? How are notions of demonic causality established as a compelling part of Pentecostal-charismatic interpretive schemes? How do Pentecostals/charismatics enact a rupture with the past and a retreat from as well as an ongoing struggle with the “world” of sin? And how do they sometimes reach out for that “world”? How are Pentecostal-charismatic gendered identities constituted? How do prosperity preachers enhance their personal status and persuade followers to donate large sums of money to ministries? And how does Pentecostal-charismatic Christianity engender hope, enhance the self-esteem of converts, and make them feel empowered (assuming that it does)? And so on. While the ritual perspective is not presented here as a God-given solution to all the analytical challenges scholars of Pentecostal-charismatic Christianity face, the contributors to this volume consider in different ways ritual as constitutive of Pentecostal-charismatic religious life—as an arena of practice through which new dispositions and new senses of self, agency, community, and mission are cultivated.

Experiencing God The experience of divine presence is foundational to Pentecostal-charismatic spirituality. Though many Pentecostals/charismatics read the Bible and regard it as the true word of God, Pentecostalism-charismatic Christianity is foremost an experience-centered kind of Christianity. According to Daniel Albrecht, Pentecostals participate in a heritage of Christian mysticism where “God or Christ are not merely objects of belief but living facts experimentally known first-hand; and mysticism [is then for the mystic] … a life based on this conscious communion with God” (quoted from Evenly Underhill 1925: 10; Albrecht 1999: 239). The personal relationship with God or Jesus, established and nourished through first-hand experience, is a defining feature of Pentecostal-charismatic self identity. Several scholars have pointed to the experiential, emotional, oral, anti-intellectual and holistic dimensions of Pentecostal-charismatic

Introduction

9

Christianity in their attempts to explain why it has a greater appeal to the poor and poorly educated of the global south than more rational, book-centered, and liturgical variants of Protestantism (Deiros 1991; Sepúlveda 1992; Cox 1996; Anderson 2000a, 2000b; Hollenweger 1997; Schultze 1994). Recently, scholars working in Western contexts have related the increased search for experiences of divine presence and a close personal communion with God, not least among the middle classes, to a decline of civic engagement and a general weakening and thinning of social relationships (Luhrmann 2004: 527) or to the rise of a narcissistic culture where individuals have lost faith in social and cultural institutions and therefore search for meaning and fulfillment in personal preoccupations and intimate relationships (Steven 2002: 131–32). Pentecostal-charismatic ritual life forms the prime context for personal encounters with the divinity, although people may have firsthand experiences of divine presence, including glossolalia in numerous everyday situations. Increasingly, scholars are focusing on experiences of divine presence, considered to be effectuated by the mobilization of the senses and the kinesthetic, rhythmic, and oral engagement in ritual activities such as singing, dancing, swaying, and praying. From this perspective, conversion and growing in faith can be understood as processes of developing an embodied sensibility to the sacred or learning to tune the senses to certain experiences, in addition to learning theological doctrines and understanding biblical truths. Albrecht sees the kinesthetic experience in ritual as expressing “a spirituality that cooperates and participates in the movements of God” (1999: 148). He further points out that music can embrace worshippers and usher them into the presence of God (143). Collective singing takes up much of Pentecostal-charismatic ritual life. In many Pentecostal-charismatic communities, a long succession of songs at the beginning of a service/meeting contributes to building up an atmosphere of divine presence and enables a focus upon God, which, as James Steven argues, would be impossible with a traditional pattern of singing single hymns, sandwiched within the liturgy (2002: 127). Singing is a discursive practice, in that hymns have semantically meaningful contents. And it is a form of worship that engages the body, especially when participants stand, dance, or at least move their upper bodies while singing. Sitting enables bodily functions to sink into the background outside the domain of explicit awareness (Leder 1990: 25). Standing, on the other hand, engages the body in the ongoing activity. Sitting down facilitates concentrated appropriation of intellectual truths, whereas standing and oscillatory movements facilitate engagement and encounters with experiential truths.

10

Martin Lindhardt

Steven finds the notion of “flow experience” helpful in analyzing the perceived closeness of God during singing and musical performance in Pentecostal-charismatic communities (2002: 117–18, see also Lindhardt 2004: 288). The experience of flow, most notably documented by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (see Neitz and Spickard 1990: 20), is individual and may occur during certain kinds of actions such as rock climbing, playing music, performing medical surgery, or playing chess, which necessitate an extremely focused and delimited consciousness and attention. The concept of flow has also been applied by Neitz and Spickard in their research on certain absorbing religious experiences where “all sense of individual self vanishes” (quoted from Steven 2002: 118). What happens in flow experiences is that action and awareness appear to merge, and distinctions between self and environment, between stimulus and response, become blurred (Neitz and Spickard 1990: 20). This absorption and experience of intimate and powerful immediacy is connected with people’s bodily experience of standing and swaying while singing. As Humphrey and Laidlaw (writing on Jain rituals in India) note, particular oscillatory motions with the upper body influence the equilibrium sense and the operation of the vestibular system (1994: 234). In a study on Pentecostal glossolalia and related phenomena, Williams describes how rhythm and song lead to a fixation of attention and suspension of breath, which in turn lowers the efficiency of the brain. In addition to this, the emotional excitement that is produced by rhythm, song, and dancing movements reduces the range of sensory perceptions while at the same time strengthening the dominant response (1981: 141–42). Other scholars have noted how experiences of divine presence may result from the intense union and collective energy of ritual communities. Victor Turner’s concept of “spontaneous communitas” is applied by scholars (cf. Albrecht 1999: 212–13; Csordas 1997: 112; Lindhardt 2004: 287, 2009a) in analyzing moments of high-level mutual participation and focus in Pentecostal-charismatic services, such as collective singing or praise and worship sessions. Spontaneous communitas is described by Turner as a “feeling of endless power … a flash of lucid mutual understanding on the existential level” (1982: 47–48). Unlike structure, which is institutionalized and exclusive, spontaneous communitas is inclusive and characterized by sensations of powerful immediacy. And while communitas is an intrinsically social experience, taking place between individuals, Turner, following Csiszenmihalyi, argues that it also has the absorbing and self forgetting qualities of “flow” (1982: 56).

Introduction

11

Writing on loud praise among Catholic charismatics, Csordas makes another important observation concerning the possible occurrence of hierophany (an experience of divine presence) from intense and noisy participation. A loudly praying collectivity, he argues, appears after a while to have a life of its own as a “Durkheimian occurrence, in which the reality of the collectivity becomes more vivid than the reality of its individual believers” (1997: 110). One might add that the noise of a loudly singing collectivity can produce the very same effect. Csordas goes on to suggest that loud praise (and again the point could easily be extended to include loud singing) should mainly be seen as a technique of the body and that its effect “has its locus in the physical engagement of the body in the act of worship” (ibid.). The importance of sound and noise in Pentecostal-charismatic ritual practice further draws our attention to questions of semiotic ideologies, defined by Webb Keane as arguments about “what signs are and how they function in the world” (2003: 419). Recent scholarship has demonstrated how an analysis of experiences of divine presence and power during Christian worship can be enriched by moving beyond a classical Saussurean language theory in which acoustic forms are merely seen as arbitrary vehicles for communicating fundamental but immaterial meanings (Coleman 2000, 2006; Engelke 2007, Lindhardt 2010b). Keane has convincingly argued that such understandings should be seen as a particular historical construct with deep roots in Protestant language reforms. This construct forms part of a modernist project of purification, abstraction, and detachment from materiality (2007). But scholars have noted that other semiotic ideologies are at work in different Christian communities, where sound sometimes seems to be invested with a significance of its own. Writing on Pentecostal soundscapes in Brazil, Martijn Oosterbaan notes that (musical) sound has the capacity of reaching out and creating a sensate, intense, immediate, and nonconceptual physical experience of connection. This experience, he argues, is both social in that it provides a sense of belonging and deeply personal (2008: 131). In his painstaking study of the African independent church, the Friday Masowe Church in Zimbabwe, Matthew Engelke (drawing on scholars such as Keane, Charles Sanders Peirce, and Richard Parmentier) also argues for the importance of focusing more attention to the material qualities of words. In this church, noise and sound, most notably but not exclusively the sound of singing, are perceived as having cosmological qualities in themselves (2007: 201–02, 207). For the Friday Apostolics, Engelke writes,

12

Martin Lindhardt

there is something about the human voice in song to God that serves as a vehicle for God’s presence—that indeed is God’s presence. Singing, as a certain kind of sound, conveys that presence in itself. (2007: 207—emphasis in original).

The Friday Apostolics constitute a special case. As they do not read the Bible, they are particularly concerned with receiving the word of God live and direct from the Holy Spirit (ibid: 2–3). But the points made by Engelke concerning the irreducibility of sound in Christian worship are also highly relevant in the study of Pentecostals/charismatics who—despite finding inspiration in the Bible—place more emphasis on personal experience, direct communication with God, and divinely inspired language use (see Csordas 1997; Coleman 2000; Lindhardt this volume). The scholars referred to above share an understanding of ritual as being more than expressions or public displays of prior ideas, thoughts, values, and social structures. Pentecostal-charismatic ritual practice can be seen as constituting and nourishing a particular relationship between humans and God through immediate and unmediated engagement with divine power—rather than merely representing this relationship. In Pentecostal-charismatic worship, divine power is perceived as a physical force that mobilizes the senses and acts directly on and through the human body. There is, however, more to Pentecostal-charismatic ritual than the production of certain experiences. It is not difficult to think of nonreligious social activities such as rock concerts or sport events where the noise of a collectivity can appear to have a life of its own (e.g., when celebrating a goal in a soccer match). Spontaneous communitas and flow experiences can occur through many types of intense mutual participation and bodily, rhythmic engagement, resulting in a momentary suspension of reflection. Yet such experiences are not always defined as religious by participants. The identification or specific cultural objectification of certain bodily, emotional experiences as deriving from divine presence is central to Pentecostal-charismatic ritual life. This is particularly important in the constitution of a personal relationship with God that is a pervasive feature of everyday life of Pentecostals/ charismatics (cf. the section below on the ritualization of everyday life). This process requires the availability and appropriation of a particular religious language or lexicon. As Tanya Luhrmann, writing on the “Horizon Christian Fellowship” in Southern California, points out: “the processes of learning to have these experiences cannot be neatly disentangled from the process of learning the words to describe them” (2004: 522). She goes on to argue that an intimate relationship with

Introduction

13

God, sometimes described by congregants as a “spouse,” “boyfriend,” “buddy,” “pal,” or “close friend” (ibid: 525) is developed as congregants learn to use their own bodies to create a sense of the reality of someone external to them. That learning process is complex and subtle: It involves developing a cognitive model of who the person is in the relationship; a metakinetic responsiveness that can be interpreted as the presence of another being; and many repetitions of apparent dialogue through which a person develops an imagined sense of participation and exchange. (Luhrmann 2004: 527)

Attempting to decode deep layers of prior meanings and ideas beneath surface expressions may not be the most fruitful approach to Pentecostal-charismatic ritual practice. Nevertheless, it is highly relevant to ask what certain ritual experiences mean to participants and how such experiences become meaningful,8 being open to the possibility that they may mean different things to different people (see the chapters of Csordas and Bialecki in this volume; see also Lindhardt 2011).

Ritual and Community Building The argument that churches provide converts with new and intimate communities in an otherwise hostile world is about as old as the academic study of Pentecostal-charismatic Christianity itself (see Willems 1967; Lalive D’epinay 1969). Yet, many of the scholars who emphasize the communal aspects of church life pay little attention to the actual empirical processes through which Pentecostal-charismatic communities and solidarities are formed. Some of the contributions to this volume provide quite explicit arguments about the importance of ritual in the production of shared realities and sense of group membership. Like Robbins, Smilde finds Randall Collin’s work on interaction chain ritual inspirational (Collins 2004). Collins’s definition of interaction ritual involves bodily co-presence, social barriers (demarcations between participants and nonparticipants), a mutual focus of attention, and shared moods or emotional experiences. All of these elements help bind communities together, even before members are properly introduced to particular doctrines. According to Collins, societies are shaped as the store of emotional energy created in one successful ritual is carried on to another through interaction chains, an argument taken up by Robbins in his analysis of the ability of Pentecostalism to spread and build thriving institutions (this volume).

14

Martin Lindhardt

In a similar vein, Albrecht stresses how ritual enactments can lead participants to discover a common spirituality and nourish a sense of being a charismatic community (1999: 205). He notes that critics tend to accuse Pentecostals of being too individualistic but fail to recognize the fundamental social orientation of Pentecostal-charismatic liturgical spirituality (ibid: 204). Drawing on the work of Victor Turner (1969), he sees Pentecostal worship services in three Californian churches as having liminal qualities, in that they temporarily suspend and distance participants from secular structures and values. During the most liminal and contemplative moments of services (speaking in tongues, ecstatic dancing, etc) participants reject normal behavior and temporarily exist outside norms of dominant social systems, in a state of “betwixt and between” (Albrecht 1999: 212). Such liminal dimensions of ritual become bearers of communitas, another concept Albrecht (1999: 213) borrows from Victor Turner (cf. page 10). Turner argues that the subjective feeling of endless power during spontaneous communitas is not easily applied to organizational aspects of social life since attempts at organizing the power of the communitas necessarily distance the individual from the communal experience, and free relations between individuals will soon be converted into norm-governed relations (1982: 47–48). Yet, as Albrecht notes, the egalitarian encounter and strong emotional union during communitas helps to enhance solidarity and create and sustain a community of believers (1999: 212–13). Others have noted how the ritual acts of witnessing or the narrating of testimonies of salvation/conversion create and reaffirm shared realities, solidarity, and membership of Pentecostal-charismatic communities (McGuire 1982; Lindhardt 2009d). By being personal and stereotypical at the same time, testimonies integrate individual biographies within a shared story of the religious community and implicitly express a commitment to its values and worldviews. Witnessing and testimonies further create a communion of the here-and-now with the eternal truth of the Gospel as they unite listeners and tellers in an unfolding biblical narrative (cf. Pfeil this volume; Harding 2000: 130). Harding notes how the act of witnessing can constitute a new and compelling reality or truth that the listener is implicitly invited to inhabit (1987: 169). Susuma makes a similar point, arguing that a salient feature of testimonies of conversion is their practicality (1986: 170). Testimonies are often told in a way that enables the listener to identify with the “I” of the story and to participate in and live out the exampled world (ibid.), which is always described as superior to the everyday world (Booth 1995: 373). These scholars seem to agree that the study of religious testimonies should not be confined to a concern with the

Introduction

15

autobiographic reconstructions of narrators but should include a focus on the intersection between the world of the story and the world of the listener (see also Stromberg 1985, 1993; Rambo 1993; Lindhardt 2004, 2009d; Pfeil this volume). Harding has forcefully argued that witnessing, by absorbing the listener into the religious world of the story, provides an important strategy of gaining new converts (1987). But if we agree with Susuma’s extended definition of conversion—and I think we should—as including continuing growth in faith over time (1986: 158; see also Rambo 1993; Coleman 2003), a focus on witnessing and the narrating of testimonies in ritual contexts is also helpful for analyzing how Pentecostals/charismatics repeatedly invite each other to relive original conversion experiences and to continue to inhabit and project themselves into a shared and alternate world, which is pervaded by the sacred (Lindhardt 2009d: 26).

Dealing with the Devil Pentecostals/charismatics can be distinguished from many other Christians by the emphasis they place on spiritual warfare. The view of the universe as a cosmic battlefield where divine and satanic forces struggle to influence the course of human history and everyday life is encapsulated by a favorite Biblical passage in many Pentecostal-charismatic communities, Ephesians 6:12: “For we are not fighting against human beings but against the wicked spiritual forces in the heavenly world.” Pentecostals/charismatics do not see themselves as mere passive spectators of cosmic warfare. As potential targets of demonic attacks and being able to activate and to some extent direct divine power, thereby limiting the activities and influence of the devil in the world, they easily identify themselves with the “we” of this biblical passage. It is particularly through the ritual act of deliverance or expulsion of evil spirits from possessed persons, places, or objects that Pentecostals/charismatics become active participators in battles with the devil. As Robbins has noted, talking about spirits is always a language for talking about broader concerns (2004b: 128). Like witchcraft, notions of satanic and demonic agency can explain different kinds of misfortune as the result of evil intentions rather than mere coincidence (Evans-Pritchard 1976/1937). At the same time, the Christian concept of the realm of darkness provides a more globalizing discourse than witchcraft (Comaroff and Comaroff 1999: 291). The theological dualism between God and the devil also serves as a metanarrative that is both a model of and for reality (Geertz 1973: 93) as it enables believers

16

Martin Lindhardt

to make sense of lived experience, engage in moral evaluations, endow time with meaning and direction, and outline possible courses of action. Writing on Nigerian Pentecostalism, Ruth Marshall argues that the Christ-Satan division of the moral universe “provides a ready-made conceptual framework for reorganising a chaotic moral field” (1993: 234). Similarly Meyer sees Pentecostal imaginations of evil in Ghana as “fields within which people produce meanings enabling them to analyze critically and thereby shape their life conditions” (1995: 237). The cosmic struggle between God and the devil is easily made relevant to more specific concerns, a fact that may well provide a key to understanding the global appeal and local adaptability of Pentecostalcharismatic Christianity (Corten and Marshall-Frantani 2001). In different parts of the world, Pentecostals/charismatics fight off the devil and his demons in their various local manifestations. Examples of demonic interference in human affairs in Africa are seen by Pentecostals/ charismatics in Islam, political corruption, witchcraft, traditional religion, traditional healing, age hierarchies, kin relations, and ancestral curses (Meyer 1998b, 1999a; Larkin and Meyer 2006; van Dijk 1992; Marshall 1993; Blunt 2004; Smith 2007; Lindhardt 2009a, 2009b). In Latin America the list includes Catholicism, afro-Brazilian religions, a decadent male public sphere, alcoholism, liberal youth cultures, heavy metal music, and sexual liberation (Burdick 1992; Brusco 1995; Lehmann 1996; Lindhardt 2004, 2010a, 2011; Smilde 2007). In North America Pentecostals/charismatics point to the political defense of the right to free abortion, the election of Bill Clinton for president in 1992, high divorce rates, drug abuse, mental health disorders, depression, insecurity, doubt, and confusion as examples of demonic influence in society (McGuire 1982; Harding 1994; Csordas 1994; Bialecki this volume). Besides, demons are often associated with negative human attributes and emotions such as greed, envy, bitterness, hatred, laziness, lust, etc. Pentecostal-charismatic demonologies can therefore be seen as a negative cultural mirror of the ideal Christian community (Lindhardt 2004, 2011) or of the ideal Christian person (Csordas 1994, Lindhardt 2010a). Distancing oneself from the devil, the “world,” and one’s past, moving closer towards God and being filled with his blessings and power are fundamental Pentecostal-charismatic identity processes. These processes are not are not confined to a specific moment of conversion or the subsequent baptism with the Holy Spirit but are relived through a number of postconversion rituals of rupture that emphasize disjunction, such as deliverance, healing, and spiritual in-filling (Robbins 2004b: 128). Though saved by God, Pentecostals/charismatics still live in the

Introduction

17

“world” of sin, saturated with demonic forces. This is why continuous spiritual in-filling are necessary components of Pentecostal-charismatic life. In the Brazilian neo-Pentecostal church, the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, that has congregations in at least sixty-five countries (Oro and Semán 2001), deliverance sessions are held on Fridays. At this time all the demons that are held responsible for illness, poverty, and other kinds of misfortune are cast out. A Brazilian pastor whom I spoke to in a local congregation in Valaparaíso, Chile, insisted that prosperity (a dominant theme in this church) and divine protection against demons and witchcraft could only be guaranteed if church members showed up for the deliverance session each Friday. In Tanzania, charismatic Christians explained to me how they would always ask God for protection against demonic powers before going to the market, and always say a small prayer before entering a bus to cast out demons that are believed to be responsible for traffic accidents (see Lindhardt 2009a). In different rituals of rupture, the cosmic war between divine and satanic forces and the social and cultural ills the latter represent become an actual local and situated struggle, fought through the rhetoric and bodily engagement of the human participants (cf. Lindhardt 2009a). Thus a focus on ritual practice will improve our understanding of how demonologies and theological dualisms become persuasive and compelling to believers. The presence of demons can be detected in many spheres of life, and demonization can be a more or less permanent state as some Pentecostals/charismatics believe that any person who has not given his or her life to Jesus is controlled by demons (Munga 1998: 117). Yet, as Csordas points out, demonic crisis, which he defines as a situation in which the manifestations rage out of control, very rarely occur in a civic setting or in the course of daily life (1994: 259–60). This point is also valid elsewhere in the world where the most dramatic encounters between Pentecostals/charismatics and demonic forces take place in ritual contexts. Some authors have demonstrated how focusing on those contexts enables us to move beyond a view of demons as “good to think with.” Writing on Catholic charismatic healing and drawing on MerleauPonty’s understanding of perception as starting with our body in the world and ending in objects (1962), Csordas distinguishes between demons as culturally reified objects and their experiential manifestations as concrete self-objectifications in religious participants (1990: 15). As cultural objects in a behavioral environment, demons can be conceptualized as intelligent beings with purposes and functions, and

18

Martin Lindhardt

detailed demonologies can be constructed (ibid: 13). In a most inspiring analysis, Csordas manages to step back from the view of demons as cultural objects (good to think with) by exploring the ritual processes or “moments of transcendence” (1990: 7) where specific cultural objectifications occur. He argues that victims of demonic attacks do not at first perceive a demon as a culturally reified object inside themselves. What people sense is some thought, behavior, or emotion as existing beyond the control of the subject (ibid: 14). This sensation or experience of lack of control is preobjective and preabstract but not precultural, since standards of control derive from culture and are inscribed in the habitus. It may subsequently be explored and discerned, usually by a religious healer, as deriving from demonic disturbance. Meyer’s work on the role of the devil and his demons in Ghanaian Pentecostalism (1998b, 1999a) also warrants mentioning here. While conversion in principle implies a complete break with the past, Meyer found that this break is often experienced as rather incomplete by Ghanaian Pentecostals, some of whom continue to be haunted by family spirits. In Pentecostalism, such spirits are seen as servants of the devil. However, their ontological status as truly powerful beings that must be taken seriously is not challenged. The spiritual ambiguity that converts experience corresponds in Meyer’s view to an experience of perceived conflict between identity in terms of membership of an extended family and identity as a striving towards modern individualism. By simultaneously diabolizing and preserving traditional spirit worlds, Pentecostalism “offers members an elaborate discourse and ritual practice to oscillate between both [kinds of identity] and to address the gap which exists between aspirations and actual circumstances” (1998b: 340—emphasis added). The ritual practice that Meyer refers to is deliverance sessions in churches or prayer camps. Praying for deliverance sometimes results in an intense spiritual and physical struggle if the afflicted starts moving, vomiting, falling, and assaulting the pastor, all of which indicates that the evil spirits are disturbed by the power of the Holy Spirit (Meyer 1998b: 336). In some churches, those who seek deliverance have to fill in a questionnaire where sources of troubles are catalogued before the actual ritual can take place. Answering the questions becomes a process of radical self-searching through which the afflicted learn to define diverse personal experiences as types (ibid: 330). By focusing on deliverance rituals and the preceding diagnosing practices, Meyer demonstrates how the demonic is manifested in bodily experience and does not just remain an abstract conceptual framework. She furthermore provides an insightful analysis of the processes through which

Introduction

19

Pentecostals or potential converts learn to use diabolic spirits to think about themselves and their past.

The Ritualization of Everyday Life Another very good reason for focusing on Pentecostal-charismatic ritual practice is that its transformative effects tend to transcend the boundaries of strictly ritual contexts and find their way into the sphere of everyday life (Csordas 1997: 198–99). Csordas refers to this process as “the ritualization of life” (1997: 74; this volume). Like other scholars inspired by his work (Coleman 2000b; Collins and Coleman 2000; Lindhardt 2004, 2009a), he finds the concept of habitus particularly helpful in analyzing the entrenchment of ritual effects. Bourdieu defines habitus as “systems of durable transposable dispositions … principles of the generation and structuring of practices and representations” (1977: 72). The adjectives “durable” and “transposable” are essential here. People do not “take off” the ritually cultivated embodied and linguistic dispositions for experiencing the sacred and reordering the behavioral environment, as one might take off a particular ritual garment at the end of a service. On the contrary, these dispositions form part of what Collins and Coleman refer to as an all-pervading aesthetic consistency or a habitus, which is always a potential arena for inspired action (2000: 318, 320, 324–25). Csordas demonstrates how the ritualization of life not only pervades the daily routines and domestic space of charismatic Catholics but also transforms interpersonal space. Thus greeting with a “holy hug,” an expression of spontaneity and intimacy, replaces the culturally typical handshake or verbal greeting. The ritualization of life creates new ways of relating to civic and geographic space, e.g., through the casting out of demons of public buildings and taking a renewed interest in sacred sites. Through the charismatic habitus, people enact new ways of being in time, inhabiting space, and projecting themselves into the world (1997: 68–74). Now, it may not be surprising that religious people often think and behave religiously in nonritual contexts, even in secularized and differentiated societies. However, the originality of the perspectives offered by Csordas, Collins, and Coleman lies in the emphasis on ritual practice as the point of departure for analyzing the cultivation of pervasive and enduring religious dispositions. These scholars also underscore the empirical blurring of the (analytical) boundary between ritual and nonritual practices. Pentecostals/ charismatics perceive divine presence and intervention in numerous

20

Martin Lindhardt

everyday contexts. Ritualized practices such as praying, speaking in tongues, and building up oneself spiritually in order to take control of the immediate environment take place in various social settings. It is therefore problematic to maintain a rigid distinction between ritual and nonritual as domains of the sacred and the profane. “Where ever I go, I say: Jesus, you are with me, you will protect me, and I feel confident that things will work out well,” a Chilean Pentecostal woman once told me. A young Chilean Pentecostal man described to me how interaction with God, sometimes resulting in high levels of intense spiritual excitement, pervaded his everyday existence: I feel the gozo [sublime pleasure] of God, many times I feel the presence of the Holy Spirit, when I am in the bus, in the supermarket, walking on the street, and I feel like shouting: “Glory to God, Alleluia,” it is like a necessity of the heart, a necessity from the inside to say: “Thank you lord, I praise you, I glorify your name.” … now you two are leaving [referring to his wife who was about to leave for a women’s meeting in the church and to the visiting anthropologist], but his presence will remain here in this home. … Often, I don’t just kneel to pray, but also, like you and I are talking now, I talk with him, I go around in my home, and for me it is like a person who is present here. I do not see him, but he is very real for me, I know he is here, that he hears me and he sees me. So it is not that I just go to church to find God, wherever God wants me to be, I look for him.

Having a personal relationship with God and talking to him in numerous nonritual contexts extends the ritual act of praying into everyday internal conversation. In order to illustrate this point, Csordas quotes Neitz: Charismatics are people whose daily thoughts about their world become framed in terms of a conversation with the Lord. Nearly all conscious thought seems to be considered in terms of prayer. … In terms of everyday language the phrase “I thought about this” becomes “I prayed about this” or, even more likely “I talked to the Lord about this.” Prayer, as conversation with God, is the framework within which reflection in general takes place. (Neitz 1987: 119–20—quoted from Csordas 1997: 199)

Csordas further argues that ritual genres such as sharing can find their way into everyday conversation and become part of the organization of a linguistic habitus (1997: 200). I pursue this point in my own work on Chilean Pentecostalism. I see the ritual acts of witnessing and sharing, i.e., making a public declaration of gratefulness to God during a church meeting, followed by an anecdote about divine presence and intervention in everyday affairs, as important rhetori-

Introduction

21

cal exercises through which lay Pentecostals develop a practical sense of discursive-theological reality construction. By ritually talking about the world in particular ways, people become co-constructors of the specific social reality they are part of. In informal everyday conversation, Pentecostals frequently relate anecdotes to one another about divine intervention in their lives. Some specific ritual rules of church meetings such as waiting for permission to speak by a ritual leader, fixed bodily positioning, and standardized verbal beginnings (e.g., “in this night I thank the lord for giving me the opportunity to be here in his house of worship”) and closings (“to the Lord is all honor, glory and worship”) do not blend into everyday informal conversation. However, the anecdotes related are often very similar and structured according to the same politics of storytelling as sharing and witnessing, a main principle being crediting divine rather than human agency for positive achievements (Lindhardt 2004: 320–23).

Pentecostal-Charismatic Christianity and Popular Culture Over the past decade, the overlapping or cross-cutting between Pentecostal-charismatic expressive forms and secular popular genres such as music, theater, call-in radio programs, talk shows and other TV programs, romantic songs and literature, fictional video films, and advertising has inspired increased scholarly attention (Albrecht 1999; Meyer 1998a, 2004a, 2004b, 2005, 2006; Hackett 1998; de Witte 2003; Asonzeh 2003; Gifford 2004; Percy 1998b, 2000, this volume; Steven 2002; Coleman 2000b; Burdick 2008). Pentecostals/charismatics have been remarkably successful in adopting modes of expression from the entertainment and leisure industry in their ritual practice and evangelical outreach. They also, at least in some African countries, influence mainstream culture. According to Meyer, the increased articulation of Pentecostalism within Ghana’s public sphere is not confined to the exposure of Pentecostal views but involves more complex processes of extending particular moods and atmosphere from churches into wider society (2004: 95). This expansion, she argues, takes place as Pentecostal expressive forms proliferate into various channels within the entertainment sphere, such as fictional videos (2004: 92).9 Musical performance, singing, and dancing represent important points of convergence between Pentecostal-charismatic ritual practice and entertainment. Many Pentecostal-charismatic churches have bands with electric instruments that perform during services. Albrecht notes how musical worship in the Californian Pentecostal churches he stud-

22

Martin Lindhardt

ied is reminiscent of rock concerts, where fans become kinesthetically engaged in the music, as they stand, clap to the beat, and sway with the rhythm (1999: 157). In a study of charismatic worship in the Church of England, Steven agues that, consciously or unconsciously, hosting the secular rituals of discotheque culture provides a suitable way to celebrate the intimate relationship with the divine. He explores parallels between worship and discotheque culture in terms of romantic lyrics—songs of worship sometimes speak of passionate love and a desire for physical closeness with Jesus. But Steven also sees both environments as reflecting a private world of leisure or otherworldly alternatives to the public world of work, school, or college. In discos as well as in church services, informality, desire, pleasure, intimacy, and affectivity are predominant values, forming a marked contrast to the values of modern public spaces such as formality, neutrality, and reason (2002: 133). Gifford describes how political restrictions on the entertainment business in Ghana in the 1970s led several well-known artists to join charismatic worship groups (which were not subjected to the same restrictions). As the staging of dances required an entertainment tax to be paid, it was to a large extent replaced by gospel crusades featuring the same music. Unlike mainline churches, Ghana’s new charismatic churches have been able to increase their appeal by developing a whole industry of music cassettes, CDs, and videos (2004: 35). Even though Ghana is a special case because of its particular political context, similar processes can be observed in other countries. In Tanzania, open-air revival meetings with live music and dancing followed by enthusiastic preaching and praying are a form of public entertainment, enjoyed by Pentecostal-charismatic and non–Pentecostal-Charismatic audiences alike (Lindhardt 2009a). This also applies to the consumption of music cassettes and video tapes with gospel music and dancing. Finally, Burdick notes how black gospel and rap gospel have become popular genres among evangelicals in urban Brazil. Despite the specific religious content of songs, evangelical rap has the same social base, circulates in the same social world, and is sometimes performed at the same venues as secular rap (2008). The success with which Pentecostals and charismatic Christians in different parts of the world have adopted and recast local popular cultural forms of expression is related to certain ritual elements and features. The liveliness, the apparent spontaneity and informality, the emotional display, the use of music, and the bodily, rhythmic engagement that characterize much of Pentecostal-charismatic ritual life generally make it anything but plain or boring. According to Robbins,

Introduction

23

Pentecostal-charismatic rituals tend to ease boundaries between worship and leisure and act as a counterpoint to the ascetic lives that converts live in other contexts, as their structures commonly reiterate an alternation of control and release (2004b: 126). In addition to this, a sense of drama and movement towards one or several climaxes often form an integral part of services. Exorcism, collective praying, and infilling by the Holy Spirit (glossolalia, trance) affect ritual climaxes, as they are moments of intense and absorbing intimacy with a perceived divine presence and sometimes (in exorcism) of dramatic struggles against evil. Though Pentecostals/charismatics emphasize the spontaneous nature of spiritual phenomena, collective praying and spiritual in-filling are commonly preceded by a build-up phase, e.g., of musical performance or collective singing and dancing, or oscillatory movements of the upper body, resulting in a gradual loss of peripheral awareness (Luhrmann 2004: 523). And the most dramatic demonic manifestations often occur after initial praying for a possessed person. Drama and adventure are also salient features of sermons and testimonies that are often accounts of suffering, struggle, obstacles, enlightenment, rupture, testing, momentary setbacks, and victory.10 Apart from the dramatic, adventurous contents of sermons and testimonies, the style of narrating/preaching also contributes to the building up a climax. Despite cultural, regional, and denominational variations in ritual practice, I take the liberty of assuming that many readers who have had the opportunity to attend a Pentecostal-charismatic service anywhere in the world can recognize the following stereotypical description of a preacher: He or she starts out by speaking calmly but warms up emotionally, gradually raises his or her voice and begins to move about, gesticulating, possibly calming down, only to start all over again. What I am suggesting here is that it is the drama of ritual life that converges with popular cultural expressive forms and practices, not least from the entertainment and leisure industry.11 The particular narrative and anecdotic styles, the emphasis on rupture,12 the use of music, the building up of climaxes, the search for romantic intimacy with the divine,13 the releases of bodily energies, and the moments of struggle and absorption all combine to produce specific Pentecostal-charismatic moods and atmospheres that can be projected into wider society. Through live performances in public places (preaching on the street, open-air meetings) and through the consumption of mass-mediated Christian products such as literature, comics, videos, TV and radio shows, music cassettes, taped sermons, etc., Pentecostal-charismatic soundscapes, moods, and atmospheres blend into public and domestic

24

Martin Lindhardt

spaces. Smilde’s contribution to this volume provides an interesting example of how Venezuelan Pentecostals, through a ritual act—namely, a public march for Jesus in Caracas involving music, a speech, intense bodily copresence, and engagement with nonparticipants—produced specific moods and shared realities and projected them into public space. The consumption of Pentecostal-charismatic media further contributes to the ritualization or sacralization of everyday life, as described in the previous section.14 Like secular media, Pentecostal-charismatic media can be consumed as background noise, constituting a ritualized context for domestic work and leisure. Or people can watch and/or listen to it in a more concentrated way, for the sake of mere entertainment, or in order to learn and grow spiritually. Coleman describes how an adherent from the Swedish Pentecostal-charismatic ministry “Word of Life” compares home-viewing of Christian videos with the experience of actually participating at the Bible school (2000b: 176). In Chile, Pentecostals explained to me that they would sometimes skip church meetings and stay home instead, and listen to a taped sermon or watch an evangelical TV program. These activities were apparently perceived as valid substitutes for church attendance, even though church leaders repeatedly stressed the importance of actually coming to church. Writing on Pentecostal radio shows in Brazil, Oosterbaan argues that radio can produce an experience of real presence (2008: 126) and is often understood by Pentecostals as an instrument that “put them in touch with God so as to achieve a divine state of being” (2008: 134). Marleen de Witte describes how Ghanaian Pentecostals try to avoid disturbances, e.g., by locking their door, while watching a specific television program, and how some people also pray before watching the program, so that God may allow them to be transformed by his word. Viewers can also interact with the preacher on the screen by saying “yes,” “amen,” and hallelujah” and join in the prayers when encouraged to do so (2003: 194). These descriptions indicate that mass-mediated reproductions and transmissions of religious images and performances do not necessarily impede recurring experiences of the powerful immediacy of the original event. It is therefore difficult to maintain a rigid dualism between presence and representation (see also Csordas 2007b; Meyer 2004a, 2005, 2006; Coleman this volume).15 According to Robbins (this volume), a shared knowledge of ritual frames and bodily rhythms enables consumers of Pentecostal media to be powerfully moved. This is a very illuminating argument that enables us to understand the expansion of ritual moods from Pentecostal-charismatic spheres to the wider society. It further helps us to understand the rela-

Introduction

25

tive ease and success with which Pentecostals/charismatics, by comparison with mainline Catholics and Protestants, have adopted and made use of the mass media. The above-mentioned scholars have done excellent work on Pentecostal-charismatic adoption and recasting of popular forms of expression. What I argue in this section is that research on this important topic might benefit from an explicit focus on certain ritual elements, such as the liveliness, the sense of drama, the search for intimacy, and the kinesthetic, rhythmic, and absorbing engagement in Pentecostalcharismatic worship.

Pentecostal-Charismatic Globalization The history of Pentecostal-charismatic Christianity is a history of rapid global expansion (see Hollenweger 1972, 1997; Cox 1996; Maxwell 2006 for historical overviews). Pentecostalism’s historical roots can be traced back to eighteenth-century Methodism and the North American Holiness movement in the nineteenth century. However, the birth of Pentecostalism is commonly associated with two particular early twentieth-century events that took place in the United States: the spiritual baptism of a group of Protestants at Charles F. Parham’s Bethel Bible College in Kansas in 1900 and, more importantly, the so-called Azusa Street Revival in Los Angeles in 1906 (Albrecht 1999: 30–34). Yet Pentecostalism was already present in Europe, South America, Africa, and Asia as far back as 1910 due to missionary outreach, networks, and correspondence between Protestant communities in the United States, China, Chile, Wales, Korea, and India (Williams 1981; Kessler 1967; Hollenweger 1997; Maxwell 2006). A century later there are at least 250 million Pentecostal-charismatic Christians in the world, and some estimates see the number to supersede 500 million people, two-thirds of whom live in sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, Asia, and Oceania (Robbins 2004b: 117). Within the last fifteen years, a body of academic literature has emerged focusing explicitly on Pentecostal-charismatic Christianity from a global perspective. This literature pursues well-known themes in anthropological studies of globalization such as the relationship between the common and the particular, homogenization versus differentiation, the conciliation between transnationalism and cultural particularities, or the dialectics between flow and closure (Corten and Marshall-Frantani 2001; Droogers 2001; Meyer 1999b). As Pentecostalcharismatic Christianity expands and grows more rapidly than any

26

Martin Lindhardt

other form of Christianity—indeed more rapidly than any other religious movement—it seems important to consider what it is about this movement that makes it spread so easily and how it relates to the particular indigenous contexts where it is received (Poewe 1994; Brouwer, Gifford, and Rose 1996; Robbins 2004b, this volume; Csordas 2007b; Martin 2001; Droogers 2001; Lindhardt 2009a). The ability of converts to indigenize Pentecostal-charismatic Christianity is to some extent due to some of the key features of the movement such as enchanted world views, its focus on emotionalism and mysticism, the kinesthetic engagement in worship, the use of music, and the importance of charismatic personalities. All these qualities fit quite well with local traditions in different parts of the world, as was noted by several scholars before the upsurge of the globalization perspective (e.g., Deiros 1991; Meyer 1992; Bastian 1993; Sepúlveda 1992, 1996). What characterizes much of the more recent literature is a view on Pentecostal-charismatic Christian organizations as socializing adherents into a specifically global orientation (Coleman 2000b: 70; see also Coleman 1998, 2000a; Marshall-Frantani 1998; Corten and Marshall-Frantani 2001; Lindhardt 2004). Meyer argues that Pentecostal churches in Ghana take their members beyond the scope of local culture by placing more emphasis on being a world religion than other churches (1999b: 159–60; see also Meyer 2004b; van Dijk 2003, 2004). In addition to frequent contact with foreign Pentecostal associations, Ghanaian Pentecostals are also inspired by foreign crusade preachers such as Morris Cerrullo and Reinhard Bonnke. These preachers—known, admired, and often imitated by Pentecostals/charismatics in Africa and other parts of the world— represent an interdenominational, intercultural, mobile, nonlocalized, public, and mass-mediated revivalism that enables local believers to identify with new imagined communities and engage in new forms of reflexivity (Appadurai 1996). The local appropriation of the global also becomes a process of opting into a global order (Gifford 2001: 78), creating a “multidimensional yet cultural specific sense of reaching out into an unbounded realm of action and identity” (Coleman 2000b: 6). There are as yet few explicit studies of ritual practice in the bulk of literature on Pentecostal-charismatic globalization, the most outstanding exception being Coleman’s work (2000a, 2000b). Scholars have, however, noted that one of the greatest appeals of Pentecostal-charismatic Christianity is its spontaneous and experiential forms of worship (e.g., Brouwer, Gifford, and Rose 1996: 179–80). In a recent publication on globalization of religion and modalities of transnational transcendence, Csordas argues that religions that travel well are the ones that

Introduction

27

have transposable messages and portable practices (2007a: 261). The latter include rites that are easily learned, require little esoteric knowledge, are not necessarily linked to specific cultural contexts, and can be performed without commitment to an ideological or institutional apparatus. According to these criteria, Pentecostal-charismatic rituals, though not mentioned by Csordas in this specific context, qualify as a portable practice.16 People’s bodily engagement in different acts of worship such as dancing, swaying, clapping, singing, and loud praise is relatively easy to master and may often be implied in existing religious, cultural, and musical traditions that form people’s habitus.17 Newcomers with no deep doctrinal or institutional commitment furthermore experience such practices as enjoyable, meaningful, empowering, and ecstatic (see Robbins’s contribution to this volume). The rather complex relationship between Pentecostal-charismatic Christianity and traditional cultures—a relationship of both preservation and rejection/demonization (Robbins 2004b: 127–29)—can also be approached by focusing on ritual. The plasticity and scope for improvisation that characterize much of Pentecostal-charismatic ritual practice make it apt to specific indigenous appropriations and adaptations. The ritual perspective advocated in this book is thus applicable in comparative studies. While most Pentecostals/charismatics around the world would agree that Jesus protects his people (though the emphasis that is placed on spiritual protection varies), Maxwell notes how the protective and empowering quality of the very name of Jesus is repeatedly stressed in sermons and prayers in the Zimbabwean Assemblies of God, a fact that he relates to the strong resonance of names and naming in many parts of Africa (2005: 12–13) where being named after ancestors can be a source of blessing or a curse (see also Lindhardt 2010b). In a study of the Upramin people of Papua New Guinea, Robbins describes how Pentecostal rituals such as spirit discos reconcile Christianity and local culture by addressing the culturally important idea of willfulness (as opposed to lawfulness) as an attribute that must be controlled and fought, but which is nevertheless a fundamental and necessary part of human existence. The spirit discos are meant to let willfulness be overruled by spirit-filled lawfulness, but they also allow for expressions of the former. As physical ecstasy and collapse during spirit discos can appear quite sexual, they point to the possibility that illicit desire may be present in the ritual. And the action of “pulling the spirit,” though essential to the performance of the ritual, is prototypically willful. Finally, possession by the Holy Spirit often leads to violent actions, understood as deriving from a struggle between the spirit

28

Martin Lindhardt

and a person’s sin, and the violent possessed person is a clear picture of willfulness (2004a: 284–86). I have already argued in an earlier section that Satan and his demons provide an important point of integration between biblical master narratives and local concerns and struggles. The indeterminacy and transmissibility that characterize the theological notion of the realm of darkness, which is only vaguely described in the Bible, make it a prime example of a transposable message that can find footing across a diversity of cultural settings (Csordas 2007a: 261). Deliverance sessions and other rituals of rupture, on the other hand, can very well be seen as portable ritual practices through which Pentecostals/charismatics around the world, to quote the Comaroffs, “make universal signs speak to particular realities” (1993: xxii). As Meyer demonstrates in her work on the expulsion of family spirits, perceived to be satanic agents, in Ghanaian Pentecostal churches and prayer camps, ritual is also an important arena for the rejection (and simultaneous preservation) of local culture and tradition (1998b, 1999a). And as the Christian devil is ultimately responsible for many local social, cultural, and spiritual calamities, the ritual struggles that aim to transform particular realities become parts of a global and universal warfare between good and evil (Corten and Marshall-Frantani: 2001:10). Experiential forms of worship also provide a key to understanding the ability of Pentecostal-charismatic Christianity to take church members beyond the scope of local culture (other important factors being the use of mass media, actual foreign contacts, traveling). Poewe sees the global nature of charismatic Christianity as related to the proleptic experiences that open the individual to a new and infinitely wider world (1994: 251). As ritual body language and proleptic experiences are shared by Pentecostals/charismatics in different parts of the world, they have the potential of increasing a sense of contact and community beyond local churches (Coleman 2000a: 20). According to Coleman, Pentecostal-charismatic Christianity, by being idealistic and experiential, makes it easy “to reject specific organisations in favour of an apparently unconfined, all embracing and endlessly mobile force for personal empowerment” (2000b: 68). Such arguments echo Bourdieu’s views on bodily language and the gymnastics of ritual as vaguer and at the same time richer and more ambiguous and overdetermined than verbal translations (1977: 120). Words tend to limit people’s range of choice, and their effects are in quite obvious ways influenced by the linguistic mastery of listeners. Bodily action, on the other hand, can lead participants towards common experiential truths transcending linguistic, cultural, and organizational barriers (see also Jackson 1983: 339).

Introduction

29

Coleman further argues that globalization is an embodied aspect of charismatic action (2000b: 69). In a study of the “Word of Life” ministry in Sweden, he describes how the notion of a global landscape of evangelical agency is constituted through ritual bodily practices of “reaching out,” such as speaking in tongues, a practice that breaks down semantic barriers, while pointing with the hand in all directions (2000a: 20). In the “New Life in Christ” movement in Tanzania, where I did field work, praying for or against global issues such as the situation in the Middle East, the perceived global threat of Islam, or the spread of the Gospel all over Africa is accompanied by specific bodily practices. Church members often walk around the church room, facing corners and open windows while praying loudly with open arms as if they were channeling divine power from and through their own bodies towards the wider world. This clearly contrasts with praying for the well-being, healing, and spiritual empowerment of the charismatic community or specific members, where bodily positioning is more introverted as participants remain standing on the spot and face each other, sometimes forming circles and holding hands. Apart from being the temple that allows the Holy Spirit to dwell in and transform each person, the human body, and not least its ritual movements, becomes a vehicle and subject of global spiritual agency.18 More empirical work is still required, but existing research has demonstrated how a ritual perspective can produce insights into the three different, though closely related, aspects of Pentecostal-charismatic Christianity discussed in this section, namely, its global spread, its various local appropriations, and its contribution to the constitution of a global orientation.

Themes, Intersections and Points of Departure The other contributions to this volume are all studies and, with the exception of Robbins’s chapter, all empirical case studies of different aspects of Pentecostal-charismatic ritual practice. While the authors mostly address topics that are not new in the scholarly literature, they clearly demonstrate how original research can emerge by approaching well-known themes from a ritual perspective. In other words, the argument advocated in this collection is that a fine-grained study of ritual processes can produce important new understandings of Pentecostalcharismatic Christianity while at the same time stimulating more general conversation on the role of ritual in the building and contesting of social realities.

30

Martin Lindhardt

By focusing on rituals as constitutive modes of practice or sites of transformative action and creative tension, the contributors take up a trend that began earlier (Comaroff and Comaroff 1993) and forcefully demonstrate its analytical potential in the study of Pentecostalcharismatic Christianity. In their seminal introduction to “Modernity and its Malcontents,” the Comaroffs argue for the need to move beyond a view of ritual as “ceremonial action that insulates enchanted, selfreproducing systems from the “real” world” (xvi). Instead they plead for the scholarly recognition of the ability of ritual to authorize action outside of itself (ibid: xix). It is this ability that makes ritual a “vital element in the processes that make and remake social facts and collective identities. Everywhere” (ibid: xvi). The papers collected in this volume share a view on Pentecostalcharismatic ritual as creative processes through which people act upon their social environment and negotiate identities and meaning. The careful analysis of ritual practices enables the authors to shed new light on the ways in which Pentecostal-charismatic Christian movements travel, lend themselves to different and sometimes ambiguous appropriations, and reproduce and renew themselves while at the same time contributing to processes of social and cultural transformation everywhere they are found. Several chapters illustrate how the success of Pentecostal-charismatic Christianity as a global and globalizing movement can be related to specific ritual dynamics. Robbins explicitly explains the global spread of Pentecostal-charismatic Christianity in terms of the pedagogical focus on easily learned ritual frames and bodily styles that binds the movement together and enables it to travel across cultural and linguistic barriers. Drawing on the work of Randal Collins, Robbins further argues that Pentecostal-charismatic Christianity spreads through chains of interaction ritual that are produced as one successful ritual generates emotional energy that can be used to fund subsequent ones. To a large degree, ritually generated emotional energy has propelled evangelists to travel around the world. Some of the other authors are particularly sensitive to the ways elements of ritual practice engage with and sometimes challenge particular cultural practices and understandings, e.g., of personhood, healing, and reconciliation (Ryle); gender and patriarchy (Chong); romantic love (Percy); or autonomous individual agency and more broadly secular modernity (Bialecki, Lindhardt). Finally, Coleman addresses aspects of Pentecostal-charismatic globalization, focusing on the ways in which certain forms of ritual discourse become available for appropriation and copying by both close and—through mass-mediated transmission—distant others. Rit-

Introduction

31

ual discourse is thus imbued with a life and authority that transcend temporal and spatial restrictions of specific persons and events. A number of chapters focus on ritual in relation to the constitution, extension, reproduction, and transformation of Pentecostal-charismatic sociality and communities. As noted by Csordas in his pioneering work on charismatic ritual, anthropologists studying traditional societies have tended to see ritual as a window onto the nature of society. In this view, it is society that creates ritual as a self-affirmation. But Csordas argues that this relationship is inverted in Catholic Pentecostalism. Here ritual events “provide the earliest models for the organization of aspect of community life that subsequently transcend the boundaries of events: ritual creates society as a self-affirmation” (1997: 158, emphasis in original). The present volume provides important and original insights into the ways in which ritual creates and organizes community life. Robbins and Smilde both find Collins’s work on interaction ritual helpful in terms of explaining how ritual practice—involving bodily copresence, social barriers, shared moods, and mutual focus—can produce shared realities and tie people together in communities and institutions. However, Smilde also takes analysis to a different level, thus demonstrating the rich potentiality of a ritual perspective. He focuses on public rituals that enable Venezuelan Evangelical groups produce and expand shared realities and moods that in turn enable them to extend their network and insert themselves into a political field. In this analysis, Evangelical (Pentecostal) ritual does more than tying communities together. Smilde sees the public rituals he describes as multifaceted practices through which Pentecostals reach out to, generate debate and engage with, and position themselves within wider Venezuelan society. Ryle’s chapter offers some very important observations about bodily copresence and the intrinsically social orientation of charismatic healing rituals in Fiji, though she does not explicitly deal with the constitution and nourishment of religious communities. She explores how different ritual practices (such as prayers for healing during which participants kneel and touch the altar and each other) produce bodily and spiritual connectedness as well as a link of empowerment between the body of Christ and the body of those living today. The integration of a human ritual community and divine others is a theme that also emerges in the contributions of Pfeil and myself. My own chapter throws light on different strategies of ritualization by use of which a ritual communicative community in a Chilean Pentecostal church is extended beyond the human participants and comes to include God. These strategies include positional practices such as not looking at each

32

Martin Lindhardt

other during sharing or moments of intense spiritual excitement and spontaneous ways of addressing God so that he appears to be an everpresent, intimate, and almost ordinary member of the community. In her chapter on a North American Protestant-charismatic church, Pfeil focuses on the narrating of testimonies, which often include accounts of suffering, hardships, and emotional distress. She sees such narration as a specific ritual action that aligns narrator and listeners with the imagined origin of the group, namely, the passion and suffering of Christ and the community of the apostles. She further points out how emotional display in charismatic services plays a crucial role in the formation of group identity as it marks a fundamental opposition to other and more “plain” and “spiritually dead” Protestant groups. The contributions of Csordas and Percy each offers specific ritual approaches to the classical Weberian question of how charismatic groups or revival movements reproduce or transform themselves over time. Csordas examines a North American Catholic charismatic community, the Word of God, at the time of a schism and a crisis of generational transition. In this community, a process of hyperritualization in the form of regulation and behavioral codes took place. At the same time, supposedly and ideally spontaneous ritual expressions of spiritual experiences became subject to severe control, which led secondgeneration teenage members to fake particular spiritual behaviors in order to conform to community standards. Csordas argues that in such cases, meaning, rather than inspiring people’s imagination and enabling them to elaborate on a symphony of experiential possibilities, becomes restricted as routinized ritual behavior. His contribution demonstrates how inherent contradictions and processes of cultural transformation in charismatic communities can be explored by focusing on reformulations of meaning, expression, and experience in ritual. Scholars such as Victor Turner have emphasized the ability of ritual to resolve the contradictions of social life (1969). By contrast, Csordas presents a case where ritual generates its own contradictions. In this case ritual processes actually contributed to the division—rather than the creation or self-affirmation—of a charismatic community. The history of Pentecostal-charismatic Christianity is a history of endless schisms and proliferation of churches or groups. Yet scholars have so far paid relatively little attention to these processes and the tensions that cause them (but see Kessler 1967; Lindhardt 2004, 2011) and by approaching these themes from a specific ritual perspective, Csordas offers a welcome and original contribution to the existing literature. Percy shows how members of the Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship (commonly associated with the Toronto Blessing) come to terms

Introduction

33

with declining attendance and atrophy of revivalism by incorporating a romantic genre and more broadly a narrative of adventure into charismatic worship. By allowing for the negotiation of atrophy as a period of reflection, temporary settlement, and rest—clearly expressed in the ritual practice of “resting in Jesus”—this narrative enables fellowship members to construct and reconstruct their identities in the midst of decline. However, reflecting upon possible future scenarios, Percy points to what he sees as a long-term irreconcilable tension between security, settlement, and mainstreaming and, on the other hand, a blessing movement whose major contribution is renewal, movement, and venture beyond conventionality. Healing is a central feature of Pentecostal-charismatic religiosity and a topic that is examined in a number of ways in this volume. The chapters of Ryle and Chong demonstrate how a focus on ritual healing provides an important window onto other topics such as the complex interplay—involving both continuity and discontinuity, and both consonance and dissonance—between Pentecostal-charismatic Christianity and particular social structures and cultural understandings of personhood, agency, gender, and sociality. Ryle explores how relational and reconciling understandings of healing in Fiji are incorporated into Catholic charismatic rituals, where empowerment is experienced through practices of bodily and spiritual connectedness. But she also points out that certain ritual elements, such as the emphasis on the individual acknowledgement of sin at an inner level of sin (absent from traditional rites of reconciliation), display of affections between spouses, and expressive bodily actions are challenging to Fiji Islanders, yet are ultimately experienced as liberating and empowering. Chong focuses on South Korean Evangelical female cell groups where emotional healing is found through experiences of empowerment, collective sharing, discursive reframing, and not least through a ritual of surrender, understood as self-abandonment and relinquishment of the will to divine control. However, Chong also argues that women’s religious engagement becomes a double-edged sword. The ideals of self sacrifice and repression of desires, articulated in confessions and repentance of sins of disobedience, egoism, and impatience also serve to redomesticate women within a South Korean patriarchal system and provide little incitement to change the status quo. Chong’s chapter thus adds nuances to much of the existing literature on Pentecostal-charismatic religion and gender that mostly emphasizes the empowerment of women (Mariz 1994; Griffith 1997; Gill 1990; Brusco 1995). And, equally importantly, she demonstrates how the study of ritual healing can improve our understanding of how culturally spe-

34

Martin Lindhardt

cific gendered (empowered and/or repressed) Pentecostal-charismatic identities are constituted. Percy contributes another angle in his focus on perceived immediate ritual healings as parts of a performative revivalist experience in the Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship. He argues that in this context, the efficacy of healings does not lie in their verification (and many of the complaints people bring to church are internal and unverifiable) but in their performative and persuasive power within a ritually enacted divine dramaturgy. Bialecki’s chapter addresses the complex ideational material as well as the negotiations of meaning, status, and failure that are involved in the—on the surface—quotidian ritual act of praying for healing of emotional or physical states in Californian Vineyard churches. While there is no mention of the demonic in such prayers, Bialecki discovered that the person praying often sees the act as one of deliverance. Puzzled by this discovery, he engages in an insightful exploration of demonological folk theories, of cultural notions of agency, and not least of the understandings of relations between mental illness and demonic disturbances that inform such practice. He argues that framing healing as deliverance is an act of self classification (seeing oneself as knowledgeable of charismatic practice) and simultaneously represents a way of coming to terms with repeated failures to handle a problem. Such framing can further be seen as a moment of resistance to secular modern hegemony and notions of autonomous individuality as it preserves supernatural agency and influence on human will. As with healing, the complexity of Pentecostal-charismatic ritual language is reflected in different ways in the contributions to this volume. Gifford’s and Coleman’s chapters each demonstrate how certain kinds of ritual language use serve to enhance the status and charismatic persona of particular preachers and prophets. Gifford explores ritual uses of the Bible in Kenyan Pentecostal-charismatic churches highly influenced by the so-called Faith Gospel. In these churches, the Bible is considered to be a contemporary—rather than historical—document that recounts God’s promises to his people. Drawing on the speech act thinking of John Austin, Gifford demonstrates how this understanding has led to a performative and declarative use of the Bible, through which pastors are constituted as anointed men of God who proclaim and thereby effectuate his promises. The ritual use of the Bible, as different rituals of breaking curses and generating blessings, creates more personalized churches and elevates the status of particular pastors, making it quite functional in terms of fundraising. The contributions of Coleman, Bialecki, and myself all address questions of ownership of language. Coleman and I both explore ritual

Introduction

35

situations where speakers to different extents appear as messengers of God and where spoken words are perceived as sources of divine power to be appropriated into the self, and not just as arbitrary carriers of a theological message. While healing is not the theme in any of these chapters, we both demonstrate how experiences of divine empowerment (often an important part of healing, a point made by both Ryle and Chong) are produced from specific kinds of language use. Analyzing three sermons (one of which is filmed) by preachers from or with strong connections to the Word of Life in Sweden, Coleman demonstrates how charismatic redistribution from a divine source (the preacher being a messenger of God) becomes entangled with redistribution and exchange between humans. He provides an interesting example of a preacher who (not unlike the preachers described by Gifford) appears to embody scriptural truth and give voice to its saving words. According to Coleman, listeners/viewers of such sermons are left with interpretive gaps to fill in themselves, as questions of whether a linguistic message can be appropriated as a divine message, or deriving from the preacher, mostly do not receive immediate answers. In this way listeners are engaged by the charismatic voice because it gives them simultaneous access to human and divine “speaking worlds.” And in the process there is an “ever-present possibility” that the human and divine might be translated into the other. My own chapter explores how divine presence and interference in communicative processes are constituted as distinguished features of services in a Chilean Pentecostal church. In particular, attention is focused on rhetorical practices such as emotional display, interruptive outbursts, and spontaneous shifts between addressing human participants and God. Such practices all indicate perceptions of divine interference, inspiration, and partial control of affairs. The chapter further touches upon different ritualized speech acts where spoken words are to different extents perceived as originating from God. In a final discussion of the apparent autonomy of spoken words, Csordas’s view of language as part of our essential embodied otherness is supplemented with a Foucault-inspired analysis of Pentecostal discourse as manipulating its subjects, not by enforcing social constraints upon otherwise free speech, but by inciting and inducing the possibility of spontaneous linguistic conduct. The focus of Bialecki’s chapter lays on demonization, but he notices how this topic reveals similar problems of agency as found in the exercise of divine gifts such as prophesies, tongues, and direct communication with God, namely, the overrunning of corporeal and psychic barriers, and questions concerning degrees of free will and control.

36

Martin Lindhardt

However, Bialecki also pushes analysis in a different direction. He argues that models that foreground language use, embodiment, and experience in ritual need to be complemented (though by no means replaced) by a focus on ideational material and inner beliefs, since understandings of what goes on in ritual sometimes remain unarticulated and may not be shared by everyone involved. The ways in which ritual language use contributes to sensations of divine presence is a topic that also emerges in Percy’s chapter, in which he describes how ways to encounter God at an intimate level are facilitated by using rhetoric of passionate, romantic love. Finally Pfeil looks at emotional display in North American charismatic ritual linguistic practice and in particular in the narration of testimonies. She sees the role of affectively marked performances in charismatic services as a manifestation of specific devotional ideology. In the latter, “Ritual,” referring to empty and law-governed action, contrasts with what Pfeil calls anti-“Ritual” forms, characterized by emotional and apparently spontaneous and informal performance, understood as originating from the true center of human subject. Whereas early Protestants positioned plain, rational speech as a transparent medium for devotional practice, charismatic-Pentecostal Christians find even these forms insufficiently anti-“Ritual.” For the latter, so Pfeil argues, emotional display becomes an important sign of authentic heartfelt experience and true communication with God. By focusing on different aspects of ritual in a variety of regions and congregations, the authors not only shed light on the global diversity of Pentecostal-charismatic Christianity but also, implicitly or explicitly, address more general theoretical questions concerning the constitutive and transformative role of ritual in social and cultural life. The aim of the review of some of the existing literature in this introduction is to illustrate that much of what Pentecostal-charismatic Christianity does—or much of what people do with Pentecostal-charismatic Christianity—is done through ritual. This argument also runs through the remaining chapters that all focus on ritual and in doing so portray Pentecostal-charismatic spirituality, sociality, and identities as emerging, unfolding, and negotiated through practice or doing, rather than as fixed entities or essences to be represented through expressive behavior. Hopefully, the explicit analytical emphasis on the creative aspects of ritual practice, advocated in this volume, will inspire future research on Pentecostal-charismatic Christianity. This emphasis has the potential to generate significant new insights into global religious transformation and revitalization, and ultimately to enhance our un-

Introduction

37

derstanding of the continuing enchantment or reenchantment of the modern world.

Notes 1. Enumerated in the New Testament, l Corinthians 12:4, 9, 28, 30, 31, these gifts include the grace of healing, the working of miracles, prophecy, the discerning of spirits, diverse kinds of tongues, interpretations of speeches, the word of wisdom, the word of knowledge, and faith. 2. A wedding ritual, if performed properly by authorized officials, will effectuate a marriage. The legal validity of the marriage does not depend upon the intentions and desires of the bride and the groom (for instance on whether or not they actually wish to marry each other). Neither will it depend upon whether or not they understand or pay attention to what is being communicated during the ritual. 3. Csordas considers Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus and the socially informed body (Bourdieu 1977: 72, 124) particularly relevant in analyzing charismatic ritual practice and experience. By collapsing well-known dualisms such as mind/body or nature/culture and allowing us to conceive of culture as grounded in the body rather than merely ideational, these concepts help explain how spontaneous behavior and pre-objective, pre-reflective bodily sensations never escape cultural determinism (Csordas 1990: 110–12). 4. Anthropologists such as Rosaldo (1982) have pointed out that Western concepts of sincerity and intentionality should only be applied with great caution in the study of other cultures. Robbins has argued that before converting to Christianity, the Upramin of New Guinea understood human intentions as totally inaccessible. With the introduction of Christianity, a new genre of sincere speech developed, allowing the possibility of truthful representations of inner states (2001b). A particularly interesting analysis of a clash between Protestant/modernist and other cultural language ideologies is found in Webb Keane’s recent book on Dutch Calvinist missionaries on the Indonesian island, Sumba (2007). 5. Scholars emphasizing the social power of formalism are not blind to this weakness. Tambiah argues that the formalism and invariant stereotypy of ritual could result in the loss of meaning over time, outdating and rendering it meaningless to subsequent generations. This may affect periods of revivalism in which pragmatic and functional considerations predominate (1979: 165). This argument could be relevant to the analysis of charismatic revivalism. To some extent it is echoed by Shoap’s observation of a tension in many Protestant communities between “routinized religious language and that which comes spontaneously from the heart of the divine” (2002: 35). 6. Research conducted by cognitive anthropologists and psychologists has revealed that interaction with supernatural others is to a large extent informed by the same interference and other cognitive systems that regulate interaction

38

7.

8.

9. 10.

11.

12.

Martin Lindhardt

between humans (e.g., Boyer 2001). This point rings true in the case of Pentecostals/charismatics who, while they conceive of God and Jesus as supernatural others, invested with counterintuitive properties, also emphasize the human-like qualities that make the latter ideal friends and partners. Chilean Pentecostals sometimes describe God or Jesus as emphatic, loving, caring, sensitive, and good listeners (see Lindhardt 2009c). See Du Bois (1986) for a summary of some of the different formal properties of ritual speech that may lead to a decentering of discourse. See also Keane (1997) for an overview of approaches to the study of ritual language. See also Csordas 1990, 1994, 1997 for an analysis of how a particular (Catholic charismatic) sacred self, which is “oriented in the world and defines what it means to be human in terms of the wholly other than human” (1994: 24) is constituted through specific cultural objectifications of experiences and emotions. Elsewhere Meyer demonstrates how Pentecostal imagery and conceptual elaborations shade into political propaganda and discourses in Ghana (1998a). See Percy’s contribution to this volume for an analysis of how motifs and narratives of adventure pervade charismatic worship in the Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship. Following Mark Hansen (2000), Luhrmann relates the increasing search for psychological anomalous experiences among North American Evangelicals to the rise of television and other modern media technologies that enhance experiences of being absorbed and distracted from the outer world (2004: 526). The ritual emphasis on rupture is a dramatic element that connects with a wide range of human experience, providing a meeting point with a variety of secular genres. As Meyer points out, there is a clear analogy between Pentecostal conceptualizations of conversion as rupture and modernity’s self-definition in terms of progress and continuous renewal (1998b: 317). Besides, conversion and postconversion experiences of rupture (such as ongoing struggles with the “world” and demonic forces) share important elements with other experiences of personal and social rupture. Migration, going to war, being attacked by terrorists, finding love, breaking up, parenthood, death, career changes, finishing school, leaving home, getting sick, being healed, getting an alcohol or drug abuse problem, deciding to deal with it, etc. all provide good material for popular mediated dramatization and/or culturally specific biographic articulation. Meyer notes that West African Christian video films are often framed as confessions or testimonies and introduced as true stories (2004: 103). The standardization of personal narratives of rupture in institutions such as Anonymous Alcoholics, where members learn to objectify experience and reconstruct their biographies in particular ways (Cain 1991), has clear parallels to the cultural modeling of testimonies within religious institutions (see Pfeil this volume; Stromberg 1993; Rambo 1993; Snow and Machaleck 1983; Berger and Luckmann 1966; Lindhardt 2004, 2009d), though a thorough comparative study has yet to be undertaken. The narrating of testimonies and the confession of past sins in Pentecostal-charismatic services, often guided and directed by a pastor who asks questions to the narrator, also share many features with

Introduction

39

televised talk shows (e.g., with Jerry Springer) in which people confess different misdeeds to partners, friends, relatives, and (not least) millions of viewers. In her contribution to this volume, Pfeil explores parallels between American reality shows and charismatic devotional practice as she argues that tears and other kinds of emotional display—taken as proofs that the parties involved have been truly touched—are crucial features in both genres. Future research might also reveal parallels and mutual influencing between some neo–Pentecostal-charismatic preachers and secular motivational speakers/coaches—and between the narratives of members of an audience who feel that their lives have been transformed after having heard the message. This applies to stage performance as well as to structure and content. For example, the importance of turning one’s life through positive thinking, belief in oneself, definition and focused pursuit of goals, not allowing oneself to be too influenced by pessimistic others, etc. 13. Steven compares the intimate encounter with God to the climax of a night at the discotheque, namely, the romantic encounter between individuals at the dance floor, which also takes place in a context of music, lyrics, and demeanor of participants (2002: 133). See also Percy (1996, 1998a, 1998b, this volume) for analysis of how a romantic genre is incorporated into charismatic worship. 14. While visualism has traditionally enjoyed a privileged position in ethnographic work on the senses, scholars such as Engelke (2007), Feld (1996), and Hirschkin (2001) have argued for the importance of focusing careful attention on sound. Following these scholars, I suggest that sound is in fact more important than visual images in the expansion of Pentecostal moods beyond the confines of churches. As noted by Oosterbaan, sound has a unique capacity to transcend space in a centrifugal movement, to fill it and occupy it in ways that envelops an auditor. He relates this capacity to what he terms the Janusfaced character of sound in relation to territory: “On the one hand, its material dimension can appear to be an extension of material and social boundaries. On the other hand, its immaterial dimension can appear to transgress these boundaries fluently” (2008: 130). Sound, in other words, is more omnipresent and accessible than images and can more easily transcend spatial boundaries, e.g., between a living room and a kitchen, or a church and the surrounding neighborhood. The visual experience of watching a Pentecostal image, e.g., a TV show, is interrupted when someone turns his or her head around or leaves a room. But the experience of listening to Pentecostal sounds (sermons, singing) is not in the same way dependant upon bodily fixation. In Chilean lowerclass households, I have noticed that nonworking women (who spend the day at home) tend to have the television turned on most of the day but rarely sit down and watch it with focused attention. Rather they listen to it while being engaged in domestic tasks, moving back and forth between different rooms. Pentecostal services, open-air meetings, and street preaching sessions are often heard—but not necessarily seen—by people who live nearby or simply pass by. Similarly one can easily listen to a Pentecostal radio show or cassette—but only with great difficulty watch a Pentecostal TV show—while driving a car or riding a bus.

40

Martin Lindhardt

15. Engelke’s distinction between re-presentation—making present again—and representation—a making present but only in some sense—(2007: 26) is useful in the study of religion and mass mediation. The work of scholars such as Meyer, Coleman, Csordas, Oosterbaan, and de Witte indicates that massmediated transmissions of religious images and performances are often experienced by Pentecostals/charismatics as re-presentations. 16. Elsewhere Csordas does note that the Catholic charismatic movement expands globally by “spreading devotees in networks of communities that create styles of inter-subjectivity and inter-corporeality through adherence to common experiential modalities and performative genres” (2007b: 303). 17. The extent to which existing traditions and standards of bodily expression and control can prepare the habitus for engagement in Pentecostal-charismatic worship must be a subject for empirical research. According to my own field work experience from Tanzania and Chile, loud praise is one of the ritual practices that are seen as most bizarre by outsiders from Catholic and mainline Protestant churches. Not surprisingly, it is also a practice towards which many new, and even some old, converts feel more awkward and inhibited than practices such as clapping, dancing, swaying, and singing of lively rhythmic songs, which are parts of popular mainstream culture in both countries. See also Ryle’s contribution to this volume. 18. The necessity of avoiding sinful bodily practices (drinking, smoking, immoral sex) is often explained by Pentecostals/charismatics in terms of the Holy Spirit’s preference for a clean home.

References Albrecht, Daniel E. 1999. Rites in the Spirit. A Ritual Approach to PentecostalCharismatic Spirituality. Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic Press. Anderson, Allan. 2000a. Evangelicalism and the Growth of Pentecostalism in Africa. Paper read at the Africa Forum, Churches Together in Britain and Ireland, 11 April, http://artsweb.bham.ac.uk/aanderson/Publications/evangelism_and_ the_growth_of_pen.htm. ———. 2000b. The Pentecostal Gospel, Religion and Culture in African Perspective. Paper read at the History of Religion seminar, University of Oxford, 29 May. http://artsweb.bham.ac.uk/aanderson/Publications/pentecostal_gospel.htm. Appadurai, A. 1996. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Asad, Talal. 1993. Genealogies of Religion. London: John Hopkins University Press. Asonzeh, F-K Ukah. 2003. “Advertising God: Nigerian Video-Films and the Power of Consumer Culture.” Journal of Religion in Africa: Religion and the Media 33 (2): 203–31. Bell, Catherine. 1992. Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Berger, Peter, and Luckmann, Thomas. 1966. The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. New York: Doubleday.

Introduction

41

Bloch, Maurice E. F. 1998. “Symbols, Song, Dance and Features of Articulation: Is Religion an Extreme Form of Traditional Authority.” In How We Think They Think: Anthropological Approaches to Cognition, Memory, and Literacy, edited by Maurice E. F. Bloch. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Blunt, Robert. 2004. “‘Satan Is an Imitator’: Kenya’s Recent Cosmology of Corruption.” In Producing African Futures: Ritual and Reproduction in a Neoliberal Age, edited by Brad Weiss. Boston: Brill. Booth, Wayne C. 1995. “The Rhetoric of Fundamentalist Conversion Narratives.” In Fundamentalism Comprehended, edited by : Martin E. Marty and R. S. Appleby. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice. London: Routledge. Boyer, Pascal. 2001. Religion Explained. The Human Instincts that Fashion God, Spirits and Ancestors. London: William Heinnemann. Brouwer, Steve, Paul Gifford, and Susan Rose. 1996. Exporting the American Gospel: Global Christian Fundamentalism. New York: Routledge. Brusco, Elizabeth. 1992. “The Reformation of Machismo: Asceticism and Masculinity among Colombian Evangelicals.” In Rethinking Protestantism in Latin America, edited by David Stoll and Virgina Garrad-Burnett. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. ———. 1995. The Reformation of Machismo: Evangelical Conversion and Gender in Colombia. Austin: University of Texas Press. Burdick, John S. 1992. “Struggling against the Devil: Pentecostalism and Social Movements in Urban Brazil.” In Rethinking Protestantism in Latin America, edited by David Stoll and Virgina Garrad-Burnett. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. ———. 1993. Looking for God in Brazil: The Progressive Catholic Church in Urban Brazil´s Religious Arena. Berkeley: University of California Press. ———. 2008. “Class, Place and Blackness in Sao Paulo’s Gospel Music Scene.” Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic and Racial Studies 3 (2): 149– 69. Butler, Judith. 1990. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. London: Routledge. Cain, Carole. 1991. “Personal Stories: Identity Acquisition and Self-Understanding in Alcoholics Anonymous.” Ethnos 19 (2): 210–54. Chesnut, R. Andrew. 1997. Born Again in Brazil: The Pentecostal Boom and the Pathogens of Poverty. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Coleman, Simon. 1998. “Charismatic Christianity and the Dilemmas of Globalization.” Religion 28: 245–56. ———. 2000a. The Globalization of Charismatic Christianity. Spreading the Gospel of Prosperity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2000b. “Moving Towards the Millennium? Ritualized Mobility and the Cultivation of Agency among Charismatic Protestants.” Journal of Ritual Studies 14 (2): 16–27. ———. 2003. “Continuous Conversion? The Rhetoric, Practice, and Rhetorical Practice of Charismatic Protestant Conversion.” In The Anthropology of Religious Conversion, edited by Andres Buckster and Stephen D. Glazier. Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield.

42

Martin Lindhardt

———. 2004. “When Silence Isn’t Golden: Charismatic Speech and the Limits of Literalism.” In The Limits of Meaning: Case Studies in the Anthropology of Christianity, edited by Matthew Engelke and Matt Tomlinson. New York: Berghahn Books. ———. 2006. “Materializing the Self: Words and Gifts in the Construction of Evangelical Identity.” In The Anthropology of Christianity, edited by Fenella Cannel, 163–84. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Coleman, Simon, and Peter Collins. 2000. “The “Plain” and the “Positive”: Ritual, Experience and Aesthetics in Quakerism and Charismatic Christianity.” Journal of Contemporary Religion 15 (3): 317–29. Collins, Randall. 2004. Interaction Ritual Chains. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Comaroff, Jean, and John Comaroff. 1993. “Introduction.” In Modernity and Its Malcontents: Ritual and Power in Postcolonial Africa, edited by Jean and John Comaroff, xi–xxxvii. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ———. 1999. “Occult Economies and the Violence of Abstraction: Notes from the South African Postcolony.” American Ethnologist 26 (2): 279–303. ———. 2001. “Millennial Capitalism: First Thoughts of a Second Coming.” In Millennial Capitalism and the Culture of Neoliberalism, edited by Jean and John Comaroff. Durhamn, NC: Duke University Press. Corten, Andre, and Ruth Marshall-Fratani. 2001. “Introduction.” In Between Babel and Pentecost. Transnational Pentecostalism in Africa and Latin America, edited by Corten and Marshall-Frantani. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Cox, Harvey 1996. Fire from Heaven. The Rise of Pentecostal Spirituality and the Reshaping of Religion in the Twenty-first Century. London: Cassel. Csordas, Thomas. 1990. “Embodiment as a Paradigm for Anthropology.” Ethnos 18 (1): 5–47. ———. 1994. The Sacred Self: A Cultural Phenomenology of Charismatic Healing. Berkeley: University of California Press. ———. 1997. Language, Charisma, and Creativity: The Ritual Life of a Religious Movement. Berkeley: University of California Press. ———. 2007a. “Introduction. Modalities of Transnational Transcendence.” Anthropological Theory 7 (3): 259–72. ———. 2007b. “Global Religion and the Re-enchantment of the World. The Case of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal.” Anthropological Theory 7 (3): 295–314. de Witte, Marleen. 2003. “Altar Media’s Living Word: Televised Charismatic Christianity in Ghana.” Journal of Religion in Africa 33 (2): 172–202. Deiros, Pablo. 1991. “Protestant Fundamentalism in Latin America.” In Fundamentalism Observed, edited by Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Drogus, Carol Ann. 1997. “Private Power or Public Power: Pentecostalism, Base Communities, and Gender.” In Power, Politics and Pentecostals in Latin America, edited by Edward L. Cleary and Hanna W. Stewart-Gambino. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Du Bois, John. 1986. “Self-Evidence and Ritual Speech” In Evidentiality: The Linguistic Coding of Epistemology, ed. W. Chafe, J. Nichols, 313–36. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.

Introduction

43

Engelke, Matthew. 2004. “Text and Performance in an African Christian Church.” American Ethnologist 31 (1): 76–91. ———. 2006. “Clarity and Charisma: On the Uses of Ambiguity in Ritual Life.” In The Limits of Meaning: Case Studies in the Anthropology of Christianity, edited by Matthew Engelke and Matt Tomlinson. New York: Berghahn Books. ———. 2007. A Problem of Presence. Beyond Scripture in and African Church. Berkeley: University of California Press. Evans-Pritchard, E. E. 1937. Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Feld, Steven. 1996. “Waterfalls of Song: An Acoustemology of Place Resounding in Bosavi, Papua New Guinea.” In Senses of Place, edited by Steven Feld and Keith H. Basso. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press. Ferguson, James. 1999. Expectations of Modernity: Myths and Meanings of Urban life on the Zambian Copperbelt. Berkeley: University of California Press. Geertz, Clifford. 1973. The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books. Gifford, Paul. 2001. “The Complex Provenance of Some Elements of African Pentecostal Theology.” In Between Babel and Pentecost. Transnational Pentecostalism in Africa and Latin America, edited by André Corten and Ruth Marshall-Frantani. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ———. 2004. Ghana’s New Christianity. London: Hurst. Gill, Lesley. 1990. “‘Like a Veil to Cover Them’: Women and the Pentecostal Movement in La Paz.” American Ethnologist 17 (4): 708–21. Griffith, R. Marie. 1997. God’s Daughters: Evangelical Women and the Power of Submission. Berkeley: University of California. Hackett, Rosalind I. J. 1998. “Charismatic/Pentecostal Appropriation of Media Technologies in Nigeria and Ghana.” Journal of Religion in Africa 27: 258– 77. Hansen, Mark. 2000. Embodying Technesis: Technology Beyond Writing. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Harding, Susan F. 1987. “Convicted by the Holy Spirit: The Rhetoric of Fundamental Baptist Conversion.” American Ethnologist 14 (1): 167–81. ———. 1994. “Imagining the Last Days. The Politics of Apocalyptic Language.” In Accounting for Fundamentalism, edited by Martin E. Marty and Scott Appleby. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ———. 2000. The Book of Jerry Falwell. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Hirschkind, Charles. 2001. “The Ethics of Cassette-Sermon Audition in Contemporary Egypt.” American Ethnologist 28 (3): 623–49. Hollenweger, Walther. 1972. The Pentecostals. London: SCM Press. ———. 1997. Charismatisch-pfingstliches Christendum Herkunft, Situation ökumenische Chancen. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht. Hughes-Freeland, Felicia, and Mary M. Crain. 1998. “Introduction.” In Recasting Ritual. Performance, Media, Identity, edited by Felicia Hughes-Freeland and Mary M. Crain. London: Routlege. Humphrey, Caroline, and James Laidlaw. 1994. The Archetypal Actions of Ritual: A Theory of Ritual Illustrated by the Jain Rite of Worship. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

44

Martin Lindhardt

Jackson, Michael 1983. Knowledge of the Body. Man 18 (n.s.): 327–45. Keane, Webb. 1997. “Religious Language.” Annual Review of Anthropology 26: 47–71. ———. 2003. “Semiotics and the Social Analysis of Material Things.” Language, Culture and Communication 23 (2–3): 409–23. ———. 2007. Christian Moderns: Freedom and Fetish in the Mission Encounter. Berkeley: University of California Press. Kessler, J. B. A. Jr. 1967. A Study of the Older Protestant Missions and Churches in Peru and Chile. With Special Reference to the Problems of Division, Nationalism and Native Ministry. Goes, Netherlands: Oosterbaan le Cointre N.V. Lalive d’Epinay, Christian. 1969. Haven of the Masses: A Study of the Pentecostal Movement in Chile. London: Lutterworth. Leach, Edmund R. 1964. Political Systems of Highland Burma LSE Monographs in Social Anthropology. London: Athlone Press. ———. 1968. “Ritual.” International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. New York: Macmillan. Leder, Drew. 1990. The Absent Body. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lindhardt, Martin. 2004. Power in Powerlessness. A Study of Pentecostal Life Worlds and Symbolic Resistance in Urban Chile. PhD diss., University of Aarhus. ———. 2009a. “The Ambivalence of Power. Charismatic Christianity and Occult Forces in Urban Tanzania.” Nordic Journal of Religion and Society 22 (1): 37–54. ———. 2009b. “More than Just Money: The Faith Gospel and Occult Economies in Contemporary Tanzania.” Nova Religio. The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions. 13 (1): 41–67. ———. 2009c. “Poder, Género y Cambio Cultural en el Pentecostalismo Chileno.” Revista Cultura y Religion 3 (2): 94–111, http://www.revistaculturayreligion.cl/ articulos/vol_3_n2/vol_3_n2_2009_5_Martin_Lindhart.pdf ———. 2009d. “Narrating Religious Realities. Conversion and Testimonies in Chilean Pentecostalism.” Suomen Antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society 34 (3): 25–43. ———. 2010a. “Mind, Self and the Devil. Satanic Presence in Internal Conversation among Chilean Pentecostals.” Nordic Journal of Religion and Society (2010), 23 (2): 177–195. ———. 2010b. “‘If You Are saved You Cannot Forget Your Parents.’ Agency, Power and Social Repositioning in Tanzanian Born-again Christianity.” Journal of Religion in Africa 40 (3): 240–272. ———. 2011. “Why the Devil is Satan So Important in Chilean Pentecostalism? Power, Resistance and Pentecostal Micropolitics.” In Pentecostal Power Expressions, Impact and Faith of Latin American Pentecostalism, edited by Calvin L. Smith. Leiden: Brill. Luhrmann, Tanya M. 2004. “Metakinesis: How God Becomes Intimate in Contemporary US Christianity.” American Anthropologist 106 (3): 518–28. Mariz, Cecília Loreto. 1994. Coping with Poverty: Pentecostals and Christian Base Communities in Brazil. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Marshall-Frantani, Ruth. 1993. “Power in the Name of Jesus. Social Transforma-

Introduction

45

tion and Pentecostalism in Western Nigeria Revisited.” In Legitimacy and the State in Twentieth Century Africa, edited by Terence Ranger and O. Vaugh. London: Macmillan. ———. 1998. “Mediating the Global and Local in Nigerian Pentecostalism.” Journal of Religion in Africa 28 (3): 278–315. Martin, Bernice. 1995. “New Mutations of the Protestant Ethic among Latin American Pentecostals.” Religion 25 (2): 102–17. ———. 1998. “From Pre- to Postmodernity in Latin America: The Case of Pentecostalism.” In: Religion, Modernity and Postmodernity, edited by R. Heelas. Oxford Blackwell. Martin, David. 2001. Pentecostalism: The World Is Their Parish. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Maxwell, David. 2005. “The Durawall of Faith: Pentecostal Spirituality in Neoliberal Zimbabwe.” Journal of Religion in Africa 35 (1): 14–33. ———. 2006. African Gifts of the Spirit. Pentecostalism and the rise of a Zimbabwean Transnational Religious Movement. Oxford: James Currey. McGuire, Meredith B. 1982. Pentecostal Catholics: Power, Charisma and Order in a Religious Movement. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Meyer, Birgit. 1992. “‘If you are a Devil you are a Witch and if you are a Witch, you are a Devil’: The Integration of ‘Pagan’ Ideas into the Conceptual Universe of Ewe Christians in Southeastern Ghana.” Journal of Religion in Africa 22 (2): 98–132. ———. 1995. “‘Delivered from the Powers of Darkness’: Confessions of Satanic Riches in Christian Ghana.” Africa: Journal of the International African Institute 65 (2): 236–55. ———. 1998a. “The Power of Money: Politics, Occult Forces and Pentecostalism in Ghana.” Africa Studies Review 41 (3): 15–37. ———. 1998b. “‘Make a Complete Break with the Past.’ Memory and Postcolonial Modernity in Ghanaian Pentecostalist Discourse.” Journal of Religion in Africa 28 (3): 316–49. ———. 1999a. Translating the Devil. Religion and Modernity among the Ewe in Ghana. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. ———. 1999b. “Commodities and the Power of Prayer: Pentecostalist Attitudes Towards Consumption in Contemporary Ghana.” In Globalization and Identity. Dialectics of Flow and Closure, edited by B. Meyer and P. Geschiere. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. ———. 2004a. “‘Praise the Lord.’ Popular Cinema and pentecostalite style in Ghana’s new public sphere.” American Ethnologist 31 (1): 92–110. ———. 2004b. “Christianity in Africa: From Independent to Pentecostal-Charismatic Churches.” Annual Review of Anthropology 33: 447–74. ———. 2005. “Religious Remediations. Pentecostal Views in Ghanaian VideoMovies.” Postscripts 1 (2/3): 155–81. ———. 2006. “Impossible Representations: Pentecostalism, Vision and Video Technology in Ghana.” In Religion, Media and the Public Sphere, edited by B. Meyer and Annelies Moors. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 290– 312.

46

Martin Lindhardt

Mitchel, Jon P. 1998. “Performances of Masculinity in a Maltese Festa.” In Recasting Ritual. Performance, Media, Identity, edited by Felicia Hughes-Freeland and Mary M. Crain. London: Routledge. Munga, Annett Nyagawa. 1998. Uamsho: A Theological Study of the Proclamation of the Revival Movement within the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania. Lund, Sweden: Lund University Press. Neitz, Mary Jo. 1987. Charisma and Community: A Study of Religion in American Culture. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publications. Neitz, Mary Jo, and Spickard, James V. 1990. “Steps towards a Sociology of Religious Experience. The Theory of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Alfred Schutz.” Sociological Analysis 51 (1): 15–33. Oosterbaan, Martijn. 2008. “Spiritual Attunement: Pentecostal Radio in the Soundscape of a Favela in Rio de Janeiro.” Social Text 26 (3): 123–45. Oro, Ari Pedro, and Pablo Semán. 2001. “Brazilian Pentecostalism Crosses National Borders.” In Between Babel and Pentecost. Transnational Pentecostalism in Africa and Latin America, edited by André Corten and Ruth Marshall Frantani. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Ortner, Sherry B. 1978. Sherpas through their Rituals. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Percy, Martyn. 1996. Words, Wonders and Power. Understanding Contemporary Christian Fundamentalism and Revivalism. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. ———. 1998a. Power and the Church: Ecclesiology in an Age of Transition. London: Cassell. ———. 1998b. “The Morphology of Pilgrimage in the Toronto Blessing.” Religion 28 (3): 281–89. ———. 2000. “The Church in the Market Place: Advertising and Religion in a Secular Age.” Journal of Contemporary Religion 15 (1): 97–120. Poewe, Karla. 1994. Charismatic Christianity as a Global Culture. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press. Rambo, Lewis. 1993. Understanding Religious Conversion. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press Rappaport, Roy A. 1999. Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Robbins, Joel. 2001a. “Ritual Communication and Linguistic Ideology: A Reading and Partial Reformulation of Rappaport’s Theory of Ritual.” Current Anthropology 42 (5): 591–614. ———. 2001b. “God Is Nothing But Talk: Modernity, Language and Prayer in a Papua New Guinea Society.” American Anthropologist 103 (4): 901–12. ———. 2004a. Becoming Sinners: Christianity and Moral Torment in a Papua New Guinean Society. Berkeley: University of California Press. ———. 2004b. “The Globalization of Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity.” Annual Review of Anthropology 33: 117–43. Rosaldo, Michelle. 1982. “The Things We Do with Words: Ilongot Speech Acts and Speech Act Theory in Philosophy.” Language and Society 11: 203–37. Sepúlveda, Juan. 1992. “Reflections on the Pentecostal Contribution to the Mission of the Church in Latin America.” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 1 (95): 93–108.

Introduction

47

———. 1996. “Reinterpreting Chilean Pentecostalism.” Social Compass 43 (3): 299– 318. Shoaps, Robin A. 2002. “Pray Earnestly: The Textual Construction of Personal Involvement in Pentecostal Prayer and Song.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 12 (1): 34–71. Smilde, David. 2007. Reason to Believe: Cultural Agency in Latin America Evangelicalism. Berkeley: University of California Press. Smith, Brian H. 1998. Religious Politics in Latin America: Pentecostal vs. Catholic. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. Smith, Daniel Jordan. 2007. A Culture of Corruption: Everyday Deception and Popular Discontent in Nigeria. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Snow, David A., and Richard Machaleck. 1983. “The Convert as a Social Type.” Sociological Theory 1: 259–89. Steven, James H. S. 2002. Worship in the Spirit. Charismatic worship in the Church of England. Carlisle, UK: Paternoster Press. Stringer, Martin D. 1999. On the Perception of Worship. The Ethnography of Worship in Four Christian Congregations in Manchester. Birmingham, AL: University of Birmingham Press. Stromberg, Peter G. 1985. “The Impression Point: Synthesis of Symbol and Self.” Ethos: Journal of the Society for Psychological Anthropology 13: 56–74. ———. 1993. Language and Self-Transformation: A Study in Christian Conversion Narrative. New York: Cambridge University Press. Susumu, Shimazono. 1986. “Conversion Stories and their Popularization in Japan’s New Religions.” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 13 (2–3): 158–75. Tambiah, Stanley J. 1979. A Performative Approach to Ritual. The Proceedings of the British Academy 65, London Tomlinson, Matt, and Matthew Engelke. 2006. “Meaning, Anthropology, Christianity.” In The Limits of Meaning: Case Studies in the Anthropology of Christianity, edited by Matthew Engelke and Matt Tomlinson. New York: Berghahn Books. Turner, Victor W. 1969. The Ritual Process. Structure and Anti-Structure. Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company. ———. 1982. From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play. New York: PAJ Publications. van Dijk, Rick. 1992. “Young Puritan Preachers in Post Independence Malawi.” Africa. 62: 159–82. ———. 2001. “Time and Transcultural Technologies of the Self in the Ghanaian Pentecostal Diaspora.” In Between Babel and Pentecost. Transnational Pentecostalism in Africa and Latin America, edited by Corten and Marshall-Frantani. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ———. 2003. “Pentecostalism and the Politics of Prophetic Power: Religious Modernity in Ghana.” In Scriptural Politics. The Bible and the Koran as Political Models in the Middle East and Africa, edited by Niels Kastfelt. London: Hurst and Company. ———. 2004. “Beyond the Rivers of Ethiopia. Pentecostal Pan-Africanism and Ghanian Identities in the Transnational Domain.” In Situating Globality. African Agency in the Appropriation of Global Culture, edited by W. van Binsbergen and R. van Dijk, 163–89. Leiden: Brill.

48

Martin Lindhardt

Willems, Emilio. 1967. “Followers of the New Faith: Culture Change and the Rise of Protestantism in Brazil and Chile.” Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press. Williams, Cyril G. 1981. Tongues of the Spirit: A Study of Pentecostal Glossolalia and related Phenomena. Cardiff: University of Wales Press.

c1C The Obvious Aspects of Pentecostalism Ritual and Pentecostal Globalization Joel Robbins

It is only shallow people who do not judge from appearances. —Oscar Wilde

The title of this chapter alludes to Rappaport’s (1979) seminal essay, “The Obvious Aspects of Ritual,” a lengthy article containing many of the ideas that two decades later would form the backbone of his important book Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity (1999). Rappaport begins that article by stating: This essay is not about the symbols of which human rituals are made, nor yet about the entities, ideas, or processes—physical, psychic, social, natural, or cosmic—that these symbols may represent. It is concerned with the obvious rather than the hidden aspects of ritual, those of its features that, being most apparent, lead us to identify events as instances of ritual. (1979: 173)

In this chapter, I take a similar tack in approaching Pentecostal and charismatic Christianity. Rather than focusing on its doctrines or symbols or what we might call the content of its culture, things I and most of the contributors to this volume have been very much concerned with in our previous work, I want to focus on a few of its aspects that would be obvious to any contemporary observer, even one who knows little about Pentecostal and charismatic history or doctrine. There are three obvious aspects of Pentecostal and charismatic Christianity, or Pentecostal Christianity as I will for reasons of convenience mostly refer to it from here on out, that I have mind. These are: 1) its ability to spread quickly across cultural and linguistic barriers, as evidenced by its rapid expansion around the globe; 2) its ability to build thriving institutions in social settings in which few other institutions are able to survive, much less flourish; and 3) the extremely high 49

50

Joel Robbins

degree of ritual activity that marks its social life. The primary argument I want to make in this chapter is that these three obvious features of Pentecostalism are related. More specifically, I want to argue that it is the third aspect of Pentecostalism—its extensive reliance on ritual forms of interaction to give shape to social life—that underwrites the other two. It is, I will claim, Pentecostalism’s promotion of ritual to the center of social life that has allowed it to travel so well and to build institutions so effectively even in socially harsh environments. Even as I hope in the course of my argument about the obvious aspects of Pentecostalism to show convincingly that it makes sense to place ritual at their center, I recognize that some might question whether an emphasis on ritual should in fact count as an obvious feature of the Pentecostal tradition at all. As the social scientifically trained Pentecostal theologian Albrecht (1999: 21) has noted, “Pentecostals themselves have often objected to or reject[ed] the term ‘ritual’ and its implied conceptualization.” Placing a high value on spontaneity and authenticity, Pentecostals condemn ritual as too routine, mechanical, or, as Albrecht has it, “unspiritual.” Furthermore, the Pentecostal tendency to introduce ritual into almost all domains of social interaction tends to rob believers’ ritualized productions of that sense of setapartness that scholars often see as central to the definition of ritual (Bell 1992). Largely for these reasons, I think, when it comes to Pentecostalism, the study of ritual has lagged behind work in other areas. With a few notable exceptions such as the work of Csordas (1997; see also Robbins 2004a), this is true even among anthropologists, despite the support their discipline provides for arguing that ritual is crucial to people’s lives (Robbins 2004b: 126b). Yet despite both the lowly status of ritual in Pentecostal self-understandings and the extent to which Pentecostal ritual fails to announce itself as such in ways scholars can easily recognize, it is not difficult to make the argument that a very frequent recourse to ritual is an obvious aspect of Pentecostal social life. To begin with, if we look carefully, we will see that Pentecostal antiritualism is, as Pfeil (this volume) has noted, itself ritualized. Moreover, to an observer whose eye is trained only on Pentecostalism’s obvious aspects, rather than on the fine points of its folk theology, it is hard to miss how much of what Pentecostals do with each other easily counts as ritual in terms of its formulaic quality and its directness toward divinity—and this is true even if the forms in question allow for a good deal of spontaneous elaboration of personal content in approaching the divine. Given this, it is easy to concur with Albrecht (1999: 21–22) when he goes on to say that despite their protestations to the contrary, “Pentecostals do in fact, engage in ritu-

The Obvious Aspects of Pentecostalism

51

als, though they often call them by other names: ‘worship services,’ ‘spiritual practices,’ [and] ‘Pentecostal distinctives,’ for example.” I will back this claim up more fully later when I come to discussing Pentecostal ritual in more detail. For the moment, though, I want to take it as given that it does make sense to talk about Pentecostals as people who have a vigorous ritual life. If the claim that Pentecostals are very much invested in ritual action is the most contestable of what I have called Pentecostalism’s three obvious aspects, the claim that it is very successful at crossing cultural and linguistic boundaries is probably the least. The spectacular global spread of Pentecostalism is easily the most common trope in discussions of Pentecostalism—often used to justify paying attention to it in both scholarly and popular contexts. Taking two sources that are ready to hand, the 23 December 2006 issue of The Economist (p. 48) called Pentecostalism the world’s fastest growing religious movement and, apropos its global diffusion, went on to add: The evidence of this [rapid growth] can be seen everywhere in America and the developing world: in churches the size of football stadiums in Latin America, in 12,000 acre ‘redemption camps’ in Nigeria, in storefront churches in the slums of Rio and Los Angeles. LA’s most successful export is not Hollywood but Pentecostalism.

And on the more academic end of the spectrum, I began a recent review of the anthropological literature on Pentecostalism with a first sentence that described Pentecostalism as “one of the great success stories of the current era of cultural globalization” (Robbins 2004b: 117). There is room to argue that it is probably time to critically examine this trope of rapid growth. At issue would not be the reality it points to—Pentecostalism certainly has spread rapidly around the world—but rather the uses to which the trope of spectacular growth is put. Arguably, our deployment of it to justify the value of studying Pentecostalism sometimes directs people away from the broader analytic contributions we are making. There is no question of unpacking this claim here. I have raised it simply to note that while I will take Pentecostalism’s rapid global growth to be a real phenomenon—to be one of Pentecostalism’s obvious aspects—the overall concern of this paper is with what interesting things a focus on ritual can teach us about Pentecostalism and its other obvious aspects, including this one, but not on the fact of Pentecostal expansion per se. The final aspect of Pentecostalism that I discuss in this chapter is its ability to thrive in harsh environments marked by poverty and social disorganization. I imagine that this claim is also not terribly con-

52

Joel Robbins

testable, and certainly for a largely social-scientific audience it should be quite familiar. Indeed, because this point has been well developed in the literature, I want to start by critically examining it and then work from there to my discussion of ritual. By proceeding in this way, I will be able to look critically at many common arguments about why Pentecostalism has become the vigorous, global phenomenon it is today. In the course of doing so, I hope to create a space for the argument I ultimately want to make about the way ritual ties the obvious aspects of Pentecostalism together.

On Pentecostalism and the Neoliberal Global Order1 The neoliberal global order has proven to be a harsh environment for a wide range of social, economic, and political institutions. Many of those local and more globally diffused institutions that once in various ways buffered people from the depredations of the capitalist market economy have been so starved for human and material resources in the current climate that they have retreated or simply disappeared. In the face of what Bernice Martin calls the “institutional deficit” that has resulted, people have had fewer and fewer ways to sustain spaces in which social relations can be organized by nonmarket logics to meet nonmarket goals (Martin 1998: 117–18). But looking out at the desiccated social landscape that neoliberal restructuring so often leaves in its wake, one exception to the rule of institutional die-back stands out clearly: the current neoliberal regime has in many places been very good for religious institutions, and particularly for Pentecostal and charismatic churches. Not only have these churches gathered up new adherents at an impressive clip, especially in the global south, they are also one of the great institution-propagating success stories of the neoliberal era—able to plant churches and allied parachurch institutions with seeming ease. Pentecostal churches have thus demonstrated an ability to thrive in the very kinds of environments in which so many other institutions struggle and fade. A fundamental question for social scientists studying Pentecostalism has been why this should be so. On the basis of their work, there are a number of candidate answers to this question that are readily available in the literature on global Pentecostalism. Most of these have a more or less functionalist tinge—suggesting that Pentecostal churches thrive because in one way or another they help people cope with global orders in which they now live and in doing so help those orders to sustain themselves. Pentecostal churches do this, many have argued, by providing some form of

The Obvious Aspects of Pentecostalism

53

community for people wrenched out of rural worlds and kinship structures by their dreams of individualist, urban lives. Or they offer healing to those who lack access to health care. In their prosperity guise, as another argument has it, they enchant the market in ways that allow people to construe it as a context for meaningful living even in the absence of the resources needed to really make it so. Or on other accounts they provide people recipes for self-discipline that make it possible for them to cope with poverty and adapt themselves to whatever opportunities for work they can find (see Robbins 2004b for a review of these arguments). I could go on in this vein, detailing the numerous ways scholars have attributed the popularity of Pentecostalism to its ability to compensate for losses and deprivations people have experienced at the hands of the global order. And if I don’t choose to go on this way here, it is not because I think such answers are entirely wrong. There is some truth to each of them, and taken together they represent a style of thinking about Pentecostal growth that cannot be discounted. I choose to step back from them not because they fail, but because I think they tend to beg a fundamental question—the question of how Pentecostal churches can succeed as institutions at all in the kind of resource-poor conditions in which they these days so regularly take root. It is only once they succeed as institutions, I would argue, that they can compensate for anything. This is why I take the question of the means of their institution-building success to be fundamental, even to the deprivationtype arguments I laid out above. And it is for this reason I want to put the question of the reasons for Pentecostalism’s institution-building success at the center of this section of this chapter. When I talk about the institutional success of Pentecostal churches, I am referring minimally to their ability to engage people’s time in the construction and maintenance of congregations that regularly come together to worship and whose members work to evangelize those who do not belong. That Pentecostalism has this ability is well attested in the literature on its global spread. Members of these churches regularly attend Sunday services that last several hours or more, often attend at least one other service a week, and regularly participate in home worship and bible study sessions and in evangelization efforts. Chesnut (1997: 141) collected quantitative data on participation among the urban Brazilian Pentecostals he studied and found that members participated in an average of 4.7 church activities per week (see also Gill 1990; Willems 1967). Furthermore, along with giving their time in the form of participation in church services and activities, many members of Pentecostal churches also volunteer to fill church offices, serving as

54

Joel Robbins

deacons, elders, heads of women’s and youth ministries, etc. Chesnut (1997: 135) again provides enlightening quantitative evidence, finding that among those he interviewed, 79.5 percent held such offices. Making a similar point, Blacking (1981: 45) writes of the South African Zionist church that “the general principle seemed to be that as many members as possible should have an opportunity of holding positions”—positions that draw them into making regular contributions of their time to supporting the institution of the church and its many institutionalized subgroups. As a final index of institutional commitment, it is also worth noting that people often give materially to their churches as well, finding ways to tithe even in conditions of great poverty or giving in kind or in labor where they cannot give cash. It is by soliciting such intense involvement on the part of members that Pentecostal churches have been able to thrive as institutions. My original question about the reasons for the institutional success of Pentecostal churches during a period that has been hard on many other institutions can thus be reframed as a question about how they solicit this kind of involvement. One could imagine that Pentecostal churches succeed in commanding people’s attention by giving away a lot of material resources or providing services people cannot provide for themselves. This has for a long time been a common way for social scientists to explain the success of mission Christianity—people come for the food, or the medical care, or the access to schooling that the mission provides. But these kinds of rice-Christian arguments tend not to work well to explain the institution-building success of Pentecostal mission efforts. For one thing, people’s involvement in Pentecostal church life tends to be much more intense than it is in the mission churches that have made material inducements and the provision of social and economic programs more central to their outreach efforts. For another, and more pointedly, it is one of the most noteworthy characteristics of Pentecostal church planting that it tends to be done on a shoestring. Pentecostal missionaries have from the outset of the movement tended to, as they put it, “go out on faith.” Heading out to the mission field with very little, often with no more than what they need to get a one-way ticket to their destination, they trust that if they are anointed by the Holy Spirit for mission work, their needs will be supplied by those to whom they bring the word (Synan 1997: 133). If sustenance is not forthcoming, they know their missionary efforts are not in accord with God’s plan from them. For those missionized, this Pentecostal practice of going out on faith means that very often they are asked to join a missionary in starting a church for which they are to provide all the resources.

The Obvious Aspects of Pentecostalism

55

This has been particularly true in the global south, where missionaries tend to be people from neighboring groups rather than the wellappointed Westerners that arguments about the material factors driving conversion tend to take as the paradigmatic representatives of the mission enterprise. A second approach to explaining people’s willingness to make quick and strong commitments to building Pentecostal institutions would take the belief system of Pentecostalism as its explanatory variable. In one way or another, such arguments have it, Pentecostalism is a perfect tract for the times. It preaches precisely the kinds of selfreliance and self-discipline the neoliberal order demands; it promises a better life to come to those whose current lives are marked by misery; it offers to heal those who lack access to modern medicine, and often to traditional healing as well; it empowers women seeking to escape traditional patriarchies and provides them with safe spaces for congregation. This list in many ways overlaps with the one of compensatory or deprivation theories I presented above. And reiterating what I said there, it is beyond doubt that many of these arguments are true. But again I would suggest that the compensatory promises Pentecostalism makes—promises many other religious and for that matter developmentalist and good governance bodies also make—would not be so attractive were Pentecostalism not better than its competitors at setting up thriving institutions in which people can participate in a world shaped around those promises. It is Pentecostalism’s institution-building social productivity that makes it promises credible, not the credibility of those promises that makes its socially productive. Instead of relying on the arguments about material inducements or ideological compensations I have just rehearsed, I want to argue that Pentecostal social productivity is rooted in its model of social life and that the key to that model is that it defines ritual as fundamental to social interaction and asserts that ritual should be practiced regularly in all kinds of settings. It is to this argument that I now turn.

Ritual in Pentecostal Social Life What does it mean for people to relate to one another as Pentecostals? On the most fundamental level, to relate to one another as Pentecostals is to carry out rituals together. These rituals can be praying together as almost a form of greeting, or as a way to define the kind of interaction about to transpire (“God, we have come together today to …” eat/hold a conference/plant a garden/make a business plan/study for a test, etc.).

56

Joel Robbins

They can be rites of ministration, where one prays for the needs or health of others. They can be celebratory rites of praise in word or song. And of course they can be the major Sunday service rites that constitute the sacred high point of the week in most churches (Nelson 2005). These rites can also involve a wide range of personnel. They can be carried out by two people, or in small groups (a fast-diffusing social form in many of these churches), or by whole congregations with some people acting as ritual specialists. One could go on in this manner pointing to the variety of ritual forms and personnel configurations Pentecostals can draw on in relating to one another, but perhaps enough has been said to carry my main point that Pentecostal sociality in a wide range of contexts is marked by a high degree of mutual ritual performance. A number of aspects of Pentecostal doctrine support this high frequency of ritual interaction. A conviction that God cares about and intervenes even in the mundane lives of his faithful, and that a sharp sacred/profane distinction is untenable, is important here, for it allows ritual to suffuse all domains of social interaction (think again of Pentecostal uses of the ritual of praying together) (Csordas 1997: 109). Also important are key design features of Pentecostal rites that make their ritual forms easily identifiable to participants while still allowing for a lot of improvisation in their content, thus making it possible for people to perform rites in almost any setting and to use them to address almost any circumstance. Yet as important as the refusal of the sacred/profane distinction and the openness on matters of ritual content are to the place of ritual in Pentecostal social life, probably the most important feature of its doctrine in this regard is the idea that all church members are qualified to initiate and participate in ritual performances. The clergy has no monopoly on ritual. Everyone participates, and whomever the Spirit moves can initiate rituals in most settings. There is no need to have formal training or possess church office. Much has already been made in the literature of the lack of formal credentialing of clergy in accounting for the rapid spread of Pentecostalism—new converts quickly become missionaries to their friends and neighbors and then often set themselves up as pastors of their own churches. Here my point is the slightly different one that the intensity of ritual interaction that defines Pentecostal sociality is rooted in the Pentecostal belief that everyone can initiate and participate in ritual. This means that whenever any two or more Pentecostals are copresent, they have everything they need to engage in ritual together. So far I have made an empirical claim—Pentecostal models of social life are distinctive in the amount of space they give over to ritual performance—and I have rooted that empirical claim in a quick sketch

The Obvious Aspects of Pentecostalism

57

of the basic features of Pentecostal doctrine that support it. What I want to do now is connect that empirical fact with what I have called Pentecostalism’s social productivity: its impressive institution-building capacity. In arguing for a connection between Pentecostalism’s emphasis on ritual and its social productivity, I want to draw on Randall Collins’s recent work on interaction ritual chains. The notion of interaction ritual comes, of course, from Goffman (1967), and Collins takes from Goffman a focus on face-to-face interaction. But to construct the heart of his theory, Collins returns to Goffman’s Durkheimian roots. He starts with Durkheim’s (1995) argument that major collective rituals produce a kind of effervescence that energizes people and leads them to feel empowered—to feel larger than themselves. He then generalizes this familiar point to suggest that all successful interactions, interactions that in a way I will lay out in a moment, are sufficiently ritualized, produce some of this kind of effervescence, which he calls “emotional energy.” In a final twist, one not familiar from Durkheim or Goffman, Collins (2004: 44) claims that human beings are at bottom seekers of such emotional energy; they are creatures who go through life trying to participate in as many successful interaction rituals as they can, using the energy generated in each such interaction ritual to fund the next one. It is the human tendency for people to endeavor to move from one successful interaction ritual to another, increasing their store of emotional energy as they go, that generates the chains of interaction rituals that provide Collins with his titular image. And it is these chains, he argues, that give society its shape. If Collins is right that people seek successful ritual experience and tend to invest in those situations and institutions that most regularly provide it, then it becomes crucial in studying social life to understand what constitutes a successful interaction ritual and how it is produced. For Collins, interaction rituals involve two components. The first is “mutual focus of attention”—a sense on the part of participants that they intersubjectively share a common definition of what they are doing together. The second is what Collins calls “a high degree of emotional entrainment.” This refers to people’s developing sense that they are coordinating their actions together, a sense built up particularly through the rhythmic synchronization of bodily action such that interaction flows smoothly. Such bodily synchronization can happen as fully in conversation or any other kind of interaction as it does in those social practices, like dancing, that explicitly aim to produce it. When it does happen, and is combined with a strong sense of mutual focus, successful interaction ritual occurs.

58

Joel Robbins

In this chapter, there is little reason to further unpack Collins’s discussion of the way successful interaction rituals are constructed. A moment’s consultation of one’s own experience of what in English is colloquially called a “good conversation” or “a productive meeting” or even “a smooth transaction” is probably enough to plant the outlines of Collins’s argument in one’s mind. In any case, for the purposes of my argument about the role of ritual in the social productivity of Pentecostalism, it is enough to know that mutual focus and emotional entrainment through bodily synchronization are, for Collins, what turns mundane social encounters into successful interaction rituals. It is enough to know that these two features are at the heart of interaction ritual because on inspection, it is clear that Pentecostalism is ideally suited to allowing people to put them in play when they come together. Mutual focus in ensured by the knowledge all Pentecostals share of the basic ritual frames that orient them in so much of their interaction: frames like prayer, praise, worship, healing, etc. As I noted, these frames are open enough to allow all kinds of content to arise within them, but their purposes and basic organization are fixed enough that as soon as the frame is in place, people possess an immediate mutual awareness of their shared purpose and interactional focus: they know they are praying, praising, worshipping, healing, etc. together. And once Pentecostals are in an interactional frame together, they are well prepared to generate the emotional entrainment through bodily synchronization that is the second constituent of a successful interaction ritual. For if there is one thing even those who know little about Pentecostals tend to recognize, it is the extent to which members of the faith everywhere share a set of bodily practices that look very much the same: arms lifted in praise, hands laid on in healing, tongues speaking in prayer, voices lifted in song, etc. Because of these shared bodily practices, Pentecostals recognize each others’ physical presence even when they do not share a verbal language. And hence Pentecostal bodies of all backgrounds are well trained to work together in ritual and well practiced in producing the physical synchronization that turns mutual attention into successful interaction ritual. In summary, I have been arguing that to live in a Pentecostal faith community is to participate in ritual together whenever one can, in church and out. Drawing on their trained ability to fall into states of mutual attention and push such states forward through bodily synchronization, Pentecostals go through life producing an unusually high percentage of social occasions that qualify as successful interaction rituals. From Collins’s point of view, this would be precisely what makes them such good institution builders, even in situations where

The Obvious Aspects of Pentecostalism

59

material resources are so scarce that few other institutions survive. The emotional energy successful interaction rituals produce is, Collins would tell us, its own reward—or even what most people, whether they know it or not, take to be the one intrinsic good in the world. Blumhoffer (1993: 210–11) captures well the sense of Collins’s argument when she writes of the “spiritual acquisitiveness” that drove early Pentecostals forward in the pursuit of what she calls spiritual experiences and what Collins would call emotional energy produced out of ritual interaction. As she puts it, “these eager pioneers … pressed relentlessly on to the next experience, impelled by an insatiable longing for more rather than by determination to reach a specific goal.” It is the Pentecostal ability to produce emotional energy in such quantity that keeps people highly involved in churches that meet in shabby storefronts or move from office park to office park in dreary, decayed urban locales around the world, or that meet in churches made of whatever scraps are to hand in rural villages in an equally wide range of places. And it is the centrality of ritual in Pentecostal social life that allows them to produce this good in such quantity. To this point, I have argued that there is a strong connection between two of the obvious aspects of Pentecostalism—its emphasis on ritual and its extraordinary institution-building capacity. Moreover, I hope to have made the case that it is the Pentecostal emphasis on ritual that is primary in the relationship between these two obvious aspects of the religion. Without the rituals, the institutions would not survive. Pentecostal doctrine on its own could not produce them successfully. It is the Pentecostal mastery of the technology of ritual production that makes these churches work; the doctrinal features that make Pentecostalism appealing to so many who in various respects live on the margins of the market economy can bind people to the faith only after these robust, ritually driven institutions have already proven their ability to thrive. With the link between ritual and institution building in place, what remains to be done to complete my argument about the role of ritual in tying together the obvious aspects of Pentecostalism is to connect Pentecostal ritualism to Pentecostalism’s remarkable ability to spread across linguistic and cultural barriers. That is what I will try to do in the next section.

Pentecostal Ritual and Globalization Inasmuch as Pentecostalism’s institution-building capacity often figures in discussions of its global spread, I have already addressed some

60

Joel Robbins

arguments aimed at explaining Pentecostal globalization in the previous section, in particular those concerned with issues of deprivation and compensation. In this section, I want to shift focus in relation to this issue. Rather than ask why people for whom Pentecostalism is something new might want to convert to it, I want to query the social mechanisms of Pentecostal diffusion—how is it that Pentecostalism actually travels across linguistic and cultural barriers in the first place. How does it get from place to place and how do people come to learn about it such that they can embrace it if, for whatever reason, they want to? When the issue is in this sense how rather than why Pentecostalism spreads, the centrality of ritual to its social life proves to be of great relevance. The first observation I want to make in regard to the how of Pentecostal globalization is that Pentecostalism is relatively easy to convey to strangers, even to those with whom one shares little by way of a common language, because its pedagogy focuses first on conveying broad ritual frames and the bodily styles that go with them. Evangelists stress these aspects of the faith from the outset, often leaving all but the very basics of doctrine and theology for later. As Albrecht (1999: 2005) puts it, in the Pentecostal tradition it is ritual, rather than “structured verbal catechesis,” that teaches people “what it means to live and behave as Christians in a faith community.” Csordas’s (1997) work, and more recently that of Luhrmann (2004), also point to this process of learning the faith through bodily ritual training. Because of this pedagogical emphasis on learning ritual frames and the ways to bodily enact them, those introduced to the movement gain entry to its ritual life very quickly. As Collins would have it, they almost immediately begin to experience the emotional energy Pentecostal ritual produces, even before they have to learn about or commit to an elaborate doctrinal system. The quick social dividends Pentecostal ritual life produces render it in Collins’s terms very easy to spread. Along with making Pentecostalism easy to convey across cultures in the first instance, the religion’s emphasis on training people from the start in its ritual life also helps to tie the movement together across great distances and to rapidly diffuse innovations such as spiritual warfare, deliverance, and the prosperity gospel. This is so because it is the existence of easily learned and hence widely shared ritual frames and bodily styles, which accounts for the huge success visiting pastors have in their preaching to groups both large and small all over the world. Because everyone who is at all connected to the faith knows the frames and the bodily rhythms of Pentecostal ritual and trusts that others do as well, visiting preachers can rapidly meld huge crowds into

The Obvious Aspects of Pentecostalism

61

ritually focused groups, even when working through interpreters. For the same reason, consumers of Pentecostal media can be powerfully moved by radio and television broadcasts, cassettes, and video tapes featuring pastors and others with whom they have had no personal contact. The high-velocity circuits in which religious media and religious leaders both travel do much to tie Pentecostal networks together across the globe. These circuits depend at bottom, I am arguing, on the shared ritual life of those who consume what they provide. There is also a second way in which Pentecostal ritual life supports the mechanisms by which the religion travels. In laying out Collins’s theory above, I mentioned in passing that his notion of chains of interaction ritual is designed to capture the way in which people use the emotional energy generated in any given ritual to propel the performance of future rituals in which they participate. Pentecostal techniques of revival have made this dynamic an almost explicit folk model of the way to spread the religion beyond local boundaries. From Azusa Street forward, Pentecostal revivals have ritually generated energy that has propelled evangelists out around the world. And each place these evangelists land becomes itself a center from which the ritual life of Pentecostalism can be propagated further afield. Pentecostalism has in essence moved around the world by leaping from one ritual hotspot to another along a path blazed by the emotional energy its ritual life generates. A third and final aspect of ritual’s contribution to the globalization of Pentecostalism that I want to discuss relates not to Collins’s theory of ritual but rather to that of Rappaport. In his article on the obvious aspects of ritual that I referred to at the outset of this paper, and also in his magisterial book on ritual, Rappaport (1999) argues among other things that rituals produce secure knowledge and thus combat the corrosive effects of dissimulation and mistrust in social life. Rappaport bases this claim on a semiotic argument concerning the way in which the performative character of ritual leads it to generate indexical signs that are reliable guides to truth because they create or are otherwise inextricably linked to the things to which they refer. For a clergy member to say “I now pronounce you man and wife” in the midst of a properly constituted marriage rite, for example, is to create a marriage, and so the rite conveys the fact of marriage in a completely trustworthy way. Rappaport’s argument is complex, and I cannot lay out all of its steps here (see Robbins 2001). But, for the sake of argument, I want to accept that he is correct in saying that performing rituals together fosters bonds of trust between people. In the context of my argument, the question then becomes how the trust-producing qualities of Pentecostal ritual help to foster its spread.

62

Joel Robbins

The short answer to this question is that they do so by quickly melding individuals from diverse cultural, linguistic, and often denominational backgrounds into groups that possess the requisite trust to coordinate actions and build institutions. Blumhofer (1989: 201; see also Albrecht 1999: 43) provides an illustration of this dynamic at work in her account of the founding of the Assemblies of God at a 1914 convention that brought together three hundred representatives from independent churches around the country. The call for the convention had aroused a good deal of discussion and even “accusation” among those who were invited. But “four days of rousing Pentecostal meetings helped allay the reservations of some who feared organization. Although all did not concur fully on doctrine and practice, they discovered unity ‘in the Spirit.’” It was bonds of trust forged in four days of successful ritual practice that allowed the founders of the Assemblies of God to go on to work together to found the denomination. Similar dynamics, I would suggest, are at work wherever Pentecostalism travels (see Austin-Broos 1997: 180). Those who can successfully perform rituals together come to treat each other as trustworthy and find it possible to coordinate action to achieve all manner of tasks. The Pentecostal ritualization of everyday life then further serves to routinely reinforce these bonds of trust as people pray and perform other “quotidian rituals” in the course of working together. The ability to ritually forge bonds of trust across barriers of disagreement or less than fully shared cultural or linguistic understanding is thus another important link in the chain that connects Pentecostals to one another across the globe. In preparing to summarize the points I have just made, it is notable that all three of my arguments about the connections between the centrality of ritual in Pentecostal life and the religion’s global spread can be illustrated through a brief analysis of the Toronto Blessing, probably the best known revival of the last several decades. The phenomenon that would come to be known as the Toronto Blessing began at the Toronto Airport Vineyard Church. This church was located in a strip mall in the shadow of Toronto’s main airport and was originally affiliated with the Vineyard movement, one of the movements that made up what is often known as the “third wave” of the Pentecostal-charismatic tradition. In January 1994, a revival broke out at the church. As Percy (1998: 101) puts it, the revival was marked by an uncharacteristically high degree of ritual activity, but also by some “more unusual phenomena.” “There was,” he explains, “an unusually high reportage of people being ‘slain in the Spirit.’ A number would laugh uncontrollably, make animal-like noises, barking, growling or groaning as the ‘Spirit fell

The Obvious Aspects of Pentecostalism

63

on them.’” News of this powerful revival and its unusual ritual effects spread quickly around the world through Pentecostal networks, and in the next two years “over one million ‘pilgrims’ … journeyed to Toronto to taste the blessing for themselves” (Percy 1998: 101). Once having tasted the blessing, “pilgrims” took it home to their own congregations and thus quickly spread its third-wave style of ritual to Pentecostal and charismatic churches around the world (Poloma 2003: 18; Percy 1998: 115). In this way, it became a global phenomenon almost overnight. The Toronto Blessing illustrates all of the points I have made about the role of ritual in Pentecostal globalization. First, it was very decidedly a setting in which pilgrims came first to experience ritual. Indeed, one senses that ritual experience always ran ahead of doctrinal elaboration during the Blessing’s heyday, and that this in part accounts for some of the controversy that surrounded it (Hilborn 2001). Nightly sessions of revival ritual were at the heart of the pilgrim experience. This made the Blessing easy to share among people who had little in common except their general Pentecostal-charismatic background and the fact of their having come together at this oddly placeless site. Furthermore, the pattern of people flocking to a center of intense ritual activity and then using the emotional energy generated there to spread the revival at home fits neatly my second point about revivals as generators of cascades of enchained interaction rituals that carry new forms of the faith quickly around the globe. Finally, my point about ritual generating trust among people who are otherwise socially distant from one another is also germane to an understanding of the Toronto Blessing. For most who participated, the Toronto Airport Vineyard church was not in any usual sense a community. They did not know most of the others with whom they worshiped there. Yet by virtue of falling into ritual interaction with one another, they came to trust each other enough to allow themselves to seek to lie prone in the Spirit in each other’s presence, and to manifest publicly other unusual gifts of the Spirit that they knew some were given to attack as unscriptural or worse. Even if the bonds they forged were often fleeting, their shared ritual experience allowed those at the church at any given time to act as a community founded in trust. Having summarized my arguments about the connection between Pentecostal ritual and globalization by way of this brief discussion of the Toronto Blessing, I want to conclude this section by mentioning a comparative observation that even if not conclusive adds further plausibility to my overall argument that Pentecostalism globalizes so well because of the central place it gives to ritual. The comparison I have in mind is one between Pentecostalism and fundamentalism. I realize

64

Joel Robbins

that there are contexts in which it makes sense to group Pentecostal and fundamentalist Christianity together, a point made by Percy (1998) and others—and if we group them together it is difficult to treat them as suitable cases for comparison. I would suggest, however, that there are also contexts in which it makes sense to stress their differences. An argument about ritual and globalization is precisely one of these latter contexts. For consider that two of the points at which Pentecostalism and fundamentalism most obviously differ is in their pattern of globalization and their approach to ritual. Fundamentalism has not globalized with nearly the success of Pentecostalism. It has planted far fewer churches around the world, and those is has planted rarely generate the kind of institution-building commitment so prevalent in Pentecostal churches (see the case presented in Knauft 2002). The two traditions also differ markedly in their approach to ritual. Fundamentalists give it a much less prominent role in social life, and moreover their approach to the body, focused overwhelmingly on subjecting it to strict controls, does not support the build-up of emotional entrainment through bodily synchronization that Collins sees as crucial to the performance of successful interaction rituals. On the basis of the argument I have made in this section, it is at least plausible to argue that these differences between the two traditions are connected: fundamentalism globalizes poorly because it does not make ritual central to social life, while Pentecostalism globalizes well because it does. This argument gains further support when we acknowledge that Pentecostals and fundamentalists share many of the doctrinal stands that people sometimes refer to when explaining Pentecostalism’s globalizing success: both are strong on certainty, moral strictness, individualist models of salvation, and the conviction that the Second Coming is imminent. Against this shared doctrinal background, it is at least plausible to suggest that it is their divergent approaches to ritual that accounts for the differential globalizing success of Pentecostalism and Fundamentalism.

Conclusion I think the theme of this book is that rarity in academic life—something new under the sun. I have felt for some time that Pentecostal and charismatic ritual life has been too much ignored in scholarly discussions of various churches within this tradition (Robbins 2004b: 126). The tack I have taken in addressing this gap has been to make two

The Obvious Aspects of Pentecostalism

65

linked arguments. One is that there are some things we should take to be obvious aspects of Pentecostalism: its rapid global spread, its institution-building capacity, and the prominent role it gives to ritual in the construction of social life. These features of Pentecostalism, I have suggested, should be evident to anyone who is familiar with its tradition. Given this, it stands out as odd that the first two obvious aspects of Pentecostalism have received a great deal of scholarly attention while the third—its emphasis on ritual interaction—has been largely neglected. This imbalance alone should provide strong encouragement for us to see what a sustained examination of Pentecostal ritual can teach us about the churches and movements we study. My second argument went beyond simply pointing to this imbalance in the attention scholars have paid to the obvious aspects of Pentecostalism and the need to redress it. For ritual, I have tried to demonstrate, is not only one of Pentecostalism’s three obvious features—it is in social scientific terms the most important one. Pentecostalism’s global spread and institution-building capacities depend on its elaboration of a ritualized approach to social life. Without the ritual, the other obvious aspects of Pentecostalism would not exist. This argument suggests not only that we should study ritual, but that we should explore making it central to our approach to Pentecostal and charismatic Christianity. This chapter has not, as I once hoped it would, consisted in close analyses of a few select Pentecostal rituals—analyses that would show them to be as socially and symbolically rich as the rituals of other religious traditions routinely appear to be in work by anthropologists and others. Many of us those who have contributed to this volume have provided such analyses both here and in our previous work, and that work provides a good indication of how much the study of Pentecostalism stands to gain by directing more attention than it has in the past to the study of ritual. What I have wanted to do with the very general set of arguments I have made here is provide one possible theoretical foundation for such a reorientation in Pentecostal studies. If I have demonstrated nothing else, I hope to have indicated that it makes good sense to see Pentecostal social life as saturated with ritual in a way that is relatively distinct when compared to many other religious traditions. And I hope to have further indicated that we can get to some interesting places by starting with this “obvious” point. Note 1. This and the next section draw extensively on Robbins 2009.

66

Joel Robbins

References Albrecht, Daniel E. 1999. Rites in the Spirit: A Ritual Approach to Pentecostal/Charismatic Spirituality. Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic Press. Austin-Broos, Diane J. 1997. Jamaica Genesis: Religion and the Politics of Moral Order. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Bell, Catherine 1992. Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice. New York: Oxford University Press. Blacking, John 1981. “Political and Musical Freedom in the Music of Some Black South African Churches.” In The Structure of Folk Models, edited by L. Holy and M. Stuchlik, 35–62. London: Academic Press. Blumhofer, Edith L. 1989. The Assemblies of God: A Chapter in the Story of American Pentecostalism. 2 vols. Springfield, MO: Gospel Publishing. ———. 1993. Aimee Semple McPherson: Everybody’s Sister. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans. Chesnut, R. Andrew. 1997. Born Again in Brazil: The Pentecostal Boom and the Pathogens of Poverty. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers. Collins, Randall. 2004. Interaction Ritual Chains. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Csordas, Thomas J. 1997. Language, Charisma, and Creativity: The Ritual Life of a Religious Movement. Berkeley: University of California Press. Durkheim, Emil. 1995. The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, translated by K. E. Fields. New York: Free Press. Economist. 2006. “Christianity Reborn,” 48–50, December 23. Gill, Lesley. 1990. “‘Like A Veil to Cover Them’: Women and the Pentecostal Movement in La Paz.” American Ethnologist 17 (4): 708–21. Goffman, Erving. 1967. Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face-to-Face Behavior. Garden City, NJ: Anchor Books. Hilborn, David. 2001. “Introduction: Evangelicalism, The Evangelical Alliance and the Toronto Blessing.” In ‘Toronto’ in Perspective: Papers on the New Charismatic Wave of the Mid 1990s, edited by D. Hilborn, 3–34. Carlisle, UK: Paternoster Publishing. Knauft, Bruce M. 2002. Exchanging the Past: A Rainforest World of Before and After. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Luhrmann, Tanya M. 2004. “Metakinesis: How God Becomes Intimate in Contemporary U.S. Christianity.” American Anthropologist 106 (3): 518–28. Martin, Bernice. 1998. “From Pre- to Postmodernity in Latin America: The Case of Pentecostalism.” In Religion, Modernity and Postmodernity, edited by P. Heelas, D. Martin, and P. Morris, 102–46. Oxford: Blackwell. Nelson, Timothy J. 2005. Every Time I Feel the Spirit: Religious Experience and Ritual in an African American Church. New York: New York University Press. Percy, Martyn 1998. Power and the Church: Ecclesiology in an Age of Transition. London: Cassell. Pfeil, Gretchen n.d. “They Overcame Him by the Blood of the Lamb, by the Word of Their Testimony: Rituals of Anti-“Ritual” in Contemporary American Charismatic Practice.” Unpublished Manuscript.

The Obvious Aspects of Pentecostalism

67

Poloma, Margaret M. 2003. Main Street Mystics: The Toronto Blessing and Reviving Pentecostalism. Walnut Creek: Altamira. Rappaport, Roy A. 1979. Ecology, Meaning, and Religion. Richmond, CA: North Atlantic Books. ———. 1999. Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Robbins, Joel. 2001. “Ritual Communication and Linguistic Ideology: A Reading and Partial Reformulation of Rappaport’s Theory of Ritual.” Current Anthropology 42 (5): 591–614. ———. 2004a. Becoming Sinners: Christianity and Moral Torment in a Papua New Guinea Society. Berkeley: University of California Press. ———. 2004b. “The Globalization of Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity.” Annual Review of Anthropology 33: 117–43. ———. 2009. “Pentecostal Networks and the Spirit of Globalization: On the Social Productivity of Ritual Forms.” Social Analysis 53(1): 55-66. Synan, Vinson. 1997. The Holiness-Pentecostal Tradition: Charismatic Movements in the Twentieth Century. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. Willems, Emilio. 1967. Followers of the New Faith: Culture Change and the Rise of Protestantism in Brazil and Chile. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press.

c2C Laying Our Sins and Sorrows on the Altar Ritualizing Catholic Charismatic1 Reconciliation and Healing in Fiji Jacqueline Ryle

Introduction: Healing the Spiritual and Social Body In 2003, a visiting Roman Catholic Charismatic priest from Kerala, South India, conducted over fifty healing services in overflowingly full churches in almost every Catholic parish in Fiji, as well as a handful of services in Anglican parishes and one in a Methodist church.2 Commenting on a talk Fr. Thomas gave on his healing ministry at the Catholic seminary in the capital of Suva (3 September 2003), a seminarian complained about how churches were always far fuller during healing services than for ordinary masses. This must be due, he surmised, to people’s lack of understanding and lack of depth of faith, and that people think healing services are especially powerful. Fr. Thomas replied: “When we [share] our convictions, we are thinking intellectually. People come with feelings. People have lots of sensitivity. We theologians have a heavy approach. People want to touch,” he said, recounting the Gospel story of the bleeding woman, who touched the fringes of Jesus’ robe in the midst of the crowd, believing that if she just touched part of his garment, she would be healed (Mk 5: 25–34). “To theologians,” Fr. Thomas said, “meaning comes from the head. To Jesus meaning comes from compassion.” He added that he had passed by an outdoor Pentecostal service some days before: “I looked at the National Stadium on Sunday and saw men like us with their arms in the air. And I wondered: why are we so reserved?” This chapter explores the centrality of the body in the ritual space, movement, and language of the Charismatic healing services celebrated by this Catholic priest—as ideal, locus of faith and spirituality, 68

Laying Our Sins and Sorrows on the Altar

69

and as vehicle of experience and obstacle to or instrument of change and empowerment in the lives and social relations of the participants. The approach to healing advocated by Fr. Thomas emphasizes the healing power of Christ through the inherent power of the Eucharist, through communion, i.e., the ingestion of what in Catholic belief is understood to be the actual body and blood of Christ. Healing can only take place through confession and reconciliation at both vertical and horizontal levels; that is to say, with God as well as with one’s neighbor. This approach follows the teaching in the Catholic church since Vatican II on the multiple wounds of sin in need of inner healing and “presents the sacrament of penance as a sacrament of healing, bringing varied healing for the multiple wounds of sin” (McManus 1984: 42). People are social creatures enmeshed in social relations that, if broken, must be restored, in order for them to be healed by God. Healing is therefore never merely related to the individual. It is always contextual and has to take place at many different levels: spiritually, emotionally, socially, and physically—and encompasses the past and present of a person’s life. At the same time healing connects these different levels. It is through the individual’s agency through discernment of the sin or wrong-doing, confession to God and in relation to others, especially in relation to those he or she is related to, that healing takes place. This draws a line of continuance of agency and the sense of empowerment it engenders from the space and sanctity of the church and the ritual and context of the healing service into the home and hearth, the family space, the space and time of everyday life.3 This understanding of healing corresponds to understandings of the people of the church as inextricably connected to one another in Christ, people being the limbs of the body of Christ (the church). If there is brokenness in one part of the body, it will reflect on the whole body. When one part of the body is healed, the whole is healed (1 Cor 12: 12–26). In many ways this corresponds with indigenous Fijian understandings of sickness and healing as deriving from the pollution or brokenness and restoration of social relations between different clans. In Fijian perception, people are connected to one another through the holistic concept of vanua, which has many meanings, such as land, clan, tradition, and traditional practice. People are connected to one another and to the land through their belonging to a particular clan that is historically, socially, and spiritually linked to a particular place, to a particular part of the land. “Self and other are located in a sociocosmic matrix as much as they are bound to one another” (Becker 1995:103).

70

Jacqueline Ryle

People are known as the “flesh of the land” and any damaged relations within a clan or between clans reflects on the whole clan or clans as physical, social, spiritual, and historical entities, i.e., the people, their land, their ancestors, and future generations of the clan. Healing, therefore, is collective, based on rituals of collective reconciliation that are considered at social and spiritual levels to immediately restore relations between clans and between people and the land. While Fiji was Christianized in the nineteenth century and all Fijians are Christians, these understandings, interwoven from the start with Christian belief, are an intrinsic part of contemporary Fijian identity. Although the focus of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal in general is on developing a personal relationship with God in Jesus Christ, in the Pacific Island region this has been expressed in a more Pacificstyle spirituality that is communally oriented and more intertwined with the family and the parish.4 So the approach to sickness and healing employed in these healing Masses corresponded to familiar cultural and religious values and perceptions. At the same time the rituals employed challenged Fijian cultural and religious understandings of space, place, and hierarchy, challenged people’s usual ways of positioning and comporting themselves as social, gendered, and religious bodies and people in the space of the church. The power of the healing services Fr. Thomas led to momentarily or permanently affect transformation and empowerment of participants was, I argue, in large part due to the dynamics and tension between the taken-for-granted and familiar and the radically Other and different—not merely the radically different ritual, but also an expansive experience of the spiritual, sacred Other.5 The familiar conceptual and framework of sin, sickness, confession, reconciliation, and healing through God’s forgiveness, the known physical space of the church building, and the familiar liturgical and ritual flow of the Mass formed the backdrop of the healing experience. Posited against this were the radically different rituals people engaged in within that space. There was the foreign priest with a different rhetoric and healing narratives and testimonies from many different parts of the world, yet at the same time in many parishes there was also the sense of security of the familiar in the participation of the local parish priest. As Fr. Thomas points out, the healing masses in which the local parish priest participated were the most successful. There was a sense of disconnection and temporary rupture of people’s taken-for-granted, familiar reality, yet there was also a sense of familiarity. I argue that the tension between a radically Other spiritual experience and the familiarity of physical space, symbols, and ritual in these healing services created an openness in many people that en-

Laying Our Sins and Sorrows on the Altar

71

abled a heightened experience of the sacred. This spiritual experience was first and foremost an experience of the spiritual as embodied—individually and socially.

The Body and Religious Experience “At the heart of the religious phenomenon,” writes Berger, “is prereflective, pretheoretical experience” (1979: 36). “The sacred,” writes Csordas (1994: 5), “is an existential encounter with Otherness that is a touchstone of our humanity. It … defines us by what we are not—by what is beyond our limits, or what touches us precisely at our limits. … this sense of otherness itself is phenomenologically grounded in our embodiment.” In attempting to analyze the ways in which these healing services, people’s experience of them, and their experience of the transcendent within them dissolved, merged, or inverted perceived cultural, hierarchical, social, spiritual, and religious perceptions and demarcations of self-other, the body necessarily becomes the focal point. As Michael Jackson points out, “While words and concepts distinguish and divide, bodiliness unites and forms the grounds of an empathetic, even a universal, understanding. This may be why the body so often takes the place of speech and eclipses thought in rituals” (Jackson 1981: 341). The body, according to Lock and Scheper-Hughes, could be described as “simultaneously a physical and symbolic artifact, as both naturally and culturally produced and as securely anchored in a particular historical moment” (Lock and Scheper-Hughes 1987: 7 in Strathern 1996: 2). So the body does not just exist within a given moment as belonging to a particular person, as directed by individual cognitive processes. The body does not merely mechanically internalize, learn, and perform particular movements, gestures, and their timing, such as the bodily movements of religious worship within the space and time of religious ritual. The body experiences and remembers, is effected and brought into affect, is transformed by experience—an experience that encompasses rational, emotional, sensual, and spiritual expression and feeling. In Csordas’s seminal paper on embodiment “as the existential ground of culture” (1990: 5), further developing Mauss, Merleau Ponty, and Bourdieu’s theories, he writes that “perception (the preobjective) and practice (the habitus) [as] grounded in the body leads to the collapse of the conventional distinction between subject and object” (Csordas 1990: 39). “[The body is] at once an object of technique, a technical means, and the subjective origin of technique’ (Csordas 1990: 7). And to Geertz’s theories of religion as a system of symbols, Csordas (1994:

72

Jacqueline Ryle

5) adds that religion is “articulated in a system of social relationships … [and] acts to establish long-standing moods and motivations … The method to get at these moods and motivations is to be found in the phenomenologists’ notion of Otherness.” So the body is not merely an individual body, but always a body in relation to others. “Embodiment,” Andrew Strathern points out, referring to Seremetakis (1994), “reminds us of the concrete, the hereand-now presence of people to one another, and the full complement of senses and feelings through which they communicate with one another” (1996: 2). And Strathern emphasizes Lock’s point in her 1993 article that “any anthropology of the body must include a theory of the emotions, and the first step toward such a theory is to recognize how arbitrary the Cartesian separation between ‘reason’ and ‘emotion’ is” (Strathern 1996: 7). Lock cites Michelle Rosaldo’s argument (1984) that “emotions inevitably involve both meaning and feeling … emotions cannot simply be captured as either cognitive judgements or visceral reactions” (Lock 1993: 139 in Strathern 1996: 8). Charles Davis points out, “Since the human self is both intelligent and bodily, spiritual and material, its spontaneous responses are indissolubly both intelligent and bodily, spiritual and physiological” (1976: 13). And he suggests that in order to understand the body from a religious and spiritual perspective, we must clarify the difference between “emotion” and “feeling” and dissolve the dichotomy between intelligence/ feeling and rationality/feeling: A feeling differs from mere emotion in being an intelligent, insightful relationship with what is felt. It is not just a bodily reaction to a physical or imaginative stimulus. It is a spiritual, rational response. (1976: 6) Prior to any conceptual formulation, however, there is a direct, intelligent apprehension of the object, the insightful grasp of what is felt. Intelligence is present and operative even before the mind formulates in concepts what is intelligently apprehended, and the intelligent grasp of the object may and often does run deeper than what can be clearly formulated. … Feelings are spontaneous responses … the stirring of our intelligent, spiritual, embodied affectivity toward whatever is presented to it. … affective reponses are themselves cognitive insofar as they reveal those features of reality we call values. Nevertheless, feelings presuppose as already given a factual presentation of the object. (1976: 7)

Spiritual feeling is facilitated and nurtured by ritual practice, by the aesthetics of religious experience within a given context: the aesthetics of sound, smell, seeing, moving, touching, being. These embod-

Laying Our Sins and Sorrows on the Altar

73

ied aesthetic, sensual experiences—i.e., in the ways in which people move in relation to each other, the ways in which their bodies respond to different parts of religious rites—are central to people’s participation, response, and experience in religious worship. And they are central to the ways in which people bring their experience in the context of, for example, church worship, with them into the world of other social relations in ritualized practices that stem from their experience of the ritual in these communal contexts. Drawing on Mauss’s essay, “Body Techniques” (1979), Asad, in discussing the embodiment of ritual in monastic life, suggests that “embodied practices (including language in use) form a precondition for varieties of religious experience” (1993: 76) and talks of the “mutually constituting relationship between body sense and body learning” (1993: 77; see also Lindhardt 2004: 259). Lindhardt emphasizes that “essential to ritualisation is the production of ritualised bodies, which in turn produce ritualised practices” (2004: 260). Bell, he points out, inspired by Bourdieu’s notion of the socially informed body, “suggests that a ritualised social body comes to possess a cultural ‘sense of ritual’ or a ‘ritual mastery’” (Bell 1992: 107 in Lindhardt 2004). Such practical knowledge is not an inflexible set of assumptions, beliefs or body postures; rather it is the ability to deploy, play, and manipulate basic schemes in ways that appropriate and condition experience effectively. It is a mastery that experiences itself as relatively empowered, not as conditioned or moulded. (Bell 1992: 221)

I agree with the idea of “ritual mastery” as empowering, as a form of practical knowledge that empowers and is relevant in analyzing Charismatic ritual and people’s experience of these healing masses. But I am trying to go beyond this and argue that a powerful creative force comes into being in the embodied experience of the sacred: I call this spiritual agency—“agency” to emphasize the creativity, intentionality, and inner “drive” that manifests itself in relation to other people and ritual and other activities that I see as an intrinsic part of spirituality. People who engage in religious ritual and experience the transcendent engage with the transcendent at that moment and, inspired by their experience, bring it with them in their continued ways of experiencing the world and of engaging with others in the religious community and with the world outside the community. This engagement that I term spiritual agency could be similar to what Davis describes here as “religious feeling”: Religious feeling is the arousal of our personal being—our intelligent and bodily, spiritual and material selves—in what is, though variously

74

Jacqueline Ryle

mediated, a direct relation to transcendent reality. Religious feeling is constitutive of every truly personal religious experience, because without it religious responses are reduced to words, gestures, attitudes borrowed from others and repeated without personal involvement. By religious feeling a particular experience is intrinsically, not just extrinsically, for example merely verbally or socially religious. (Davis 1976: 25)

To speak of religious feeling or spiritual agency as being embodied is to see it as part of that which makes up a whole person and their ways of being in the world. It is an active component of people’s daily life, their agency in life, the choices they make, the challenges they face, the way they relate to others and their surroundings, the way they engage bodily in their faith, the rituals they participate in or perform, the words they say, their reflections, the emotions and feelings they experience. It is such spiritual agency that is central to people’s actions and responses in the healing services and how people connected their experiences within the context of the healing services with their daily lives: how the empowerment they experienced during the services affected change in their lives and in their relations to others.

Global Links: The Overseas Visitor It was the unusually physically expressive nature and spiritual intensity of the healing services that Fr. Thomas celebrated that challenged many people within the Catholic church in Fiji, laity as well as clergy. Yet it was also this turning upside down of conventions and norms and the ways people through this came to perceive themselves and use their bodies and voices within the space of the church, and the ways the sacred space of the church was transformed through the rites performed, that made these healing services so efficacious and popular. Fr. Thomas had originally been invited to give a retreat to a Fijian order of nuns. His retreat had been such a success that he was invited back by the order and given permission by the archbishop to conduct a healing ministry in the country. Word of Fr. Thomas’s healing services and the many healings that occurred in the course of the services spread quickly from parish to parish, mainly through the loosely organized parish Charismatic groups, but also through the close network of extended family relations in Fiji. In many cases parish priests worked with Fr. Thomas. But in some cases parish priests did not want to be involved. According to Fr. Thomas, a greater degree of success of these healing services was

Laying Our Sins and Sorrows on the Altar

75

achieved when people saw their own parish priest actively participate in the healing services and concelebrate Mass with him. Several parishes invited Father Thomas back to conduct a second service, and word of this also spread, so that by the time he left the country, parishes were still ringing to ask him to return and do another healing service. In addition to this, many, many people contacted Fr. Thomas via the mobile phone he was lent by a parishioner for use while in the country. An ever-growing stream of people came to the presbytery in the parish where he was based in Suva, to talk to him and be prayed over or to ask him to come and visit sick relatives. Many calls were received each day on the presbytery phone. And on a daily basis Father Thomas also received phone calls from relatives of people who had attended these healing services, based as far away as Australia, New Zealand, the United States, and Canada, and he conducted healing prayers over the phone with them. In addition, he went on daily sick visits to people and conducted healing prayers for families or parish groups in their homes. The intensity of Fr. Thomas’s ministry and the rumors of healing that abounded from it were such that people walked for miles across difficult terrain in the interior of the main island to get to the healing services, people in other rural areas paid large sums of money to hire vehicles that could bring them to the town or coastal churches where healing services were being held, and people waited patiently for hours and hours in churches to participate in the healing services. Most churches were overflowing—with Catholics, as well as mainstream Protestant and Pentecostal church members and Hindus. A number of factors played into the wave of excitement Fr. Thomas’s ministry affected among Catholic parishes. For one thing, to the vast majority of people in Fiji—in all religious communities, non-Christian as well as Christian—people’s religion, their faith, is of central importance to their sense of self and as the focal point of their everyday lives. Second, apart from a relatively small elite of well-educated and wealthy people in the capital and people who attend nonmainstream churches such as Pentecostal churches, most people in Fiji, especially in rural areas, will generally seek traditional healing or religious healing first and seek medical help only as a final resource. In many cases, people whose lives could have been saved by proper medical attention in time die because their relatives have tried all sorts of nonmedical intervention before taking the patient to a doctor or hospital. Third, the fact that Father Thomas was an outsider and came from overseas added to the perceived efficacy of his healing powers.

76

Jacqueline Ryle

In pre-Christian Fiji, the world existed as an expression of the mana (divine power, efficacy) of the gods, of which the chiefs and their divine rule (matanitu) were living representatives. Fijians in pre-Christian times existed within this polytheistic cosmology, maintained by a balance of ritual and political power between people of the land, itaukei (literally, owners of the land) and the chiefs (turaga) they installed. These chiefs were “stranger-kings,” seen to come from across the seas, were considered tabu, and were believed to embody divine powers (mana) linking them to the mana of ancestors (cf. Sahlins 1985: 73–103). They were thus seen as links between the people and the divinities. This complementary opposition of “land” and “sea” was “not only geographical but also implied autochthony versus foreignness, and ‘ownership’ of land versus rule over it” (Kaplan 1990: 129), an appropriation and domestication of potentially dangerous and powerful mana from outside. Although Fijian society was—and is—hierarchically structured, this is inextricably linked with concepts of complementarity and reciprocity (cf. Toren 1994: 213). Because Fr. Thomas came from overseas, his authority as a priest and perceived efficacy as an instrument of God’s healing was, I would argue, considered different and exotic. His healing services were to some degree so popular precisely because they were the work of a stranger from overseas. A local Charismatic Catholic priest would not have achieved the same level of interest or enthusiasm. The perceived power of innovation, difference, and freshness the outsider inevitably brings with him through his mere being there and through the narratives he brings with him of a different world6 played a role—but so, I suggest, did the deep-seated Fijian mythological understandings of the powerful “stranger-king.” And people in Fiji, as many other places in the world, are tremendously drawn towards any form of healing.

The Structure of the Healing Service At the start of each service, Fr. Thomas emphasized a number of biblically based central points: 1) that he does not heal: only Jesus heals; 2) that he has merely been given the gift of facilitating or passing on that healing; 3) that in praising the Lord, you are asking God to touch you and heal you; 4) that healing can only take place in the name of Jesus Christ—“In my name they will drive out demons” (Mk 16: 17);

Laying Our Sins and Sorrows on the Altar

77

5) that healing is dependent on the acknowledgement of individual sin (Ps. 41: 4) “I said I have sinned against you”; that healing is dependent on the powerful Word of God (Ps 41: 3); 6) that “God will touch you and set you free from your anger” (Eph 4: 26).

Each healing service was structured in the same way and based on the liturgical rhythm and flow of an ordinary Catholic Mass, yet was at the same time completely different than any ordinary Catholic Mass. In chant-like, almost meditative style, line by line, Fr. Thomas led people to loudly repeat the words of a lengthy healing prayer. Through this, 1) people are led7 to become conscious of their need for the healing touch of God by becoming conscious of their mistakes and sins; 2) people are led to open their souls through praising God; 3) this will in turn lead them to be open to hearing the Word of God, that is to say, the liturgy of the Word through Bible readings and through the homily or sermon; 4) in praying for others and themselves, people are confirming their relatedness through God to each other and to the world; and this all leads up to 5) the sacrifice of the Eucharistic celebration, Holy Communion—the pivotal point of an ordinary Mass and of these healing services.

The healing prayer expressed the individual’s praise and adoration of God, individual acknowledgement of sin, and supplication for forgiveness and healing. Interwoven with this were Bible quotations that Fr. Thomas or members of the congregation were asked to read and testimonies by people from healings in former services as well as of those participating in the present service. Within each healing service was a Eucharistic Mass with Holy Communion. The start and end of the Eucharistic Mass was clearly indicated by Fr. Thomas and clearly demarcated, partly by the break while the altar was prepared for the Eucharist; partly by the initiatory and concluding liturgical words and movements of the priest or priests; but also by the fact that while engaged in the Eucharistic celebration, Fr. Thomas and the concelebrant priest would be wearing Eucharistic vestments. Before and after the Eucharistic Mass, Fr. Thomas would be dressed in a simple white soutane, occasionally also wearing a stole. The pivotal and most striking event that took place during each healing service, which took place directly before the start of the Eucharistic Mass, was the invitation to people to come up to the sanctuary and kneel around the altar. During some of the healing services, Fr. Thomas invited people up to the altar during the Eucharistic Mass—

78

Jacqueline Ryle

this was after the homily or sermon, before Holy Communion. This timing is important, since the invitation to come to the altar was an invitation to people to bring their sins and sorrows, pain, anger, illness, and so on, as a sacrifice to lay on the altar. Very little singing took place during the actual Mass—only the soft singing of the Lord’s Prayer and a quiet song during the offertory, when the bread and wine was carried up through the church and presented at the altar. Father Thomas discouraged any form of clapping, as he felt it disturbed the flow of the Holy Spirit and the flow of people’s concentration: “I am trying to bring people to aloneness with God. If they start clapping, they will start sitting, looking left to right,” he pointed out to me (17 September 2003). This did indeed differ from the usual form of worship in Fijian Catholic Charismatic meetings and masses I had participated in, where the use of guitars, clapping, and louder and more expressive singing is prevalent. At the conclusion of each healing service, long lines of people sought individual healing from Fr. Thomas. In his conversations with people in these individual healing sessions, Father Thomas felt their pain in his own body for a moment, as inner visions about illness or accidents concerning the person or people the person is related to—and he was usually right when he asked whether people had been operated on or had a knee injury or had had an accident, or whether someone in the family had had an abortion, committed suicide, committed murder, all of which could be elements causing illness or blocking healing. In this way for a brief moment, the healing facilitator and those seeking healing are fused together, connected in joint bodily or spiritual pain. Physical and emotional relief and release comes when the spiritual bondage is released through acknowledgement of one’s sins.

Raising One’s Hands to the Lord Each healing service started with Father Thomas calling on people to raise their arms high up in the air, and loudly and exuberantly repeat over and over the words “Praise the Lord!” Many people were clearly most uneasy about this to start with, although those who had prior experience of these healing services slipped into it without problems. It was not easy for the majority of people: for one thing, to most people it was alien and suspect to perform such explicit and expressive bodily actions as to raise one’s arms high up. And second, it was challenging to speak so loudly and exuberantly.

Laying Our Sins and Sorrows on the Altar

79

In Fiji, quiet or silence, strict rules of bodily comportment, and the positioning of a person in relation to others in hierarchically organized space and social relations is part of formal etiquette. No one may stand or sit taller than a chief. It is therefore extremely rude and offensive to stand up when those to whom you should defer are sitting, or to stretch over the area above their heads, the most tabu (taboo) part of the body, or to sit on a higher seat than those you should defer to. The physical and symbolic ordering of people within space in Fiji, equated with respect for and subservience to chiefly authority—and ultimately, in church worship to God as the paramount chief of all—were woven into mainstream church worship from the time of Christianization. The importance of silence as expressing respect and reverence in traditional Fijian ritual is borne out by the absolute silence and stillness of body comportment maintained at the death of a high chief. However, despite people’s initial suspicions and reluctance or shyness to participate, to raise their arms and hands so high in the air and for such sustained periods, in the course of the services I attended, almost every single person present let go. Even in parishes where the majority of people initially were negative towards the idea, they ended up joining in fully. The explicit use of lifted hands and arms in the course of the service, we were told, is an invitation to God to come into our lives. The palms raised upwards meaning also an uplifting of joy or of burdens or sins to the Lord, essentially an uplifting of everything we are and have to offer to the Lord. Raising our hands up in worship is, Fr Thomas told me, a two way process. We are “waiting on the Lord” and “inviting the Lord to come into our lives.” We are “asking the [Holy] Spirit to come down.” At the same time we are “reaching out to the Lord,” are “lifting ourselves up to the Lord.” (interview 22 August 2003). We also make ourselves physically vulnerable. We surrender ourselves. Indeed, this gesture is internationally recognized as indicating unconditional surrender. You become truly open, and there is a sense that the openness also lays open your sins and wounds before God. And this links with the main thrust of the services, that in order to be cleansed and healed, you must lay open your sin and brokenness. And this too follows the Catholic rite of reconciliation, in which the acknowledgement and confession of sin and wrongdoing and, importantly, the will to change and repair what has been broken through sin, leads to the bestowal of absolution by the priest. Despite—or perhaps because of—the laying open of a person’s conscience and sense of sin, wrongdoing, and brokenness, this becomes an empowering gesture, perhaps because

80

Jacqueline Ryle

physically the movement gives release and a sense of freedom. Perhaps because in surrendering themselves totally to God and feeling God’s forgiveness, participants feel liberated. One young man from a Pentecostal church told me, when I asked him what he felt when he held his arms up in this way, that he felt a closeness to God. “But,” he added, “I only hold my arms up like that if I feel clean inside and at peace with God.” A Catholic Charismatic told me that unless you feel close to God—or desire to feel close to God—it is almost physically impossible to raise your arms up in this fashion. In a highly hierarchical society such as Fiji’s, where much cultural value is placed on conforming to given norms and where individuality and being different is seen as suspect, one could argue here that this would make it difficult for individuals to go against the flow of spirit and bodily movement during an event like this, and not raise their hands. However, I had a very clear sense that when they had overcome their initial awkwardness at such expressive behavior, people truly felt empowered and spiritually touched by performing these movements that were indeed physically energizing to do. A rural parish priest warned us when we arrived that his parish was very antiCharismatic. Yet the repeated request by Fr Thomas to people to raise their hands up high ended up with the whole congregation doing so. The parish priest said afterwards that he himself had felt negative towards the whole thing to start off with, but found himself transformed during the evening: “[People have been] using [their] mind, [having] an intellectual way of understanding [their faith] … judging intellectually,” he told us, … “People have grown complacent in their faith here. … During the course of the Mass I let go of my intellect—and my heart was touched. … “[We have to] let go and experience the experience,” he added. (Fr Peter Loy Chong, Mary of the Immaculate Conception Church, Solevu, 22 September 2003)

Reconciling and Healing Brokenness To Fr. Thomas, physical sickness is mostly connected to spiritual illness or “brokenness” and sin in a person’s life, and particularly in his or her family relations. Sickness and healing are therefore not individual phenomena as such, but linked with the life and social relations of the individual—present as well as past, and are linked with the actions of the individual’s relations, those living as well as those of former generations. We are all related—in time and space.

Laying Our Sins and Sorrows on the Altar

81

Similar to the image in 1 Cor 12 of the church as a body that needs all its different parts in order to function, Fr. Thomas pointed out: “We are all related to one another and to God. When one of our members is hurting, we are all hurting. When one of our family members is far away from the Lord, the whole family is far away from the Lord (St. Joseph the Worker Church, Suva, 25 August 2003). This relatedness, Fr. Thomas emphasized, also means that the consequences of our sinful actions will be handed down through the generations: Do not abuse one another, respect one another. If you are hitting your wife, stop it in the name of Jesus Christ—or your sins will go into your children. (St Peter’s Anglican Church, Lautoka, 26 August 2004) The children will continue the bondage of their parents, Ex. 20: 5. … We carry bondages from one generation to another … just like bricks glued together, a continuous chain. (Holy Trinity Anglican Cathedral, Suva, 8 August 2003) [See] Nehemiah 9: … They stood before the Lord and confessed their sins. Do you confess the sins of your ancestors? The sins of our forefathers … [See] Ex 20: 5. … [They will be punished] to the third and fourth generations. … We have to pray for our parents, [for] our ancestors. (Holy Family Church, Labasa, 24 August 2003)

Father Thomas explained that in order to open up for healing, we must embark on this process of recognition and acknowledgement of our mistakes and sins. We have to ask for forgiveness from God but also from those we have hurt in our lives, and forgive those who have hurt us. Only then can we expect healing to take place. If we hold on to anger, bitterness, and hurt in our lives, we will not be able to open up to either spiritual or physical healing. Family members who are holding on to anger or trauma, or who have committed sins, can keep another member of the family locked in illness or depression. Much of this approach ties in well with traditional Fijian understandings of identity. An individual is never merely an individual. The Fijian body, as Becker points out, is first and foremost social: Among Pacific Island societies the self is not so much conceived of as a body, but “as a locus of shared social relationships, or shared biographies” (Lieber 1990: 74). The Melanesian person is construed as a “composite site of relationships” (Strathern 1988: 13) that is not “coterminous or even synonymous with individual bodies” (Foster 1990: 432). (1995: 4)

One is always and at all times connected to one’s clan and clan members, and whatever a person does will reflect on all the other

82

Jacqueline Ryle

members of the clan in the present as well as the future, just as the actions of deceased clan members still reflect on the clan as a whole today. As with the Body of Christ in 1 Cor 12—brokenness in part of the clan reflects on the whole, “socio-moral transgressions (or, breaches of tabu) have ramifications in both the social and the cosmic realm in Melanesia and Polynesia” (Becker 1995: 99). However, there is a clear difference between the rites of reconciliation in these healing services and the traditional, communally oriented and enacted ritual displays of reconciliation between Fijian kin groups. In such traditional rites of reconciliation (generally known as ibulubulu), the individual perpetrator need not be present, but is represented by a clan spokesman, who through a ritual presentation of the highest cultural valuable in Fiji, a whale’s tooth, and often other valuables too, asks the representative of another clan for reconciliation on behalf of his clan. However, several Catholics I have spoken to in Fiji with regard to reconciliation8 have pointed out that these traditional rites of reconciliation bury grievances in a negative sense. Grievances are buried; sullied and broken clan relations are buried. The rite cleanses, reconciles, and restores clan relations, but people do not at an individual level confront, acknowledge, confess their wrong-doings and seek forgiveness. The emotional wounds of individual victims are therefore buried, sought forgotten, not healed as such. Hidden from sight, the wounds continue to fester. In these healing services, the important element is the individual acknowledgement at an inner level of sin and wrong-doing, the individual taking responsibility for his or her actions and the reparation at spiritual and social levels. Speaking openly about hurt, abuse, sin, anger, and so on within the family can, according to Father Thomas, free the individual to be healed. And through this freeing of the bondage of sin and the healing of an individual member of the family, the whole family is healed too. This is also known within the Catholic Charismatic faith as “healing the family tree.”

Being Healed To be “healed” does not necessarily mean to be “cured.” Fr. Thomas emphasized on many occasions that the healing that takes place need not necessarily be the healing a person has come for. A story he often told was of a man who came in the hope of being healed of cancer. He died, however, before Fr. Thomas left Fiji. But the point of the story was that

Laying Our Sins and Sorrows on the Altar

83

he died in peace, surrounded by his family, strengthened in his faith, and reconciled to his children. This man, Fr. Thomas explained, had not received the physical healing he had asked for, but he had received spiritual healing. In a predominantly Indo-Fijian parish, Fr. Thomas encountered an old woman and her daughter-in-law. In the course of being prayed over, the old woman’s pain had not been alleviated. In a later conversation alone with the daughter-in-law, Fr. Thomas asked if anyone in the family had had an abortion. He had sensed that the old woman, who had many physical ailments, was being bound in illness by this particular act. But the young woman denied this. After having prayed over the old lady a second time to no avail, Father Thomas asked to speak to the daughter-in-law again. In this second private talk with Fr. Thomas, the young woman acknowledged having had an abortion. Following this, when Fr. Thomas prayed over the old lady a third time, she sensed a clear change and felt that she had been released from her pain of several years. Such confessions were not reached through any pressure and were not responded to with any indication of blame or condemnation. The point was to encourage individuals to openly acknowledge their sins and sorrows, so that through this act, the bondage they or others experienced on account of what they had done would be loosened.9 Fr. Thomas emphasized how the above case is an example of how other family members can be held in physical bondage through illness on account of the sinful actions of another member of the family. This case also emphasizes the centrality of the body. Here, the body of the daughter-in-law is seen as first blocking the health and well-being of her mother-in-law through the sin of having had an abortion. When the action of abortion has been openly acknowledged by the daughterin-law, her mother-in-law’s healing is able to take place. Through acknowledgement, confession, asking God as well as her aborted child for forgiveness and through the ensuing reconciliation with God, the daughter-in-law’s body, now cleansed through reconciliation becomes instead the vehicle through which healing of her mother-in-law’s body through the power of the Holy Spirit is achieved. Mere,10 a Fijian woman, told me that her first encounter with Catholic Charismatic Renewal had deepened her faith and made her understand connections between past and present actions and relations within her family. She realized now, she told me, that her eldest daughter’s pregnancy out of wedlock some years before, which forced her to leave high school and brought shame on the family, was a consequence of the bad relations between Mere and her husband, Tomasi,

84

Jacqueline Ryle

at the time she was carrying their first child. When Mere was heavily pregnant, Tomasi left her, and she had to return to live with her family. Not until after some months after she had given birth to their daughter were the two reconciled, and they have since had a happy and solid marriage and are strong in their Catholic faith. The trauma and rupture of relations between Mere and Tomasi while she was carrying their first child had, she concluded, damaged their daughter spiritually and led her in turn to commit sin as a young adult. “We have to sit down together, all three of us,” she told me, “and we, Teresia’s parents, have to ask her for forgiveness for the sin we committed then, before she was born.” Only then would healing of the daughter and of the family as a whole be able to take place, she maintained (interview October 1998). Lusia, a women whose son was healed of a serious ear problem for which he was due to have surgery, described to me a year after the healing how Fr. Thomas’s focus on reconciliation had led her to reconcile with her family before returning to a second healing service when her son was healed: Fr. Thomas kept on talking about reconciliation. … So I came home that evening, we had our prayer … and then we had our family reconciliation. … I felt we needed to do this … because there is no point, I mean that was how I felt, asking the Lord for healing when there is hurt in the family. Maybe … I’ve hurt [the children] in some ways, because sometimes I talk to them in a way that I’m not supposed to. … So the Lord led us to come and do our reconciliation. … Sometimes we pray and pray and pray, and we don’t realize that we need to reconcile first with our family members. … So I was very happy that he led me to do that, and it’s sort of an on-going thing for our family [now]. (Lusia, interview 29 October 2004)

In the first narrative, through accepting God’s will in his life, a man sought a cure for his diseased body. He was not cured of his illness, yet his bodily suffering and dying became instead the channel through which wounds within the family were healed and reconciled. In the second narrative, unacknowledged bodily sin was seen as holding a family member in sickness; in the third narrative, previous sin and hurt within the family was seen as resulting in sinful bodily action one generation down. In the fourth narrative, hurt was seen as blocking potential healing. Healing can only take place through confession and reconciliation at both vertical and horizontal levels, with God as well as with one’s neighbor. We are social creatures enmeshed in social relations that must be restored, for us to be healed by God. This corresponds with Catholic

Laying Our Sins and Sorrows on the Altar

85

understandings of reconciliation—again reflecting the Pauline text on the body of Christ: that in sinning against God, in causing brokenness in our relationship to God, we are sinning against the whole church, causing brokenness in our relations with our brothers and sisters. It is therefore vital to reconciliation that we reach out to those we have hurt, compensate them for their hurt, and reconcile with them before we can expect to be reconciled with God. McManus notes that the Rite of Penance (1974, ICEL) states: “Penance always entails reconciliation with our brothers and sisters who remain harmed by our sins (No.5) (1984: 49). It is through the individual’s agency in relation to others, especially in relation to those he or she is related to that healing takes place.

The Altar The pivotal moment in the healing service was when people, before the start of the actual Eucharistic Mass, were invited to come up to the sanctuary and kneel around the altar. This was a radical invitation. To Catholics, the altar is one of the two most sacred objects and holy places in a church, the other being the tabernacle, within which the consecrated host, the Body of Christ, is kept. The perpetually burning red light found in all Catholic churches near the tabernacle indicates that the tabernacle contains the consecrated host. The sanctuary area of the church, where the altar—and the tabernacle—are placed, is an area that is out of bounds during Mass to anyone other than those involved in the Mass. Although particularly during Mass, at all times the sanctuary area of a Catholic church is revered, and unless they have business to do there, people do not enter this area. In fact, at Sacred Heart Cathedral in Suva, there is a notice that emphasizes this sanctity of the sanctuary, forbidding anyone without authority to enter the area at any time.11 So this act of leaving the main body of the church and entering into the sacred space of the sanctuary is in itself radical and challenging. “Never come empty handed to the altar,” Fr. Thomas emphasized cheerfully after making the invitation. People were to bring all their sins, sorrows, frustrations, anger, and illnesses, he said, as an offering to lay on the altar. However, many people generally still hesitated at this perceived transgression of spatial boundaries in church, this turning upside down of their perceptions of where they belonged. In Fiji, the head (ulu) of a person is tabu (literally, forbidden, sacred), the head being the highest place of the body hierarchically as

86

Jacqueline Ryle

well as physically; the head of a chief is therefore exceedingly tabu. All concepts of space and place in Fiji are centered round this concept of the head being the first and highest place. Therefore the space of houses and villages are considered by the same principle, being spatially divided into hierarchically and socially “above” and “below” areas. And with the Christianization of Fiji in the nineteenth century, these spatial distinctions were transposed to the space of churches. People enter spaces and position themselves within them in relation to their place in the hierarchy, and in so doing physically embody that social status. To place oneself in a physically higher position than a person of higher social rank than oneself is a serious breach of conduct and an indirect, or perhaps very direct, affront to the authority of the highest ranking person. To show true respect and humility, one invariably seats oneself in a “lower” hierarchical position in a house than that which one might be entitled to—and then, in a ritualized show of hospitality, generosity, and respect, the host or those present of higher rank will gesture that one move up to a “higher” position. Since the sanctuary area of the church is considered the “highest” area of the church, only the hierarchically highest or most important people should be allowed to enter the sanctuary. This is gels well with Catholic understandings of the sanctity of the sanctuary area. In Catholic churches, the altar is at one and the same time the symbol of Christ himself as the high priest offering the sacrifice to God—and the one who was offered. Every time the Eucharist is celebrated at the altar, the priest becomes the instrument of the Holy Spirit in the act of transubstantiation, changing the bread and wine to the body and blood of Christ, and reenacts the sacrifice of Christ at Calvary. Time and space is collapsed in the mystery of this ritual. This explains the deep sanctity of the altar in Catholic belief. As a former seminarian described to me: Like the source of his life has been pierced—the heart from which water and blood flowed for me. … That’s very powerful. In the center of the Holy Mass we [the priest] change the bread to the body and wine to the blood of Jesus. I mean, just thinking of that. Something that happened in that time, which I too, I was there too in that moment. That moment, just imagine. And now I have been given the privilege, the right by God, through the sacrament. (Brother Mika, Ra, interview 21 October 2004)

To place one’s hands on the altar is therefore to be invited to place one’s hands on the crucified Christ, the High Priest who always inter-

Laying Our Sins and Sorrows on the Altar

87

cedes to God on our behalf. To ordinary people, being invited to enter the sanctuary and touch the altar is quite overwhelming: Normally, we don’t go up to the altar. We don’t have the privilege to go there, we don’t have the right to go there. But once the opportunity is given. … But here, the altar of sacrifice, which we offer the bread and wine reflects [the sacrifice at] Calvary, the blood and the flesh. On the cross in Calvary Jesus Christ offered himself. With nails on [his] hand[s ], both feet, and then his heart was pierced. (Brother Mika, Ra, interview 21 October 2004)

Father Thomas sought to draw people to the power of the altar. “Do not be afraid,” he said, “to touch the altar. … Are you afraid to touch God? No! Then don’t be afraid.” (St. Joseph the Worker Church, Suva, Assumption, 15 August 2003). On the other hand, he also emphasized the potential and transformative power of the altar: “The altar is the tomb of Jesus, from where Jesus Christ was resurrected. It is a power. … When you touch the altar you are offering your sinfulness, your sincerity, as your burnt offerings to the Lord … and he will shower his blessings on you: (Holy Trinity Anglican Cathedral, Suva, 8 August 2003). People are invited to kneel round the altar, placing the palms of their hands on the altar. Those who could not reach the altar itself were asked to kneel or stand behind the first row of people who had their hands on the altar, and were asked to put their palms on the shoulders or backs of those in front. “If you cannot get to touch the altar, touch the person in front of you; the Spirit of the Lord will run through that person and cleanse you,” Fr. Thomas told people (St. Joseph the Worker Church, Suva, 7 August 2003). In this way, everyone around the altar was physically connected to the altar and to the power it represented to people, symbolic as well as real, which many participants felt either physically or spiritually while there. At the same time people were connected to one another physically, vocally, and spiritually, as they repeated, line by line, almost like a mantra, a long, chant-like prayer, a “healing prayer,” saying that they lay on this altar all their brokenness, all their mistakes, their anger, their sorrow, their pain and sins—and asking God for cleansing, forgiveness, reconciliation, healing, strength, and renewal. At one time when participating in this rite, I knelt behind a disabled man, holding my hands flat against his back. While we were repeating the words of the healing prayer, through this man’s thin body I felt in my hands the physical resonance of his voice, as he prayed, as we prayed together, repeating the same words.

88

Jacqueline Ryle

I was reminded of the American film from the 1980s, Children of a Lesser God, in which the actor William Hurt plays a young, innovative teacher of deaf children. He empowers his pupils and revolutionizes their life by teaching them to learn to “hear” music by resting their hands on enormous loud speakers, feeling the rhythm and pulse of the music physically, so that it is almost as if they could touch the music. Feeling almost physically connected to this man’s prayer, I felt as if I were learning to “hear” prayer through feeling it, touching it. You could really say that here was indeed an example of the embodiment of faith, prayer, and communion—with God and neighbor. The experience tangibly emphasized to me the sense of connectedness or relationality, physical, vocal, and spiritual, that this rite affected and symbolized—the underlying theme of the services. As Csordas (1983: 352) points out, performance of the gesture of laying on of hands in the ritual context is “an imitation of the healing touch of Jesus portrayed in the Bible … a metonym of the solidarity of the Christian community; the unity of the two bodies touching is the Unity of the Church as the Mystical Body of Christ.” He cites T. Turner’s observation that “the surface of the body seems everywhere to be treated, not only as the boundary of the individual as a biological and psychological entity but as the frontier of the social self as well” (1980: 112). I would add to this that the surface of the body is also the frontier of the spiritual body. Father Thomas emphasized the importance of people putting the palms of their hands flat down on the altar—or against the body of the person in front of them: “[The] palm is very important. The palm has to be open, then we will receive. That’s the sign of asking. We don’t ask with fists, do we?” he asked me (interview 21 October 2003). This also emphasizes the potential power of the stigmata, the five wounds of Christ at the Crucifixion. As Father Thomas once said in a service: When you hit your wife you use the palm of your hand, don’t you? Husbands, never hit your wives! Joseph did not hit Maria. There was no hitting in the Holy Family! Do not hit your children … unnecessarily. … Bring your palms [to the altar]. … Jesus had nails put through his palms. (Holy Family Church, Labasa, 24 August 2003)

A Catholic Charismatic woman, who described to me her baptism in the Holy Spirit on a different occasion, explained how she had stood in front of the tabernacle in her local parish church during the baptism and had clearly felt an immense heat and power emanate from the tabernacle to the palms of her hands. “Because of the nails,” she

Laying Our Sins and Sorrows on the Altar

89

told me. Feeling heat in her left palm as she later prayed over someone confirmed to her and to others that she had been granted the gift of healing. In these two ways of referring to Christ’s stigmata, a connection is made from the bodily suffering of the living Christ to the potential transformative power of his body through death and resurrection. So there is a sense of the collapsing of time and space between the historical event of the Crucifixion and the “now” of the present moment. A link of empowerment is made between the Body of Christ and the body of those living today: the palms of people’s hands, as Father Thomas points out, contain the potential to do good and to do evil. The woman who experienced heat in the palms of her hands during her baptism in the Holy Spirit perceived the power of the Body of Christ emanating from the tabernacle to her hands as a spiritual empowerment from God through her body, to effectuate healing in others. When those she laid hands on similarly felt this power, she was confirmed in her understanding of the link between Christ’s body, her body, and the bodies of those whom she prayed for by physically laying hands on them—a link that similarly connects past, present, and future, the spiritual and the physical. The rite at the altar of offering, sacrificing at the altar one’s sins, and people’s ensuing sense of their being cleansed and reconciled to God through acknowledging their wrong-doings and asking God’s forgiveness clearly symbolizes (without actually being, Father Thomas strongly emphasized) the Catholic sacrament of confession and penance, also known as the rite of reconciliation. On some occasions in villages, Father Thomas invited people to come to the altar specifically to heal their clan and forefathers, also emphasizing that this rite, though it seemed like a form of confession, was not the same thing: Extend your hands to the altar. … [This is] not … confession as in Church—when you do this you are bringing your forefathers [to God], ask the Lord to forgive them. (St. Peter’s Church, Namosi, 26 August 2003)

Much of the theology of the healing services was focused on the ways in which the actions of our forefathers or other members of our family can bind us in spiritual or physical illness. Since this resonates with traditional Fijian and Pacific Islander notions of the ways in which past actions are reflected in the present, the invitation to bring the sins of people’s ancestors to the altar and seek God’s forgiveness was also particularly powerful from a cultural perspective.

90

Jacqueline Ryle

Almost all those who were asked afterwards what they felt when they touched the altar—and Father Thomas used to ask people before they left the sanctuary to share their feelings with the rest of the congregation in the microphone—almost everyone attested to having felt something extraordinary: great joy, inner peace, strength, lightness, or warmth or heat. To everyone it was a very special and moving experience—to enter into the sanctity of the sanctuary, to physically touch the sanctity of the altar in this way. For some it was an extremely powerful experience. “I felt my burdens are lightened,” a Hindu man said. “I felt I am leaving everything behind. I am going to love my family and everything will be fine.” My friend told me: I felt all my guilty feelings … the way I sometimes talk to my children, my impatience with them. … I felt all that just disappear there at the altar. … I felt so peaceful inside. … I felt I was cleansed of my sins. … I’m the kind of person that when I’ve done something wrong I’ll never go back and say sorry. I don’t usually do that. It made me completely different. Like I know if I hurt my husband, I’d go to him and hug him and say I’m sorry—and my children. And I don’t usually do that. And I’ve taught them also to do the same; every time they’ve hurt us they must come back, always ask forgiveness. Like that experience has also taught me to teach my children. (Lusia, interview October 2004)

People described both spiritual and physical sensations: [I felt the] spiritual tension in me relieved. [My] body felt lighter and [I] felt energetic and [felt] peace in my heart. [I felt the] pain in [my] joints gone. (St Peter’s Anglican Church, Lautoka) A shock went into my hands. Both palms … it felt like both my hands were very hot … hot air kept coming up to my hands. I felt free. I felt strengthened. I feel courage. I felt healed of my burdens. [Said by a child] I feel love. I feel healing in my body. (St. Joseph the Worker, Suva, Assumption Day, 15 August 2003)

Laying Our Sins and Sorrows on the Altar

91

As a concelebrant Irish priest later wrote to the Fiji Catholic monthly newspaper of this central ritual element of the service in his church (this was a service that lasted from 4 P.M. in the afternoon till 11 P.M. at night—with more than 1,200 people present in and outside the church): One of the most revealing moments in the overall celebration was when people were invited and facilitated to approach the altar of the Lord, place their hands on it and openly ask Jesus for healing. The impatient eagerness of those present to be immersed in this sacred ritual of cleansing and renewal was genuinely breathtaking. The soiled condition of the altar cloth following the touch of so many wounded hands symbolically bore silent yet eloquent testimony to the depth and breadth of forgiveness and healing abundantly bestowed. (Fiji Catholic 3 September 2003, 1, J. J. Ryan, CSS)

The Body of Christ At the end of each Mass, connecting the symbolic sacrifice of sin and brokenness at the altar with the healing power of the Risen Christ, Father Thomas took a consecrated host, the Body of Christ, placed in what is known as a monstrance (from Latin monstrare—to display), a brass holder with a round, flat glass container that can be opened, into which is inserted a consecrated large host—the Body of Christ. The glass “window” is often surrounded by a circle of brass formed like a sun, perhaps studded with semiprecious stones. Often, though not always, the monstrance is only ritually handled when a priest or deacon, wearing a humeral veil, a particular vestment used only for this purpose and worn as a cloak over the alb, holds the monstrance with his hands covered by lengths of material, so that the material and not his skin touches the monstrance. This indicates on the one hand the holiness of the ritual gesture, the deep respect shown to Christ and the subservience and humility of the priest. On the other it indicates the potential efficacy, the potentially dangerous or overwhelming power of the Body of Christ. Father Thomas, however, handled the monstrance with his bare hands. This did not indicate disrespect or lack of humility, but could perhaps be seen as indicating a more accessible Christ. While leading a continuous chanting of prayers, Fr. Thomas carried it through the church. People knelt with bowed heads, repeating the healing prayers, the Sacrament, the Body of Christ passing by everyone at one point,

92

Jacqueline Ryle

exuding a concentration of healing power. As the former seminarian I discussed this with emphasized: [Christ] is in us. We can come in contact with Jesus in this way as he passes by. When he passes by, I bow. In my whole heart I ask him to heal me, to touch me more, to heal me more. For me it’s a person to person encounter. I’ve come in contact with Jesus in person passing by. (Brother Mika, 21 October 2004)

Touching the Transcendent: Is Healing Only Healing If It Lasts? At the end of the healing service, people were asked to fill out a Healing Testimony Form, were given a printed “Healing Prayer” to take home with them, and were instructed to pray this prayer daily as husband and wife or as a family in front of a lit candle for a period of nine days, as one would a novena.12 Surprisingly, although the majority of people who came to the healing services were not generally well versed in reading and writing, they took very seriously the idea of filling out the Healing Testimony Form. The fact that so many of them did fill it out, indicates to me that this too was part of the whole experience of healing, expressing a sense of empowerment: to testify in writing that yes, I felt healed of such and such an ailment at such and such a moment at during this service. Several parish priests expressed their experience of the healing service on this form, or wrote in person to Fr. Thomas at a later stage. I would argue that this act is an extension of the ritual experience of the transcendent and of healing. Being photographed on account of having been healed and filling out the testimony forms made tangible that sense of the transcendent which might be difficult to grasp, and added, I believe, to the sense of efficacy and potency of the healing experience. In a similar way it added to the celebratory atmosphere of “anything” being possible in Christ: Religious feeling emerges—sometimes fleetingly, sometimes lastingly, as an explicit, recognizable element in religious living. There is then an express awareness of the transcendent. Such people are endowed with a personal religious sense. In other words, they have discerned and acknowledged a distinctive feeling, relating them directly to the reality with which their varied religious behaviour is concerned. That religious feeling remains as the animating element in their many religious activities and passivities. (Davis 1976: 26)

Laying Our Sins and Sorrows on the Altar

93

Is healing only to be considered healing if it is lasts? Although it would be interesting to know whether the empowerment people experienced lasted, whether the healing lasted, whether the feeling lasted, the fact is that—if only for a moment—in the context of the healing services, people had felt different, had felt touched by the transcendent—perhaps even changed and transformed. From my experience of Charismatic worship both within the Catholic church and within Protestant churches in Fiji, I believe that this is important.

Conclusion The central ritual elements of the healing services, the ritual use of the altar and of the rite of Benediction when the Body of Christ was carried through the church, are significant not merely in that they express the power of the risen Christ, but also in expressing the journey to this empowerment through the brokenness and suffering of Christ for the sake of humanity. In ritual and spatial terms, this rite radically transcends time; transgresses and transcends liturgical and cultural boundaries between body and space, between God and people, between priest and laity. As mentioned earlier, normally, no one who is not ritually involved in a Mass is invited into the sanctuary area where the altar is. Those receiving Holy Communion in a Catholic church may only go as far as where the priest and Eucharistic ministers stand to offer Communion, which is directly in front of the sanctuary area. To invite people into the sanctuary is inviting them into the holiest and most powerful part of the church space. To furthermore invite people to kneel at the altar and place their hands on it is to bring them into contact with the ritually and spiritually most powerful and tabu place in a Catholic church. This is a very tangible spiritual empowerment, experienced physically, which had a strong and powerful impact on people. Normally, the congregation of a Catholic church would experience the Eucharist either when they receive the Body of Christ in Holy Communion in front of the sanctuary area. Or the Body of Christ, the consecrated host, would be “exposed” on the altar in a monstrance for a period of silent prayer, ending with a benediction in which the priest lifts up the monstrance and makes the sign of the cross. To take the consecrated host, the Body of Christ out of the sanctuary area and carry it through the church, is symbolically and, to those experiencing it, really bringing Christ to people, bringing Christ close to people, at one and the

94

Jacqueline Ryle

same time emphasizing his divinity, yet in bringing him close to people, also emphasizing his chosen humanity and likeness with us. In these services, healing happened through the power of the Eucharist—a quiet, personal inner healing and transformation, very much based on social reconciliation, on reconciliation with one’s close family. Yet Father Thomas’s charisma drew attention to his person. However much he emphasized in each service that healing took place throughout the healing service, the long queues for personal, individual healing after the Mass indicated that people attributed particular efficacy to his gift for facilitating healing—through the laying on of hands or his explicit prayer for them. The ways in which people in the healing services were invited to bodily transcend culturally determined spatial, hierarchical boundaries and cultural boundaries, and boundaries of the transcendent and sacred, intensified the sense of empowerment they experienced. To use their bodies in these radically different ways—to raise their hands above their heads, to speak loudly in church, to testify, and, more than anything else, to be invited to enter the sanctuary area and actually touch the altar—were spiritually transformative experiences for many people. Especially within religious contexts, the sense and understanding of community in ritual practice is central to people’s experiences and central to any understanding of embodiment. Our sense of embodiment may be individual, but we are not acting alone; we are acting with others, in relation to others. And it is a similar relationality that was stressed so many times within the healing services in spiritual, moral, social, and temporal terms: that our spiritual and physical health and well-being is dependent on our individual actions, yet closely connected to the actions of our family and kin—those living as well as those of former generations.

Notes I would like to thank Fr. Thomas Matthew OSA; Fr. John Bonato SM, Fr. Paul Marks OMI; Fr. Denis Mahony SM for inspiring discussions, helpful comments, and corrections of this chapter. Comments on earlier versions, presented at the Pacific Theological College, Suva, Fiji, September 2003 and at the conferences History of Christianity in the Pacific in the Twentieth Century, Pacific Theological College, Suva, Fiji, October 2004; and Ritual Practice in Charismatic Christianity, University of Copenhagen, February 2007, were also helpful. 1. The Catholic Charismatic renewal movement in Fiji experienced its heyday from the mid-1970s till about 1990–91. At this time, Charismatic worship was

Laying Our Sins and Sorrows on the Altar

2.

3. 4. 5. 6.

7. 8. 9.

95

based on an idea of strong ecumenical ministry between the three mainline churches in Fiji—the Methodist church, the Roman Catholic church, and the Anglican church—organized by an ecumenical team, ICHTHUS (Greek, meaning fish; also the first letters of the Greek “Jesus Christ Son of God” and is the Christian symbol). Each year a National ICHTHUS Convention was held in Suva with Catholic, Anglican, and Methodist speakers. Anyone could be a member of ICHTHUS, and individual members of Pentecostal churches also joined in the services. Although all Methodists were welcome, the Butt St. Methodist Circuit in the capital of Suva (an English-speaking circuit, more oriented toward European-style Methodism than other Methodist circuits in Fiji) was part of ICHTHUS. Mainline Methodist church leaders opposed ICHTHUS, which does not now exist, but there are plans to revive it. In 2008 almost all the thirty-three parishes in the Catholic Archdiocese of Suva have a strong Catholic Charismatic Renewal (CCR) presence (Fr. John Bonato SM, CCR chaplain in Fiji since 1980—interview October 2002; pers. comm. 2008). See also Ryle (2010), chapter 6. Over a period of six weeks, I participated in twenty-one of these healing services. Each Mass lasted from between three to five hours, including sessions of individual healing afterwards; the longest service I attended lasted for all of seven hours. I was given permission to take photographs during the healing services, and Fr. Thomas asked me to photograph (if people were willing) those who had been healed. Csordas 1997: 198–99 and Lindhardt 2004: 262 make similar observations. Cf. Fr. John Bonato, SM, interview October 2002. See also Berger 1979: 39–46. This should not in any way give an erroneous image of Fiji as a group of isolated islands in the Pacific Ocean. There is a continuous criss-crossing and linking of Fiji Islanders across the world through work and family connections. Many urban Fiji Islanders—Fijian, Indo-Fijian, Chinese, Pacific Islanders—have the outside world to an increasing degree at their fingertips through television, telephones, mobile phones, the internet, yet still an outsider in person receives a certain amount of kudos and could be seen to emanate particular spiritual powers. And to many of the poor and disadvantaged participants with little educational background in rural areas, who only see their parish priest once a month or so (since Catholic priests in rural areas often minister to parishes stretched over large areas), the spiritual energy and drive of Fr. Thomas’s healing services provided unprecedented stimulus and inspiration—as well as clearly having an entertainment value. Cf Fr. Paul Marks OMI, interview, Copenhagen, February 2007. Cf Ryle (2010), chapter 7. While this example concerns an Indo-Fijian young woman, in Fijian cultural practice, considerable importance is paid on disclosing to others, i.e., not keeping to oneself, important experiences or situations. This is particularly important in relation to pregnancy. An undisclosed pregnancy can cause serious danger, even death to others. I was told a story: a female relative of a family had recently visited the household, yet had not disclosed at the time that she was pregnant. When family members subsequently fell ill and it was discov-

96

Jacqueline Ryle

ered the young visitor had been pregnant, yet had not said so, her failure to do so was viewed most seriously and seen as the cause of the illness in the family. (Compare Becker on disclosure and exposure: 1995: 94–103). The importance of disclosure in relation to pregnancy concerns the inherent importance and dangerous qualities of regenerative powers in relation to the community. My point is, however, that in a society based on the penetrative collective gaze, specifically in the context of village life, clandestine behavior is considered a threat, (cf e.g., Tuwere 2002: 161–62 re: sorcery), so the idea that openly acknowledging sin or traumatic events releases bondages and enables healing in others would from this perspective be quite logical. 10. Mere, Tomasi, and Teresia are pseudonyms. 11. This is presumably also because many non-Christians pass through the cathedral or come to light candles there or sit quietly at different times of the day. 12. A novena is a prayer undertaken by an individual, a family, or a group, usually over a period of nine days, to pray for a particular intention, either one’s own or someone else’s.

References Asad, Talal. 1993. Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Becker, Anne E. 1995. Body, Self and Society: The View from Fiji. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Bell, Catherine. 1992. Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Berger, Peter L. 1979. The Heretical Imperative: Contemporary Possibilities of Religious Affirmation. New York: Anchor Press/ Doubleday. Csordas, Thomas J. 1983. “The Rhetoric of Transformation in Ritual Healing.” Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 1983: 333–75. ———. 1990. “Embodiment as a paradigm for anthropology.” Ethos 18: 5–47. ———. 1994 The Sacred Self: A Cultural Phenomenology of Charismatic Healing. Berkeley: University of California Press. ———. 1997 Language, Charisma and Creativity. New York: Palgrave. Davis, Charles. 1976. Body as Spirit: The Nature of Religious Feeling. London: Hodder & Stoughton. Foster, Robert J. 1990. “Nurture and Force-feeding: Mortuary Feasting and the Construction of Collective Individuals in a New Ireland Society.” American Ethnologist 17: 431–48. Jackson, Michael. 1981. “Knowledge of the Body.” In MAN 18: 327–45 Kaplan, Martha. 1990. “Christianity, People of the Land, and Chiefs in Fiji.” In Christianity in Oceania, edited by J. Barker, 189–207. Association of Anthropologists in Oceania Monograph 12. Lanham, MD: University Press of America. Kirkpatrick, John T. 1977. “Person, Hierarchy, and Autonomy in Traditional Yapese Theory.” In Symbolic Anthropology: A Reader in the Study of Symbols and Meanings, edited by Janet Dolgin, Davis S. Kemnitzer, and David M. Schneider. New York: Columbia University Press.

Laying Our Sins and Sorrows on the Altar

97

Koskinen, Aarne A. 1968. *kite: Polynesian Insights into Knowledge. Helsinki: Finnish Society for Missiology and Ecumenics. Leenhardt, Maurice. 1979. Do Kamo. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lieber, Michael D. 1990. “Lamarckian Definitions of Identity on Kapingamarangi and Pohnpei.” In Cultural Identity and Ethnicity in the Pacific, edited by Jocelyn Linnekin and Lin Poyer. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Lindhardt, Martin. 2004. “Power in Powerlessness: a Study of Pentecostal Life Worlds and Symbolic Resistance in Urban Chile.” PhD thesis, Aarhus University. Lock, Margaret. 1993. Cultivating the Body: Anthropology and Epistemologies of Bodily Practice and Knowledge. Annual Review in Anthropology 22: 133–155. Lock, Margaret, and Nancy Scheper-Hughes. 1987. “The Mindful Body.” Medical Anthropological Quarterly 1 (1): 6–41. Mauss, Marcel. 1979. “Body Techniques.” In M. Mauss, Sociology and Psychology: Essays, edited and translated by B. Brewster. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. McManus, Jim CSSR. 1984. The Healing Power of the Sacraments. Notre Dame, IN: Ave Maria Press. Rosaldo, Michelle. 1984. “Toward an Anthropology of Self and Feeling.” In Culture Theory, edited by R. Shweder and R. LeVine, 137–57. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ryle, Jacqueline. 2010. My God, My Land: Interwoven Paths of Christianity and Tradition in Fiji. Farnham: Ashgate Publications. Sahlins, Marshall. 1985. Islands of History. London: Tavistock. Seremetakis, Nadia, ed. 1994. The Senses Still: Perception and Memory as Material Culture in Modernity. New York: Westview Press. Shore, Bradd. 1989. “Mana and Tapu.” In Developments in Polynesian Ethnology, edited by Alan Howard and Robert Borofsky. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Strathern, Andrew. 1996. Body Thoughts. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Strathern, Marilyn. 1988. The Gender of the Gift: Problems with Women and Problems with Society in Melanesia. Berkeley: University of California Press. Toren, Christina. 1994. “All Things Go in Pairs, or the Sharks Will Bite.” Oceania 64, (3): 197–216. Turner, Terence. 1980. “The Social Skin.” In Not Work Alone: A Cross-Cultural View of Acitivites Superfluous to Survival, edited by Jeremy Cherfas and Roger Lewin. Beverley Hills, CA: Sage.

c3C Healing and Redomestication Reconstitution of the Feminine Self in South Korean Evangelical Cell Group Ritual Practices Kelly H. Chong

In the latter half of the twentieth century, South Korea has become home to one of the most vibrant Pentecostal—and Christian charismatic—movements in the world. By the 1980s, churches that identified themselves as Pentecostal have become, after Presbyterianism and Methodism, the third largest Protestant group in South Korea;1 the most well known of these Pentecostal churches is the Yoido Full Gospel Church (affiliated with Assemblies of God) established and led by Pastor Cho (Paul) Yonggi in Seoul, considered to be one of the largest Protestant churches in the world with members estimated to be somewhere near a half million. The high profile of this megachurch notwithstanding, what is perhaps less known about Korean Protestantism is the continuous presence and influence of the charismatic “currents” within its beliefs and practice throughout its more than one-hundred-year history in Korea. Indeed, although the Yoido Full Gospel Church had only become established in the early 1950s by Cho, charismatic beliefs and practices have been an identifiable, though often unacknowledged, part of the fabric and spirit of Korean Protestantism from the inception. With the greater acceptance of Pentecostal and charismatic approaches to worship by the Protestant establishment in the last two to three decades, a trend given impetus by the phenomenal success of the Yoido Full Gospel Church, this emergent charismatic movement within contemporary Korean Protestantism has become difficult to ignore (J. B. Lee 1986; Yoo 1988; Martin 1990, 2002). Between 1996 and 1999, I conducted an ethnographic study of Korean evangelicalism and women in Seoul,2 focusing on the role and religiosity of women and the issues and politics of gender within the 98

Healing and Redomestication

99

churches. Throughout my study of several “mainstream” evangelical churches, that is, churches that did not explicitly identify themselves as Pentecostal, I was able to amply observe the characteristics and dynamics of this vigorous charismatic religiosity. In many of the churches, I noted an increasingly open incorporation of charismatic elements in various church worship activities, which in most churches signified the embracing of more emotional and charismatic styles of worship, increasing stress on the experience of the Holy Spirit, greater receptivity to healing practices, and even of speaking in tongues. In many of the churches, I was to learn that this visible charismatic “turn” was a relatively recent development, catalyzed often by unexpected but dramatic experiences of miraculous healings by the head pastors in recent years. Although the greater freedom now being given to congregants to express themselves in a charismatic manner was visible in all aspects of church worship and activities, both public and private, what was of particular interest was the special significance and appeal that charismatic spirituality and practices seemed to have for female congregants in South Korea, who not only comprised the majority of Protestant church membership but clearly made up the most dedicated contingent of believers. Across all denominational and church boundaries, women appeared by far to be not only the more devoted but the more spiritually ardent and zealous, embracing the charismatic beliefs and practices with far greater readiness, sincerity, and enthusiasm than the men. Indeed, it would not be far fetched to say that within individual churches, women formed a kind of intensely vibrant charismatic “subculture”—flourishing often with the tacit consent of the church authorities, though within limits. This subculture was characterized not only by a wholehearted embracing of charismatic worship styles, but by an active and dedicated participation in a whole range of charismatically oriented activities, ranging from individual and group prayers, prayer retreats, and healing rituals, all of which are aimed at profound experiences of the sacred and activating this sacred power in their lives. Drawing on my ethnographic investigation of one of these “mainstream” but charismatically oriented evangelical churches, this article examines a particular aspect of Korean evangelical women’s charismatic ritual practice and engagement as it occurs in one particular “subcultural” church setting: women’s cell meetings. While there has been much attention to analyzing the more clearly recognizable forms of charismatic practices or rituals in existing studies of charismatic or Pentecostal movements, there has been generally less attention to the spiritual dynamics of less overtly charismatic settings such as cell

100

Kelly H. Chong

groups. Cell meetings are small-group home worship/Bible study services that are found in many Protestant church settings around the world, but have become particularly well developed in and central to South Korean Protestantism. These cell group meetings, as I will argue, play a particularly important function for Korean evangelical female members, especially by serving as an autonomous female social space and as an arena for pursuing spiritual and emotional healing. Through an analysis of three key ritual practices that occur in this setting, I specifically explore the ways in which this process of healing is pursued in this setting and the achievement of the new evangelical feminine subjectivity that empowers women to combat their domestic problems. As I will show, a large part of what occurs in these meetings consists of efforts to heal the deep emotional injuries inflicted on women by the contemporary patriarchal society and the family system. This is achieved in two key ways; one, by helping women embrace the new religious interpretative framework with which they can make sense of their situations and suffering and two, by enabling them to develop the proper dispositions and habitus3 necessary for undergoing regularized experiences of sacred power, which can help lead to profound internal empowerment. The latter is achieved especially by helping women develop the capacity to open up to and understand the experience of the Holy Spirit, because it is only by surrendering to the Holy Spirit and embracing its gifts of power that the women can obtain the strength to deal with their situations. The achievement of the newly empowered feminine self that endows women with the capacity to transcend and cope with their adversity, however, is for many women also a problematic, contradictory process because the liberating potential inherent in this new sacred identity is at the same time undercut by the development of a domestically reoriented selves aimed at effectuating harmony in the home. This new “born-again” feminine identity and habitus, one that reconstitutes women as divinely ordained, devoted mothers and wives, is achieved through a highly effective disciplinary program that recommits women to the virtues of feminine Confucian-Christian womanhood, especially those emphasizing self-sacrifice, obedience, and endurance from which they are seen to have strayed. For many Korean evangelical women, divine power, then, is experienced as a double-edged sword. It is on the one hand a source of enormous personal power and transcendence that capacitates women to take on their domestic struggles with renewed vigor but it is, on the other hand, a vehicle for women’s resubordination, especially through the redomestication of women’s powers, powers that are therefore ex-

Healing and Redomestication

101

perienced in highly ambivalent ways by women. In exploring the development and constitution of the feminine sacred selves within the Korean evangelical context, it is this contradictory appropriation and application of divine power by women upon which I will focus, particularly by analyzing several technologies of ritual practice designed to achieve the contradictory goals of healing and redomestication within the cell group setting.

Korean Evangelicalism, Charisma, and Women Evangelical Protestantism first entered Korea in the late 1880s by way of American (particularly Presbyterian and Methodist) and European missionaries. The story of how evangelical Protestantism has developed and flourished in Korea has been the subject of considerable analysis and debate (Clark 1971; Clark 1986; Grayson 2002; Han 1994; B. Kim 1985; I. Kim 1985; Kim 1996; Moffett 1962; Paik 1987; H-K Park 1985; J-S Park 2003; Suh 1985; Martin 1990), but in this narrative, one part of the story that often goes underanalyzed are the ways in which the Pentecostal/charismatic dimensions in Korean evangelicalism have been a significant part of the character of South Korean evangelicalism and its development. There is no question that the charismatic dimensions we find in the Korean evangelical beliefs and practices has as one of its original sources the revivalistic orientations of earlier Western missionaries who desired to spread Christianity by awakening and spreading spiritual fervor. Developing in a syncretic relationship with native shamanistic beliefs and practices that have enabled the Koreans to approach and appropriate Christianity in a particular manner, evangelical revivals in Korea have been from the inception characterized by a number of charismatic, Pentecostal-type features, including the baptism of the Holy Spirit, healings, miracles, fervent prayers, even exorcisms, becoming an enduring part of the Korean evangelical tradition (J. B. Lee 1986: 169; Ryu 1982; Suh 1982; Yoo 1988). Indeed, some observers for a long time have remarked on the undercurrent of “Pentecostal ferment” of Korean Protestantism, the fervently spiritual, ecstatic nature of Korean Protestant beliefs and practices that have always characterized Korean Protestantism to some extent. But one of the reasons that this Pentecostal/charismatic dimension of Korean evangelicalism has not been sufficiently acknowledged by the Korean Protestant establishment is that for a long time, charismatic practices have been associated with the fringe, “deviant,” cul-

102

Kelly H. Chong

tic Christian movements existing outside of the boundaries of proper, “mainstream” Christianity. The fact of the matter, however, is that Pentecostal/charismatic features have always been an important part of the Korean Protestantism, often existing as “unofficial” religious forms existing in relation to the dominant, “official” form of Korean Christianity (see J. B. Lee 1986: 200). Indeed, experts of Korean Christianity typically view Korean Protestantism to have developed along two major tracks or groupings; one, along what Martin Riesebrodt (1993) calls a “book-centered” or “rational” direction, usually denoting churches that, in the Korean context, can typically be described as “traditional” conservative-fundamentalist, and two, along conservative, charismatically oriented lines emphasizing the importance of the workings of the Holy Spirit and charismatic experiences, or what Martin Riesebrodt (1993) calls “experiencedcentered.”4 But in South Korea, the two strands have often coexisted in uneasy tension because of mainstream Protestantism’s suspicion of Pentecostal/charismatic movements from the early days, the suspicion that has been accompanied by ongoing attempts by the Protestant establishment to try to circumscribe Pentecostal practice and influence (Riesebrodt 1993: 6).5 The Pentecostal/charismatic character of Korean evangelicalism, however, can no longer be ignored because it has, since the 1970s, become an increasingly visible and accepted part of the Korean evangelical establishment. This is due in large part to the phenomenal success of the Yoido Full Gospel Church since the 1960s, which has generated a notable impact on the Protestant establishment (Martin 1990: 146; J. B. Lee 1986; S. J. Park 1993).6 In the past several decades, efforts to duplicate the Yoido Full Gospel Church’s success, for example, have included attempts by many churches to emulate and apply the Full Gospel Church’s church growth techniques, including the redoubled efforts by the churches to respond to the spiritual needs of their congregants by accommodating to the charismatic elements within the churches, including adoption of healing ministries and the cell group system, and prayer retreats.7 Although the more Pentecostal forms of charismatic expressions, such as glossolalia and exorcisms, are practiced officially in a minority of churches like the Yoido Full Gospel Church, most of the so-called megachurches, and many others smaller churches regardless of denominational affiliation, now incorporate some degree of Pentecostal/charismatic practices and beliefs into their theology and ministry. What, then, are the general characteristic of charismatic beliefs and practices that can be observed within Korean churches? In general

Healing and Redomestication

103

terms, Pentecostalism can be seen as a movement of the Holy Spirit. Accordingly, one of the central tenets of Korean Pentecostalism rests on the emphasis on the belief in and experience of the baptism in the Holy Spirit, which includes the expectation that the Holy Spirit (Holy Ghost) bestows powerful spiritual gifts upon believers just as in the time of the Pentecost in the New Testament (McGuire 1982: 4; also see Anderson 1979: 4). These spiritual/charismatic gifts encompass such “signs” as divine healing, prophecies, speaking in tongues (glossalalia), and exorcism as manifestations of Holy Spirit’s gift of power.8 Although the Korean churches practice and accept these gifts to different degrees, the emphasis given to the experiences of the Holy Spirit is one feature shared by the majority of Korean evangelical churches, and related to that, the centrality of prayer.9 Indeed surveys after surveys consistently report the importance the majority of Korean Protestants, both pastors and laypeople, place on the supreme significance and necessity of receiving and experiencing the Baptism of the Holy Spirit—understood in the broad charismatic sense that may or may not include glossolalia—and the overwhelming majority of Korean Protestants also report that they have received the Baptism of the Holy Spirit.10 An interesting observation must be made at this juncture regarding the relationship of charismatic practices within Korean evangelicalism and women. In South Korea, charismatic forms of worship are associated more typically with women than men; it is a common perception that these charismatically oriented practices are characteristically “feminine” forms of worship that particularly appeal to and are embraced more enthusiastically by women. Some of this has to do with the purported influence of the native shamanistic beliefs and practices—a native religion based on the belief and worship of spirits and spirit possession that has evolved into a family cult monopolized by women—on the beliefs, practices, and style of Korean Christianity, especially the beliefs in the “supernatural” miracles, healings, exorcisms, as well as “earthly blessing–focused” belief system (gibok sinhang). But this kind of connection, of course, is something that is difficult to establish since the features that are often impressionistically regarded as shamanistic in Korean Protestantism are found in Pentecostal-type religions in places without shamanistic traditions (Hollenweger 1972). On the other hand, it is possible to imagine that certain elements of the shamanistic belief system may have provided the fertile soil for the ready acceptance of certain charismatic features of Christian beliefs and practices, or at least, facilitated the approach to and appropriation of Christianity in a particular manner by women—that is, in more

104

Kelly H. Chong

“emotional,” “supernatural,” “spiritual,” or “pragmatic” ways. Regardless, what does appear to be true is that in Korean evangelicalism, women, despite their unquestionably subordinate status within the churches, have always and still do comprise the most enthusiastic and devoted membership whose spiritual and evangelical zeal have served as the driving force behind the Protestantism’s spectacular growth and maintenance. I suggest that a place in which we can begin to understand the motivation behind the female members’ ardent participation in the church, and the passionate nature of their religiosity, is to understand how this relates to the women’s efforts to deal and cope with their difficult domestic situations. More specifically, I contend that the dedicated church involvement of the women I studied can be comprehended in large part as their attempts to deal with the strains and contradictions of the contemporary Korean patriarchal family and gender system in this particular moment in history, which has come to generate tremendous challenges for women. Church involvement in many cases represents a conscious attempt by the women to cope with and negotiate personal difficulties and to find viable solutions to improve their domestic situations and lives. Women’s efforts to draw upon divine power and intervention to help them overcome their difficulties can be observed in all arenas of church activities and practices, from their fervid, charismatic spiritual engagements as evidenced in their participation in countless prayers and worship activities, to enthusiastic involvements in church work. But their efforts to enlist and appropriate God’s power to help them heal and negotiate personal difficulties, and the specific practices and ritual processes by which their new dispositions and self-conceptions are developed to achieve these goals can be observed clearly and systematically in cell meetings.

Cell Meetings and Women’s Quest for Healing As a major part of my research, I made regular visits to a large number and range of cell meetings. Korean cell meetings trace their origins to John Wesley’s class meeting in the eighteenth century and were first introduced to Korea by the early missionaries. Although cell group–type gatherings exist in almost all societies, including the United States, cell meetings have become particularly well developed and central to the organizational functioning of almost all Korean Protestant churches for a number of reasons. A typical cell meeting in Korea, which is com-

Healing and Redomestication

105

monly gender segregated, consists of about five to ten members and is held on a rotating basis once a week in the members’ homes, and comprised of a short Bible study session followed by a period of extended fellowship among the participants. One of the reasons that cell groups have become so central to the churches in South Korea is that they provide, especially in large churches, a venue for all-important smallgroup interaction, functioning as a kind of a surrogate family for the members. Cell groups also serve a critical function as units for evangelization, mutual help, and collective socialization, and monitoring.11 The meetings, which for female groups usually take place in the mornings—men’s groups usually take place after work hours—commonly last anywhere from two to five hours depending on the group and begin with a Bible study session. The groups I visited were comprised mostly of middle-class married housewives between the ages of thirty-five and fifty-five, and were led by well-trained lay leaders who led these study sessions with great dedication and ability. However, the unstated, primary purpose of these weekly meetings becomes clear when one realizes that despite the serious attention to Bible study— usually lasting no more than a half hour to an hour—the majority of the time is spent on the period of socializing and fellowship that follows the Bible study session. Typically revolving around bountiful food provided by the hostess, it is during this time of conversations and sharing when women come to know each other and develop intimate bonds. Cell meetings are therefore one of the most important venues for intense and intimate regularized fellowship for women within the church; they comprise one of the most important arenas of autonomous female social interaction and an important locus of women’s social lives. Indeed, it is in these cell meetings where I was able to hear most intimately about the private problems of women, become privy to their innermost thoughts and feelings, and observed the mechanisms by which the church guided women toward developing a new understanding of themselves and their lives and the habitus necessary to become empowered agents of God. Given the immediate concerns that women brought to the table, this religious “resocialization” process was effected primarily through a program designed to help women deal with and find solutions to their domestic problems. For women, cell groups then are first and foremost a kind of therapeutic community where women came together to articulate and share their dilemmas, and through participation in ongoing ritual practices sought healing for emotional injuries and identified spiritual and practical solutions to their problems. Simply put, I suggest

106

Kelly H. Chong

that for women within the Korean evangelical context, cell meetings function first and foremost as a kind of healing ministry where healing is fostered by guiding women toward a new empowered sense of selves and relationship to the sacred that helps them transcend their suffering. Although cell meetings fall outside what is typically considered charismatic healing events, and healing in this venue is approached in many senses in a collective manner, that is, through a collective access to the divinity through worship rather than through individual quest for divine mediation (see Csordas 1994: 38), ritual engagements within cell meetings are clearly designed as vehicles for fostering personal, as well as ultimately domestic healing. But what specifically are the common dilemmas that women brought to the table? One of the most notable dimensions of the cell meetings in which I participated were the strikingly similar nature of themes that emerged regarding women’s personal problems. The middle-class women that I investigated were a group of women within contemporary South Korean society who were subject to a distinctive set of domestic and gender-related dilemmas related to their unique social position and gender location in a particular historical moment in South Korea. Adhering faithfully to the neo-Confucian vision of social order and human relations, Korea traditionally had been a society that had organized itself upon a strictly hierarchical model of social order, not only in terms of the sexes, but of age and social class. For the sexes, this translated into a deeply rooted system of patriarchal family and social relations—one based on a fundamental notion of male superiority and female inferiority—where intense gender inequality prevailed in every aspect of society (Cho 1986; Deuchler 1977; Chang 1996). But throughout the past several decades in which a program of development, modernization, and nation building was pursued at breakneck speeds, South Korean society has been fundamentally transformed at both structural and ideological levels. This situation has generated significant tensions and contradictions in the realm of culture that are evidenced most clearly in the sphere of family and gender relations (Abelmann 2002; Cho 1986, 2002; Kendall 2002, 1996; S. K. Kim 1997; Lett 1998; Moon 2002; Nelson 2000; Palley 1990). For middle-class women, these tensions have a distinctive source. Due to the rapid increase in women’s educational levels and changes in the structure of the family—including a steep drop in the fertility rates, nuclearization of the family, and the spread of Western values regarding marriage, love, and courtship—the basic status and expectations of women have undergone important alterations. However, the fundamental clash between the changed expectations and horizons of

Healing and Redomestication

107

women on the one hand, especially regarding marriage and family, and the powerful norms of the modern, neoconservative family and social structure that continue to uphold a number of central patriarchal principles on the other hand, has produced a situation of intense contradictions for middle-class women. These contradictions, which have been particularly acute for well-educated, middle-class women, have been the source of acute and wide-ranging domestic dilemmas and conflicts.12 In the cell meetings, typical problems women articulate are rooted hence in the growing disjunction between middle-class women’s altered expectations and the difficult realities and demands of the modern patriarchal family. The problems described by women commonly focused on a few central themes—intense conflicts with patriarchal husbands who turn out to be far more traditional than what the women expected, struggles with oppressive mothers-in-law, and the difficult burdens of housework and family caretaking in a society where the burdens of caring for kin still fall squarely on the shoulders of women—due to the inadequacy of the social welfare system—while the traditional responsibilities of housework and mothering have been intensified by modern forms of “status production” work in an education/status-obsessed, economically hypercompetitive society (Papanek 1979).13 I will offer one example: I am from a very Confucian family, very very strict, so lived quite a restricted life when I was young. At 23, I had an arranged marriage, to the son of the president of the company I was working for. Although everyone thought I had married well, I was in for a surprise. What happened was that upon marrying, I had to live with my husband’s family. This meant that for 13 years, I had to take care of all of my husband’s family members, all 14 of them. To make things worse, my mother-in-law became seriously ill. Of course, being that my husband was the only son, everything became my sole responsibility. And because she was sick, I also had to take charge of the entire household. Then I had babies of course. So as you can imagine, from the moment I opened my eyes in the morning until I went to bed, I had no life of my own. But because I was so young when I got married, I thought that this was how it was for everyone—I just didn’t know any better. And I was so fragile in mind and emotion that I tried to accept everything. I couldn’t tell any of this to my parents because they’d worry … and I couldn’t tell my friends either because it was embarrassing—they were all waiting to see how my life would turn out since I married into a rich household, you know, the competitive thing. I couldn’t tell my husband either. You see, my husband was, uh, immature. He was

108

Kelly H. Chong

a good person, but he was like a kid. He was in college at first and he was busy having a good time, meeting his friends, playing pool and things. He didn’t know how to show consideration to his wife, at all. And he was the only son, so was indulged, as you can imagine. Well, after about 13 years of this, I went into a deep depression. I couldn’t eat, became totally anxious and nervous. But I couldn’t tell anybody. I secretly saw shrinks by myself. Then one day, there was a deacon of a church near me and I received an invitation from her to go to church. What struck me about her was that she was always saying that she was happy, and that she had no fear of dying. So I asked her why she believed this and she said it was because she knew that she was going to heaven. At the time, I had no idea what she was talking about but the statement that she had no worries intrigued me, and I started going to her Bible study.

Aside from the common themes of domestic distress, what was even more striking about the stories of women I encountered was the degree of intensity of suffering that were expressed by the women. Indeed, one aspect that clearly emerged from my investigation was the fact that for the majority of the women, experiences of acute domestic suffering or crises constituted the overriding motivation for church attendance and/or conversion. It was also clear that for many women, these domestic dilemmas became exacerbated by the fact that they lived in a society where there are few options for women to seek outside help, due to the norm of keeping one’s problems within the family. Some turned to the church after their attempts to deal with their problems through existing alternatives have failed—for instance, psychotherapy or shamanistic intervention (cf. Burdick 1993). Furthermore, another notable aspect in the narratives of women was the number of tales related to physical/mental breakdowns and illnesses that preceded the decision to attend the churches. Although the specific aim of healing physical illnesses is one of the central reasons people seek Pentecostal churches in South Korea, the women in the church I investigated did not so much turn to the church in order to directly cure their illnesses but because they saw their illnesses, rightly, as symptoms of larger problems that they felt that they must do something about, especially after all other efforts have failed. Cell meetings, then, are places where through collective sharing, emotional ventilation, and discursive “reframing” that situate women’s plight in a God-centered framework, women develop the appropriate religious habitus and dispositions that open the way for healing and domestic resolutions, albeit with ambivalent and contradictory consequences. In what follows, I analyze three specific cell meeting ritual

Healing and Redomestication

109

practices by which this contradictory process is pursued: the rituals confession, surrender, and self-criticism.

Rituals of Confession The first step in the healing process pursued in the cell meeting context begins with a ritual activity that is aimed at one central outcome: confession and self-revelation. Every week, the Bible study session, which typically opens up a cell meeting, is structured around a discrete topic from the Bible, and it is around this theme that the ensuing freeflowing discussions will pivot. However, although the ostensible goal of the meeting is the study of the Bible, what becomes quickly apparent to any observer is that an important alternative aim of the Bible study lies in promoting discussion and sharing of personal matters among members, which extends into the fellowship period. With all the members sitting around a small table, the cell leader typically initiates the discussion of the Biblical topic at hand, working with the group members to explicate its significance and meaning. But as the lesson progresses, the leader repeatedly encourages the members to relate the topic to concrete events and occurances in their lives, and the session are then often transformed into an event of intimate sharing of personal lives and problems, opening the way for collective revelations and confessions. In one meeting focusing on the topic of sin, for instance, the cell leader asked the group about the kinds of “habitual sins” the women find themselves committing in their everyday lives. After a heartwrenching confession of long-standing marital difficulties, one woman confessed, “So I find that the most habitual sin I commit is to my husband. Out of frustration, I say things to hurt him all the time, so I repent this, and I vow every week that I will make sincere attempts to treat him with humbleness and obedience. But this doesn’t last the week. So I keep repenting.” Another woman offered woeful tales of her own troubled marriage and spoke of the sinful behavioral traits she developed toward her husband and to the world at large, which she described as the habitual sins of “negative attitudes,” the habit of “complaining about everything, being critical of everything, cutting people down.” Yet another woman spoke dramatically about a mean, spoiled, abusive, live-in sister-in-law against whom she harbored long-lasting resentment, confessing to her own “sin” of deep hatred. In another meeting in which the main topic at hand was the importance of intercessory prayers, the ensuing discussion regarding the

110

Kelly H. Chong

need for praying for others generated many revelations about domestic difficulties as well. Describing prayers as a “spiritual battle,” the cell leader spoke especially about the need for engaging in sincere intercessory prayers as a way to overcome one’s hatred and resentment of one’s “tormentors” in life, because praying for those individuals was the only way one can come to empathize with their pain, the first step toward forgiveness. Giving her own examples of her lifelong marital struggles and conflicts with a difficult husband who was her main “tormentor,” but also empathizing with his eventual unhappiness and deep depression within the marriage, she wondered if his plight was due in large part to his “misfortune” of having married her, and reiterated that the only way she can have the strength to deal with the cruelties of life was to be “seized” by God and being obedient to him. Regardless of what the final solution proffered or arrived at, what is evident is that the heartfelt confessions and self-revelations fostered in these meetings provide for the members an avenue for tremendous cathartic release. As the sessions progress and the members come to trust in one another, what is revealed are stories that are strikingly similar in their painfulness, and that are also reflective of valiant efforts by women to hold marriages and families together in the face of enormous personal suffering and sense of ambivalence. Indeed, regardless of where one is located in relation to the conversion experience, these meetings serve as crucial sites for all women involved to obtain a measure of relief and consolation from their domestic troubles, often functioning as the first step in the conversion process. During the meetings, another important way by which spiritual openness among the women is fostered is through encouraging the practice of fervent prayer. Seen as one of the most important means of deepening one’s faith and fostering intense, experiential faith that would promote a powerfully close, emotional connection between the believer and the divine, the importance of constant and impassioned prayer within Korean evangelicalism is attested by a remark by the pastor: A God’s church is, first and foremost, a church that prays. You must pray without rest, pray without rest, as God commanded. Repent. You will feel cold in your heart if you don’t fervently pray. Accepting God into yourselves is not just calling out “Jesus” when you need help. You must always be ready, spiritually, to meet him, through constant prayer. You must realize that when your spirit is clean through constant prayer, things will go well in your life. If your spirit isn’t cleansed through prayer, things will not go well. … You must pray at dawn, pray before meetings, pray all the time. You must pray whether there

Healing and Redomestication

111

are others around or not. You will experience the Holy Ghost through prayer. … Some people, when they pray, words pour like silk; we need that kind of spiritual prayer. It only comes out of deep faith, from receiving God and the Holy Spirit. There is nothing outside prayer. It’s the most important thing and the thing that’ll make our church grow.

In line with such an approach, fervent prayers are consistently encouraged and promoted within the cell meetings as well as a way to experience the divine, especially the Holy Spirit, which would lead to deepening of the women’s spirituality and openness to God. Indeed, fervent prayers, for women, are highly significant as an important channel of openness and self-revelation to the divine that has central implications for their attempts to attain healing. Most importantly, for those who are handicapped in particular by the lack of outside channels through which to reveal and discuss their domestic troubles, which was the case for many of the women I talked to, such a medium of release appears especially critical in helping them acquire a measure of relief from their pain as well as in gaining access to God’s power in dealing with their problems. Prayers in the meetings I observed usually took the form of loud, highly emotional vocal prayers in which the members were encouraged to make heartfelt confessions. The role of the leader within these settings was not only to help guide the members toward a cognitive reinterpretation of their situations and problems within the framework of the evangelical worldview, that is, teach them what it means to be an evangelical by opening their thoughts and feelings to the group for redefinition,14 but also to aid them in learning the proper techniques and methods with which to carry out such prayers, that is, teach them how to pray.

Rituals of Surrender As women collectively and individually achieve greater spiritual openness to God and with each other, the next crucial step in the healing process comprises what I refer to as the ritual of surrender. In evangelical conversion, the act of “surrender” is regarded an crucial turning point in the conversion process; surrendering is considered a prelude to genuine commitment, a point at which a person, after admitting that she is a lost sinner, delivers herself up to Christ as savior, becoming “born again.” For Korean evangelical women I studied, the ritual of complete and unconditional surrendering to the divine power has a

112

Kelly H. Chong

particular significance in the healing process, most centrally as a paradoxical instrument of self-empowerment. For Korean evangelical women in my cell groups, this movement toward total surrender begins with an understanding of the concept of sin. In Korean evangelicalism, the concept of sin is comprehended in two very contrasting ways—one, as something caused by an external force, namely, Satan, and two, a result of individual human moral transgressions and failings. Either way, understanding the concept of sin is crucial to an overall reconstruction of one’s worldview and identity as an evangelical, because it is only by first realizing and admitting one’s utter helplessness as a sinner that one can invite God into one’s life to be helped and saved. Echoing the ideas of surrender described in various charismatic and sect-like groups in America (see Gordon 1984; Westley 1977), one of the most notable aspects of the notion of surrender in the Korean evangelical context is its exceptionally pronounced emphasis on the notion of self-abandonment and the total relinquishment of the self and will to divine control, along with unquestioning obedience.15 The central idea here is that human beings, as helpless and inadequate sinners, are incapable of effecting any changes in their lives through their own ability and will; for any kind of change to occur, there must be a complete reliance on God’s power. Only by letting God take control over one’s life will one be able to attain peace, happiness, and freedom from the suffering and pain that plague people daily and be able to “go to heaven.” As one pastor put it. “Believe in Jesus, surrender everything to God, simply do and obey as he wills, and be free from all your worries and pain.” For women, giving into “surrender” helps the healing process in several ways. First, it begins to help women heal by enabling them to “unburden” themselves of their problems, which happens when they completely turn over their lives to God. The cell leaders indeed tell the women that they can only begin to be helped by first turning everything over to God, because only this can free them from their suffering. Burdened by an overwhelming sense of domestic responsibility and tormented by conflicts that they feel helpless to solve or to control, this message is understandably appealing to many women. In short, although difficult, the act of surrendering, if achieved, is an important means by which the women can obtain a sense of relief and emancipation from their psychic burdens and emotional pain, a process that one observer has called the “relief effect” (Galanter 1978). The notion of total surrender is considered so important that in the Korean evangelical context, it has come to take on a distinctive, more

Healing and Redomestication

113

intensified meaning—that of “entrusting.” Going beyond the notion of relinquishing control to a higher power, entrusting signifies a stronger meaning of complete turning over of everyday, earthly responsibilities and decisions to God. Such an idea, which is often based on an attitude of the childlike dependence of human beings on God, is one that encourages an individual’s complete reliance on God to solve all of one’s day-to-day-problems and seeing the will of God in one’s most basic decisions. As one woman, seemingly on her way to becoming converted, described it: “I think I am beginning to see why people seek God. I am beginning to understand the feeling of, ok, forget it, I’ll just trust in God to watch over me and take care of everything, you know, the feeling of being a child throwing a tantrum at God to take care of things. I am beginning to feel like that.” The act of surrendering facilitates the healing process in another way; it also serves as an important source of internal empowerment for the “helpless” believer, both by cleansing her of destructive emotions and by enabling her to gain a sense of renewed strength in God. First of all, not only does the act of surrender release an individual from the burden of pain and worries, but in the very act of surrendering, a person is moved to feel less helpless, gaining strength from the belief that God has taken charge of one’s life and that one can accomplish things with “God’s strength.” Although Korean evangelicals, in my experience, are not likely to articulate this experience as a process of “regaining” self-control as some other studies of evangelical conversion have found (see Gordon 1984), allowing God to take control seems to imply on the practical level the acquiring of freedom from the former sense of helplessness. As in other arenas, surrendering, for Korean evangelicals, is generally expected to be a powerful, experiential process, experienced particularly through prayer. As an experiential process, surrendering, ideally, is to be felt as a surrendering to the Holy Spirit as it enters one’s body. The Holy Spirit is also important to the experience of surrendering because surrendering cannot simply be an intellectual act; it is only by letting the Holy Spirit enter oneself and take total control that one experiences true “giving up.” Indeed, when women recall a moment or moments when they have consciously “surrendered” themselves to God, many remember these events as occurring during fervent prayer and as being significant experiential events in their religious lives in which they were able to finally “meet” God and “accept” him into their lives, becoming “God centered.” The intense, experiential nature of these events of divine encounter are such that for many, they are not only described in spiritual but physical terms, such as feeling “hot,”

114

Kelly H. Chong

having something enter their bodies, and even speaking in tongues. For some, moments of surrender have even been occasions for experiencing bodily healing.16 Finally, for Korean evangelical women, the healing process is fostered by another important dimension of the surrendering experience, the experience of divine love. In evangelicalism, to be reborn signifies a reconstitution of identity, most importantly, as someone who learns to live in the knowledge and experience of God’s love. While the experience of divine love can be meaningful for any believer, it has, in the Korean context, particularly profound ramifications for women, because it brings about a sense of empowerment and deep internal transformations that leads to a new self-conception. According to my research, one of the major sources of psychic injury for Korean women is the problem of emotional deprivation in marriage, especially the felt absence of marital love, intimacy, and spousal respect, set especially against women’s expectations for conjugal love. For many women, the experience of God’s love can be transformative and healing both by alleviating pain deriving from these problems and by providing a kind of ongoing, empowering experience that helps transform their sense of selves, especially by helping to rebuild a sense of inner confidence and self-worth that better equips them to deal with their domestic situations and defend against emotional harm, even to resist male domination. One woman described the changes brought to her relationship with her husband in the following way: “Before, when my husband would say hurtful things to me, I would get really hurt, but with my faith, it doesn’t hurt me anymore. So I say to my husband, you can try all you want to torment me, but I won’t get mad, and I am not tormented. If you want to know why, I wish you could experience what I have been experiencing for yourself.”

Rituals of Self-Criticism Empowerment, especially through the experience of divine presence and intervention, is a central element in the development of a Pentecostal self (Martin 1990: 256). What must also be discussed, however, are the ambivalent and contradictory implications of this empowerment for women within the Korean evangelical context, that is, the ways in which women’s appropriation of divine power, while providing women with the means with which to cope with their situations, also “empower” women for renewed dedication to domestic service, both by helping to channel their newfound powers for the purposes

Healing and Redomestication

115

of domestic fulfillment and to reconstitute feminine identities. In this section, I examine the central ritual technologies, which I refer to as rituals of self-criticism, by which such “redomestication” of women is achieved in the cell group setting. The “ritual of self-criticism” is a regularized practice of collective critique that is an important dimension of cell meetings, designed ultimately to foster the members’ receptivity to the church’s views on gender by assisting them arrive at a “proper” understanding of their “wrongdoings” or “sins,” especially regarding how these “wrongdoings” contribute to domestic disharmony. In addition to bringing about a group articulation of problems and orienting the members toward the acceptance of divine power and intervention for resolving these problems, a major part of a cell meeting agenda also consists of concerted efforts to engage the participants in a practice of intensive and repeated selfcritique, which would pave the way for the members’ acceptance of “correct” domestic solutions. To effect changes in women’s worldview, the churches employ a well-defined set of disciplinary strategies—both rhetorical and spiritual—that are designed to situate women’s views within the evangelical interpretative framework and ultimately help them develop a new religious and gender-specific identity and habitus. The evangelical gender identity to be reconstituted, or more precisely, restored, is one that approximates the traditional Confucian ideals of the virtuous female— the docile, obedient, forbearing, and self-sacrificing woman whose responsibility is first and foremost to her family—but whose deviations from or resistance to these ideals and behavioral norms have become the primary cause of the problems of the contemporary Korean family. A central part of the churches’ strategy for assisting women to recapture the proper feminine identity from which they are seen to have strayed consists first of all in persuading women to recognize and accept their central role in and responsibility for their domestic problems and the need to rectify their wrongdoings. Cell meetings, then, are spaces in which through collective reflection and analysis, women are expected to arrive at the realization of their wrongdoings not just intellectually, but by way of sincere reflection and self-criticism that would lead to genuine repentance. Indeed, one of the most notable aspects about what occurs in these spaces is the intense level of self-critique that women engage in as they collectively struggle with and address their domestic dilemmas. A great deal of time and energy, whether through discussion or through tearful prayers, are for instance devoted to confessing and atoning for “sins” of disobedience and various other

116

Kelly H. Chong

types of domestic misconduct that the women come to believe are the causes of the greater part of their domestic discord. This process of penitence begins with defining the variety of major and minor female domestic misconduct as terrible “sins” to be eradicated. Aside from disobedience, most of the “sins” to which women are most frequently led to confess and repent for are those thought to directly undermine the fundamental principles of the ideal gender and family order, male/female hierarchy, and proper gender roles, including all the “sins” that the churches view as arising particularly from women’s sins of “egoism” and “arrogance,” and related to these, selfishness, willfulness, and pride. Women become particularly remorseful about their sins of willfulness, assertiveness, and inability to endure and forgive, which they come to believe are primarily responsible for marital discord and the alienation of husbands. Another “sin” that is often a special cause of contrition for women is their perceived inability to endure difficulties or “impatience.” Agreeing with the church’s diagnosis, women frequently express the belief that suffering in marriage may be inevitable but that it is their inability to endure these trials that is at the source of many domestic problems. The inability to forgive, in particular, is seen as a central source of conflicts. Women are also led to reflect harshly upon emotions of anger, resentment, and bitterness that arise from feelings of pent-up hatred and frustrated desires, feelings that are destructive to other family members, but most of all, to themselves. As a remedy, women, in one gathering after another, are continually reminded that proper obedience and submission, the principle that is the bedrock of social order, must then be pursued because it is the first and primary means through which gender and family harmony can be restored. While discussing the variety of means by which proper obedience can be better carried out and the role of the virtuous mother and wife fulfilled, the members are exhorted to devote a great part of their time to prayers in which they are to entreat God to help them obey, endure, and better forgive, regardless of others’ behavior toward them, and to better carry out their family responsibilities. In my observation, one of the most interesting aspects of the churches’ discourse regarding these matters is the oft-repeated declarations about how difficult it is to actually achieve genuine internal transformation. That is to say, according to this discourse, to recognize and to repent for one’s sins is one thing, but to truly reform one’s behavior and thinking and live out the proper Christian life is quite another. Indeed, many of the committed women I have talked to will often state that proper obedience is not something that can be achieved without a

Healing and Redomestication

117

sincere and deeply felt faith in God, especially without the experience of the Holy Spirit. As one woman put it: “I don’t think you can obey completely unless your heart is open with the Holy Spirit. The women who say they can’t do this—well, I think it’s because they haven’t really been ‘awakened’ properly yet. It’s hard to go home and try to serve and wait on your husband totally. You must have faith to do this. But with faith, one can succeed in complete submission and obedience.” To help female members attain proper internal transformations, the churches, then, carry out a program of behavioral, psychic, and emotional disciplining that are remarkable for their depth and intensity. For instance, in one of the cell meetings, the task of transforming the self to approximate the virtuous feminine ideal not only involved attempts to change the members’ beliefs regarding gender relations, but to thoroughly discipline the internal subjectivities of women by assisting them repress and if possible, eradicate, all of the underlying “negative” desires and emotions deemed responsible for defiant or unruly female behavior. In this effort to discipline and normalize women’s subjectivities, the group, for example, consistently employed the language of “dying” of self. To “die” in sin is a classic metaphor in evangelical conversion that is considered a prelude to rebirth. In the context of Korean evangelical women, the “dying of self,” while referring to the conversion process, also clearly carries another meaning—a process of eradicating the “sins” associated with gender violations, such as arrogance, egoism, or impatience. Dying of self, however, has an even more specific meaning in the context of Korean evangelical women; it also refers to a process of more fundamental self-repression, which, involving the “death” of a person’s “self” or “ego” ( ja-ah), indicates the suppression of all the deep-down desires, emotions, and impulses considered responsible for generating the “sins” in the first place.17 Reflecting the influence of this discourse on church members, a number of women I talked to in both churches frequently used the related language of “killing of self” to refer to the repression of feminine desires and impulses, in particular, the desire to try to have things one’s way, the impulse to assert these desires, and the desires or expectations regarding other people. As one cell leader, who had a large plaque with the phrase “I die every day” prominently displayed in her living room, repeatedly advised her members: “One of the things we have to do is to ‘kill’ ( juk-i-da) ourselves everyday. We keep coming back alive but that’s no good. Everyday, we must die with Christ.”18 One church member, talking about how she learned to handle her domestic situation, confessed: “The most important thing I had to do

118

Kelly H. Chong

in my marriage was to learn to ‘die.’ I had to ‘kill’ myself. Before, I used to talk back to my husband, get mad or upset, but now, I don’t do that any more. I always try to be happy even though I have difficult problems to contend with.” The degree of self-repression and sacrifice often demanded by this process of feminine self-transformation is revealed especially vividly in the following narrative related by a former cell leader at the North River Church: I’d say that I dealt with my marital difficulties by “dying.” I am a learned woman. I have the ability to teach and lead others. And I have an intense and enthusiastic (yeoljeong han) personality. When I was a cell leader, so many people would come to my meetings and listen to me. I became someone to whom people with difficulty would come for help. I have so much love, so much ability. But my husband disregarded me and this caused a lot of conflict. I like to study, I don’t like to just gad about. And I think he didn’t like that. And I also try to do everything best; I tend to be a perfectionist. And I think he couldn’t stand this, so at a certain point, he put a stop to me. He blocked my way, kept me from developing, rising beyond. Like, at one point, I wanted to learn flower arrangement, for God’s sake, and he didn’t even like me to do this. When I’d be practicing at home, he would grab the flowers from me and fling them away. You know, whenever I tried to do something that would give me a sense of achievement or fulfillment, he tried his best to put a stop to it. Another example is that I wanted to take cooking classes once, so I asked him to give me money for the classes. But what he said to me what did I need to do that for, all I needed to know was how to make kkochujang (hot pepper paste). See, whenever I tried to go beyond myself to be a little more professional in anything, he put a stop to it. So now, I just obey God, and he helps me overcome, no matter how difficult things get. For me, “dying” means “killing” myself. Before, I used to talk back to my husband, but now, even when I’m upset, I pray and I get instantly turned around. Now, I am very happy even though I have difficult situations to contend with. And my husband has changed a lot in the last few years. He sees that I’ve changed and this has softened him up considerably. I realize now that in the past, a big part of it was that he was very jealous that I was doing all this for God, that I was neglecting him.

Indeed, for many, it appears that killing one’s ego in such a manner is seen as the only way to be able to obey “properly,” and therefore to accomplish the task of transforming others. Another member attested: “I realized that only by totally ‘getting rid’ of myself and ‘dying,’ can I change the other person. If you try to do things by asserting your own temper and personality, it doesn’t work. And that’s how I deal with my husband, too.”

Healing and Redomestication

119

Dying or killing of self, however, is not an easy thing to do. There is often much struggle and anger from the sense of injustice at having to submit to such a degree of self-denial and repression. As another cell member admitted, “Despite all my training in the church, the most difficult thing about the life of faith is not being able to apply everything properly in life, and especially, still having a strong ego/self (ja-a).” When it becomes very difficult, it is again to prayer, of course, that women turn to aid them in this inner struggle. One cell member explained: “When I lowered myself before my husband, he softened. But still, you know, there are many times when anger just rises up within me. But I know I have to press down my self/ego. When this starts to happen, I just pray a lot.” Prayer is, again, the primary vehicle through which women are expected to acquire the strength and inspiration needed to submit properly, that is, a key disciplinary instrument. Prayer, first of all, is the medium through which one can truly realize and experience repentance for one’s sins. According to one leader, “Praying always helps you to realize that things are your own fault, and when you approach your husband and kids with such a humble attitude, admitting your fault, they will be moved to admit their fault and this will encourage love among you.” But more importantly, just as prayer gives women the strength to transcend sufferings, prayer bestows the power to better endure, obey, and fulfill duties. Commanding women to pray ceaselessly, one leader observed: “Putting into practice God’s wishes is so difficult because our faith is weak and our prayers are inadequate. Total obedience, for example, is so hard to do by one’s own strength. We just have to entrust everything to God and find out all the ways to make Him happy through prayer.” By helping to reconstruct women’s gender consciousness through a process that goes beyond mere ideological reindoctrination to enforcing intense internal self-discipline for “rebirth,” we can say then that the church is not only a place where women acquire consolation, peace, and empowerment in their efforts to cope with domestic stress but also where they are ideologically and psychically redomesticated for the patriarchal system. To be sure, the degree of success achieved by the churches in this regard is by no means uniform; at the least, it is a process that requires a great deal of collective effort and ideological reinforcement. Nevertheless, the sincerity of belief displayed by many of the female converts in the legitimacy of the traditionalist notions of family and gender is undeniable, suggesting the extent of their ideological transformations.

120

Kelly H. Chong

Conclusion In existing literature on religion, the dual, contradictory aspects of religious power—power that has the capacity to both liberate and oppress, injure and heal—have been noted (Appleby 2000; Beckford 1983; McGuire 1983). While one of the central dimensions and foci of charismatic evangelical and Pentecostal religiosity lies in the pursuit and experience of empowerment through a spiritual encounter with the sacred, the religious engagement of South Korean middle-class evangelical women is a double-edged sword—while it is a means of profound personal empowerment, healing, and uplift for women, it is, at the same time, a vehicle of women’s resubjugation to the family/gender system, accomplished through a powerful reformation of women’s consciousness and subjectivity that leads to an effective circumscribing of the powers implied in their newfound religiosity. In the case of Korean evangelicalism, the contradictory operation of religious powers through the beliefs and practices of women is tied closely to a particular development of conflicting religious identities nurtured through evangelical conversion and faith experience, that is, the individually empowered self generated through a personal, spiritual relationship with God on the one hand, and on the other, the obedient, virtuous womanhood aimed at bringing about domestic healing and the reharmonization of women’s relationship with their families. One major way that this restoration of the “virtuous” Korean feminine subjectivity serves to contain women’s powers is, as we have seen, by facilitating the development of an obedient, forbearing, and accommodating feminine self whose willfulness and destabilizing desires will be kept within bounds for the sake of family harmony. To put it in another way, the feminine subjectivities centrally nurtured by the church is a role-defined, relational self-identity that ultimately reinforces the definition of a person in relation to the welfare and goals of the family, so that while women appropriate their faiths to seek healing, transcendence, and self-dignity, their domestically oriented self-conceptions and subjectivities also ensure that their powers are quite effectively suppressed for the goals of individual liberation, preventing the forging of new social power and boundaries by women. Women’s domesticated subjectivities, especially their obedient and dependent self-conceptions, contain implications for controlling and diverting female powers in other ways. For one thing, women’s fundamentally submissive orientation toward authority, especially male authority, often leads not only to a continued belief in their own fundamental inferiority, but to a belief that their newfound powers, seen

Healing and Redomestication

121

as “borrowed” from God, are not their own, and thus cannot be used to assert themselves or their abilities, nor to challenge male authority. Reflecting their firm belief in the necessity of submission and subordination to men, women’s felt powers, in other words, are disowned by them, and if exercised, are only done so for the purposes of serving others or God and to enable themselves to better obey, endure, and forgive. It is no wonder, then, that what we often find among evangelical women is a deeply conflicting sense of personal power and identity: a sense of an essentially powerless self existing alongside an image of an empowered self, mirroring their domestic self conceptions as both strong and weak. Furthermore, as can be imagined, the churches’ call for the fulfillment of other virtuous feminine qualities, such as self-sacrifice and endurance, also serves greatly to limit the impetus toward the pursuit of new social power and change on the part of women. The ideals of selfsacrifice and endurance, in general and for the family, clearly foster an attitude of forbearance toward difficult circumstances, discouraging active efforts to change the status quo, and effectively delegitimates any goals or actions on the part of women that are interpreted as being oriented toward personal or individual gain and fulfillment, including those related to the seeking of personal freedom and equality. Submissive/obedient attitudes in women are also fostered through the nurturing of another aspect of feminine Christian identity, that of a highly dependent self that must rely on the will of God, and others in authority positions, to realize things in life. We have seen how the process of a totalistic surrender to God’s control, a central dimension of Korean evangelical beliefs and conversion, can paradoxically serve as a source of liberation from pain and personal strength for many female believers. However, one central implication of this is that the encouragement toward a total dependence upon and surrender of the will to the divine often facilitates the development of a self-conception that is, all the while empowering in practice, devoid of a conscious sense of agency. In closing, I would like to discuss one generalizable lesson from this study. In recent studies and analyses of women and religious traditionalisms, there has been a notable emphasis on the strategic, empowering, and contestatory nature of women’s religious engagement, especially with regard to religious patriarchy (Brusco 1995; Davidman 1991; Griffith 1997; McLeod 1992; Stacey 1990). While these interpretations, by highlighting the matter of women’s agency and the complexities inherent in the operations of religious patriarchy, have successfully challenged the conventional views of women’s religious “submission,” the South Korean case, I believe, encourages us to refocus our attention

122

Kelly H. Chong

to the more contradictory, if not oppressive, dimensions of religious power. More specifically, while these recent interpretations have successfully problematized the traditional views of traditionalist religions simply as monolithic sources of oppression and of women’s as “victims” of male domination, this focus on empowerment/resistance has, at the same time, served in some crucial ways to deflect attention away from other central dynamics of women’s religious engagement, especially the issue of patriarchal domination and power. The South Korean case provides a clear example of a case in which religious power, through its interaction with the structures and ideology of South Korea’s regime of patriarchy, operates effectively to bring about women’s recommitment to the existing family and gender system, helping to reproduce the current family/gender arrangements. Notes 1. See J. B. Lee (1986: 193); Martin (1990). 2. As is the case with the large majority of Protestant churches in South Korea, it needs to be clarified that the churches in this study constitute what we would typically categorize as conservative-evangelical; although almost all known Protestant denominations are represented in Korean Protestantism, the beliefs and practices of an overwhelming majority of Protestant churches in South Korea—75–90 percent (Lee 1996: 335)—embrace the distinctive features of what we typically understand as “evangelical,” namely, the belief that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God, the belief in the divinity of Christ and the efficacy of his substitutionary atonement for humankind, and an emphasis on a personal and experiential orientation toward conversion and religiosity coupled with a commitment to active proselytization (Hunter 1983: 7). Displaying features associated with movements we typically understand as fundamentalism and Pentecostalism, and powerfully shaped by the revivalistic traditions of the first Western missionaries, evangelicalism, according to one observer, “so predominates the Korean church, its success or growth so influences Korean Protestantism as a whole, that Evangelicalism and Protestantism are more or less synonymous in Korea” (Lee 1996: 330; also see Hong 1966 and Ro 1995). 3. I borrow here Thomas Csordas’s (1994) definition of religious “disposition,” that of being a “psychological sense of their [the supplicants’] prevailing mood or tendency for engagement in ritual performance, and in the social sense of how they are disposed vis-à-vis the interactive networks and symbolic resources of the religious community (46).” I use the term habitus here in the sense defined by Bourdieu (1977), “a system of durable and transposable “dispositions (72)”—ie, enduring, acquired schemes of perceptions, thought, action, and tastes. 4. See Riesebrodt (1993) and Riesebrodt and Chong (1999) for more details on the typological distinction between “rational” and “charismatic” fundamentalisms. Donald N. Clark (1986: 26) refers to the two main strains of Korean

Healing and Redomestication

5.

6.

7.

8. 9.

10.

11.

12.

123

Protestant churches as “conservative and ultra-evangelical,” with the latter exemplified, again, by the Yoido Full Gospel church. See also Jae Bum Lee’s (1986) discussion of two streams of conservative, anti-Pentecostal theological movements in Korea (22, 34–35). More specifically, while the established churches did not outrightly reject the role of the Holy Spirit, especially in relation to the conversion experience, the conservative/fundamentalist Protestants rejected certain signs of gifts as having validity in the modern world. Thus, some of the earlier mystical or Pentecostal-type revivalists have been outcast as heretical, and contemporary pastors such as Cho Yonggi of the Yoido Full Gospel Church were considered something of heretics at the start. According to Jae Bum Lee (1986): “The non-Pentecostal Korean churches traditionally (until the 1970s) understood the Baptism in the Holy Spirit to be conversion-initiation into the Body of Christ. But in the 1970s, the concept of the action of the Holy Spirit within the Korean church was changed through mass evangelistic revivals, a movement which was characterized by many of the beliefs and practices intrinsic to Pentecostalism. During this time, various popular charismatic revivalists … began to understand the work of the Holy Spirit in the Pentecostal manner. In their revival meetings, they began to emphasize the two aspects of the Spirit’s work: his work in bringing a person to repentance and faith, leading to water baptism, and the subsequent work of grace which they termed the baptism of the Holy Spirit. They urged believers to receive baptism, a vital charismatic experience with God, which may or may not include speaking in tongues.” (214) The Yoido Full Gospel Church is known for its Church Growth Seminars, administered by its organization the Church Growth International (established in 1976), which attracts pastors nationally and internationally (J. B. Lee 1986: 222). An interesting observation to note here is that in Korea, prophecy is given relatively less importance than other “signs” (also see Martin 1990: 147). The importance given to prayer reflects the belief that power and workings of God can be experienced primarily through the workings of the Holy Spirit, but especially by means of devoted and ardent prayer (Han 1995: 75; cf. Csordas 1994; McGuire 1982, 1988). J. B. Kim (1986: 218). Also see surveys by Hanguk Gidokgyo Sahoe Munje Yeonguso (Christian Institute for the Study of Justice and Development) 1982; Hyeondae Sahoe Yeonguso (Institute for the Study of Modern Society) 1982; and Gallup Korea 1998: 38. According to these surveys, the majority of the laity and even a larger majority of the clergy regard the Holy Spirit experience as absolutely necessary to salvation and conversion experience. In many cases, members might, at the behest of a neighbor or a friend, begin attending the cell groups even before attending the church, which becomes a crucial site both for gospel transmission and social integration into the church body. These contradictions, for instance, are evidenced by the acute discrepancy between the level of contemporary Korean women’s educational levels and the rate of their labor force participation. South Korea currently has one of the

124

13.

14.

15.

16.

17.

18.

Kelly H. Chong

highest educational levels in East Asia. As of 1990, while the literacy rate in South Korea was almost 100 percent for both sexes, 24 percent of women and 51 percent of men were enrolled in institutions of higher education. In comparison, higher education enrollment in neighboring Taiwan was 18 percent for men and 20 percent for women. However, South Korean women, in relation to both Taiwan and Japan, display the lowest rates of formal work participation at every age group. Furthermore in South Korea, we find an inverse correlation between the level of education and the rate of labor force participation (Brinton, Lee, and Parish 1995). For many women, all of these problems are usually compounded by unabating worries about their economic situations. It is also worth mentioning that unlike what has been reported by some other studies, such as the study by Thomas Csordas (1994: 33), the kinds of problems reported by the two sexes and the kind and frequency of experiences undergone by men and women are highly specific and gendered in South Korea. In viewing prayer and other ritualistic practices of evangelicalism as a learned process, I take an “activist” perspective on conversion, the view of conversion as an active achievement by the seeker who “accomplishes” conversion within a particular religious group context by mastering certain practices and ways of achieving it. These might include appropriate “technology,” such as prayers, as well as appropriate language and interpretation schemes for the group (see Straus 1979). Indeed, one cell leader from the South River Church tells her cell members that praying is a “difficult thing to do,” and especially difficult without “proper training.” Also see Sarbin and Adler (1970). This emphasis on absolute or unconditional obedience to God within Korean evangelical churches has been amply documented in a number of studies, even studies on Korean immigrant churches (Kim 1996). It is important to stress that these acts of surrender are not necessarily a final, once-and-for-all act that generate permanent experiences of release or healing. To the contrary, what I have found is that although these therapeutic effects are real in each act of surrendering and encounters with God, they may not necessarily have lasting effects, and must be renewed on a continual basis, especially through prayers. This theme of “dying” in conversion has been observed in studies of American evangelical conversion as well. For example, Gordon (1984), in his discussion of Jesus People groups, talks about “dying to self” in the process of surrender, which ultimately leads to rebirth and reconstitution of a more empowered self; “dying” of self is a form of surrender through which one becomes more empowered to accomplish one’s goals by “letting go” of oneself and one’s sins and allowing God in to direct one’s life. My findings regarding the rhetoric of “killing” of self in evangelical women’s discourse is corroborated clearly by Ai Ra Kim’s (1996) study of first-generation Korean evangelical immigrant women in America, suggesting that this rhetoric is a central part of Korean female evangelical discourse. In Kim’s findings as well, the concept of the killing of self is understood by the women as a kind of extreme self-denial and self-repression (96, 121–23), an enactment of Jesus’ sacrificial example and Christian virtue.

Healing and Redomestication

125

References Abelmann, Nancy. 2003. The Melodrama of Mobility: Women, Talk, and Class in Contemporary South Korea. Honolulu: University of Hawaii. Anderson, Robert Mapes. 1979. Vision of the Disinherited: The Making of American Pentecostalism. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers. Appleby, R. Scott. 2000. The Ambivalence of the Sacred: Religion, Violence, and Reconciliation. New York: Rowman & Littlefield. Beckford, James A. 1983. “The Restoration of ‘Power’ to the Sociology of Religion.” Sociological Analysis. 44 (1): 11–32. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brinton, M. C., Y. Lee, and W. L. Parish. 1995. “Married Women’s Employment in Rapidly Industrializing Societies: Examples from East Asia.” American Journal of Sociology 100 (5): 1099–130. Brusco, Elizabeth E. 1995. The Reformation of Machismo: Evangelical Gender and Conversion in Colombia. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Burdick, John. 1993. Looking for God in Brazil: The Progressive Catholic Church in Urban Brazil’s Religious Arena. Berkeley: University of California. Chang, Pilwha. 1996. “Korean Mothers, Daughters, and Wives.” In Women of Korea, 18–33. Seoul: Asian Center for Women’s Studies, Ewha Womans University. Cho, Haejoang. 1986. “Male Dominance and Mother Power: The Two Sides of Confucian Patriarchy in Korea.” In The Psycho-Cultural Dynamics of the Confucian Family: Past and Present, edited by Walter H. Slote, 277–98. Seoul: International Cultural Society of Korea. ———. 2002. “Living with Conflicting Subjectivities: Mother, Motherly Wife, and Sexy Woman in the Transition of Colonial-Modern to Postmodern Korea.” In Under Construction: The Gendering of Modernity, Class, and Consumption in the Republic of Korea, edited by Laurel Kendall. Honolulu: University of Hawaii. Chong, Kelly H. (forthcoming) Agony in Prosperity: Evangelical Women and the Negotiation of Patriarchy in Contemporary South Korea. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, Harvard University Press. Clark, Allen D. 1971. A History of the Church in Korea. Seoul: Christian Literature Society. Clark, Donald N. 1986. Christianity in Modern Korea. Lanham, MD: University Press of America. Csordas, Thomas J. 1994. The Sacred Self: A Cultural Phenomenology of Charismatic Healing. Berkeley, CA: University of California. Davidman, Lynn. 1991. Tradition in a Rootless World: Women Turn to Orthodox Judaism. Berkeley: University of California. Deuchler, Martina. 1977. “The Tradition: Women During Yi Dynasty.” In Virtues in Conflict: Tradition and Korean Woman Today, edited by Sandra Mattielli, 1–48. Seoul: Royal Asiatic Society, Korea Branch. Galanter, Marc. 1978. “The ‘Relief Effect.’: A Sociobiological Model for Neurotic Distress and Large-Group Therapy.” American Journal of Psychiatry 135: 588–91. Gordon, David F. 1984. “Dying to Self; Self-Control Through Self-Abandonment.” Sociological Analysis 4 (1): 41–56.

126

Kelly H. Chong

Grayson, James Huntley. 2002. Korea: A Religious History. London: RoutledgeCurzon. Griffith, R. Marie. 1997. God’s Daughters: Evangelical Women and the Power of Submission. Berkeley: University of California. Han, Gil Soo. 1994. Social Sources of Church Growth: Korean Churches in the Homeland and Overseas. Lanham, MD: University Press of America. Hanguk Gidokgyo Sahoe Munje Yeonguso (Christian Institute for the Study of Justice and Development). 1982. Hanguk Gyohoe 100nyeon Jonghap Josa Yeongu (The Centennial Comprehensive Study of the Korean [Protestant] Church). Seoul: Hanguk Gidokgyo Sahoe Munje Yeonguso. Hyeondae Sahoe Yeonguso (Institute for the Study of Modern Society). 1982. Hanguk Gyohoe Seongjang-gwa Sinang Yangtae-e Gwanhan Josa Yeongu (Investigation into the Growth and Religiosity of the Korean [Protestant] Church). Seoul: Hyeondae Sahoe Yeonguso. Hollenweger, Walter J. 1972. The Pentecostals. London: SCM Press. Hong, Harold S., Ji Yong Won, and Chung Choon Kim, eds. 1966. Korea Struggles for Christ. Seoul: Christian Literature Society of Korea. Hunter, James D. 1983. American Evangelicalism: Conservative Religion and the Quandary of Modernity. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Kendall, Laurel. (ed) 2002. Under Construction: The Gendering of Modernity, Class, and Consumption in the Republic of Korea. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ———. 1996. Getting Married in Korea: Of Gender, Morality, and Modernity. Berkeley: University of California Press. Kim, Ai Ra. 1996. Women Struggling for a New Life: On the Role of Religion in the Cultural Passage from Korea to America. Albany: State University of New York Press. Kim, Byong-Suh. 1985. “The Explosive Growth of the Korean Churches Today: A Sociological Analysis.” International Review of Mission 74 (January): 61–74. Kim, John T. 1996. Protestant Church Growth in Korea. Belleville, ON: Essence Publishing. Kim, Illsoo. 1985. “Organizational Patterns of Korean-American Methodist Churches: Denominationalism and Personal Community.” In Rethinking Methodist History, edited by Russell Richey and Kenneth Rowe, 228–36. Nashville: Kingswood Books. Kim, Seung Kyung. 1997. Class Struggle or Family Struggle? Lives of Women Factory Workers in South Korea. New York: Cambridge University Press. Lee, Jae Bum. 1986. “Pentecostal Distinctives and Korean Protestant Church Growth.” PhD diss., Fuller Theological Seminary. Lee, Timothy. 2006. “Beleaguered Success: Korean Evangelicalism in the Last Decade of the Twentieth Century.” In Christianity in Korea, edited by Robert E. Buswell, Jr. and Timothy S. Lee, 330–50. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press. ———. 1996. “Born Again in Korea: The Rise and Character of Revivalism in (South) Korea, 1885–1988.” PhD diss., The University of Chicago. Lett, Denise. 1998. In Pursuit of Status: The Making of South Korea’s “New” Urban Middle Class. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center.

Healing and Redomestication

127

Martin, David. 2002. Pentecostalism: The World and Their Parish. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. ———. 1990. Tongues of Fire: The Explosion of Protestantism in Latin America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. McGuire, Meredith. 1988. Ritual Healing in Suburban America. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. ———. 1983. “Discovering Religious Power.” Sociological Analysis 44 (1): 1–10. ———. 1982. Pentecostal Catholics: Power, Charisma, and Order in a Religious Movement. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. McLeod, Arlene Elowe. 1992. “Hegemonic Relations and Gender Resistance: The New Veiling as Accommodating Protest in Cairo.” Signs 17 (3): 533–57. Moffett, Samuel H. 1962. The Christians of Korea. New York: Friendship Press. Moon, Seungsook. 2002. “Carving Out Space: Civil Society and the Women’s Movement in South Korea.” Journal of Asian Studies 61 (2): 473–500. Nelson, Laura. 2000. Measured Excess: Status, Gender, and Consumer Nationalism in South Korea. New York: Columbia University. Palley, Marian Lief. 1990. “Women’s Status in South Korea: Tradition and Change.” Asian Survey 30 (December): 1136–53. Paik, L. George. 1927 [1987]. The History of Protestant Missions in Korea. Seoul: Yonsei University Press. Palmer, Spencer J. 1967. Korea and Christianity: The Problem of Identification with Tradition. Seoul: Hollym. Papanek, Hanna. 1979. “Family Status Production: The ‘Work’ and ‘Non-Work’ of Women.” Signs 4: 775–81. Park, Jung-Shin. 2003. Protestantism and Politics in Korea. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Park, Hyung-Kyu. 1985. “The Search for Self-Identity and Liberation.” International Review of Mission 74 (January): 51–60. Park, Sung-Ja. 1993. “A Feminist Theological Study of the Faith Patterns of Korean Church Women: Emphasis on the Religious Psychopathological Phenomenon.” PhD diss., Ewha Woman’s University. (In Korean) Rambo, Lewis R. 1992. “The Psychology of Conversion.” In Handbook of Religious Conversion, edited by H. Newton Malony and Samuel Southard, 159–77. Birmingham, AL: Religious Education Press. Riesebrodt, Martin. 1993. Pious Passion: The Emergence of Modern Fundamentalism in the United States and Iran. Berkeley: University of California Press. Riesebrodt, Martin, and Kelly H. Chong. 1999. “Fundamentalisms and Patriarchal Gender Politics.” Journal of Women’s History 10 (4): 55–77. Ro, Bong Rin, and Marlin L. Nelson, eds. 1995. Korean Church Growth Explosion. Korea: World of Life Press. Ryu, Dong-Shik. 1982. “The Korean Church and the Pentecostal Movement.” In A Study on the Pentecostal Movement in Korea, 9–22. Seoul: A Korea Christian Academy. (In Korean) Sarbin, Theodore R., and Nathan Adler. 1970. “Self-Reconstitution Process: A Preliminary Report.” Psychoanalytic Review 57: 599–616. Stacey, Judith. 1990. Brave New Families: Stories of Domestic Upheaval in LateTwentieth-Century America. New York: Basic Books.

128

Kelly H. Chong

Straus Roger A. 1979. “Religious Conversion as a Personal and Collective Accomplishment.” Sociological Analysis 40 (2): 158–65. Suh, David Kwang-Sun. 1982. “The Study of Seung-rak and the Full Gospel Church.” In A Study on the Pentecostal Movement in Korea, 9–22. Seoul: A Korea Christian Academy. (In Korean) Suh, David Kwang-Sun. 1985. “American Missionaries and a Hundred Years of Korean Protestantism.” International Review of Mission 74 (January): 6–19. Westley, Frances R. 1977. “Searching for Surrender: A Catholic Charismatic Renewal Group’s Attempt to Become Glossolalic.” American Behavioral Scientist 20 (6): 925–40. Yoo, Boo-Woong. 1988. Korean Pentecostalism: Its History and Theology. Frankfurt am Main: Verlag Peter Lang.

c4C Ritualization of Life Thomas J. Csordas

The most compelling aspect of Charismatic and Pentecostal ritual is not its repertoire of specific ritual practices such as speaking in tongues, laying on of hands, or resting in the Spirit. It is not the inventory of ritual events such as prayer meetings, healing services, or revival meetings. Neither is it the integrated system of ritual language genres including prophecy, prayer, teaching, and witnessing. What is most compelling is the manner in which ritual performance has the potential, for individuals and communities, to bring about the transformation of everyday life, to generate a new habitus, indeed to subsume quotidian practices within the sphere of ritual activities and the practical worldview of adherents within the ritual attitude. This ritualization can be effected in the social sphere by practices as simple as ritual greetings and consequential as tithing. It can be effected upon individual subjectivities by practices as disciplined as daily periods of personal prayer and as seemingly frivolous as laying hands on and praying over a car that won’t start. To be precise, there are at least five domains in which the ritualization of life can proceed. First is the transformation of interpersonal space. Pentecostals and Charismatics typically achieve this by means of gestural practices such as laying on of hands or a ritual embrace of greeting and less often by the adoption of distinctive styles of clothing. Second is transformation of domestic space. Religious objects may be prominently placed throughout the domestic environment, a room may be set aside for prayer, and rituals of protection may be performed such as “calling down the blood of the Lord” upon the house or, among Catholic Pentecostals, sprinkling sacramentals like holy water and blessed salt. Third is the transformation of civic space. This is evident when spiritual influences are projected into public spaces, as when evil spirits were cast out of a quarry where youth gathered to drink alcohol and swim in the nude, or a spirit named Unbelief was 129

130

Thomas J. Csordas

discerned to be hovering over a prominent American university town. Fourth is transformation of geographic and natural space. Among Catholic Charismatics in particular, this is related to a renewed interest in traditional pilgrimage as well as visiting among communities in different cities, and can extend to a claim over forces of nature such as rain threatening an outdoor gathering. Fifth is a transformation of time. This is not an alteration between mundane and sacred time associated with the movement between quotidian life and specific ritual events, but a ritualized temporality within everyday life. It includes the rhythm of a “personal prayer life,” suspension of temporality by being “slain in the Spirit,” and cultivating a disposition of patience by “waiting on the Lord.” The ritualization of life can be the result of individual practice as in the case of someone who embarks on a regime of yogic discipline, but our concern here is to observe an instance of ritualization in a collective setting. Specifically, we will observe the process of ritualization in “The Word of God,” a Catholic Charismatic community incorporating the Pentecostal gifts of the Holy Spirit in ritual and everyday life.1 The Word of God is not a congregation, parish, or prayer group, but a highly organized group known within the movement as a covenant community. The membership live in geographic proximity to one another, but retain a residential and economic integration with society at large. Thus the discussion takes place at the intersection between the study of ritual process and the study of intentional communities. The intentional community offers an ideal setting in which to examine how the ritualization of practices can effect a transformation of habitus. It also allows insight into a closely related and classic Weberian question of how charismatic movements succeed or fail in reproducing themselves in a second generation. This examination of ritualization and its consequences focuses on a period twenty-five years after the community’s founding, at a critical moment in its history. This critical moment occurred in 1990 when the community underwent a cataclysmic break—a factionalized and factionalizing schism between the conservative and the more moderate members. The consequences were severe: in 1990 the community had about three thousand members, whereas after the community schism in 1991, only about half remained. Coincidentally, the first generation of this community’s children were entering their teenage years. The interviews conducted at this critical moment can be understood as snapshot of culture caught in the headlights of profound transformation. The congested intersection of social and ideological tensions, coupled with the community’s acknowledged pause for self-reflection, made

Ritualization of Life

131

this moment ideal for exploring the process of ritualization and the crisis of generational transition. The discussion that follows first presents the general psychosocial perspectives from which intentional communities have been discussed in the literature. Against the background of these theories and perspectives, I present an ethnographic and historical sketch of The Word of God focusing on processes of the ritualization of life and transformation of habitus, the tensions generated by these processes, and the eventual schism in the community. Following a brief review of the methodology for our analysis of the community’s second generation, we then trace the two pivotal community themes of spontaneity and control in their ideological and narrative contexts of spirituality and intimacy. In conclusion, I suggest that intentional communities, as heterogeneous cultural distillations, are contextually rich sources for exploring the movement of ritual and ritualization through time and across generations.

Perspectives The scholarly literature on “intentional communities” comes primarily from the disciplines of sociology, psychology, and anthropology. Sociologists have most typically taken a structural-functionalist approach to understanding how and why these groups form, operate, and either endure or dissolve over time. Psychologists have looked to leaders’ charisma and members’ dependency characteristics to explain the interpersonal forces at work in alternative societies. From an anthropological perspective, Victor Turner’s concept of “communitas” (1969) has often been invoked, naturalizing communitarianism as a basic human behavioral tendency with historically and culturally specific manifestations (Seligman 1994). Many studies have been retrospective, and have employed contemporary, discipline-specific, explanatory theories to frame their findings. The literature often examines social configuration, internal and external social forces, and ideology in relationship to community endurance. Some authors have explicated the common paradoxes and conflicting values that inevitably arise in oppositional communities.2 Other works have attended to continuity and change within specific communities. A few ethnographic and participantobservation studies have elucidated the experience, opinions, and insight of members and exposed the abundance of situational variables that both ground and challenge social theory. “Culture” in these communities is either reconstituted or contrived, though seldom under-

132

Thomas J. Csordas

stood as a product of ritualization (Brown 2002; Carter 1990; C. Clark 1995; Shenker 1986; Zablocki 1973, 1980). Intentional communities are distinct from other social entities in that they are deliberately formed, voluntary, and espouse explicit ideals. Typologies have developed that categorize communities by form, function, or ideology. These categories are neither comprehensive nor exclusive, but a brief mention of them will be useful to provide a sense of the inherent diversity. Communities may be open, closed, urban, rural, individualistic, or communal. They may be distinguished by ideological template: millenarian, revivalistic, or utopian (Bennet 1975); by Weberian breakdown of power type: rational-legalistic, traditional, or charismatic (Giorio 1982); by motivation: escapist, reformist, or religious (Cavan and Singh Das 1979); or by degree of engagement with the world at large: monastic, evangelical, or retreatist. Some intentional communities were established to continue tradition, and some developed in opposition to society.3 Finally, some communities have intended to be transient while others hoped to be regenerative (Bennet 1975). The plethora of intentional community types can be problematic in the development of theory. It is difficult, for example, to generalize the conclusions drawn from any one specific study.4 Conversely, this elaborate variety of intentional communities provides an immense and fertile ground of nuanced difference from which to generate ideas about social and cultural processes in context. Psychological accounts of intentional communities focus on the dependent personality type of the members,5 or the charismatic influence of the leaders. Kern’s (1981) comparative review of the Shakers, the Mormons, and the Oneida community interprets leadership behavior in a definitively Freudian framework. He further concludes that these three distinct moral orders were reactions to the sexual anxieties of the Victorian era. Examples of structural-functionalist studies of intentional communities abound in the literature on communities. Foster (1981) draws from modernization theory when he attributes the appeal of alternative communities in the nineteenth century to the rapid rate of social change, the gender division of roles and labor, the economic devaluation of the home, and social fragmentation. Pilarzyk et al. (1977) determine that the dissolution of the Jesus People commune was the precipitated by an inconsistent permeability of group boundaries, the subsequently inadequate socialization of recruits, and a fading of charismatic authority. Olin (1980) draws on Weber’s power base of authority to explain the downfall of the Oneida community. He concludes that ultimately a tension arose between the charismatic authority of John H. Noyes’s “rule of grace,” and his rival, the rational-

Ritualization of Life

133

legalist James Towner’s (Townerites) “rule of law.” Matarese and Salmon (1983) on the other hand surmise that the collapse of the Oneida community occurred as a result of intergenerational conflicts. Social theorists Emile Durkheim and Max Weber were instrumental in conceptualizing a distinction between the affective and the functional components of communities. The conflict inherent between the collective and the individual good is aptly captured in Ferdinand Tönnies’s Gemeinschaft-Gesellschaft dichotomy. Gemeinschaft are the affective, emotional, traditional, and expressive relations made with the authentic, whole self. Gesellschaft are the instrumental, rational, goal-oriented relations that do not engage the whole self (Durkheim 1949; Weber 1947; Tönnies 1957; Kanter 1972). The tension between these two social system modes is experienced profoundly in utopias and other intentional communities, where internal communitarian ideals rival external social realities (Bennet 1975; Kanter 1972). If communities responded to this tension with a shift toward a more Gesellschaft system, as was the case for Shaker, Amana, Oneida, Hutterites, and many other nineteenth century utopias, the chances for surviving amidst the socioeconomic realities were enhanced (Kanter 1972; Bennett 1976; Andelson 1983). Kanter identifies four social system dilemmas, related to Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft, which directly challenge an individual’s commitment to the community. Commitment, as Kanter sees it, is the central problematic of community survival. Conundrums emerge out of the lure toward “permeability, isomorphism, value indeterminism, and perpetuation strategies that [undermine] community.” Both permeability and isomorphism6 can facilitate an exchange of ideas, labor, and resources, and eventually even aid in the appropriation of those external world elements which threaten the community. Conversely, permeability can contribute to the dilution of community values and ideals, and isomorphism can subvert the need for expressed difference. Value indeterminism can greatly enhance a system’s adaptive flexibility, yet most communities are deeply invested in a clear articulation of values. Perpetuation strategies are necessary for group survival, yet certain strategies may ultimately be a source of tension. Recruitment, for instance, may have the effect of disrupting community cohesion. Bennett concurs that communities survive when they are able to compromise some of their principles. The problematic of communitarian life is the inevitable paradoxes that develop when one ideal contradicts or negates another. For example, one paradox is the potentially conflicting needs of self and community. Another is the predicament of separating from an intrinsically interdependent world. Yet a third paradox is the ideal of egalitarianism coincident with the desire

134

Thomas J. Csordas

for order and leadership. Another example is how the high valuation of family is countered by the need to control its form and function. Bennett contends that while communities respond in various ways to these challenges, the purity of their original ideals must ultimately be sacrificed if they are to endure. Israeli kibbutzim have provided the setting for some of the few studies that explicitly examine the transition to a second generation within intentional communities. Spiro extended his study of moral, social, and political organization of the kibbutz (1970) with a psychoanalytic examination of personality development among children born and raised in the kibbutz (Spiro 1968). Rosner et al. (1990) compares the features of kibbutz living that are preserved in the second generation with those that are either displaced or altered. They find that fundamental values are integrated into the second generation, although the approach and attitude towards these values may be very different. The factors perceived to influence intergenerational value continuity are drawn from socialization theories, including significant figures and critical sociopolitical events. Evens (1995) demonstrates how kibbutz members’ explanation of “generational conflict” to explain internal tensions fits so tightly with the logic of their participatory democracy that other plausible explanations are summarily rejected.

History of The Word of God The Word of God Community had its origins in a 1967 Charismatic prayer group formed and led by Steven Clark and Ralph Martin. These two college graduates had been recently baptized in the Holy Spirit7 and felt moved by God to begin the fellowship. As founders, they aspired to create a Christian culture and to form “a people.” They imagined the community as the arena where the ideals of spiritual and relational spontaneity and an imminent intimacy with God could manifest. In its nascent stages, Clark segregated the prayer group into an inner and outer circle membership. A small, intimate group of core members met separately for spiritual edification, spontaneous worship, and communion, while the general membership were pastored by the core group through their worship experience. Initiation meetings were conducted with an informational session in one room, and the profoundly experiential Holy Spirit baptism in the next. The prayer group transformed over time in response to God’s word, revealed directly to Clark, shared among the core group, and delivered to the general membership. In 1969, the initiation meetings evolved

Ritualization of Life

135

into “Life in the Spirit” seminars led by Martin.8 In the first official community conference, a leadership council formed, and a covenant was adopted that committed members to each other and to the community. At this time also, two traveling evangelists visited, spiritually reanimating the group with highly dramatic exorcisms of evil spirits. “During a prayer session that became known as Deliverance Monday, the two preachers cast out demons which exited their hosts in a paroxysm of screaming, crying, and coughing” (Csordas 1997: 80). In 1970, the community took the name “The Word of God,” consistent with the concept that God had spoken it into being. In this sense, the community’s existence was God’s manifest intention. It was at this time also that the covenant became concretized as a drafted, publicly witnessed pledge of commitment to the community.9 In the early 1970s, the authority hierarchy became more formal. Clark and Martin designated themselves “overall coordinators,” appointed subsidiary head coordinators, district coordinators, and district heads, and family heads.10 The amended community structure accommodated expansion by heightening the pressure to conform to community ideals. The coordinators became the gatekeepers to community power when they reconfigured the covenant commitment as an incremental process. For example, community prospects’ full membership was conditioned on successful completion of the comprehensive Foundations in Christian Living course, and a personal invitation to commitment by the leaders. In addition to becoming more formal, the leadership’s authority extended into more areas of the members lives. For instance, the heads could expel individuals who did not follow the covenant injunction to respect the leadership, or who were “unrepentant” for some facet of their lives determined to be untenable. The “Words Gifts group,” formed in 1971, specialized in hearing and interpreting God’s daily word for the community. An “Office of the Prophet” position was conceived in 1975, filled by one of the coordinators. Under his guidance and tutelage, the Word’s Gift group screened, interpreted, and selectively extracted from among the incoming prophecy mail. These spiritual elite became the principal contributors of prophetic words at community gatherings. The Brotherhood was formed in 1972, comprised of dedicated men who chose to be “single for the Lord,” followed in 1976 by a lessprominent “Sisterhood.” These individuals remained celibate and lived austere lives in full spiritual commitment to the Lord and community. Many other specialized community service groups11 were also formed, each with their own hierarchy of spiritual authority. The coordinators

136

Thomas J. Csordas

soon felt moved to expand the community mission internationally. To underscore the significance of that vision, they required the committed members to repeat the initiation and commitment process. Men were given linen mantles to wear, and the women, linen veils as an external symbol of their consummation. A number of disillusioned individuals left the community as the authoritarian control escalated and as the demands on individuals for community participation grew. The “Training Course” was begun in 1980. This was comprehensive guide to Christian life in the context of the community mission, based on an exhaustive treatise “Man and Woman in Christ” authored by Steven Clark (1980). In this volume, Clark is the expositor of correct contemporary living. He addressed every facet of conduct, especially gender roles, gender dress, discipline, lines of spiritual authority, marriage obligations, community service, and spiritual gifts. He details the breakdown of the family in society and proposes a corrective return to tradition. He asserts that the “rise of modern ideologies” are fundamentally anti-Christian, particularly liberalism, socialism,12 individualism, and the liberation movements.13 At first, the training course was reserved for the leaders, coordinators, district heads, and their families. The clandestine approach to these teachings was met with misgivings among the general membership. Again, some members left, including coordinators. The community school was founded in 1982 in response to the growing number of families with children. It provided a Christian education for fourth through ninth grades, seen as the children’s developmental window where community influence would be strongest. Broader affiliations between other Charismatic communities developed, and the leaders developed an international community coalition that they named the “Sword of the Spirit.” The Word of God became one of its branches. The growth in the movement’s scope and influence found at least some resistance from the Catholic church. During the mid-1980s, territorial issues developed between a local Catholic bishop and the community, creating an external tension. At the next level, tensions within the community focused on the abrupt instigation and the selective participation in the Training Course. Finally, family tensions were brewing with the additional expectation that youth would be supervised by parents, while the restrictions on behavior were unrealistic.14 These tensions also caused some community self-reflection and a trend toward relaxing the behavior codes. Women were allowed to work outside the home, extracommunity marriages were tolerated, and stereos and televisions were reintroduced into the home. John Wimber, an evangelical healer, introduced “power evangelism,” which was based in “signs and wonders.” In what amounted to a spiritual revival, the

Ritualization of Life

137

community adopted the Wimberite “loud praise” and a collective expression of deep emotion at group gatherings. Nearly twenty-five years since the community’s founding, Martin and Clark developed irreconcilable differences with regard to the governance of The Word of God. In particular, the tension centered on the voice Martin gave to the pragmatics of family life, which conflicted with the stringent spiritual mandates promoted by Clark. Martin, on the one hand, took the posture of repentance to the community for his transgressions of spiritual arrogance and the enforcement of unattainable codes of comportment. Clark and his followers, on the other hand, fully supported all the conservative tenets of the Training Course and the ordained community vision in its original form. The initial attempt at a resolution focused on the leaders’ conflict, mirroring the tensions in the community. In order to relax the authority of the international leadership, The Word of God agreed to be reframed as an allied branch rather than a full member branch of the Sword of the Spirit. The Brotherhood, however, objected to this action and broke off from The Word of God. They aligned themselves with other conservative members and formulated a new branch of the Sword of the Spirit. The community ruptured. Demographic analysis shows that most individuals who went with the conservative faction had very young children or no children at home. It was the families with older children that remained with The Word of God. The community split was in large part an outcome of hyperritualization in the form of regulation and behavioral codes. Family units, especially with older children, are faced with very different issues than the single community members or those with young, manageable children. Martin’s advocacy for family needs refracted the community dissonance through the leadership. Throughout the interviews discussed below, it is evident that families acted as a buffer for unrealistic behavioral expectations set down by the community leaders. The tensions experienced in the family produced a fault line in the community that was mirrored in the leaders’ conflict, and the community schism occurred. Out of this schism, the second generation emerges. How did children understand their lives and their spirituality in the wake of the schism, and would the second generation reinvent itself in the image of their parents?

Data and Method During a four-week participant observation period in 1991–92, a graduate research assistant conducted open-ended interviews with nineteen

138

Thomas J. Csordas

adult, twenty-three child, and seventeen teenage community members (Table 4.1). She lived with three different families and observed prayer meetings, informal play groups, and activities at the community school. The interviews were intended to elucidate patterns of moral thinking and development in the second generation in a tightly codified Charismatic community. During the fieldwork, it was observed that ideological differences were hardening between the more conservative Sword of the Spirit and the original The Word of God communities. We included questions about the schism in the interview, and other spontaneous references to the tensions within the community appear in the interviews. We coded the interviews thematically, comparing participants’ stated ideals and reported practice, and examining both self-reported changes in individual experience and intergenerational nuances. Table 4.1. Participants in the Word of God Youth Study 1. Adults: 1. a. community members 1. b. teachers totals 2. Children: 1. a. ages 5–7 1. b. ages 10–12 1. c. ages 15–17 totals

female 7 2 —— 9

male 8 2 —— 10

total 15 4 —— 19

6 5 13 —— 24

4 8 4 —— 16

10 13 17 —— 40

Findings How does a community transform itself by means of the ritualization of life? When Steven Clark and Ralph Martin began the community, they envisioned a context where a deliberate culture of Charismatic Christianity could be created.15 There are community-specific values, behavior codes, morals, and even speech patterns that, as deliberate cultural components, may be followed for both change and continuity from one generation to the next. Moreover, specific themes are woven into the daily fabric of life in the community. I will first demonstrate how the mutually dependent themes of control and spontaneity, especially in the fields of spirituality and intimacy, contribute to the process

Ritualization of Life

139

of change in this culture. Second, I will discuss the role of ritualized behavior and narrative construction in the changing constitution of meanings over time and across generations. The following excerpts from adult members of The Word of God are emblematic: The community started with people saying, “Man, this is great, this is the most wonderful thing that ever happened to me, being with people who really love and care for me, and who really love and care for God, and feeling that support really empowered them in a way, that heartfelt commitment that people have. And there’s also a danger in that, because after the fire goes out in your own heart, you’re still trying to ride it with everybody else. Then it becomes duty, and then it slowly shifts into something else. I think that’s one of the things that the children—it has to be heartfelt for them. Revivals where people gain a heartfelt devotion to God, and to service—to people—and it really can change society. Then if the children don’t catch the same vision there’s a system that’s imposed over it to keep a semblance of this thing going, like, if you pray every day, and do this and that, then you’ve done what you need to do, and you’re satisfying your guilty conscience. … That’s really what was happening in the community, people were starting to look at it like we have to be strong, and this and that, and they forgot that the whole start of it was to reach out, and the caring for other people. Then you start saying, what about me? … When you focus inward like that you start to realize your needs more, but it also breeds unhealthiness, you start to suck your life out of yourself. What happened was they set up this big government thing, this big fat manual about how things would be, and then what happened was it got turned backwards, and they said now this is who you are and this is what you’re gonna be like. … at a point in time when many people were … well, going through things that weren’t going well. … and we are not here to enshrine our life and pass it on in the Dead Sea scrolls, to me what community is about is living life with God and with other people … and if you stop doing that, it’s dead.

Much research in intentional communities has looked to psychosocial theories to explain how and why the group forms, functions, and possibly disbands. The prototypical explanation begins with observing that a somewhat dependent membership is attracted to the community by a Charismatic leader. Next, these early converts, convinced that their leader is inspired, fully dedicate their energies to the work of the community. As select values are given official priority, conflicting values may create social tension and crystallize into the problematic of the collective welfare versus individual freedom. Social heterogeneity increases as the membership grows, diluting the focus and vigor of the community. Eventually the leader has less influence, and the

140

Thomas J. Csordas

group dissolves. These analyses, drawn from structural-functionalist theories, can broadly explain what is happening in The Word of God community, but they are not specific enough to explain the nuances of day-to-day life, and as such do not reveal anything about cultural process. By exploring the interview data, it is possible to elucidate how the threads of control and spontaneity weave through many layers of meaning and experience in this community, and how the dynamic relationship between them reflect and constitute a cultural process. The vision of the community promulgated by Clark was based on a lifestyle where continuous fellowship, spontaneous worship, and certain spiritual ideals would find their highest expression. High value was placed on a personal relationship with God, spontaneous inspiration, worship in the Holy Spirit, selfless service, and a commitment to the community. One of the most talked about ideals was spontaneity, manifest in spontaneous prayer, spontaneous worship, spontaneous praise, and an ever-present relationship with the Holy Spirit. The community was small at first, and the members were unified by the community vision. But even at this embryonic stage in the community development, ideals began to be codified into specific behavior: So that’s the risk you take. As soon as you make it something concrete—how you’re going to implement something—as soon as you get concrete about it, comes the fact that you have to deal with failure and success. … In the community people say “Yeah, I want to be holy, that’s why I came here, that’s why I’ve given my life to God, that’s why I’ve made this covenant commitment.” But as soon as you say, “What is being holy?”—then you say—“Well, holiness involves prayer.” So you should take a prayer time. Then you’re faced with a thing like, well, I didn’t take a prayer time in the last five days. If you didn’t pin it down at all, you could still generally think you’re holy until your life falls apart and you’d have to face the fact that something isn’t working right. But as soon as you say prayer time, or reading the scripture, or going to a prayer meeting or whatever, repentance of sin is a part of it, then the more you start to define it, the more you have to deal with the fact that you don’t do it all the time. And then what do you do, and how do you repent, and how do you deal with failure? You don’t have to deal with that though, if you never define it. It’s just that you’ll never gain the goal, because it’s sort of vague and fuzzy in your mind and in everybody else’s mind. Where does the balance come, between not defining anything, and defining everything?

Over the next few years, as part of their evangelical mission, the community took in outsiders. Many people joined who were not so much committed to the community’s edification as to finding solace and direction for themselves. In fact, the members describe a dispro-

Ritualization of Life

141

portionate influx of troubled individuals during this time. The growth of the community changed the tone of the prayer meetings. Individuals’ spontaneous inspirations and prayers were not audible without a microphone. Of course, the person who controlled the microphone controlled what was heard in the meetings. In the prayer meetings, people had to get their spiritual authenticity preapproved: I remember watching people go down to the microphone if they wanted to speak, and they would tell the people sitting down front what they wanted to say, and those people would tell them if it was relevant or not, and if it wasn’t they’d be sent back to their seats.

The increasing size and social diversity of the membership also presented a challenge for the community vision. The leadership generated increasingly more official recommendations for how the members should live even the minute aspects of their lives. While they were officially “suggestions,” there was tremendous social and moral pressure to comply: The kids have a hard time getting out of adult authoritative scrutiny, and they’re taught deference and respect for elders and so on, and sometimes I think we as adults in the community tend to be very perfectionist, very intent on having things be right and ordered and in place. And if a kid—anything from a shirt not tucked in, to a comment that he makes to somebody else—if an adult is around and sees it, they tend to give correction. And also what makes it problematic, is that the correction tends to be given with a little bit of authoritative teaching … that is there’s a principle to be derived from it. … so an adult says, you know, you shouldn’t make that comment to Johnny, because that comes from a bad heart, and you need to have this kind of attitude. … a kid can get overwhelmed with all this correction. My parents would allow my brother to go to rock concerts, and they wouldn’t be punished in a physical sense, but in a mental way: you’re not supposed to allow your children to do this.

The community paradox was this: in order to maintain an inspired unity of purpose, spiritual spontaneity, and a personal relationship with God in a context of social dilution, it became necessary to set up controls that would contradict those very principles. The codification of behavior was pervasive and extreme, yet members maintained a sense of autonomy and leaders denied the intensity of their control. Leaders and community members alike referred to behavioral rules as suggestions. There were rules for every facet of daily life. For instance, females were not allowed to wear pants; men were not allowed to assist with any of the domestic work; prayer sessions

142

Thomas J. Csordas

took place several times a day; rock music, dance, videos, and television were prohibited; and boys could only socialize with boys, and girls with girls. There was even at one point a yellow line painted down the middle of the hall at the community school, to separate the boys from the girls. The youth were not allowed to date until they were of the age to consider marriage, and then only with the approval of their spiritual head, and only in a group context. The community pressure to conform to moral standards was so intense that one girl claimed God had restored her virginity. There were rules about lines of spiritual authority, correction, and the proper channels for expressing concerns. The repercussions for noncompliance ranged from social disapproval to expulsion from the community: We were looking to build a culture that would impact not only how we raise family life by the approach to courtship and marriage, how we approach celebrating, a lot of different things. … We had recommendations for family worship. … we never said that is was absolutely necessary, but you know, there’s a lot of built-up momentum to do things in a common way given the way we were approaching the value of common life and what not, so I think a lot of people felt a pressure. Then we come along and say have your child make these commitments, or ask them if they want to make these commitments, and then we say to them, you know, it’s all voluntary, but if they look at it and say gosh I don’t want to be on the outside, I already feel on the outside, and then they pressure their child to do it.

Even after the excessive regulation is identified as the source of tension within the community, the coordinators continue with subtle narrative twists that give social control the illusion of personal choice: [Since the community split, we are now] working to try to release people from all these expectations, work toward some healing and opening communication, not having all kinds of expectations put on people, respecting the autonomy of particular families, and really the autonomy and dignity of the kids themselves to, if they want to, to choose disaster for their lives. It’s their life, if they want to. We should have built in more checks and balances to say now look, this is a good idea but we [the community] aren’t going anywhere with it unless you [parents] own it, you want it. And let’s be honest about it, if we’re not ready for it, we’re not ready for it. That’s life. We’ll just be who we are and we’ll move at the pace we think we can move. Even when we started that, it was hard to get people to be honest.

Not only was everyday life controlled, but how people prayed and expressed their spirituality was also regulated. Raising one’s hands dur-

Ritualization of Life

143

ing prayer indicated the instance of a “heartfelt” connection with God. “Resting in the Spirit,” manifest as a sacred swoon or collapsing to the floor, was the ritualized response to being overcome with the presence of the Holy Spirit. The experienced immediacy of the Holy Spirit might stimulate a round of joyful spiritual dancing or crying. While these manifestations of the Spirit were supposed to be spontaneous, they also were social evidence of the fact and quality of one’s relationship to God. It was not uncommon for the kids to admit that they faked these behaviors, and in at least one case a prayer group leader asked his kids to just raise their hands even if they didn’t feel anything. In this case, there is the ideal of authentic, spontaneous, spiritual experience—and the reality of a highly regulated behavioral expression. In this context, behavior is no longer a genuine response to an experience. Instead, it comes to represent or substitute for the experience, and finally, comes to be the experience. In the words of one schoolgirl: Like, you’re not feeling God unless you’re crying, or unless you’re laughing in the Spirit, or unless you’re raising your hands and feeling very fuzzy, very warm and fuzzy and isn’t this wonderful. You can’t expect to feel something every single time you turn around. It’s not like, well, I’m now going to pray, and I’m going to feel God. No. You are not going to feel God every time you pray. But you’re expected to, so that’s what you came up with. And I know girls who made up prophecies. I know girls who made up prayers that they would pray out loud. Girls who would stand up and fake praying in tongues. And this one girl … this is really funny … she stood up and prayed in tongues, and this other girl stood up and translated it, and the first girl was speaking jargon and the second girl was just making it up! It’s just like, it was totally. … we look back on that and go, I can’t believe I did that, but that was what was expected, so we came through.

The pressure to conform to all these rules was overwhelming. The resulting tensions were felt most acutely within the family, where collective, relational, and individual goals were likely to collide. In several instances, the family provided a buffer zone between the unrealistic community mandates and the lives of their children. One explicit function of the community is to support the family unit. It seems at first ironic that the fracture line for the community schism occurs at precisely this juncture. Yet, at the height of community conflict and contradiction, the first wave of the second generation entered their early teenage years. At this age, they are likely to be most sensitive to whether community life is congruent with its stated ideals and to assertively test their immediate environment. The rigidity of behavioral proscriptions and the layers of hierarchical supervision disproportionately cre-

144

Thomas J. Csordas

ated tension within these family constellations than in those with only younger or no children at home. A teenage boy remarked: [The prayer meetings] were a joke. We just went along with them ’cause we got out of class … and we could fall asleep on the floor and be stricken by the Holy Spirit and sleep for hours! … [And once] they said, oh, did you feel it did you feel it? and I said oh hallelujah! It’s true, and they thought it was the greatest miracle that hit the school since Adam and Eve were put on this earth … and it was a big crock of shit. … See the thing is we all did it, but we didn’t talk about it for … whatever, the fear of the wrath of God raining down on us or something.

It is interesting to notice how the community members choose to explain the split in the community. Consistently the adults felt the fracture was secondary to the relational conflicts brought about by increased authority and control. The youth typically described the problem as a disagreement between the leaders. It is curious that these are the preferred explanations when it could have just as easily been explained by the processes outlined in social theories: loss of the leader’s influence, loss of identification with the group, loss of community vision, or the increasing social heterogeneity. One possible reason that their explanations center on relationship conflicts and behavioral control is because the original vision of the community embraced fellowship and spiritual spontaneity as a means and an expression of their personal relationship with God. The family, as the highest expression of these community ideals, was a sensitive barometer for the spiritual health of the community. Relational tensions reflect blocked communion with God, which in turn suggests spontaneity has been stifled. If the split was explained as a loss of leader influence, it would attribute power to him rather than the divine inspiration. If the split was explained through loss of identification with the group, with the assumption that the individual is called by God to participate in His ordained community, it suggests a moral failing. It would be impossible to attribute the split to the loss of community vision without contradicting the conviction that the vision is directed by God through prophecy. Although the increasingly diverse membership is mentioned in passing by some as a contributory factor in the accelerated regulation of community life, it cannot be offered as the primary explanation for the split, because it would make the increased social control a legitimate means to the community ideals. Further, it would imply that God was wrong to inspire community expansion or that the community’s evangelical mission was incorrectly discerned.

Ritualization of Life

145

The themes of spontaneity and control in the field of relationships are spun through narrative style, content, thought process, and even in the constitution of meaning in this major community event. The specific ways that these themes are talked about and understood shift across generational lines: Adults: Some of the issues (of the split) have to do with control and forcing people to do things that they don’t want to do and adhering to standards. Who’s in charge, and do we want them to be in charge of us? Part of the split had to do with freedom of expression within the family. It was apparent to me that my family was not thriving, they were not happy people. We started getting structured. And it just squeezed the life out of it.

Youth: They [the leaders] were so controlling, it was almost, in my opinion, it was almost cult-like, the way it dealt with a lot of the discipline and restrictions that they had over people’s lives. … They just carried it too far. [They split because] of the differences between the people. They couldn’t decide, like the coordinators. … I’m not sure, but I think it’s because they couldn’t decide on what the rules should be.

The process of change in a culture is palpable in the deployment, ritualization, and recreation of specific narrative styles, metaphors, analogies, and behaviors. They are vehicles through which meaning and experience may be refined, elaborated, or constrained. Byron Good has aptly synthesized two important concepts: Iser’s view that a story’s meaning is mutually constructed through the active engagement of the reader with the text (1978), and Bruner’s concept of the subjunctivizing narrative (1986). He brings them together in a discussion about the creative potential of indeterminancy, and the dialectic relationship between meaning and experience (Good 1994). Like text or narrative, the creative use of linguistic imagery or spontaneous behavioral expression moves concrete events into an abstract realm of indeterminism and into the ether of unformed meaning. Metaphors, for instance, are used to expand the possibilities in the reading of experience. Many different metaphors may be imagined in order to highlight various nuances of meaning of a singular experience. When a metaphor is routinized,

146

Thomas J. Csordas

however, it begins to restrict meaning, until eventually the metaphor and the meaning are the same. Taking this idea further, if one particular metaphor is used in a variety of disparate contexts, then it begins to function as a template through which experience must pass. This template actually limits possibility, and becomes a culturally specific interpretive prescription. A consideration of ritualized behavior in The Word of God community points the same way. In the case of resting in the Spirit or hand raising during prayer, for example, a behavior is intended to reflect spontaneity, is culturally taught, socially expected, and deliberately deployed. Rather than elaborate on the symphony of experiential possibility in relation to the sacred, the ritual expression begins to signify the experience, and, finally, simply is experience. A typical metaphor used in The Word of God community is “catching a vision.” It is intended to refer to the moment when children really internalize the mission of the community. This is somewhat of a mystical moment of deeper spiritual understanding of God’s will, because the community, and therefore its mission, is literally the Word of God. This metaphor is quite descriptive of a sacred posture, a designated mode of participation, the certitude in God’s choice of players, and so on. Yet, it is a habit of speech now, so that it no longer provokes the imagination. The metaphor and the experience are the same. At the same time as narrative habits are wearing out their creative potential, new turns of phrase and expressions appear. Creation and transformation are irrepressible processes, and symbols such as language and behavior bear witness. Examples from the children’s interviews in particular illustrated this process of shifting meaning as it occurs intergenerationally, although this re-creation is present within adult interviews as well. Youth: Resting in the Spirit is like when you’re riding a bike and you go ahh. … something like that. Conversion stories all have the same punchline. [When you pray, do you speak in tongues?] Most of the time. [What’s that like?] It’s kind of like, just making noises, I always tried to do that when I was a kid, pretend to speak in a secret language, and I was never very good at it. And then I found out you could speak in tongues, and that was really easy. Kind of gibberish noises. [How come you do it? What’s it for?] I don’t know, I just do it. I mean, it’s a way to keep from saying hallelujah praise the Lord over and over and over.

Ritualization of Life

147

[Have you ever rested in the Spirit?] I have a couple of times. [What’s that like?] Well, the one time I remember, I was lying there, and thinking, gee this is great, I don’t have to move. I probably could have moved if I’d wanted to, but I didn’t want to move, so I just laid there, for about a half an hour. [Do you talk to God when you pray?] Oh, I ask him for certain things. I don’t usually get them, but I ask, you know, like, I want a car. It’s not going to drop out of the sky. I asked Him for a job, and He gave me a really good paying job, $5.00 an hour at a bakery, which is spending cash for me. And I asked him for a computer and He gave me a paper route so I saved up my money and got a computer. I mean I’ve gotten some stuff, but it’s not magical, it’s not gonna fly outta the sky.

Discussion Intentional communities are contextually rich sources for exploring social and cultural processes. A Charismatic community in which the full array of “gifts of the Spirit” are deployed as performative resources enhances the setting’s ethnographic richness as a site for the ritualization of life and the transformation of habitus. Much of the literature engages traditional psychological and sociological themes to explain and predict the observed patterns of development and behavior. A complementary body of work attends to the circumstances of individual communities, and in various degrees conveys something of the daily tone of community life. Many studies look at the why of intentional communities, their persistence, and the social forces of change, but because the process of change is palpable only at the moment of change, the how of cultural transformation has remained unanswered. The access of ethnographers to a Charismatic intentional community has granted us an uncommon opportunity not only to observe the ritualization of life but to address the issue of rhetorical and social conditions under which that ritualization may be sustainable into a second generation. In the course of our analysis, we have encountered a ritualization of life that is not understandable only as a sedimentation of overtly ritual practices into habitual behavior, or as the colonization of increasingly more domains of social activity by practices once restricted to ritual events. The psychocultural themes of control, spontaneity, and intimacy in the context of spirituality and relationships were traced through the fabric of these interviews. We illustrated the dynamic tension among these themes, and suggest that this tension itself constitutes much of the substance and content upon which ritualizing be-

148

Thomas J. Csordas

havior and routinizing language act in the reformulation of meaning and experience. This form of investigation may be useful in developing theories about how culture transforms itself through time. The case of The Word of God also bears particular salience insofar as the goal of deliberately creating a new culture was a self-conscious feature of community discourse. If one can grant that a defining characteristic of culture is that it is at a deep sense all that is taken for granted by a people about the world, self, and others, what exactly does it mean to self-consciously create something that is by definition taken for granted? It seems distinctly Euro-American to presume that culture is other than organic, and that it can and should be contrived. What then about the idea that, because ritual is a signal of culture, that culture can be created through ritual? Bennett notes that in the case of intentional communities, it takes three full generations for “something stable to come out of it” (1975). His thinking is that the tensions that threaten communal living are in part related to the incongruity between a member’s social inheritance and the ideals of the commune. This falls into alignment by the third generation, when social inheritance and social circumstance are one. This is another way of saying that a set of practices does not become a culture until it is taken for granted, and crystallized into, in Bourdieu’s (1984) terms, a set of structured and structuring dispositions that constitute a stable habitus. In this way too, The Word of God is a culture in progress. This is most evident in the youth interviews, which simultaneously expound on the meaninglessness of ritual and its contribution to self-experience. From this tentative balancing point, the intensity and stability of consequences can range along a continuum from the ultimate worldrenouncing radicalization of charisma epitomized by the mass suicide of the Peoples’ Temple to the sedate ritualization of life that has resulted in the observed increase in average lifespan by several years among Seventh Day Adventists in Loma Linda, CA (Bluezones.com). It can take on a variety of rhetorical forms ranging from a world-accepting design to deliberately create a new culture to a world-renouncing aspiration to build the Kingdom of God. In any case, certainly among contemporary Pentecostals and Charismatics, the ritualization of life is a critical component of what we are increasingly willing to recognize as an escalating reenchantment of the world. Notes This research was supported by NIMH Grant 2ROIMH40473-04 and by a grant from the Armington Program on Values in Children at Case Western Reserve Uni-

Ritualization of Life

149

versity. Special thanks are due to research assistants Sue Wasserkrug, Micah Parzen, and Lydia Lauritzen. 1. “Gifts” are understood to be the Holy Spirit working through the individual. They may include speaking in tongues (glossolalia), prophecy, prophetic interpretation, discernment, and faith healing. Additionally, the presence of the Holy Spirit may be manifested as raising hands during prayer, “resting,” singing, laughing, crying, or dancing in the Spirit. These are intense and intimate spiritual moments, during which time the individual is simply overcome with the presence of the Holy Spirit. 2. This term has been used to describe communities that are established as social alternatives, are society rejecting, or otherwise constitute themselves as “other” than the larger society. 3. The Amish and the Israeli kibbutzim are two examples of communities established to affirm tradition, while Oneida and Amana are examples of societyrejecting communities. 4. In fact, most studies begin with established theory and work toward an explanatory model for a particular community—a process that might be called deductive analysis. 5. Erik Erikson coined the term “hippie personality type,” which refers to the commune-prone dependent individual who remains in the early developmental stage of “trust.” (Noted in Bennett 1975). 6. Isomorphism is the structural similarity between the community and the outside social world, including shared language, symbols, and economic system. 7. Baptism in the Holy Spirit is a very specific transformative spiritual experience that brings the Christian believer into an immanent, deeply engaging, and personal relationship with God. There are specific spiritual gifts that are regarded as manifestations of the Holy Spirit’s presence and power, including the gift of discernment, speaking in tongues, and other “charisms.” There is generally a high level of personal commitment and motivation to follow whatever God’s calling is perceived to be, and individuals may be described as “being on fire for the Lord.” 8. Life in the Spirit seminars formalized the initiation process and included specific teachings about Christian life and spiritual experience, as well as induction into the membership. 9. The four-part covenant included community service, respect for the community order, presence at convocations, and a financial commitment (Csordas 1997). 10. This was the line of descending authority, and men always took the role of household head and personal head of their wife. 11. Community service was part of the covenant, and there were numerous specialized service groups, including childcare, music, pastoral leadership, healing, initiations, etc. (Keane 1974, Lewis 1995; Csordas 1997). 12. Clark notes that the “similarities between Fascism and Socialism are more important than their differences” (1980: 513). 13. Specifically feminism, the women’s movement, and gay liberation. 14. The youth were not allowed to attend dances, listen to rock music, wear blue jeans, or spend unsupervised time with the opposite sex.

150

Thomas J. Csordas

15. The notion that culture can be created is an intriguing one. Culture has come to be thought about as all that which is taken for granted. That being the case, it may be more to the point that the very presumption on the part of Martin and Clark that culture can be formed is in itself culture. The “culture” they create is perhaps merely artifact. Then, does this artifact indeed become culture by the third generation, albeit in a different configuration than intended by the founders?

References Andelson, J. G. 1983. “Communitarianism, familism, and individualism among the Inspirationists at Amana.” International Journal of Sociology of the Family 13 (2): 45–62. ———. 2002. “Coming Together and Breaking Apart: Sociogenesis and Schismogenesis in Intentional Communities.” In Intentional Community: An Anthropological Perspective, edited by Susan Love Brown, 131–52. Albany: State University of New York Press. Bennett, John W. 1975. “Communes and Communitarianism.” Theory and Society 2: 63–94. ———. 1976. Human Ecology as Human Behavior: Essays in Environmental and Development Anthropology. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1984. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Brown, Susan Love, ed. 2002. Intentional Community: An Anthropological Perspective. Albany: State University of New York Press Bruner, Jerome. 1986. Actual Minds, Possible Worlds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Carter, Lewis F. 1990. Charisma and Control in Rajneeshpuram. New York: Cambridge University Press. Cavan, Ruth Shonle, and Man Singh Das, eds. 1979. Communes, historical and contemporary. New Delhi: Vikas. Clark, Christopher. 1995. The Communitarian Moment. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Clark, Steven B. 1980. Man and Woman in Christ: An Examination of the Roles of Men and Women in Light of Scripture and the Social Sciences. Ann Arbor, MI: Servant Books. Csordas, Thomas. 1997. Language, Charisma, and Creativity: Ritual Life in the Catholic Charismatic Renewal. Berkeley: University of California Press. Durkheim, Emile. 1949. The Division of Labor in Society, translated by George Simpson. New York: Free Press. Evens, T. M. S. 1995. Two Kinds of Rationality: Kibbutz Democracy and Generational Conflict. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Foster, Laurence. 1981. Religion and Sexuality. New York: Oxford University Press. Giorio, G. 1982. “In tema di ‘comunità’: possibili richiami a concetti weberiani.” Studi di Sociologia Milano 20 (1): 19–25.

Ritualization of Life

151

Good, Byron J. 1994. Medicine, Rationality, and Experience: An Anthropological Perspective. New York: Cambridge University Press. Iser, Wolfgang. 1978. The Art of Reading. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Kanter, Rosabeth Moss. 1972. Commitment and Community. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Keane, Roberta. 1974. “Formal Organizations and Charisma in a Catholic Pentecostal Community.” PhD diss., University of Michigan. Kern, Louis. 1981. An Ordered Love: Sex Roles and Sexuality in Victorian Utopias: The Shakers, the Mormons, and the Oneida Community. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Lewis, Jeanne G. 1995. Headship and Hierarchy: Authority and Control in a Catholic Charasmatic Community. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Company. Matarese, Susan, and Paul Salmon. 1983. “Heirs to the Promised Land: The Children of Oneida.” International Journal of the Sociology of the Family 13: 35–43. Olin, Spencer C. 1980. “The Oneida Community and the Instability of Charismatic Authority.” Journal of American History 67 (2): 285–300. Pilarzyk, T. J., and C. K. Jacobson. 1977. “Christians in the Youth Culture: The Life History of an Urban Commune.” Wisconsin Sociologist 14: 136–51. Rosner, Menachem, Itzhak Ben David, Alexander Avnat, Neni Cohen, and Uri Leviatan. 1990. The Second Generation: Continuity and Chance in the Kibbutz. New York: Greenwood Press. Seligman, Adam B. 1994 Innerworldly Individualism: Charismatic Community and Its Institutionalization. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. Shenker, Barry. 1986. Intentional Communities: Ideology and Alienation in Communal Societies. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Spiro, Melford. 1968. Children of the Kibbutz: A Study in Child Training and Personality. New York: Schocken Books. ———. 1970. Kibbutz: Venture in Utopia (augmented edition). New York: Schocken Books. Tönnies, Ferdinand. 1957 (1887). Community and Society. East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press. Turner, Victor W. 1969. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company. Weber, Max. 1947. The Theory of Social and Economic Organization. Translated A.M. Henderson and Talcott Parsons. New York: Oxford University Press. Zablocki, Benjamin D. 1973. The Joyful Community. Baltimore: Penguin Books. ———. 1980 Alienation and Charisma: A Study of Contemporary American Communities. New York: The Free Press. Zicklin, Gilbert. 1983. Countercultural Communes. London: Greenwood Press.

c5C Adventure and Atrophy in a Charismatic Movement Returning to the “Toronto Blessing” Martyn Percy

The “Toronto Blessing”—A Retrospective Overview Dating from 1994, the “Toronto Blessing” is the name for a phenomenon that is associated with the Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship. From its very foundation, the Vineyard Christian Church in Toronto had experienced many of the things that would be typical for Christians within the fundamentalist-revivalist tradition: miracles, healings, an emphasis on deliverance, speaking in tongues, and a sense of the believers being in the vanguard of the Holy Spirit’s movement as the millennium neared. However, what marked out the Toronto Blessing for special consideration were the more unusual phenomena that occurred. A number of followers trace the initial outpouring back to Father’s Day, the result being that some prefer to call the movement the “Father’s Blessing” (Chevreau 1994).1 There was an unusually high reportage of people being “slain in the Spirit.” A number would laugh uncontrollably, writhing on the floor (the leaders of the movement dubbed this “carpet time with God”), make animal-like noises, barking, growling, or groaning as the “Spirit fell on them.” Others reported that this particular experience of God was more highly charged than anything that had preceded it (Hunt 1995; Poloma 1996; Percy 1996a; Percy 1996b; Percy 1998: 281–89; Richter and Porter 1995; Smail, Walker, and Wright 1995). Thus, the Blessing became known by the place where it was deemed to be most concentrated. To date, around two million visitors or “pilgrims” have journeyed to Toronto experience the Blessing for themselves. Many of these pilgrims report dramatic miracles or supernatural interventions, substantial changes in their lives, and greater em152

Adventure and Atrophy in a Charismatic Movement

153

powerment for Christian ministry. More unusual claims have included tooth cavities being miraculously filled with gold, and “dustings” of gold on the hair and shoulders of believers, indicating a specific spiritual anointing. Some have even claimed that children born to believers will have supernatural resurrection bodies. A small num-ber of other women of child-bearing age claimed to have had spiritual pseudopsychetic experiences. In spite of the extraordinary success of the church, John Wimber (1934–1997), founding pastor of the Vineyard network, excommunicated the Toronto fellowship for “(alleged) cult-like and manipulative practices.” Some evangelical critics of the Toronto Blessing Movement cited the influence of the Rhema or Health and Wealth movement, through the Toronto Fellowship’s own connections with Benny Hinn and Rodney Howard-Browne, as another reason for Vineyard-led secession (Hilborn 2001: 4–10). In January 1996, the Toronto Vineyard became independent. But under the leadership of its pastor, John Arnott, it has flourished and continues to exercise an international ministry in the fundamentalist-revivalist tradition. The Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship still meets in a converted trade center on an industrial estate that is less than a mile away from the main city airport. Contextually, it is conveniently located in a matrix of highways that criss-cross downtown Toronto. There are no residential areas remotely near the fellowship, and members or visitors need a car to travel to meetings—but this is not unusual in North American church-going. Local hotels that are linked to the airport and conference economy also enjoy a good reciprocal relationship with the fellowship and its pilgrims. The fellowship building is functional, comprising offices, meeting rooms, and a large sanctuary area for celebrations. It is a spacious, adaptive building. For example, there was once a large area at the back of the church that was segregated into track lanes. This is where worshippers, at the end of a service, could stand waiting for individual ministry to take place. A minister stood in front of the worshipper, and a “catcher” at the back. When or if a worshipper fell to the ground—slain in the Spirit—they were caught, and the minister moved on to the next worshipper on their track, leaving the previous one on the floor to “marinade in the Spirit.” Worship or revival meetings can last several hours, but pilgrims can also avail themselves of café facilities if they need physical rather than spiritual refreshment. Yet as a cultural creature of its time, the Toronto Blessing, in spite of its claims to represent a preeminent type of pneumatological power, ironically seemed to place less emphasis on aggressively reified spiritual power (a particular feature of John Wimber’s teaching

154

Martyn Percy

in the 1980s—e.g., “power evangelism”), and through its distinctive grammar of worship, put more accent on concepts such as the “softness” and “gentle touch” of God and the desirability of acquiescence in the believer. The popular worship song “Eternity” (by Brian Doerksen, 1994, Vineyard/Mercy Publishing) perhaps captures this best, sung many times over by followers, and set to a soft melody: I will be yours, you will be mine.

No more tears of pain in our eyes;

Together in eternity

No more fear or shame.

Our hearts of love will be entwined.

For we will be with you,

Together in eternity,

Yes, we will be with you,

Forever in eternity.

We will worship,

We will worship you forever.

It is through this distinctive grammar of assent that the fellowship continues to configure its life. The motto of the fellowship is “to walk in God’s love and give it away,” and the life of the congregation emphasizes this in its ministerial distinctiveness. Thus, there are programs for single parents (e.g., “Just Me and the Kids—Building Healthy Single Parent Families: a twelve week program for single parent and their kids,” etc), a conference entitled Imparting the Father’s Heart (“Are you called to minister the Father Heart of God? This course will take you deeper into the Father’s love … giving you the tools to give it away. … topics include the need to be fathered, hindrances to receiving the Father’s love, shame, Father issues, prodigal issues, orphan heart,” etc), and various schools of ministry or programs that center on spiritualtherapeutic approaches to brokenness, abuse, neglect, and failure.2 There are also some social and welfare programs that reach out to the poor and homeless. More generally, we should also note that the Toronto Blessing was one of the first revivalist movements to be promoted through the internet, and to a lesser extent on television networks such as CNN. (Indeed, I debated with John Arnott live on television on the BBC 2 Newsnight program in 1996). Through skillful marketing and public relations, the Toronto Blessing spread its message and testimonies quickly and easily; it developed speedily into becoming an “internet-ional” movement. But with the benefit of hindsight, the net result of the Blessing seems to have been individual and atomized in its beneficence, rather than galvanizing for the world of revivalism. Indeed, the epiphenomena associated with the Toronto Blessing succeeded in dividing many constituents within the world of charismatic renewal, with some declaring that the manifestations of spiritual outpouring (e.g., laughter, howling, animal noises, etc.) were Satanic, while others proclaimed them to be

Adventure and Atrophy in a Charismatic Movement

155

a preeminent sign that this was the prelude to the greatest revival ever. In retrospect, neither side—promoter or detractor—could claim an interpretative victory (see Hilborn 2001). Perhaps all that now can be said is that the experiences of those attending Toronto Blessing meetings since 1994 seem to have been primarily cathartic; one could almost describe the effect of the Blessing upon worshippers as having been something like a cleansing spiritual enema. However, the influence of the Toronto Blessing has steadily waned since the late 1990s, and its position and prominence within global revivalism and the charismatic marketplace quickly forgotten. The movement, after a period of intense etiolation, has been subject to some serious atrophy. There are now comparatively few visitors to the fellowship in Toronto, and the phenomenon is now rarely mentioned in revivalist circles.3 Scholars such as Festinger (1957) might see this as a simple matter of cognitive dissonance—the process whereby a belief or expectation, having been disconfirmed, is nonetheless adhered to (and perhaps even more strongly). In this scenario, the muchanticipated fruits and blessings of revival are usually deemed to have arrived as promised and predicted, but just not widely perceived and reified. Margaret Poloma pays some attention to this perception in her analysis of the Toronto Blessing (1996). However, the majority of churches that were initially supportive of the Toronto Blessing seemed to have moved on quickly, redeveloping their focus, and also their interpretation of the Blessing. For some, the promised revival is deemed to be manifest in the phenomenal success and growth of Alpha courses (see Hunt 2000). Only a few Christian fellowships and churches have persisted with a focus on exotic spiritual epiphenomena, such as miraculous gold fillings occurring in tooth cavities or dustings of gold on the shoulders and the hair, indicating a special anointing. (Suffice to say, and in spite of the claims made for these miracles on various websites, the evidence for such miracles remains circumstantial and uncorroborated.) We should also note that a small number of Vineyard churches have become more liturgically oriented in the wake of the Blessing: spiritual experience has led to an embracing of tradition and order.

Interpreting Toronto: A Methodological Sketch In my return to the Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship, I wanted to see how the fellowship was dealing with the decline in demand for its conferences, and how it was coping in a postmillennial climate—in which the rhetoric of a much-anticipated global charismatic revival

156

Martyn Percy

had patently receded. The added grist for such a study was that, strictly speaking, many scholars for the past twenty-five years have only been predicting uniform growth for conservative churches, especially those with a charismatic flavor (see Kelley 1972; Tamney 2002; Cox 1994; Miller 1997; cf Weber 1946: 295ff). Only a small minority of scholars have predicted the very opposite of this in relation to charismatic renewal and revivalism, especially in relation to the Toronto Blessing (see Walker 1998: 313–15 and Hunt, Hamilton, and Walter 1997). In this microstudy, I want to explore how participants now understood the movement of which they were still a part—one that had witnessed stunning but ultimately unsustainable growth, followed by “wilting”; a process that biologists know as etiolation. Or, and put more colloquially in the rhetoric of the 1980s and 1990s that partly constructed the language and vistas of “power evangelism” and “power healing” programs, adherents have lived through the “boom and bust” years. So how did they now interpret the apparent atrophy of revivalism? Of course, pilgrims and members tend not to construct their self-understanding in these terms, and this immediately raises some sensitive questions about appropriate methodological approaches within the field and participant observation. Yet there can be no substitute for being there. As James Hopewell notes: The fullest and most satisfying way to study the culture of a congregation is to live within its fellowship and learn directly how it interprets its experiences and generates its behaviour. … participant observation … as the term suggests [involves the analyst] in the activity of the group to be studied [while] also maintaining a degree of detachment. (Hopewell 1987: 86)

As a general guide, two distinctive but closely related tactical trajectories have conditioned my reading and reappraisal of the Toronto Blessing some six years after my first visit. The first trajectory is drawn broadly from anthropology and ethnography, which focus their attention upon first-hand accounts of local practices and beliefs, rather than solely being concerned with “official” texts (see Geertz 1973, 1983; Dey 1993; Maykut and Morehouse 1994; Hammersly and Atkinson 1995; Atkinson 1990; Mishler 1991; Burgess 1984). The distinction is important, for it moves research away from concentrating on the primary claims of “pure” or “central” religion toward the grounded reality of praxis (e.g., it might assess a number of Roman Catholic congregations and their practices—not ask the Vatican what such churches should be doing or believing). Or, put another way, the focus shifts from blueprints about the way the church or congregation could be or should be

Adventure and Atrophy in a Charismatic Movement

157

to that of grounded ecclesiology—discovering how and why Christian communities are put actually together in their localized context (see Healy 2000). It is through a matrix of conversation, interviews, observation, and the savoring of representative vignettes that one can begin to piece together a more coherent picture of what it is like to belong to a group, to be a pilgrim, and to believe (see Watt 2002; Bramadat 2000; Dempsey 2002). For the purposes of this study, the work of Clifford Geertz has proved to be most illuminating. Geertz is an anthropologist of religion, and his two principal works are The Interpretation of Cultures (1973) and Local Knowledge (1983). Both these works argue for research that consists of ethnography and theoretical approaches. In my own research, I have tended to treat religion as a complex cultural system. That is not to say that I in any way ignore or reject any idea of revelation, divinity, or “genuine” religious experience. Theologically, I expect such things to be treated seriously, and I expect their reality to have some sort of impact upon any empirical study. But I do not think that religion is only the repository for revelation. I regard it as a complex system of meaning: a mixture of description and ascription, of deduction and induction. For Geertz, a cultural system is a collection of symbols—objects, gestures, words, events, etc.—which all have meanings attached to them and exist outside of individuals, and yet work inwardly to shape attitudes and guide actions. Referring to Max Weber, Geertz takes the view that [man] is “an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun.” Furthermore, to explain cultures, Geertz takes the view that analysts and interpreters have to engage in “thick descriptions,” not “thin” ones. It is important to understand what people meant by a word or gesture, so that we can understand its significance. An obvious example is two boys—one with a twitch of the eye, the other who winks. A thin description would say they made the same movement. A thick description unpacks the significance of the wink, and what the gesture means and infers, why it is unspoken language, and so forth. That said, the study of culture is not just about meanings, as though the currency of behavior was agreed. People often do things that are countercultural. This means that anthropologists can often do little more than faithfully reconstruct what people did and meant, and then interpret this. Cultural analysis is “guessing at meanings, assessing the guesses, and drawing explanatory conclusions” (Geertz 1973: 20). Geertz regards his interpretative anthropology as being constituted through “ethnographic miniatures”—small studies that paint a bigger picture of society, a tribe or culture.

158

Martyn Percy

This tends to mean that Geertz is not in favor of general theories. He sees anthropology not as “an experimental science in search of a law, but an interpretative one in search of a meaning” (1973: 5). Thus, an anthropologist, like a doctor, cannot predict what will happen, cannot say that a child will develop the flu; but an anthropologist can anticipate what might happen, based on patterns they have observed, studied, and interpreted. At this point, anthropologists have a variety of ideas at their disposal: ritual, structure, identity, worldview, ethos, to name but a few. Thus, Geertz is primarily interested in religion as a cultural system, or the “cultural dimensions” of religion, because he sees culture as a pattern of meanings or ideas, carried by symbols, by which people pass on knowledge and express their attitudes to knowledge. “Common sense” can be a system as much as any political ideology. So for Geertz, religion is: [1] a system of symbols which acts to [2] establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by [3] formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and [4] clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that [5] the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic. (1973: 90).

Geertz adds to this definition by reminding his readers that religions distinguish between worldviews and ethos. A worldview is the way things could be or should be: “Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” And an ethos is the way things are: “They gave alms to the poor.” In ritual and belief, ethos and worldview are often fused together; religion expresses both. The moods and motivations created within an ethos reach toward a worldview—the ways things could be or should be. To be sure, there are limits on what can be done with Geertz’s work. Many scholars regard him as a functionalist. But this may be more of a compliment than an insult. Like many anthropologists, he is compressing complex data into a system of agreed symbols and contours—not unlike a cartographer. And as with cartography, there is no map that is a 1:1 scale that records what the observer sees. A good map is a guide to a field or an area; the chosen symbols help us to look on unfamiliar terrain with some agreement—churches with spires, a pub, a post office, an incline, a forest of deciduous trees. Insofar as it goes, Geertz offers us a reasonable, accurate, and creative way of navigating through complex data, and making some judgments about the shape of the subject. And as with maps, each is specific, but uses general ideas to help us create an accurate impression. The second methodological trail draws upon—appropriately enough—the burgeoning field of congregational studies (see Ammer-

Adventure and Atrophy in a Charismatic Movement

159

man 1997; Williams 1974; Eiesland 1998; Dorsey 1985), but with a special focus upon the interpretative framework provided by James Hopewell (Hopewell 1987; Ammerman et al. 1998: 91–104). In many ways the discipline is a natural complement to anthropology and ethnography, since practitioners of congregational studies pay particular attention to the local or “concrete” church rather than to the “ideal” constructions; it stresses the value of uncovering “operant” rather than “official” religion. Put another way, As slight and predictable as the language of a congregation might seem on casual inspection, it actually reflects a complex process of human imagination. Each is a negotiation of metaphors, a field of tales and histories and meanings that identify its life, its world, and God. Word, gesture, and artefact form local language—a system of construable signs that Clifford Geertz, following Weber, calls a ‘web of significance.’ Even a plain church on a pale day catches one in a deep current of narrative interpretation and representation by which people give sense and order to their lives. Most of this creative stream is unconscious and involuntary, drawing in part upon images lodged long ago in the human struggle for meaning. Thus, a congregation is held together by much more than creeds, governing structures and programs. At a deeper level, it is implicated in the symbols and signals of the world, gathering and surrounding them in the congregation’s own idiom. (Hopewell 1987: 11)

Hopewell, rather like certain anthropologists (he was heavily influenced by Geertz) and ethnographers in the field, takes the many and multifaceted stories of faith seriously. Rather than simply attending to the creedal statements and articles of faith that are said to provide ecclesial coherence, ethnography and congregational studies probe deeper and listen to (and observe) the expressive narratives of belief that make up the practice of a community. It is by attending to the apparently trivial—testimonies, sayings, folk wisdom, stories, songs, and so forth—that one can begin to understand the truer theological construction of reality under which believers shelter. But what exactly emerges from this narrative trawl? As we shall see, there are many rhetorical shards that speak of heroism, romance, adventure, risk, and reward, and while these may lie scattered on the surface of congregational storytelling, their origin comes from deep within the movement. As Wade Clark Roof notes, the beliefs of churches cannot be construed entirely in terms of their creedal statements: Theological doctrines are always filtered through people’s social and cultural experiences. What emerges in a given situation as ‘operant religion’ will differ considerably from the ‘formal religion’ of the historic

160

Martyn Percy

creeds, and more concern with the former is essential to understanding how belief systems function in people’s daily lives. (1985: 178–79)

So, in telling the story of the congregation, we unravel its plot: Church culture is not reduced to a series of propositions that a credal checklist adequately probes. The congregation takes part in the nuance and narrative of full human discourse. It persists as a recognizable storied dwelling within the whole horizon of human interpretation. (Hopewell 1987: 201)

This observation is important, for it would be a mistake to read or judge the Toronto Blessing movement by its formal declarations of belief. (Most adherents are in any case unaware of these, and would regard them as unimportant.) So, although the Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship does have a Statement of Faith and also adheres to certain formal creedal articles, their main purpose is to position the fellowship as a mainstream (evangelical) ecclesial organization. To focus on these as constituting the core identity of the fellowship would be to entirely miss the point. It is the combination of divine dramaturgy (i.e., healings, miracles, etc.) and the distinctive romantic grammar of assent that attracts believers by the thousand, and then enriches their lives. Phrases such as “you will be lead into greater intimacy [with God] and personal renewal” are abundantly present in literature and teaching, peppering pamphlets and pep talks alike. Similarly, worship songs such as “I Can Feel the Touch of Your Presence” and “Dancing in Daddy’s Arms” are manifestly more important for the constituent contouring of belief and practice within the fellowship than any creed. The operant stress is on tactile, almost romantic-somatic encounters with God, leading to deep cathartic spiritual moments that then provide liberating and generative possibilities for individual spiritual renewal and further empowerment.

Immersed in the River of Revival: Returning to Toronto Given the context of atrophy—the pretext for this short study—one might ask how the stories of faith within the Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship are beginning to change. Given that the much-hyped and predicted global revival has not taken place, what kinds of narratives do pilgrims and members now use to describe their ongoing commitment to a fellowship whose influence and popularity has manifestly waned (cf Festinger 1957)? Interestingly, there is both some continuity and development to focus upon here, but it is the latter that highlights

Adventure and Atrophy in a Charismatic Movement

161

a theme I had not fully developed in my earlier study. In my original research based on my 1996 visit, I had especially registered the romantic metaphors and motifs in worship, teaching, and testimony that seemed to shape the overall horizon of belief and possibility. There was a superabundance—almost overwhelming—of appeals to the romantic nature of God, the desire of the believer for intimacy and oneness with God, and the reciprocal desire of God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit for the heart and soul of the believer. Much of this was constituted in a grammar of paternalism and passionate (or quasi-erotic) intimacy (see Percy 1997: 71–106; Heather 2002: 28–38). Yet, during my visit of 2002, I was struck by just how little the appetite for this faith-world had abated. There had been some routinization of charisma, in the Weberian sense. There was less spontaneity and more order; there were signs that a charismatic movement was evolving into a young church. But there were also factors that pointed to a sustained and original vibrancy. Pilgrims and members were still hungry and thirsty for God, and God was, apparently, still hungry and thirsty for them too—the rhetoric of passionate and romantic intensity remained buoyant. That said, the numbers of attendees were a fraction of what they were, and the rhetoric that anticipated (and to some extent hyped) the possibility of global charismatic revival had all but disappeared. How then, I wondered, did members and pilgrims understand the failure of God to slake their desire for global revival? Given that intimacy with God had been (and still was) advocated as the path to ultimate individual spiritual empowerment, which would then pave the way for the preeminence of charismatic renewal throughout the world, surely followers of the Toronto Blessing would have a theological narrative that dealt with the growing sense of dissonance? The answer to these questions lay in paying closer attention to narratives that emphasized a spiritual theme that is closely related to the romantic worldview, but which I had underestimated in my earlier research. I speak, of course, about adventure, and the idea that pilgrims and members are caught up in God’s own narrative of involvement in the world, which in revivalist and charismatic worldviews is often understood as a form of adventure, of which romance is but only one type. In focusing on narratives of adventure, the language and actuality of atrophy could be located and understood; read not in terms of dissonance, but rather understood as a vindication of the ongoing story of struggle. But before reflecting further upon the theme of adventure and its relation to charismatic atrophy, it is first necessary to describe the present situation of the Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship in a little

162

Martyn Percy

more detail. Turning up for a regular nightly revival meeting, which begins at 7.30 P.M. and normally ends about four hours later, I was greeted at the door by a smartly dressed woman who introduced herself: “Hello—tonight will be your night for a miracle.” All revival and prayer meetings commence with intense times of corporate worship. Participants sometime dance to the music, but most make gestures with their hands or arms, either raising them high (and then keeping them still), but with some also moving them in a slow sweeping, encompassing, or wiping fashion, as though polishing an invisible giant globe. Some of the gestures seem to be more eccentric than this, at least to an observer. As I stood among the worshippers, a woman near me clapped her hands haphazardly around her body, as though swatting a fly, and cried out “Ho!” or “Hah!” (loudly) with each clap. A man in front of me raised his hands during the sermon at points where he was in intense agreement with the speaker, and cried out words such as “transformation!” and “change!” During praise, some women danced around freely, twirling brightly colored flags and ribbons. A male member of the ministry team moved along rows of seats, and prayed with people by blowing on them forcefully and loudly, making a wind-like sound. As he did so, the supplicant, normally already standing with arms raised, buckled, and fell to the ground, where others then gathered around and prayed. As the worship continued, the songs proclaimed that believers are “dancing on the mountain top with God”; another song announced “God of the Breakthrough … all things are possible through you.” Still another worship song declared: You are my health Your are my hope Your are my help, So I’m gonna lift You up …

On my return to Toronto, I had expected the distinctively romantic and mildly quasi-erotic accent of the movement that permeated the worship to have subsided. But if anything, the romantic genre had become even more explicit and intense than before. The structuring and grammar of worship made overt use of sexual analogies that were drawn from biblical and Christian tradition, but then intensified as they were interpreted. One worship leader explained that “worship means ‘to kiss towards’—to come into His tender presence; so let Jesus respond to your loving.” There was a real sense in which worship regularly progressed through three distinct phases: (1) wooing or courting

Adventure and Atrophy in a Charismatic Movement

163

Jesus; (2) “mystical foreplay”—often accompanied by heightened use of musical instruments, but with little singing (i.e., delicately stroking or touching the chords of a guitar or keys of a piano—brushing them so lightly yet intensely; an erotic and suggestive sequence of notes rather than music); (3) relational consummation—which could include signing in tongues and other activity, sometimes leading to cathartic responses. But is such an interpretation fair, or merely tendentious? The key is to recognize the way in which the encounter with Jesus is understood in specifically romantic terms. Thus, recent praise compilations (available on CD, tape, and in books) offer “Intimate Bride— gentle worship for soaking in God’s presence”; “Warrior Bride” (with a picture of a young woman in full bridal regalia holding a large sword); and “Passionate Bride—songs of intimacy and passion for soaking in God’s presence.” These products are illustrated with pictures of a bride embracing or encountering Jesus; the biblical analogy of “marriage” to Jesus having been literalized and individualized. Other collections of songs include “How Big is He?” “I Can Feel the Touch,” “Take Me,” and “Soaking in Glory (in the River).” It would appear that this worship continues to appeal more to women than men. At the daily meetings in the morning (“Wake Up Call for Revival,” 10:30–12:30 P.M.), close to 95 percent of the attendees were women, with an average age of fifty-seven. These meetings are far smaller but no less intense than those I encountered six years ago, and attract around fifty people. But the format remains almost identical, with worship songs beginning the meeting that suggest a unique, tactile intimacy with Jesus: Lord, Show me your face, So I can touch your brow Lord, show me your face So I can see your smile.

These prayer meetings are led by women—and are mainly for women, and the rhetoric reflects the desires and concerns of the dominant age-group (50–60 plus).4 Prayer is offered for those who have anxiety or sleepless nights. Women are advised to try to create a prayer room in their homes: “tastefully decorated in colours that help you to relax.” Other advice includes to “keep a ‘Dream Journal,’ and share them with your Cell Group leader.” During ministry, the value of “resting” was frequently stressed; resting with Jesus would combat stress, alleviate anxiety, and also bring stillness and strength back into the family home. Sometimes this counsel would extend into vivid analogy:

164

Martyn Percy

“Reach out your hand—can you sense the fragrance of the Lord here? This is a place of peace, and it feels like velvet.” In the bookshop and resource center belonging to the fellowship, customers can buy fragrant oils for the house, and also scented candles with names such Rose of Sharon, Myrrh, Frankincense, and Lily of the Valley. The morning meetings tend to contain a smattering of teaching drawn from the Bible, but are mostly distinguished by a constant resort to folk wisdom, stories and aphorisms that seem to engage the audience. More often than not, the talks are aimed at giving handy and homely hints for living a distinctive Christian lifestyle. Again, this thematic approach to teaching is reflected in the fellowship’s resource center. Adherents can buy books on Christian approaches to parenting, family life, marriage, health and healing, devotion, revival, leadership, and ministry. There are also books on men’s and women’s spirituality, and books for children and teenagers. Books on doctrine or theology would be a rare find. Furthermore, there is no neglect of the watery or liquid analogies to remind adherents that they are part of a “wave” or “river” of revival. Several letters in Spread the Fire magazine now include endings such as “yours in the flow” and “yours, in the river.” One article headline states bluntly: “Power Conference Leaves Everyone Saturated.” The worship in the larger revival meetings also shows no sign of being less intense than it was six years ago, although the numbers of participants are also smaller. But worship continues to be central; one leader proclaims that “as we bless the Lord, his presence begins to fall.” If I may make an aside here, the study of the theology of worship is interesting at the Toronto fellowship, because the theology effectively marks out the activity of intimate worship as the primary mediator between God and humanity. Worship becomes the conduit for encounter with God; an agency and catalyst that manifests the “Ithou” relationship.5 Performative worship is therefore elevated to a high sacramental status (i.e., God is reified in this activity—not simply inferred, described, remembered, or represented). This observation is also borne out by close attention to the numerous slick aphorisms that pepper presentations. Thus, “God is looking for a reason to come to you, not a reason to leave you,” and “God is looking for a reason to bless you, not a reason to punish you” sound fairly reasonable, and to some extent comforting. But deeper reflection on the phraseology might suggest that these aphorisms create a sense of distance between God and the individual (an accidental trope), which only intimate worship can bridge. In other words, the rhetoric implies a doctrine of conditional grace, in spite of appearing to say the very reverse of this.

Adventure and Atrophy in a Charismatic Movement

165

But some aspects of the fellowship continue to produce surprises. The novelty of a “spiritual car wash”—in which the congregation passes through a “tunnel” of pastors who “spray and brush” each individual with the “anointing power of God”—is a typically innovative form of ministry that combines a theology of immediate and reified divine power with a contemporary mechanistic cultural construction of reality. Equally, some worshippers bring their own musical instruments to meetings. One evening when I was present, a woman had brought a giant ram’s horn with her, and the speaker, when he saw this, insisted that she blow it hard to announce the presence of the Lord in the “Holy of Holies.” “Let the horn proclaim Zion!” he cried, and the people joined in with whoops of delight and loud acclamations of “Amen!” and “Praise God” as the horn was blown loud and long.6 On another evening, one visiting speaker from South Africa, who appeared to be at complete liberty to address the congregation, prophesied at length in rhyming couplets, albeit in a fairly rudimentary way: Thus the Lord says, I am with you until the end of days, and though you may have striven, know that you shall be forgiven.

The slightly corny or retro language of revival that is spoken in meetings is perhaps a surprise, but speakers are probably doing no more than trying to link the present to the past. Inevitably, as the movement wanes, a tradition is being appealed to in order to sustain momentum and provide a historical repository for memories that can recontextualize the dramaturgy. There are often allusive appeals to previous Great Revivals (and their leaders, such as Smith Wigglesworth, George Whitfield, etc.), presumably in an attempt to establish a sense of historic continuity (or rapport?) for pilgrims and members. References enhance the sense of spiritual adventure for believers, underlining the requisite pioneering and tarrying identity that is so endemic within revivalism. There is also plenty of audible praying in tongues, which is encouraged and orchestrated from the stage by speakers and worship leaders alike. In the midst of the congregation, worship continues to be punctuated by individuals crying out loud sporadically, groaning or moaning loudly, and letting out involuntary yelps of agreement, occasional piercing cries of ecstasy, or offering loud interjectory words of encouragement. Many people in the congregation twitch and shake, with some appearing to have their legs regularly buckle, as though being oppressed by a great weight. Many who are prayed for fall backwards,

166

Martyn Percy

apparently slain in the Spirit. But the numbered tracks and lanes that used to filter and organize believers for this ministry have now been replaced. More ambiguous thick green lines or bands woven into the pattern of the carpet, which run in several areas of the sanctuary, now demarcate where believers should stand before they fall during times of “soaking” ministry. Here again we should note that where there was once one large area for this ministry, there is now a range of much smaller areas scattered around the sanctuary, marked out in the carpet, only a few of which are used in any one evening. But the types of people coming forward for healing ministry have altered little in six years: Caucasian, middle class, and (late) middle aged. The list of diseases and ailments cured is also a familiar canonical litany that reflects the needs of the congregation. Thus, there are “suspected cancers” said to be healed on the spot, with depression, nightmares, back pain, angina, urinary tract infections, cancer of the ovaries and colon, and persistent headaches all dealt with by Jesus, immediately. Naturally, each of these complaints is internal, usually unverifiable, and not normally linked to any social cause such as malnutrition or poverty. But to make such an observation is simply to point to the fact that the “healings” are part of the overall performative experience within the revivalist context. Their efficacy lies not in being proven, but in their power to persuade and perform within the divine dramaturgy that unfolds each day within the sanctuary. So far, these reflections suggest that the life of the Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship remains buoyant and continues to evolve, albeit centered on fewer participants who are concentrating more intensely on some of the core themes that marked out the fellowship for attention and research in the first place. But given that a process of atrophy is also underway (we have noted the declining numbers and waning influence of the fellowship), how does a charismatic movement such as the Toronto Blessing and its parent fellowship come to understand itself? How does it reconcile its belief in a global revival with a steady decrease in its own popularity? I want to suggest that part of the answer to this question lies in repositioning the romantic genre (which dominates the worldview and worship of the fellowship) and seeing romance as being derivative of a theology of adventure, which in turn can make space for atrophy.

Adventure and Atrophy According to Hopewell’s congregational studies, based on participant observation and thematic analysis and interpretation, charismatic

Adventure and Atrophy in a Charismatic Movement

167

Christians and revivalists configure their lives and meaning through a primarily romantic genre: The charismatic narrative is a more frightening and thrilling place. … souls are eternally damned in it, yet God does not fail those who trust in him. … the world in which the charismatic lives is fundamentally equivocal and dangerous, challenging the believer to seek its blessings amid the peril of evil forces and events. God’s steady providence, however, accompanies the self who launches out toward God in an exciting romantic adventure. (Hopewell 1987: 76)

The romantic worldview generally eschews mundane reality in favor of witnessing supernatural signs. It deliberately ventures into a world of uncertainty; it is the world of the “perilous journey.” But this search or spiritual quest is rewarded, for, as Hopewell points out, “the romantic journey ends in the triumph of God’s love”: “the hero becomes the home of God’s Spirit” (Hopewell 1987: 78). In a romantic worldview (i.e., a congregation’s perception of how things should or could be), the primary motif is adventure. Individually, the response to weakness is tarrying, and the resolution is empowerment. Corporately, conventionality is overcome by charism, which leads to transformation. Cosmically, perpetuity is usually addressed by signs and wonders, which will then lead to the coming of the day of the Lord. In the world of adventure, authority is discovered in the evidence of God’s immanence, the continuity of God’s providence, and the recognition of God’s blessings. Critically, a romantic worldview understands that spiritual adventure is the context in which the strength of the romantic relationship with God is discovered, tested, and refined. The heroes of romantic stories are those who persevere through trials and tribulations and who remain constant and faithful in the midst of adversity. In this respect, the underlying romantic theology of the Toronto Blessing movement depends, to some extent, on “reading” Jesus’ life as part of God’s adventure with humanity. Just as it is an adventure following Jesus, so Jesus himself is often portrayed as the protoadventurer, and as the “pioneer of faith.” In talking to individuals at the Toronto fellowship, and in listening to speakers and their talks and sermons, one is continually struck by the emphasis on blessing—those who receive it are those who venture beyond conventionality. Furthermore, the adventure to acquire blessing only becomes possible when one has been preempowered and equipped with some kind of anointing, divine charge, or what some describe as being filled with “the liquid love of God.” In a Christian community that mainly configures its life through the romantic genre, there is a close relationship between ethos and worldview. The ethos of a place is the palpable experience and tone

168

Martyn Percy

of a place—the very character of the culture that is encountered. A worldview, in contrast, is a philosophy of life that indicates how the world could or should be. In the romantic genre, ecclesial reality, no matter how imperfect, is normally regarded as a significant foretaste of what is to come; heaven is already partly revealed. The perceived experience of divinity within the worshipping community is regarded as an aperitif; the banquet is to follow. Correspondingly, the sense of adventure that both sources and governs the romantic genre tends to take on elements of dramaturgy and narrativity that stress exploration and pioneering. This might sound like a mundane remark, but it is in fact crucial. Adventurers not only pass over and through boundaries— they also return to the worlds from which they claim, with new stories, fresh revelations, and novel perspectives from afar, which change the environment of their homecoming. Furthermore, an adventure is not, strictly speaking, quite like a vacation, pilgrimage, or ordinary journey. An adventure is something that happens to someone. People seldom opt to go on adventures; adventures are events, dramas and stories upon which individuals and communities are taken—it is event driven, with no obvious plot. In the course of an adventure, there is no control over the beginning or end of the drama (one can only choose to see it through, or to opt out). Furthermore, because the outcomes of adventures are seldom known, there is no point at which a conclusion can be naturally reached. Necessarily, an adventure engages its subjects; it is packed with risk and reward, uncertainty and vindication, threat and promise. As Georg Simmel suggests, adventure is “defined by its capacity to have necessity and meaning: [there] we abandon ourselves to the world with fewer defences and reserves than in any other relation.” In other words, the adventurer can be characterized as having “daring … with which [the adventurer] continually leaves the solidities of life” (Simmel in Levine 1971: 187–90). The motif of adventure, then, allows a threefold cyclical sequence of movement for believers: leaving the present life and its conventionality; encountering the new world; returning home and transforming the homeland to which one has come with the tales of the new world. But critically, the motif of adventure also begins to offer some clues as to how a charismatic movement might begin to cope with apparent atrophy.7 In the world of adventure, the romance (with God or Jesus) may remain constant, or even steadily intensify, but that does not prevent setbacks. When these occur, they only serve to test the quality of the adventurous romantic relationship, and underline its fundamental importance to the believers. So adventure allows for the negotiation of

Adventure and Atrophy in a Charismatic Movement

169

atrophy—it is only a “blip” or test in the longer, bigger divine drama. The prevalence of charismatic authority—“resting on devotion to … exceptional heroism” (Weber 1968: 24)—provides further support for the worldview. Similarly, a reappraisal of sermons at the Toronto Airport fellowship also suggests that the ideal, model Christian that is being promoted is the “Pilgrim-Adventurer.” The highs and lows of Christian living are sustained by a deep, romantic, passionate, and intense relationship with Jesus. But it is this foundation that creates the context for coping with apparent atrophy and setbacks. In a world where the horizons of possibility are shaped by the promise of adventure—including rewards—tarrying for revival is a duty and a joy. Correspondingly, the biblical archetypes of heroism that are most frequently appealed to in sermons tend to be Old Testament figures who are reconstructed as pioneers. Characters such as Abraham, Moses, Joshua, Noah, and even Jonah are represented as proto–Pilgrim Adventurers who set an example for believers today. This is intriguing, for in my original research on the Toronto Blessing in 1996, I suggested that, strictly speaking, visitors to the Toronto Airport fellowship were not really pilgrims at all, because the location of the church was immaterial to receiving the blessing. I now accept that this view needs modifying. Visitors to Toronto are unquestionably pilgrims, but not in any conventional anthropological sense. For the believers, the pilgrimage is entirely internal—a thrilling adventure that takes place within the rugged and breathtaking interior spiritual landscape of the individual, in which adversity and reward combine within the overall ecology of the broader spiritual adventure that constitutes the divine drama for each individual visitor or member. To some extent, this observation can be verified when one talks to individuals about how they now understand the term harvest. Six years ago, references to harvesting peppered many talks and sermons. The Toronto Airport fellowship launched “Partners in Harvest,” an umbrella term for other North American and Canadian churches that wanted to belong to a network that linked revivalism to evangelism. Harvest was suggestive of produce and growth, and had a clear resonance with gospel imagery and analogy. But the use of the term now seems to have evolved into a cipher for the spiritual fruits within the lives of individuals. The harvest is less “out there”—whole “fields” of potential converts, as it were—and has become something that is concerned with the growth, development, and the interiority of the individuals’ spiritual life. Of course, this means that the phenomenon of atrophy is much more difficult to assess, since growth is still always

170

Martyn Percy

being claimed, in spite of appearances to the contrary. In an interview with one member of staff, she explains to me that the cell meetings that produce the most growth are those for men or women only. When I gently press the question—“Does that mean numerical growth?”— the reply is modest and temperate: “Oh you know, growth takes many forms; like it could be spiritual growth, or growth of another kind. It could be evangelism, yes, I suppose. It depends.” The cellular structure of the Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship is something that has been with it from the beginning. This involves small groups of people meeting in specific localities for prayer, worship, and fellowship. Cell groups meet in one another’s homes on a weekly basis, for perhaps an hour or two. The numbers involved in cell groups are perhaps the best indication of the present size of the Toronto fellowship; by their own estimation there are 150 groups with perhaps one thousand members. There are cell groups for families, young adults, men, women, and couples. The fellowship believes that the most popular cell groups are single sex. The advocacy of the cell structure is not unusual in a North American church context, but its promotion at the Toronto fellowship tells us something about its direction and development, namely, that it is leaving its “movement” identity behind and on the way to becoming a church. Being a committed member of the fellowship is now constituted through belonging to a cell. This also helps the fellowship differentiate between members and attendees; the leadership’s estimates are that there are about two thousand regularly coming to meetings, but core membership is around one thousand—a noticeable reduction in numbers from the figures I collected in 1996. Naturally, the fellowship does not see this picture in terms of atrophy or decline. The language of harvest and the “Pilgrim-Adventurer” worldview ensures that any notion of fallowness is only read as part of an overall narrative of growth. Thus, one of the noticeable changes from six years ago is the more intense concentration on youth work. There are about 250 children in the youth program, approximately 100 teenagers, and around 50 in the ‘young adult’ category (twenty–thirty). Part of the main sanctuary has been partitioned to create a giant walkin Noah’s Ark, in which some of the youth ministry can take place. For older youths, it is also interesting to note that the Toronto fellowship now practices “Christian Bar Mitzvah” with its children, in which the passage from childhood to adulthood is marked with a ceremony of blessing (by pastors and parents), which also includes walking across a makeshift bridge as part of the symbolic ritual. Here again, there is a ritual of pioneering and journeying to complement the movement to

Adventure and Atrophy in a Charismatic Movement

171

childhood to adulthood. The ritual creates a sense of freedom fused with security: a safe journey in life—with the Lord. What the new focus on youth and children’s work indicates is that the adults who have settled in the church are now raising the next generation of revivalists: routinization is settling in, and the fellowship is moving quickly away from a movement identity into an ecclesial one. Six years ago there was little youth work to speak of; now it is essential to ensure the future of the fellowship through organic growth, as it seems not to be occurring in other ways that are numerically significant (i.e., evangelism). But the new rituals, and the character they foster, seem to inculcate the youth into the Pilgrim-Adventurer and pioneering identity that so intensely flavors the Toronto fellowship. It is here that they learn that the true meaning of being a pioneer—they are both travelers and settlers, doing something wholly new, yet totally familiar.

Summary The apparent atrophy of a charismatic movement—in this case the Toronto Blessing—is indeed a complex phenomenon. For adherents within the movement, the decrease in numbers attending the fellowship and the overall waning influence of the movement as a whole, means little. Thus, a conversation with an administrator at the fellowship reveals that they “are cutting back on [staff] numbers at the moment, because we don’t want to be, like, well you know, top heavy.”8 But this is not interpreted as being indicative of decline. The PilgrimAdventurer travels lightly. There is no real narrative of deterioration in the romantic adventure—only temporary setbacks and the embracing of leanness, so travel may be swifter and more reflexive. Romantics are incurably positive and optimistic about their future: in the arena of adventure, the faithful pilgrim always prevails. In such a worldview, there are times of abundant harvest to look back on and cherish, and there are times to look forward to when the harvest will be plentiful again. Living between the lands of sowing and reaping (to borrow a well-worn phrase from Pentecostalism) only serves to consolidate the identity of the fellowship, and invites the faithful to cease traveling (for the time being), and begin settling. Indeed, such consolidation may turn out to be the Promised Land—the harvest of plenty that was promised.9 So strictly speaking, adherents would regard any apparent routinization as merely temporary, since the culture of revivalism requires believers to be ready, at any point, to become restless pilgrims and

172

Martyn Percy

adventurers once more. Meanwhile, the fellowship dwells within that unique hinterland of adventure and security; being neither a church nor a movement, but as a fellowship (settled, yet reflexive, etc.), they know that their time will come again. Adherents have no need of theories of cognitive dissonance to explain themselves (they do not, in any case, really apply here), nor do they perceive themselves to be in decline. In the mind’s eye of the faithful, God is “doing a new thing” each day, and the temporary lull in revivalist intensity is simply regarded as a period of waiting, during which time the Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship continues to hone and intensify its distinctively passionate grammar of assent and quasi-erotic spirituality. We might reflect further on this, for a moment, and perhaps recognize that the Toronto Blessing, like so many movements within the church, is a product of enculturation. The inward turn to the therapeutic is unremarkable in this respect, as is the emphasis on personal healing and individual fulfillment. Yet that is not the end of the story. For the Toronto Blessing also represents a decidedly feminine turn (as distinct from feminist). The concentration on the sensate and emotionally engaged Christ, who has feelings and empathy for the emotional conditions of individuals in the congregations gathered, represents a new romantic turn. Granted, the worship songs that create the appropriate grammar of assent are penned and mostly performed by men—but they characteristically indulge what many would regard as a feminine aspect of human identity. Added to which, we should note that the Toronto Blessing, including the opening up of the pastorate to women in the affiliated fellowships, occurred at a time when many other mainstream denominations were debating the ordination of women. And like the Toronto Blessing, the outcome for women in churches—in terms of equality and empowerment—has been mixed and partial. The feminine turn in the Toronto Blessing leads to the elevation of private spirituality and its celebration collectively—but does not necessarily lead to more women leaders. Further afield, we should note that the Vineyard movement as a whole (the parent church for the Toronto fellowship) has found it difficult to sustain growth and maintain identity in the wake of the death their founder and patron, John Wimber, in 1997. Under Wimber’s leadership, Vineyard fellowships were bound together by a concept of “kinship” and an understanding of their leader’s charismatic and apostolic authority. This meant that the fellowships enjoyed a degree of homogeneity in their praxis; there was, in effect, a distinct “Vineyard style” that marked out the fellowships from other types of charismatic renewal and contemporary revivalism. Indeed, one of Wimber’s lega-

Adventure and Atrophy in a Charismatic Movement

173

cies to the Association of Vineyard Churches was the proscribing of ten “vital signs” that provided a “genetic code” for all Vineyard churches. But in the space of five years, much of this has changed. Privately, a number of the Vineyard leadership now acknowledge that three key divisions have emerged within the Vineyard movement. Some churches have attempted to return to the “original recipe” that first made the reputation of Wimber and his churches, namely, a concentration on “power evangelism” and “power healing.” A second stream has developed an ethos that is close to that of “Seeker Churches.”10 A third stream has seen some pastors adopting a more liturgical and sacramental tone in their fellowships or churches. Some pastors now robe for worship, and the Eucharist has become the central rite for the congregation. There are now women pastors too—something Wimber would not have permitted. Where there was once homogeneity, there is now considerable diversity in liturgical style and theological substance: the Vineyard movement is losing its coherence, and becoming a broad-based (but small) denomination. At the same time, a degree of routinization is already apparent in those Vineyard churches that are faithful their past. A survey of some British Vineyard fellowships reveals that worship now follows a set pattern or recipe: worship, offertory, weekly announcements, teaching, more worship, ministry, before ending with coffee and donuts.11 At the same time, many evangelical churches of various denominational persuasions have adopted aspects of Vineyard praxis—in effect, giving themselves a Vineyard “make-over”—but have nonetheless remained true to and within their denominations. This has ensured further diversity for revivalism, and also ironically blunts the impact of various charismatic movements. In effect, mainstream churches feel free to adopt those traits and teachings that they find congenial from within the world of revivalism, but they do not actually transfer their allegiance to that world. In other words, they treat the revivalism as a collation of resources from which they can pick and choose, and also discard, as they seek to maintain and renew their own traditions. Put another way, their Jerusalem—the Golden City of Revivalism—is simply not being built; the disparate offerings of revivalism are instead being spread out thinly among the many-tented plains of denominationalism. The contemporary revivalist movement is becoming a widely dispersed resource, rather than a concentrated settlement of believers that might rival mainline denominations (see Hunt 1995: 257–72; Hunt, Hamilton, and Walter 1997). The implications of all this for charismatic renewal, for the future of the Toronto Blessing movement and for Vineyard churches are by

174

Martyn Percy

no means easy to predict. Clearly, the primary motif of the PilgrimAdventurer, although peculiarly intense in Toronto, might be said to have emerged as a major interpretative key for charismatic renewal more generally within this study. Hermeneutically, we can now see that the notion of the Pilgrim-Adventurer provides a viable narrative and worldview, through which charismatic Christians can construct and reconstruct their identity in the midst of change and decline, as much as in growth. While careful limits would have to be placed upon the pioneering identity, it should be clear that the major contribution made by the Toronto Blessing movement to charismatic renewal is not the exotic miracles and the spiritual epiphenomena so much as the confirmation and consolidation of the identity of charismatic Christianity as faith for those who seek to venture beyond conventionality. Understood like this, the evolution of the Pilgrim-Adventurer in charismatic renewal can be read as a romantic and conservative movement that is morphologically similar to some of the radicalism that broke out of liberal Christianity in the 1960s and 1970s. Both now share a sense of purpose that stresses moving on, breaking existing paradigms, and thereby renewing the tradition. But the question marks that hang over such movements remain stubbornly simple. How can the identity of revolutionary, radical, renewing movement be maintained if it subsequently becomes mainstream? How can a movement ever become settled, and thereby consolidate itself? I suspect, at least in this case, that it can’t. Charismatic renewal, like the Toronto Blessing itself, is destined to wander. The faith of the Pilgrim-Adventurer demands movement, not security, which is both its strength and weakness. In my final twenty-four hours at the fellowship, I listened intently to a talk given in the morning by a woman who told her small congregation (perhaps forty people), that she thought “Jesus really wanted us all to just rest at the moment.” “We were battle-weary,” she added, “and Jesus was longing to just let us rest with him, soak in his presence, and be still.” We were, in effect, being offered a cipher for the temporary hibernation of revivalism. In the romantic worldview, a period of rest for the warrior bride or pilgrim adventurer is naturally only a precursor to a new quest, or perhaps even a fresh battle. As the time of ministry began (more carpet time, soaking, and marinating in the Spirit), several women simply stretched out on the floor and relaxed. They were resting with Jesus: being still in the presence of God. Ultimately, this quiet hibernation of a small but influential branch of revivalism cannot be surprising; this is the reality of its organic but temporary atrophy. As the writer of Ecclesiastes reminds us, there is a time to rest, and a time to wake and rise. And after all the feverish and

Adventure and Atrophy in a Charismatic Movement

175

intense activity of the Toronto Blessing movement at its absolute peak, worshippers were now being quietly encouraged to embrace a period of passivity, punctuated only by the stirrings of our romantic-passionate and personal relationship with Jesus. And as I tried to slip out of the main sanctuary meeting that same night, where the prayer and praise had been as exuberant as ever, lasting for more than four hours, a woman seated on the ground near the doorway beckoned me over. “You look tired,” she said. “I am,” I replied. “We’re all tired,” she added, “and I feel the Lord is just using me to tell you that what you need to do is go home and rest. I think the Lord is telling me to tell you that. It’s a word of encouragement for you. We all need rest—we all need to rest with Jesus. He’ll take good care of us.” I nodded in agreement. Every good adventure story ends with a well-deserved rest for the hero and reader alike. The Pilgrim-Adventurers were now having their respite, for the time being, at least. Perhaps it is still too early to close the story, and utter the words, The End. Notes 1. Ironically, and according to the late John Wimber, a founding member of the Vineyard Church, the seminal moment in the formation of Vineyard ministry, the parent movement for the Toronto Blessing, is traced to Mother’s Day, 1980. 2. Information source: leaflets on display at the Toronto Airport Fellowship. 3. Visitor figures are hard to procure. The Fellowship claimed—with some justice—that up to two million had visited between 1994 and 2000. The visitor figures are now harder to calculate, as the fellowship runs so many commercial conferences that delegates are indistinguishable from pilgrims. My own estimation is that the combined numbers of delegates and pilgrims visiting annually is 50,000–75,000. 4. Although on one morning I went, there were ten people only, and the time of fellowship consisted of watching a video of an old revival meeting on a wide video screen. 5. Thus, a typical sermon from a visiting speaker argues that God appears in glory, and therefore the task of the worshipping community is to produce the glory so that God will appear. If the glory is created by the congregation, or in the heavenly realm by angels, God can appear; but it is a quality of worship that is deemed to produce glory, which is regarded as the necessary context for God’s presence to be manifest. 6. The Toronto fellowship exhibits an intense interest in Israel as the fulfilment of God’s purposes “as we near the end times.” Many of the talks elide the identity of Israel with the pioneering spirit of the fellowship. In sermons, the Old Testament appears to be more of a resource than the New Testament. 7. I say “apparent atrophy,” but it is, in reality, undeniable. The sanctuary area had been almost full each night when I visited in 1996. That same area has now been skilfully partitioned such that the size of the area has been reduced

176

8.

9.

10.

11.

Martyn Percy

by about two-thirds, and this area itself is only two-thirds full each night. The area underneath the mezzanine that was used for ministry is now walled up and used for seminars and offices. A “chill-out” zone for ministry that was available in 1996 is now fully partitioned off for children’s ministry—a giant wooden walk-in Noah’s Ark. The overall effect is to create a smaller, more intimate space—but for far fewer people. Evening meetings attract about 300–400 people, and morning meetings only about 50, and sometimes a lot fewer. This is a significant reduction from 1996. Source: interview, November 2002. Staff numbers are difficult to calculate, as some are paid, some voluntary, and some part-time in both categories. There may be as many as 150 staff spread across all areas of work, including the School of Ministry and international development. In conversations with other members of Vineyard churches and those who have left the Toronto movement altogether but remained within charismatic renewal, these motifs seem to persist: a new journey is underway—a new adventure with God. There is an irony here. Those who leave the movement do not necessarily regard it as having failed. Rather, they see their identity and purpose as being continually restructured within a romantic worldview, in which all journeys and pilgrimages are ultimately ascribed some worth. Seeker churches exist in various forms throughout North America in a variety of denominational guises, although they are predominantly evangelical and charismatic in ethos. Bill Hybels, pastor of Willow Creek Church in South Barrington, Chicago, is widely regarded as their pioneer. Seeker churches deliberately set out to remove all “churchy” barriers that might prevent people from attending or joining churches. Thus, at the Willow Creek church itself, there are no robed ministers, no hymn books, no altar, nor obvious Christian symbolism. The church services, as such, resemble accessible magazine-style TV chat shows—interviews, features, staged discussions or seminars, and perhaps some drama. The church attracts inquirers and committed members and aims to cultivate patterns of a Christian lifestyle that resonate with contemporary culture. Source: Bristol Vineyard, UK—weekly notice sheet, October 2001.

References Ammerman, Nancy. 1997. Congregation and Community. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Ammerman, Nancy, Jackson Carroll, Carl Dudley, and William McKinney. 1998. Studying Congregations. Nashville: Abingdon. Atkinson, Paul. 1990. The Ethnographic Imagination: Textual Constructions of Reality. New York: Routledge. Bramadat, Paul. 2000. The Church on the World’s Turf. New York: Oxford University Press. Burgess, Robert. 1984. In the Field: An introduction to Field Research. New York: Routledge. Chevreau, Guy. 1994. Catch the Fire. London: HarperCollins.

Adventure and Atrophy in a Charismatic Movement

177

Cox, Harvey. 1994. Fire From Heaven. New York: Addison-Wesley. Dempsey, Corinne. 2002. “The Religioning of Anthropology: New Directions of the Ethnographer-Pilgrim.” Culture and Religion 1 (2): 189–210. Dey, Ian. 1993. Qualitative Data Analysis: A User-Friendly Guide for Social Scientists. New York: Routledge. Dorsey, Gary. 1995. Congregation: The Journey Back to Church. New York: Viking. Eiesland, Nancy. 1998. A Particular Place. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Festinger, Leon. 1957. A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Geertz, Clifford. 1973. The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books. ———. 1983. Local Knowledge. New York: Basic Books. Hammersley, Martyn, and Paul Atkinson. 1995. Ethnography; Principles in Practice, 2nd edition. New York: Routledge. Healy, Nicholas. 2000. Church, World and Christian Life: Practical-Prophetic Ecclesiology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Heather, Noel. 2002. “Modern Believing and Postmodern Reading.” Modern Believing 43 (1): 28–38. Hilborn, David, ed. 2001. Toronto in Perspective. Carlisle: Paternoster. Hopewell, James. 1987. Congregation: Stories and Structure. Philadelphia: Fortress Press. Hunt, Stephen. 1995. “The Toronto Blessing—A Rumour of Angels?” Journal of Contemporary Religion 10 (3): 257–72. ———. 2000. Anyone for Alpha? London: Darton, Longman and Todd. Hunt, Stephen, Malcolm Hamilton, and Tony Walter. 1997. Charismatic Christianity: Sociological Perspectives. London: Macmillan. Kelley, Dean. 1972/1986. Why Conservative Churches are Growing. New York: HarperCollins. Levine, Donal, ed. 1971. Georg Simmel: Selected Writings on Individual and Social Forms. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 187–90. Maykut, Pamela, and Richard Morehouse. 1994. Beginning Qualitative Research: A Philosophic and Practical Guide. Abingdon: Falmer Press. Miller, Donald. 1997. Re-inventing American Protestantism. Berkeley: University of California Press. Mishler, Elliot. 1991. Research Interviewing: Context and Narrative. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Percy, Martyn. 1996a. Words, Wonders and Power: Understanding Contemporary Christian Fundamentalism and Revivalism. London: SPCK. ———. 1996b. The Toronto Blessing. Oxford: Latimer Studies, issue 53–54. ———. 1997. “Sweet Rapture: Subliminal Eroticism in Contemporary Charismatic Worship.” Journal of Theology and Sexuality 6: 71–106. ———. 1998. “The Morphology of Pilgrimage in the Toronto Blessing.” Religion 28 (3): 281–89. Poloma, Margaret. 1996. A Preliminary Sociological Assessment of the Toronto Blessing. Bradford-upon-Avon: Terra Nova. Richter, Philip, and Stanley Porter, eds. 1995. The Toronto Blessing—Or Is it? London: DLT.

178

Martyn Percy

Roof, Wade Clark. 1985. Community and Commitment. Philadelphia: Fortress Press. Smail, Tom, Andrew Walker, and Nigel Wright. 1995. Charismatic Renewal. London: SPCK. Tamney, Joseph. 2002. The Resilience of Conservative Religion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Walker, Andrew. 1998. Restoring the Kingdom. Guilford: Eagle. Watt, David Harrington. 2002. Bible-Carrying Christians. New York: Oxford University Press. Weber, Max. 1946. “The Social Psychology of the World Religions.: In From Max Weber, edited by H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills. New York: Oxford University Press. ———. 1968. Economy and Society, vol. 1, edited by Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich. New York: Bedminster Press. (First published in German in 1925.), Williams, Melvin. 1974. Community in a Black Pentecostal Church. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.

c6C The Ritual Use of the Bible in African Pentecostalism Paul Gifford

The use of the Bible in Africa is much studied now.1 Most are academic studies, in large measure done by African academics, trained in the West and writing for West. Regarding Pentecostal churches specifically, one hears a good deal of expository preaching, of the kind familiar in Western Reformation churches. Just as in these, much use of scripture is fairly loose; the text is a launching pad for ideas that may have a rather tenuous link back to the text. For example, Mensa Otabil in Ghana can deliver a whole sermon series loosely stemming from one text, like his “Pulling Down Strongholds” series based on 2 Corinthians 10:3–6 (Gifford 2004: 125– 32). We can note that this is common outside Africa too: Myles Munroe of the Bahamas relates his message of business efficiency to the Bible, and America’s Joyce Meyer does the same for her folksy “love yourself” messages. There is, though, a rather new development, a use of the Bible closely associated with—indeed, almost exclusively found in—faith gospel churches.2 In theory there is a distinction between Pentecostalism and the faith gospel; but, as I have argued elsewhere, in Africa this distinction is hardly relevant, because virtually all African Pentecostal churches are influenced by the faith gospel to some degree (Gifford 1998, 2004, 2009). According to the faith gospel, God has met all the needs of human beings in the suffering and death of Christ, and every Christian should now share in Christ’s victory over sin, sickness, and poverty. A believer has the right to the blessings of health and wealth won by Christ, and he or she can obtain these blessings through faith. In Africa’s new, fast-growing Pentecostal (or faith gospel) sector, the Bible is understood as a record of covenants, promises, pledges, and commitments between God and his chosen. It is not just a record of covenants and commitments to others in the past. It is not primarily 179

180

Paul Gifford

a historical document at all—it is a contemporary document; it tells of God’s promises to me. It tells my story; it explains who I am. The Bible is more authoritative on me and my future than what others, or school reports, or medical bulletins, or bank statements, or the visa section of the US embassy, might say of me. The Bible is much more authoritative about me and my destiny than my present circumstances. In the words of Wilfred Lai of Mombasa’s Jesus Celebration Centre: “The Bible is God’s Word; the Word of God is Covenant. God sealed it with his blood. If God says you are blessed you are blessed, and there’s nothing the devil can do about it.”3 The Bible is covenant and commitment to me, and to me now. This understanding has led to a distinctive use of the Bible, a performative or declarative use. This use closely exemplifies some of the speech act thinking of J. L Austin: essentially, one with appropriate authority can through his use of words effect what the words say (Austin 1975).4 Thus a judge in declaring someone innocent actually brings about their innocence. Likewise, the appropriate authority in declaring war, in pronouncing the Olympic Games open, in conferring an honorary degree, in pronouncing a couple man and wife, actually effects what is said. In the same way, God’s promises in scripture are effected in believers’ lives through proclamation by an “anointed man of God”: the blessings of Abraham, the power of Joseph, the authority of Moses, the sovereignty of David, the miracles of Elijah, and increasingly the revival and restoration of Israel itself. The exilic and postexilic prophecies of restoration (like Isaiah 60) are thus becoming the privileged texts of this Christianity, along with narratives that can be made to illustrate success. If the Old Testament furnishes most material, in the New Testament the Acts of the Apostles is a rich mine, as are some of Jesus’ miracles. (Millennialism is not a feature of this Christianity, so millennial texts like Daniel or Revelation are not prominent.) In this chapter I will consider how this covenant or these promises of scripture (promises of victory, success, hope, achievement) are effected in believers’ lives through proclamation. We can illustrate with examples under different headings, before proceeding to a few points of analysis.

Major Biblical Narratives Consider Martin Ssuna, pastor of Nairobi’s World Harvest Church, on 17 March 2006, using Joshua 3:7–17. After Joshua tells the people that God will drive out the Canaanites, the Hittites, Hivites and so on before

The Ritual Use of the Bible in African Pentecostalism

181

them, the Israelites approached the Jordan, which stopped its flow and piled up before them; the river was cut off, and the people passed over on dry land. Here Ssuna links this with a ritual of washing of the feet: You’ve stepped in disappointments, you’ve stepped in despondency, you’ve stepped in betrayal. When they stepped in the waters of the Jordan, the water parted. In other words, God transformed their feet into supernatural makers of roads. … Every office you step into, you can possess; every job you step into you can possess. Every embassy you go to, they can never deny you a visa, because your feet have been washed. You will step in right places; places where you will get benefits. You will step into an office, and they will say, “We have been waiting for you.” Order is coming to your life. I will begin to magnify you. You are going to have to stand still, because your pain has to go. The Egyptians will have to go. The Confuse-ites, the Poverty-ites, all the other-ites: Where you gonna step we gonna call it Jordan. You have walked too long, but God is going to lift you up. … [We are going to hear testimonies like] “God gave me a car,” “God gave me a better job,” “God increased my salary.” The Jordan that has been resisting you is about to split. The people resisting you are about to split. The moment you step into that water, you are a covenant child. Lord, cut off all my enemies, my problems, my poverty, everything that ever hindered me by the power of God. I move from one level to the other, one favor to another. … Heap on one side and heap on the other, I’m walking above problems, as a priest of God, I’m walking above all situations. That’s why you in World Harvest Church, the banks are about to overflow. I came to tell you today, you are on the brink of a breakthrough. Common sense would say you going to walk on, but you are not going to walk on, you are going to walk into [promotion, job, car dealership]; you want a car, they will give it to you, you walk into a bank and want money, they will give it to you. … It’s going to be tough, it’s going to be terrible [when you come up tonight for washing of the feet]. It is your right to succeed, it is your right to make it, it is your right to walk in great places. Your unproductive [life?] has been cut off right now. God is cutting off your cycle [of poverty?] as the waters of the Dead Sea [surely Jordan?] were cut off. Shout: “God, cut off for me [shouted five times] any unproductivity, failure, negativity, confusion, lack, in Jesus’ mighty name.” We have passed over. May this day be a pass-away of sickness, failure, poverty and lack, confusion and terror, generational curses and witchcraft, hindrances in your life! May you walk on [dry] ground! May you run into the favor, the anointing of God! Someone say: “I’m crossing over!” [All shout] May this day mark the end of turmoil (and all the–kites be conquered).

Apostle William Mwangangi, of Nairobi’s Jesus Manifestation Church, in a broadcast sermon on 3 January 2006, used 1 Samuel 16 about Samuel’s finding (or locating) David and anointing him:

182

Paul Gifford

This year the anointing of favor will locate you. … Jesse had many sons, but the anointing never located them. I am here to prophesy to you today, the anointing of favor will locate you. … This year whatever was [holding you back] will promote you. It’s the year of God’s favor. … Money will locate you. You have struggled for years. Today in 2006 it is the end of every struggle the enemy has put on you. It’s payback year. [Reference to restoration of what the locusts have eaten, (Joel 2:25)]. You just believe the prophetic word from God. This will be manifest in your life. Don’t ask how; that is not your [business]. … You don’t deserve a car, but because of God’s favor you will find yourself driving a Mercedes Benz. You don’t deserve to buy a bungalow, but because of God’s favor you will buy a bungalow; you don’t deserve to work in a bank, but because of God’s favor you will be working in a bank. The favor of God gives you what you don’t deserve to have.

Note that this is very different from usage in mainline and evangelical churches, where the Bible may be only occasionally referred to; here the whole sermon is a ritualized working of the text itself, picking up key words, and playing on them constantly, declaring them fulfilled.

Prophetic Texts Second, not only narratives but major prophetic themes are expounded in this way. In services throughout 2006, it was quite common in Nairobi’s Winners’ Chapel in to read Isaiah 60 antiphonally5: Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you. For behold, darkness shall cover the earth and thick darkness the peoples; but the Lord will arise upon you, and his glory will be seen upon you. And nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your rising. … Then you shall see and be radiant, your heart shall thrill and rejoice; because the abundance of the sea shall be turned to you, the wealth of the nations shall come to you. A multitude of camels shall cover you, the young camels of Midian and Ephah; all those from Sheba shall come. They shall bring gold and frankincense, and shall proclaim the praise of the Lord. All the flocks of Kedar shall be gathered to you, the rams of Nebaioth shall minister to you; they shall come up with acceptance on my altar, and I will glorify my glorious house. …

The Ritual Use of the Bible in African Pentecostalism

183

For the coastlands shall wait for me, the ships of Tarshish first, to bring your sons from far, their silver and gold with them, for the name of the Lord your God and for the Holy One of Israel, because he has glorified you. … Your gates shall be open continually; day and night they shall not be shut; that men may bring to you the wealth of the nations, with their kings led in procession. For the nation and kingdom that will not serve you shall perish; those nations shall be utterly laid waste. The Glory of Lebanon shall come to you, the cypress, the plane and the pine, to beautify the place of my sanctuary; and I will make the place of my feet glorious. The sons of those who oppressed you shall come bending low to you; and all who despised you shall bow down at your feet. … Whereas you have been forsaken and hated, with no one passing through, I will make you majestic forever, a joy from age to age. … Instead of bronze, I will bring gold, and instead of iron, I will bring silver. Instead of wood, bronze, instead of stones, iron [and so on].

Here the prophecy of Isaiah is not understood as a historical document, promising blessing to Israel in captivity in Babylon in the sixth century BCE. Perhaps few at Winners’ know that the Israelites were ever in exile. Nor is anyone concerned about issues of source criticism, identifying the section within the book of Isaiah from which this excerpt is taken. No, this is a promise addressed to the people of Africa; the promised blessings are theirs—and note just how material these blessings are. The ritualized reading is presumed to actualize them in their lives.

New Testament Narratives Third, although this usage is found more in treating Old Testament narratives, we meet it also in the New Testament narratives, including narratives about Jesus. Consider Martin Ssuna again, preaching on 24 January 2006 on Luke 6:8, where Jesus tells the man with a withered hand to stand up, and heals him: Jesus is coming right now. Tonight Jesus is saying stand on your feet. Jesus said, “What are you doing, drunkard, jobless, murderer” … And Jesus said, “Get up!” Jesus said, “I’ve got power, authority—get up!” Jesus is saying to someone: “Get up!” Get up! You have been down, a nobody. Somebody shout, “Get up!” Shout ‘”Up! Up! Up!” [by now

184

Paul Gifford

the whole congregation is shouting] Whoever told you you are down, supposed to die, have HIV, cancer … Jesus said: “Get up!” Lift your hands: “I’m up!” Jesus said: “Get up!” Get up from rape, child abuse. … he’s calling your house, your business: “Get up!” Are you ready? Your anointing, your favor, your breakthrough is coming! Your husband, wife, uncle has left you: I can hear Jesus saying: “Get up!” Devil, I have strength, power to get up, walk and go home. Shout, “Yes!” Say, “Lord, I am up right now. Lord, every favor you have for me, I’m ready.” Receive promotion, favor, prosperity. [by now all the congregation are screaming]

Pius Muiru, founder of Kenya’s Maximum Miracle Centre, deals with the narrative of Jesus meeting Bartimaeus (Mk 10:46–52) in which Bartimaeus called to Jesus, Jesus came to a standstill, and others rebuked Bartimaeus, but he found a path to Jesus: I prophesy to you that before two months are over from now, everything will come to a standstill because of you. Some things must come to a standstill in your life until God will give you your miracle. You can no longer be ignored. … When Jesus called for Bartimaeus, those that rebuked him helped the blind man to stand up and to clear the way for him. I want you to know that those who are unnecessarily rebuking you and despising you will be same people that God will use to usher you into your place of lifting [sic]. They will make the pathway to your miracle clear. They will see you pass them as you reach out to the miracle awaiting you. There is an anointing in you to overtake those that have been looking down on you. Activate it now! Bartimaeus passed the people that had initially rebuked him as he went to Jesus; he made them see his back! I prophesy to you that this year will not be over before the devil sees your back. For when the devil sees your face, it means that your life has taken a beating by the issues of life and therefore you are frustrated. I send a prophetic word to your house that the enemy will not overcome you. I also send a word to your body that diseases will not put you down. Instead, you will conquer them. … Bartimaeus saw again; he received his miracle. You too will see again from that difficult situation that has blinded your progress in life. Your business will see again. What has been robbing your peace has come to an abrupt end; you are not a victim of the devil anymore! (Muiru 2006b: 10–11)

Here is Pius Muiru again, on 18 February 2006, on the story in Acts 12, in which Peter is miraculously led by an angel from prison. The angel disappeared; Peter thought it was a vision, but it was reality. Peter knocked on the door of the Christians; despite the noise, a girl named Rhoda heard, and opened: Somebody’s agony is over this morning. … There is an anointing this morning to lead you out of your prison situation. … The Angel of

The Ritual Use of the Bible in African Pentecostalism

185

the Lord leading the way—the angel will lead your way, to rightful spouse, job, ministry, calling. The angel disappears. Peter knew it was not a vision, but a reality. It is a reality that you are cured of HIV, it is a reality that you are cured of alcoholism, it is reality that there is no more dialysis, it is a reality that opened your connection with the government of the day, it is a reality that those fighting you are [doing so] no longer. There were people praying. Rhoda came. Never again shall you knock at the door and fail to get someone. Never again will you knock at the door and the door will remain shut. From this day on, whenever you shall knock, it shall be opened. From this day on, whenever you shall knock, that door will be opened. The Lord will hear. It doesn’t matter the level of joblessness, it doesn’t matter the level of political acrimony. As Peter was knocking, Rhoda heard. The Lord says he will cause people to open to you. I speak [declare this]! From this day forward, every door, he will cause it to be opening. The Lord is bringing you to another dispensation. I don’t care the demonic noise around. God will cause someone to hear. … It is time to take the Word of God for real. Peter knocked at the door, and someone heard. Whenever you are knocking, God will cause someone to hear. It was 3 A.M. I heard the Lord saying to you, it’s time to arise; it’s time to knock. I heard the Lord saying, I will cause men and women, governments and politicians, bishops and politicians, the mighty of the land, to open for you. The door will open!6

Less-Obvious Texts Four, not only are major narratives and themes that might be thought to lend themselves to this treatment used; quite obscure texts or snippets can also be pressed into service. Consider Bishop Margaret Wanjiru of Nairobi’s Jesus is Alive Ministries on Ezekiel 47:7–8: “I saw upon the bank of the river very many trees on the one side and on the other. And [the Lord] said to me, ‘This water flows toward the eastern region and … when it enters the stagnant waters of the sea, the water will become fresh’.” Bishop Margaret shouts: Many trees on one side and on the other! [All repeat twice]. Friends, [some say] “We have rest on one side, but still have battles on the other side.” But God told me to tell you there will be rest, there will be increase [all the way round]. This is the time that Christianity is getting sweeter. There will be rest in marriage, there will be rest in business, there will be rest in church, there will be rest in finances, rest in work and play! All the way round, abundance on this side and on that side [three times]: children, life, church, everywhere! Somebody shout: “It is happening!” Peace on this side, and on that side! Victory on this side, and on that side! Abundance on this side, and on that side! I know it is sometimes preached: “But on one side we will

186

Paul Gifford

have demons.” [However,] I hear God saying: “I have decided to bless my people.” Lift up those hands and magnify him. He has decided to establish us on this side and on that side! [shouted five times] [She continues with Ezekiel 47:9: “Wherever the river flows, every sort of living creature that can multiply shall live, and there shall be abundant fish, for wherever this water comes the sea shall be made fresh”]. Everything shall live! So why did you say your marriage died, or your business died? Nothing shall die this season. Fish! What does fish represent? … Fish represents provision. Let there be fish! No, you missed it. Let there be fish [twice; congregation now shouting “Yes!”] Are we reading from the same Bible? Some of you are getting this revelation. There will be a great abundance of fish, says the Bible. According to God’s Word, let there be great abundance of fish. Now you can say “Amen!” If the Bible says “great number,” will I be satisfied with one fish? If he says “salary” [will I be satisfied with an ordinary salary? If he says “finance,” will I be satisfied with normal finances?] Not one coin, but a great number. If he brings you a great lot, eat one for yourself, and bring us the rest. [She ends the whole sermon with] Tell your neighbor, “I release the waters to come into your life!”

In the same way I have heard elaborate sermons on such obiter dicta as “to the other side” (Mk 5:1, 5:12, 8:13), with the insistence that “you are crossing to the other side,” as Pius Muiru, preaching on 19 November 2005 on Mark 3:7–9 (which tells of people coming to Jesus from seven places), told his congregation that troubles coming from seven directions (which he spelled out) would never crush them.

Biblical Composites Fifth, often a raft of biblical motifs are run together and all ritually applied to the congregation in this way. Consider Bishop Margaret’s sermon at her October 2005 conference: Today you are out of the iron furnace, and it cannot hold whatsoever is called by your names. It cannot hold your business, and neither can it hold your career, marriage, children, education, or any other thing that belongs to you … because you are out of bondage. … All the people that we love and are called by our names, coupled with our finances, are out of the bondage of the fiery furnace. Poverty is destroyed, bankruptcy and destruction is gone—for we are out of the iron furnace. … We loose the inheritance of our businesses, the finances, the favor that we need and all the inheritance of our bank accounts—for the Bible declares that what we loose on earth is loosed in heaven, and what we bind on earth too, is in turn bound in heaven. Every blessing that is our inheritance this day, we receive it. … the wicked have no authority over our lives. They have no authority to

The Ritual Use of the Bible in African Pentecostalism

187

touch our inheritance. … all the Dagons have no power, for the presence of the Almighty God is in our lives this day! We bruise the head of the serpent this day, and crush the enemies of our destinies under our feet—to ashes! … We loose our blessings and our money from the west, the east, the south and the north! We bind the Prince of the Air, the Jezebellic Spirit and the Queen of Heaven—and the Queen of the Sea. We cut them off from our lives, out of our finances, abundance and every blessing that belongs to us. … We command our heavens to open and declare an overflow of the blessings of God upon our lives. Let the rock of Moses gush out waters that will be more than enough for us; an overflow upon our lives. For every business that belongs unto the children of God, we call forth the customers and the clients that belong to those businesses. We call forth favor so that these clients and customers will be satisfied with the services, through the anointing that we are putting in those businesses. … We shall run and not be weary: and we shall soar up like an eagle, because our health has been touched by God’s mighty hand. … As God glorifies Himself today, he will give us our inheritance as the Abrahamic seed, in the name of Jesus Christ. Our inheritance has come to our bosom! Today is our day of inheritance! If there is anything you and I have been trying to pursue in vain, God is going to ensure that whosoever has them will bring them unto us!

This passage includes references to at least Daniel, Matthew, 1 Samuel, Genesis, Kings, Ephesians, Jeremiah, Exodus, and Isaiah. All are indiscriminately run together, considered to apply to the hearers, and declared fulfilled.

Significance There are various comments one can make about this performative and declarative use of the Bible. First, it is obvious how misleading it is to call this flourishing Christianity in Africa “fundamentalist.” This is a totally different enterprise, much of which is missed with a label devised for another strain of Christianity altogether. Of course the participants in this Pentecostal explosion would presume the Bible is inerrant, but in what it promises for me, not in what it claims about history or science. This performative approach to the Bible is not anticritical or even precritical—the historical approach to the Bible simply does not arise.

Status of Pastor Second, in this whole sector of Pentecostalism, this usage elevates the preacher or pastor to an entirely new level. In the words of Wilfred

188

Paul Gifford

Lai on 28 May 2006: “I am your Moses. God has sent me to deliver you from everything that has been binding you.” A church thus comes to turn upon its leaders’ “prophetic declaration” or “prophetic word.” These preachers are the contemporary equivalent of an Old Testament prophet. The roots of this phenomenon probably lie in Ezekiel 37:4–5, where the Lord commands the prophet to “prophesy to these dry bones … and they shall live.” According to this performative usage, scripture is not self-authenticating or self-actualizing. It is the anointed prophet of God who must actualize the biblical promise in your life. In many cases the impression (the very un-Protestant impression) is given that the Bible is the preserve of anointed preachers who can effect it by reason of their gifts. Thus this is one more sign of the nonegalitarian trajectory of so many of these churches. They are becoming increasingly personalized. The pastor in these churches is perhaps best understood as an “Effecter of Scripture,” presenting himself (and often his wife) as the exemplar of scriptural blessing, and someone you need if you are to realize the scriptural promises in a similar way. The obverse side of this declarative or performative ritual is the testimony, in which the recipient of the promise witnesses that the scriptures have indeed been actualized in him or her. This additional ritual is an essential part of this Christianity, and most Pentecostal churches include testimonies in their services, anything from a few to twenty. These testimonies do not center on deliverance from sin and vice; increasingly they are about the powerful anointing of the preacher through which the blessing has eventuated. This is the case, for example, in almost all of the testimonies at Winners’ Chapel (Gifford 2004: 50–51; Gifford 2009: 121–25).

Biblicized Style Third, this use of the Bible is increasingly allied to a rhetorical, dramatic, histrionic, participative style. Winners’ Chapel is the perfect example of this. All their preachers that I have heard adopted a florid, orotund repetitive style, very participative and a big secret of their appeal. In fact, this style becomes the crucial factor, remaining biblical in tone while soaring clear of the text itself. Consider some of the declarative statements of Pius Muiru at his September 2006 crusade at Nairobi’s Uhuru Park: You will be a lender, not a beggar. This is God’s promise to you if you keenly obey his commandments. Through the anointing oil, God is going to change your status once and for all. Where you were seen as a financial bother, people will now run to you for financial help. Get

The Ritual Use of the Bible in African Pentecostalism

189

ready! You will not fall a victim but [instead be] a victor. Satan and circumstances have put you on the run for long. From your contact with this prophetic word, I see you become the pursuer and not the pursued. You will punish everything that has afflicted you in the past. The blessings of God shall be permanent and they shall always be retained in your family, through the name of Jesus Christ. Yes, God is ushering you into a permanent place of His blessings. Enough of oscillating between poverty and prosperity. From this day, God has permanently changed your status. You are blessed! … International doors shall open up for you. You will soon travel abroad. You’ve only been a local name. Nobody knows you beyond your immediate neighborhood, but soon your name will be mentioned in high places. Doors that have in the past remained adamantly shut are now opening on their own accord. Walk into them now. Ease is your portion from this hour! Scholarships shall be attained. I see a big banner inscribed “scholarship.” God is releasing scholarships to his people right now. Receive yours by faith right now! Exams shall be passed extraordinarily all over the country. A divine enablement is being released upon application of this anointing oil. God is set to surprise every parent who hears this with an unusual performance of his child in KCSE [Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education]. Your family shall not be prone to the deadly HIV infection. A divine cover is being released right now. God is hiding His own under His wings, and as the scourge spreads, you and your family will be exempted. Your family shall not be a victim of jailment [sic] both locally and internationally. Your freedom is established via this prophetic word and the power-packed anointing oil. The yoke of serving jail terms for you and your people is removed in Jesus’ name. The blood of Jesus shall ensure that you will get more and better things than what you’ve lost. The future shall and will be better than your past. God is ushering you into a new realm with brand-new experience and encounters. The anointing opens to you your palace, just in the same manner it would do for the anointed Bible-days kings. There shall be a revival of your dead business. This day marks your day of resurrection. Your business will burst forth in increase. From this hour expect a head-on collision with your financial explosion. God will do this for you. (reprinted in Muiru 2006b: 6–7)

In Nairobi in 2006, every Winners’ service had all present confessing founder Oyedepo’s prophetic word for 2006, a year labeled “Our Season of Laughter.” A pastor read the following, with the congregation shouting “Amen” at the end of every sentence: “In 2006, everything that shall make your laughter complete and total shall be added unto you. The desires of everyone’s heart shall be delivered. Every trial shall be turned to testimonies. Every struggle shall be turned to miracles. Every form of barrenness shall be turned to fruitfulness. Every frustration shall be turned to celebration. Every humiliation shall be turned

190

Paul Gifford

into honor. Every shame shall be turned to glory. And every curse shall be turned into blessings.” Oyedepo’s prophetic focus for 2007 was “From Glory to Glory” (2 Cor 3:18). The preacher declared: Our God is an ever forward-leading God. God said to Moses, “Speak to the children of Israel that they go forward.” [Ex 14:15] God also, speaking in another verse of scripture, said, “I am the Lord, I change not.” [Mal 3:6] … God is saying about his family, “Arise ye and depart for this is not your rest.” [Mic 2:10] God is also saying to us, “You have gone around this mountain long enough.” [Deut 2:3] This implies it’s time to reach out to the next level of exploits and consequently the next level of glory. … God is saying in 2007, I am bringing you out of every shame and reproach into realms of glory you had never thought possible in your lifetime. That for your shame you shall have double. That it shall be a year of supernatural restoration of his glory in all areas of our lives. Yea, it shall happen suddenly like most supernatural acts of God in scripture. It shall come like a dream of the night. … God is saying to all of us in the Winners’ family that the year 2007 is a year of going forward. That we shall be moving from whatever level we are now to the next. That it shall be your year of restoration of color. That it shall be your year of restoration of beauty. That it shall be your year of restoration of dignity. That it shall be your year of restoration of glory. … You are emerging more than a conqueror in all areas of your life this year. The news of your triumphs shall hit the headlines in the course of the year 2007. Therefore arise and shine for your light has finally come.

Bridge to Other Rituals Fourth, there is evidence of this ritual use of scripture being linked with and leading to related rituals, which is all the more surprising because it has been traditionally assumed that Pentecostalism and ritual are mutually exclusive. Pius Muiru, for example, has a most imaginative range of rituals. He conducted a “Land Ownership and Cleansing Crusade” at Uhuru Park in November 2006. He used Deuteronomy 7:1–7, in which God promised the children of Israel that he would drive away seven mighty nations before them so they could possess the promised land flowing with abundance. In the same way, Muiru declared, God would drive away all the wrong people standing in the way of land possession. He listed hindrances to land acquisition: poverty, regressive cultural practices (like prohibitions about women’s inheritance), ignorance, generational curses, land disputes, lack of deeds, and so forth. He then called up eighteen people owning seven acres and above, and

The Ritual Use of the Bible in African Pentecostalism

191

prophetically told them to pour some soil onto the ground, symbolizing the freedom to acquire and own land. “In the name of Jesus,” he loosed all the chains that bound “the children of God” from acquiring land, and then distributed to all present thousands of small paper bags of sanctified soil to take home and pour on their land and any land that they intended to buy (Muiru 2006b: 12–13). To begin 2006 (which he had declared “The Year of Implementation”), Muiru asked all to come dressed in green and white to his “Prophetic Crusade” at Nairobi’s Uhuru Park, where he had laid green carpet (“He makes me lie down in pastures green,” Ps 23:1), and led a marching band round the carpet seven times playing “Jesus, You Are a Winner.” He had distributed hundreds of “Year of Implementation Prophetic Prayer” forms on which people had inscribed seven things they wished God to accomplish that year (“Write the Vision and Make it Plain,” Hb 2:2), which Muiru collected and declared done. At another crusade at Uhuru Park in February 2006, Muiru had erected seven tents through which all attending had to process, to be anointed by seven different pastors. Each tent was labeled, and all attending moved progressively from anointing to anointing, having sins forgiven, curses broken, receiving complete healing, having poverty broken (“Money shall not be your problem again”), receiving protection (“No weapon formed against you shall prosper” Is 54:17), becoming a servant of God, and receiving the anointing “to be the head not the tail” (Deut 28:13)—this last anointing from Muiru himself. (On 7 January 2007, Muiru staged a similar ritual with twelve tents, an anointing for every month of the year.) On 5 August 2006, Pius Muiru had “A New Beginning” crusade at Uhuru Park. An assistant pastor induced the crowd, as a symbol of their new beginning, to stand up and shift their position on the hill. He then announced that in this new beginning, everything lost would be restored (using the illustration from 2 Kings 6 of Elisha causing the lost axe-head to float to the surface to prove what a prophet could do). Those who required prayers from Pius Muiru were summoned. About twenty took to the stage, and hundreds assembled below it. Muiru prayed over them, throwing water, causing many to fall under the anointing, and then made them all proceed past him, ritually placing their needs into a basket he held, while he called out their needs: “Poverty! Jobs! HIV!” After this, he ritually burnt the basket on a pole on the stage, signifying the destruction of their problems. He called up more to be prayed over, promising blessings and new beginnings, including “miracles you never expected,” and a future in which “nothing will go wrong for you.”

192

Paul Gifford

Likewise at the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God in Nairobi, the pastor expounded Luke 17:1 about scandalizing little ones and the millstone that is preferable. He drew our attention to a large granite block on the stage, a “millstone.” We were told of an exercise in “practical faith.” We were to come to the front, take an envelope in which there was a piece of paper and a length of string. We were to write on the paper our areas of greatest danger, and the following Monday the bishop would tie the pieces of paper with the string to the millstone, which he would then drop into the river. Such rituals are increasingly common.7

Biblical Fundraising This explosion of Christianity has had to be paid for—the cars, conventions, buildings, indeed the entire new class of religious professionals—so, fifth, we can note how directly functional this Christianity is for the preachers themselves, because so often it is directly linked to divine fundraising. If you want the biblical promises, you need the anointing of the man or woman of God, and the prophet merits his reward. At Nakuru’s Overcomers’ Church, the prophet can effect the blessing but he is clear in his teaching, “What must I do to get the Blessing?”: “The blessing is not free. There is an exchange for it. There is what you give in order for you to receive the blessing. … There is a connection between the blessing and tithe.” He used Genesis 14:18–20, the story of Melchizedek, to show that “Abraham gave Melchizedek tithe of all and Melchizedek prophesied the blessing upon him,” and even added a final injunction (based on Isaiah 1:19) to obey willingly: “If you are obedient in your tithes but you give them unwillingly, this won’t attract the blessing.” All the rituals just mentioned comprised an element of divine fundraising. Muiru’s “Year of Implementation Prayer Forms” had to be enclosed with a “prophetic seed.” Those participating in his seven-tent ritual had to plant a seed in a special envelope marked “Tapping-theAnointing Seed.” One entered his “New Beginning” crusade by passing along a line of about fifty lilac-clad assistants who distributed envelopes specially printed for the occasion: “A New Beginning: 300, 500, 1,000 Shillings,” At one point, those with 1,000 or 500 shillings to sow for their new beginning marched across the platform, placing their notes on the carpet. All others were to approach the stage and throw their seed up onto the platform, while the pastor repeated: “Throw! Throw! Throw!” making explicit that this would bring houses and vehicles.

The Ritual Use of the Bible in African Pentecostalism

193

Likewise with the Universal Church’s ritual of the millstone just mentioned: God will not move without our tithing; indeed, God seems hamstrung without it. We were invited to the stage to have our wrist tied with a wristband inscribed with “O God, Remember that I am a faithful tither,” which we could cite in claiming our blessings at the end of the month. And in the envelope in which we wrote our “greatest dangers” to be thrown into the sea with the millstone, we were to enclose money. Those who would enclose 2,000–5,000 shillings (US$30– 65) were called out first (about ten); then those who would enclose 1,000 shillings (another ten); then 500–900 shillings, then 200–400 shillings (more going up now), and then 100 shillings, and finally those whose enclosure was “between you and God” (by now all had gone up). In the accompanying prayer, it was clear that with our money we were entering a covenant with God.

Personal Prophecy Sixth, as already noted, this Christianity obviously highlights the significance of the preacher, for his or her gifts seem crucial for the actualizing of the biblical promises. I still think this performative usage is overwhelmingly linked to the preacher, but recently I have met the encouragement to private actualizing. At Winners’ in Nairobi on New Year’s Day 2007, in a shameless display of merchandising (so again we meet the link to fundraising), we were advised to buy Winners’ Chapel bumper stickers for our cars and other stickers for house windows. Those wanting to own a car this year, or a house, were to buy the stickers and prophesy over them every day: “Every morning before you go to work prophesy to them both, for the son of a prophet is a prophet too.” Moreover, “If you want to own ten cars, buy ten stickers, and prophesy over them every day.”

Conclusion How are these prophetic declarations understood? It seems obvious, for example, that most of the members of Nairobi’s Winners’ Chapel would not own one car, much less ten, by the end of 2007. Winners’ in fact is noted for the stark falsifiability of so many of its claims: the promise will be effected “today,” “this morning,” “this month,” “this year,” even “immediately after this service” (Gifford 2004: 57–58). It must be said that there is a real tension here, a tension that the services at the end

194

Paul Gifford

of 2006 and beginning of 2007 addressed. Above, we read the promises that members would fulfill in 2006. At the New Year’s Eve service, there seemed a genuine lowering of expectations; all should rejoice at the end of 2006, because at least they were alive to celebrate: “One thing I know; Jesus has been faithful to you. Go to Langata cemetery if you are doubtful. Forget about the job [or] contract you didn’t get; the money you wanted but didn’t get. He makes all things beautiful in his time.” The pastor told the story of a woman he knew who missed her plane, only to find that that plane was the one crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11—so what we might see as a setback need not be. “Whether things are working or not, give thanks.” However, that is not the explicit message normally associated with Winners’ and not the pledges recited at services throughout 2006. To complicate matters further, the issue of delay was introduced; most of the time the pastor is effecting biblical promises now. The tension remains unresolved, but is probably at least part of the reason for members’ frequent changing of churches. The significant thing is probably the hope engendered. An exclusive and relentless message of hope, assurance, with all the accompanying histrionics, rhetorical flourishes, participation, the whole performance supported by superb soloists and choirs, is the distinguishing feature of these churches. Obviously to be assured ritually that all the biblical promises are yours must provide incentives in conditions where it is all too easy to give up. And testimonies abound of people persevering and being rewarded for their pains. Nevertheless, the improvement possible in Africa simply by believing and persevering must necessarily be limited. However, whatever the tensions and inconsistencies, with their ritual proclamations of the fulfillment of scripture, these churches have developed a winning formula. Notes This chapter was previously published as “The Bible in Africa: A Novel Usage in Africa’s New Churches” in Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 71 (2): 203–19. 1. For examples of African biblical interpretation, see Kinoti and Waliggo 1997; West and Dube 2000; Ukachukwu 2003; Loba-Mkole and Wendland 2005; Getui, Holter, and Zinkuratire 2001; Getui, Maluleke, and Ukpong 2001; Mijoga 2001; Wendland and Loba-Mkole 2004; Mugambi and Smit 2004; Speckman 2001; Holter 2006; Adeyemo 2006; Bulembat 2007; Akao et al. 2005; Dube 2001; Mosala 1989; West 1999. 2. Coleman has referred to this in his study of the globalized faith gospel, though what I am treating today is not exactly what Coleman described, as I will demonstrate (Coleman 2000: 131).

The Ritual Use of the Bible in African Pentecostalism

195

3. 28 May 2006 on his TV program “Family Glory.” Again: “You can do what the Bible says you can do. You can be what the Bible says you can be” (Lai at convention of Nairobi Pentecostal Church, 23 Aug 2007). Also: “The Word of God does not allow you to be sick. God never intended you ever to be sick. God didn’t create you to sit in a wheelchair, he created you to walk. Come on, let’s walk” (as he pulls woman from her wheelchair) (“Family Glory,” 10 Sept 2006). Lai has a distinction between something that is “true” and something that is “of the truth.” Thus: “It may be true but it is not of the truth. The doctor says: ‘You have cancer.’ That is true, but of the truth is you have been healed from all illness. Everything that is true which is not in line with what God is saying, they are just temporarily true, they are not of the truth’ (“Family Glory,” 22 July 2007). This is the understanding of Bishop Margaret Wanjiru when she makes a declaration like the following: “From this moment henceforth, you are going to enter into your inheritance, because you are a person of inheritance. Whatsoever you were believing God for shall be fulfilled. Every prayer that you have set before the Lord will be answered. It is done, for the Lord has purposed to do it for his own sake” (in her discontinued newssheet Faith Daily, 66). See also the faith confession of Nairobi’s City Revival Temple: “This is the Bible, the Everlasting and Living Word. … I choose this day to receive the engrafted Word. … I agree that I have what God says that I have. I am what He says I am.” 4. Other studies of ritual performance I have found helpful in writing this chapter are Robbins 2001 and Csordas 1996. 5. Winners’ Chapel (full title, Living Faith Church Worldwide) is a perfect example of Africa’s new Christianity (and exemplifies perfectly its use of the Bible). The church was founded in Lagos by David Oyedepo in 1983. It now has over four hundred branches in Nigeria and is in forty African countries. It boasts in Lagos the biggest church auditorium in the world, seating 50,400 (Gifford 2004, 2006: 121–25). 6. Ugandan pastor Henry Byamukama, at a “Bye Bye Yokes and Curses” crusade in Nairobi on 28 November 2005 similarly used Acts 12:6–10, but identifying the guards (as poverty, sickness, and witchcraft), and the gates (of healing, riches, deliverance, anointing), and the shackles struck from legs and hands (which represent possessing and taking, respectively). Mombasa’s Robert Wafula ritually applied the resurrection of Lazarus (Jn 11:1–44) to his listeners on “Rehema Za Mungu” on 4 August 2007. T. D. Jakes applied the story of the man waiting thirty-eight years (Jn 5:1–9) to his “Potter’s House” audience, 26 November 2005. Pastor Lucy Muiru applied the story of the woman with an issue of blood (Lk 8:43–48) to her congregation on 10 June 2006. Bishop Mark Kariuki applied Revelation 4:1 (“Come up here”) to his “Celebration Time” audience on 6 April 2006. Pius Muiru applied the story of the woman “afflicted for eighteen years” (Lk 13:10–14) to his audience on “Light in Darkness” on 11 Jan 2006. Dr J. B. Masinde of Deliverance Church, Umoja, applied Luke 1:21–25 (especially “Blessed are You”) to his congregation on 31 Dec 2006. 7. The Universal Church of the Kingdom of God is a church of Brazilian origin that is spreading widely in Africa; see Freston 2005.

196

Paul Gifford

References Adeyemo, Tukonboh, ed. 2006. Africa Bible Commentary. Nairobi: Word Alive Publishers. Akao, J. O., D. O. Akintunde, G. N. Toryough, P. A. Oguntoye, M. I. OguntoyinboAtere, eds. 2005. Decolonization of Biblical Interpretation in Africa. Ibadan: Nigerian Association for Biblical Studies. Austin, J. L. 1975. How to do Things with Words, 2nd ed. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Bulembat, Jean-Bosco Matand, ed. 2007. Sagesse humaine et sagesse divine dans la Bible: melanges offerts a S.E. Laurent Monsengwo Pasinya a l’occasion de ses 25 ans d’episcopat. Nairobi: Paulines Coleman, Simon. 2000. The Globalisation of Charismatic Christianity: Spreading the Gospel of Prosperity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Csordas, Thomas J. 1996. “Imaginal Performance and Memory in Ritual Healing.” In The Performance of Healing, edited by C. Lademan and M. Roseman, 91– 113. London: Routledge. Dube, Musa W. 2001. Other Ways of Reading: African Women and the Bible. Atlanta: SBL. Freston, Paul. 2005. “The Universal Church of the Kingdom of God: a Brazilian Church finds Success in Southern Africa.” Journal of Religion in Africa 35 (1): 33–65. Getui, Mary N., Knut Holter, and Victor Zinkuratire, eds. 2001. Interpreting the Old Testament in Africa, Nairobi: Acton. Getui, Mary N., Tinyiko Maluleke, and Justin Ukpong, eds. 2001. Interpreting the New Testament in Africa. Nairobi: Acton Gifford, Paul. 1998. African Christianity: Its Public Role. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ———. 2004. Ghana’s New Christianity: Pentecostalism in a Globalising African Economy. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ———. 2009. Christianity, Politics and Public Life in Kenya. New York: Columbia University Press. Holter, Knut, ed. 2006. Let My People Stay! Researching the Old Testament in Africa. Nairobi: Acton. Kinoti, Hannah W., and John M. Waliggo, eds. 1997. The Bible in African Christianity: Essays in Biblical Theology. Nairobi: Acton. Loba-Mkole, Jean-Claude, and Ernst R. Wendland. 2005. Interacting with Scriptures in Africa. Nairobi: Acton. Mijoga, Hilary B. P. 2001. Preaching and the Bible in African Churches. Nairobi: Acton. Mosala, Itumeleng J. 1989. Biblical Hermeneutics and Black Theology in South Africa. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. Mugambi, J. N. K., and Johannes A. Smit. 2004. Text and Context in New Testament Hermeneutics. Nairobi: Acton. Muiru, Pius. 2006a. Maximum Miracle Times. October. ———. 2006b. Maximum Miracle Times. December.

The Ritual Use of the Bible in African Pentecostalism

197

Robbins, Joel. 2001. “Ritual Communication and Linguistic Ideology: A Reading and Partial Reformulation of Rappaport’s Theory of Ritual.” Current Anthropology 42 (5): 591–614. Speckman, M. T. 2001. The Bible and Human Development in Africa. Nairobi: Acton. Ukachukwu, Chris Manus. 2003. Intercultural Hermeneutics in Africa. Nairobi: Acton. Wendland, Ernst R., and Jean-Claude Loba-Mkole. 2004. Biblical Texts and African Audiences. Nairobi: Acton. West, Gerald O. 1999. The Academy of the Poor: Towards a Dialogical Reading of the Bible. Sheffield, UK: Sheffield University Press. West, Gerald O., and Musa W. Dube. 2000. The Bible in Africa: Transactions, Trajectories and Trends. Leiden: Brill.

c7C Voices Presence and Prophecy in Charismatic Ritual Simon Coleman

A story is told of Kenneth Hagin Sr., the founder of Rhema Bible Training Center and the charismatic preacher who is generally credited for establishing the Faith Movement in the United States. Hagin was accused of plagiarizing the works of a rather more obscure preacher and writer, E. W. Kenyon. Hagin’s response was telling, and invoked a charismatic version of a Durkheimian conscience collective. Of course there were close parallels between his work and that of Kenyon. After all, both were inspired by the same source: God. This story raises some questions I want to explore. What might be the perceived links—not merely theological but also ontological— between persons united by devotion to a common, sacred language? How indeed might words mediate not only between God and believers, but also between believers themselves? In his defense, Hagin presented a redistributive model of charismatic authority: he and Kenyon were mutual beneficiaries from a single, external source. But I want to explore cases where the origins of inspiration are made rather more obscure, where a model of charismatic redistribution from a divine source becomes entangled with one of both redistribution and exchange between humans. While Hagin’s self-presentation was that of a man alone with his God, my focus is on far more crowded occasions, moments of complex interaction among preachers, audiences, and sacred language, in the context of charismatic rituals. Admittedly ritual is a bit of a dirty word amongst Protestant charismatics, implying empty repetition rather than spiritually charged events. As Martin Lindhardt noted in his introductory remarks to the workshop that brought contributors to this volume together, a reason for the scholarly neglect of charismatic Christian ritual may be the apparent lack of prescribed liturgies among such Christians. What is 198

Voices

199

less discussed1 is the ability of charismatic ritual to frame other kinds of replication, those of mimesis and mutual participation—rhetorical, embodied, spatial—among participants within and beyond the meeting hall. If one conventional view of charismatic worship is that it is about ecstasy, a “standing out” from the self, I want to broaden this idea of ritualized transcendence toward a model of self-extension and objectification that ultimately blurs the boundaries between persons. In this view, charismatic worship becomes one key arena of transaction between believers, where the very nature of the religious subject is both mediated and reconstructed. Webb Keane (e.g., 2007) has recently discussed both Protestantism’s and modernity’s anxious search to abstract the subject from its material entanglements in the name of freedom and authenticity. After all, says Keane, even at its most transcendent, the human subject cannot free itself from objectification: we possess bodies and objects, and continually constitute ourselves through semiotic practices that contain an irreducibly material dimension. In this argument, words are key semiotic forms since they can be detached from people, moving between internality and externality, intimacy and publicness. Sincerity of speech in an oral culture such as that of many charismatics must contend with the fact that words are always already derived from elsewhere, bearing with them traces of origins from beyond the speaker. In one sense we can apply Keane’s argument to that image of ritual as a dirty word: fixed liturgy is always already drawn from elsewhere, not least from the past, and so apparently cannot be “sincere.” But how does the argument apply to those other forms of repetition that I have mentioned, to the charismatic valorization of an empowered subject who is constituted in part by forms of ritual mimesis and mutual participation? I want to talk about charismatics for whom transcendence and objectification come together in ritualized practices in which the deployment of words and other semiotic forms is often explicitly tied up with and even enhanced through their derivation from specific other persons. I am going to explore some of the ambiguities of voicing, address, agency, framing, and circulation that are raised in ritualized discourse.2 I am also going to argue that the charismatic narratives I examine are—with greater or lesser degrees of explicitness—powerful metanarratives of the nature and efficacy of sacred language and its speakers. The preachers I shall look at attempt to establish the authoritative grounds for preaching and prophesying in the very act of performing linguistic tasks. In the process, they suggest ways in which certain forms of discourse can potentially be appropriated and copied by others, thus giving them a life and an authority that

200

Simon Coleman

transcend the spatial and temporal restrictions of any given speech event or person. Within faith discourse, if charisma is constituted through developing the reputation for converting others, much charismatic talk is actually talk to the already converted about reaching the unconverted. There is a sociological tension here between such Christians as constituting a public with its own conventions and modes of interaction, and Christians as having—or often not having—a missionary effect in wider public spheres. Such tensions are deeply relevant to the Swedish Word of Life (Livets Ord)3 Ministry, founded by Ulf Ekman, in which I have done fieldwork at various points over the past two decades. Based in Uppsala, this ministry embodies many of the characteristics of contemporary parachurch organizations. It is located on the outskirts of the city4 in a huge modern building that holds offices, a television studio, and a hall seating several thousand. The nature of the storms that blew around the ministry in the 1980s in particular, but which still occasionally reappear, are significant. Most predictably, the Word of Life has been accused of being a conduit for American-style Moral Majority opinions in broadly (though increasingly politically volatile) Social Democratic Sweden. More interestingly we see accusations of theatricality of worship; of overemphasis on the conflation of the spiritual and the material; of brainwashing practices that challenge the autonomy of the subject, particularly the young. In Uppsala, small Bible study groups meet in homes around the city during the week, bringing together people who may choose to missionize, study, or watch DVDs and videos together. These are occasions on which people can practice being both intimate speakers and intimate listeners. The ministry also hosts international conferences and supports other, smaller, Word of Life–type congregations spread around the rest of Scandinavia, while helping to run Bible schools in eastern Europe and elsewhere. So we can see the Word of Life as part of a much larger, global public, magnetized toward the loose group of extraordinarily mobile figures who travel in an ever-widening spiral, ranging from the nationally known to the upper slopes of charismatic international stardom.5 The charismatic personality becomes a narrated “parapersonality,” presented through verbal and visual means that are contexts for merging of individual biography and both historical and biblical paradigm. Charismatic symbolic capital is provided through demonstrating the ability to have an effect on the lives of ideally countless others. In this sense, the aim of the preacher is to enter into what Munn (1986) calls the “intersubjective spacetime” of listeners and readers, extending the self through the deployment of language that, in charismatic terms, literally enters other selves.

Voices

201

I want to provide a perspective on this charismatic landscape, presenting it in the way that I think is most salient for its participants: space, time, and actions being mediated through persons. So in the following I want us to attend three charismatic rituals, three broadly contemporaneous sermons, each given by stars of the Faith circuit, all of whom have had significant connections with the Word of Life in Sweden. I shall present them in full preaching action, but also discuss how what they say and do cascades into lay charismatic circles. I have referred to these sermons before in other work (e.g., Coleman 2009), but here I hope to emphasize how each preacher introduces us to a different dimension of the charismatic subject: the insertion of the self in the other, the apparent emptying out of the self in relation to divinity, and mimesis of sacred figures.

Part One: The Proselytizer We begin not in Sweden but with a brief extract from a videotape made available to believers in the United States and Europe entitled “Morris Cerullo in Red Square.” Cerullo is a charismatic Protestant preacher from the United States, loosely affiliated with the Faith Movement, who has been a popular visitor to the Word of Life and also worked internationally with Ekman. Cerullo is filmed while standing with his wife and an associate in Red Square, and explains that we are about to view a clip from Russian television. Within seconds we find ourselves watching him talking in a Moscow broadcasting studio. After some prefatory remarks, he addresses the camera directly and issues the following appeal to his remote audience: You repeat this prayer with my translator. / Dear God. / I come to you tonight / with all my heavy load. / Dear God, / take away my heavy load. / Lord Jesus, / I do not understand what this man Morris is saying. / But please, / I believe, you are the Son of God, / and I receive you / as my Lord, / as my savior. / Please, Lord Jesus, / forgive all my sins, / and make me, / right now, / a child of God.

Note the antitheses through which “taking away” is effaced by “receiving,” mere “understanding” by “believing.” But what’s more remarkable is the compression of various voices, modes of address, and narrative frames within a very short space. Cerullo is speaking, but not as “himself,” a powerful charismatic personality, nor indeed as God; he is apparently adopting the voice of a bemused but engaged viewer,6 narratively depicting but also embodying his Russian audience at the moment when they are to be transformed from listeners to speakers.

202

Simon Coleman

Morris Cerullo occupies the center of the screen, but individual viewers are supposedly moving their attention towards God, and simultaneously shifting their allegiance away from communist atheism towards charismatic Christianity. All this is enacted through a dialogic but intimate mode of address: the echo of translation followed by repetition in the studio provides for the viewer a responsive audience: an imagined congregation of converts. But there is an added layer of complexity in the construction of the charismatic subject here. By being put into a video, the extract gains further significance through its double-framing and multiple mode of address. The original appeal was broadcast on national public television in Russia, but has been edited into a product that is marketed to a global constituency of believers, including those in Sweden. Reframed, Cerullo’s appeal becomes both conversion narrative and metanarrative, both a form of witness and a charismatic comment on the effects of such witness. The charismatic persona is simultaneously effaced and potentially enhanced in the “act” of apparently converting remote others. In my experiences in the living rooms of Uppsala, Cerullo’s direct appeal to camera can be claimed to act as a means of renewing the faith of a born-again believer, or might be deployed as part of the missionary strategy of whoever has decided to purchase the cassette. The prayer Cerullo presents to his viewers is activated as they speak— appropriate—the words themselves. Harding (2000: 85–6) refers to the semantic risks or ambiguities contained in the stories told by televangelists. Interpretive “gaps” are created that prompt “attention and engagement” from the believer or potential believer. Similarly, Tannen (1989: 23) refers to connections between having to supply meaning and degree of involvement on the part of a reader or hearer. Here, I explore the possible connections between voicing and gapping, the extent to which creating an ambiguously situated “voice” might help to constitute rather than challenge charismatic authority. In the context of Word of Life viewing practices, Cerullo’s prayer indeed acts as a powerful catalyst of action, moving observers from watching to doing. Confident believers position themselves as the equivalent of Cerullo’s studio audience, responding to his message with tongues and affirmative prayer.7 But this intimate construction of personhood also has wider political ramifications. For beleaguered members of the Word of Life, Cerullo represents a further dimension of commitment: the presentation and indeed visualization of the Word and its human representative in the wider public. So the video—a private consumer good—is itself

Voices

203

used to depict a very different kind of broadcasting, presenting a visual metanarrative of the process of mediated charismatic representation. Cerullo’s prayer enacts not merely the possibility of personal salvation, but also the merging of two wider contexts: the “public” constituted by charismatics is shown in the act of occupying the public sphere of a contemporary state.8 Viewers move in a televisual rite of passage from the “secular” and culturally specific context of Red Square to the darkened, intense, much more generic space of a television studio, where we are subjected to the charismatic gaze accompanied by selftransforming discourse, before being returned again to the square and an introduction to the next topic of the video. The juxtaposition of intimate engagement and public identity that we see enacted here is evident in other parts of the video, where again we see the theme of insertion into the charismatic subject. In one section, Cerullo is alone in a television studio, introducing an extract from his video Bible school by congratulating the viewer on becoming a part of the “Morris Cerullo Home Video School of Ministry Outreach,” and reminding them of the correct attitude to adopt in viewing the teachings at home: So I want to encourage you, open your heart, don’t sit there and be a spectator. Be a participator. And let the truths and the revelation that flow from this message go deep into your spirit until they become seeds that will impregnate your being and make you pregnant with the truth.

Note how the transformative function of language is once again laid out in explicit terms.9 Cerullo’s imperative mode here appears to have a performative power that he describes for us himself, using imagery that dwells not only on issues of submission but also on bodily incorporation of the mobile Word. However, what is less clear is the exact provenance of the truths and the revelation that Cerullo refers to: Do they come from him or from God? The viewer is left to fill in the gap, to answer the unspoken question, for themselves. Indeed, Susan Harding has referred to the semantic risks or ambiguities contained in the stories told by televangelists. Interpretive “gaps” are created that prompt “attention and engagement” from the believer or potential believer. Here, we see the possible connections between voicing and gapping, the extent to which creating an ambiguously situated “voice” might help to constitute rather than challenge charismatic authority. Now it is important to emphasize the fragility of Cerullo’s claims here: even if it is very difficult for believers to be openly critical of preachers, some people find Cerullo’s message simply unappealing.

204

Simon Coleman

But we also need to consider the extent to which Faith discourse can seem to become an embodied form that transcends the conscious will. Former members of the group have talked to me of how the language of preachers has continued to echo within them—perhaps an example of what Csordas (1997: 238) sees as the embodied otherness of language as the final rhetorical condition for the efficacy of charismatic prophecy.10 Here the embedded as well as embodied intimacy of personal engagement with others, mediated by language, becomes a cause for unease rather than empowerment. This sense of the power of semiotic mediation transcending full consciousness resonates more positively with Swedish believers’ constructions of children as potentially powerful charismatic actors. Children may be inspired beyond their physical years, able to articulate spiritual messages that prove telling in the adult world.

Part Two: The Prophet The Swedish preacher Ulf Ekman attended Kenneth Hagin’s Bible School in Tulsa before founding the Word of Life ministry in Uppsala in 1983, and subsequently succeeded in making the group into an important player in European Faith networks.11 Among his Swedish supporters, his reputation is undoubtedly enhanced by his role as a “great man of God.” The Ekman passage I want to look at is similar to those taken from Cerullo in that both preachers assume that God is currently forming what Cerullo calls an “End Time People.” However, while Cerullo’s words were directed almost exclusively to remote viewers and listeners, Ekman is talking directly to fellow Faith members, many of them members of his own ministry. The passage is taken from a prophecy delivered one New Year’s Eve in the Word of Life sanctuary in Uppsala. God is apparently speaking through Ekman, delivering a direct message to His gathered believers, as 1986 is being transformed into 1987. The ministry at this point is just four years old, but the provision of a prophetic message by Ekman at the turn of the year has already become something of an annual tradition.12 In common with the vast majority of Word of Life services, the words of the prophecy are recorded and disseminated widely through Scandinavian Faith networks and beyond. They are also reprinted in full in the group’s newsletter, delivered to thousands of believers within and beyond Sweden.13 At first examination, the “voice” that is being articulated in the passage is a single and unambiguous one: it is that of God. The first lines

Voices

205

establish the voice’s credentials: “As deep calls to deep, so call I, the Almighty.” The identity of the first person singular of the prophecy is therefore revealed through a description of a powerful act of speaking, and moreover one that is both located in biblical text—in this case Psalm 42:7—and able to be translated into new contexts of verbal authorship. Meanwhile the direction of the message is apparently clear and seemingly appropriate for divine-human encounters: the words are presented in a predominantly monologic form. I want to show, however, not only that the connections between the voice of the pastor and that of God are mutually entangled, but also that the message contains certain suggestions for how it is to be appropriated by the listener. The prophecy is some four thousand words long, and is framed by tongues on the part of the human speaker, Ekman.14 In general it weaves together five main messages: First, God is urging his faithful to “grow” in their spiritual progress. Second, the year to come will be one of visible unity between his servants. Third, the believer should avoid all envy of others since such an attitude is a hindrance to one’s own growth. Fourth, certain named Swedish towns will play host to spiritually powerful changes in the coming year. Finally, God states that the devil has tried to stop His work but that these satanic aims are bound to fail. On one level, the message can be read in terms of its appropriateness for the Word of Life, its indexing of the specific circumstances and concerns of the time and place. The ministry was indeed growing quickly in the 1980s, and newer, smaller groups were emerging in the country as a whole. Faith adherents in Sweden were subject to considerable abuse from skeptical outsiders, so that the call for unity and lack of envy can be seen partly as an encouragement to stand firm in the light of critical pressures. It can also be read as an implicit comment on the supposedly Swedish and indeed Social Democratic habit of emphasizing group welfare over individual excellence. However, the underlying metaphors and relatively complex voicing of the message, and the connections between these two, deserve closer examination. To start with, the metaphor of constant growth is one that is central to much Faith discourse in Sweden and beyond. But growth is explored within the prophecy in yet another way. Let us look at the following passage from an early part of the prophecy: I love my children. I spend time with my children and play with my children. I look after my children and lift them up in my embrace and carry them, saith the Lord. But I do not wish for my children to remain as infants before my gaze.15 I want them to grow up. When I

206

Simon Coleman

look upon you, saith the Lord, I do not just see you on the outside. I see how you appear in your inner self. I see how you are in your Spirit, saith the Spirit of the Lord. I can allow your Spirit to grow quickly.

So humans are as children to the Lord, and He is also an agent of their spiritual growth, mediated through a penetrative vision that not only reaches inside of the person but also distinguishes between physical and spiritual maturity in each of us. The passage, as often in this prophecy, moves easily between God talking repeatedly, even insistently, in the first person—“I love my children”—to the more direct and challenging second person—“When I look upon you.” At the same time, there is a rather intriguing use of the third person: “saith the Lord” and “saith the Spirit of the Lord.” Indeed, the whole prophecy is littered with variations on this usage, which complements and is distinct from God speaking in the first person singular or the imperative mood. There is clearly an evidential basis to this verbal refrain: it frames the direct speech from God, reminding the listener of the source of the language to which they are attending. But while the use of the quotation from the Psalms at the beginning of the prophecy provided self-legitimation in recognizably biblical script, authority is here enacted in spoken phrases whose authorship is less clear. Is the Lord referring to himself in the third person, or is Ekman referring to the divine force that is possessing him? The question is left unanswered and, perhaps, unanswerable. It is an interpretative gap we can fill, if we wish, for ourselves. What, however, is the specific mechanism that causes spiritual growth to occur? By now we are probably unsurprised to learn that it involves submission to the power of language. Here is God/Ekman describing the power of both written and spoken words: For I, saith the Lord, who calls from deep to deep, need your growth, yes, so that I will be able to carry out what I have planned, and what I have certainly planned to do and carry out in this and other lands. I need your growth and your maturity and for you to learn to hear what I say and what the Spirit says to the congregation. I need you to learn to understand what I say in your spirit, when I talk to you by night, what I talk to you by day, and when I talk to you when you come to me and read my Word and come to me.

God is talking here about the enactment of plans, but in Faith ideology, the deployment of sacred language is also a performative means of carrying out that which is spoken (see Coleman 2000); repetition therefore has a cumulative force, so that God’s authority is described by the constant assertion of what “I need” at the same time as it is ap-

Voices

207

parently constituted by the insistent, reiterated description of a “need” that should create in the listener the desire to respond to and remove God’s seeming insufficiency. Occasionally, God as voiced by Ekman’s prophecy seemingly inserts Himself further into the minds of His listeners, through putting dialogue into the mouths of the generic listener. Thus in describing what He will do in Sweden and elsewhere, “God” says of his children: I shall talk to them and I shall bring them together so that they will say: “Oh, how can this be? Oh, how did this happen? Oh, how can it be this way? How could this happen?” When they were before me and when they prayed and asked: “What will happen with Sweden?” “What will happen with Christianity?” “What will happen with unity?” “What will happen with the revival?” Then I shall talk to them and they will see, instantly “This is how it is! I’d never thought of that.”

If earlier we saw Cerullo putting himself into the spiritual shoes of his imagined unsaved viewer, here God via Ekman is apparently imagining the reactions of ordinary believers. Whereas Cerullo’s appeal left the response of his remote audience open, the authority of God is here expressed by the putting of questions that do receive a direct and immediate answer: God’s talking to the people leads to their expression of immediate understanding—“seeing”—and acceptance. Authority is also enacted here through an interesting use of tenses: the passage starts in the future—“I shall talk to them”; it then moves to the past— “when they were before me”; and then goes to a future state when God will effortlessly have provided the answers to urgent questions posed by his faithful. Let me highlight just one more section that is in its way the most extraordinary part of the whole piece. After God has finished describing various parts of Sweden that He will transform in the coming year, He notes: This year, says the Lord’s Spirit, the year 1987, is also a year when I shall in all seriousness16 begin to send out my fireworks from this country.

What happens next is that the prophecy is interrupted by Ekman, talking as “Ekman” under inspiration rather than as “God.”17 The pastor tells his audience: In the spirit I saw a map of Sweden. Just like a big firework that came from different places, though not so many. When it went up in the air it spread out just like a firework; in one direction and another, and so it was shot up from this country. It was shot out, and it is God’s servants who are sent out, more than ever. This year the Lord will send

208

Simon Coleman

his servants out to other countries. Then I saw one of these stars, one of these fireworks, stay up in the sky and begin to revolve around the world, praise the name of the Lord, hallelujah!

The interruption of God’s message by a mere human might seem like hubris, but of course Ekman’s vision provides a vital form of textual closure: it sets up the most explicit link in the whole prophecy between divine message and authorized messenger. The image of the firework is contained not only in God’s words but also in the sign granted specifically to the speaker. Just as God earlier answered His own semirhetorical questions, so here the first use of the metaphor of the firework is immediately “answered,” or one might say “revoiced,” by one of God’s servants. Intriguingly, the firework image receives more internal reinforcement, albeit implicit, from other parts of the prophecy. As a piece published in the ministry’s newsletter subsequently pointed out,18 when the various Swedish towns mentioned by the prophecy are examined on a map, they appear to form an arrow pointing down to Europe, providing a sense of dynamic spatial and spiritual orientation in relation to a world beyond Sweden. And one of the final messages of the whole piece is that God’s gospel will be sent out from Scandinavia to the world in 1987, illustrating something of the way gospel messages can literally be shot out into diffused space. We see here a narrative depiction of a wider, frequently embodied trope in Faith ritual: the immediate orientation of ritualized activity on the ground is complemented by the construction of a wider mode of ritual address, made up of the audience of potential Others that charismatic action must reach. Both “proximate” and “imagined” spatiality provide a form of double address that parallels, for instance, Cerullo’s appeal simultaneously to Russia and a wider charismatic world. The ambiguity over divine and human identity evident in the prophecy is in turn played out in the ways in which Ekman himself is appropriated by believers. People talk of wishing to come to Uppsala merely through hearing one of Ekman’s cassettes or DVDs, and over time they may see their own characteristics reflected in Ekman’s persona—his humor echoes theirs, his spiritual vision is similar to their own, and so on. At times, believers may even complement each other on recognizing Ekman or other preachers in particular actions or attitudes: one young woman told me, for instance, of how she was encouraged by being told she was a “fighter” who could provide a Swedish version of a famous female American preacher. People may also more unconsciously echo Ekman’s own forms of speaking in tongues, in

Voices

209

effect revoicing a semantically stripped language of inspiration that originates, in one sense, from the body of their pastor. Recall also Morris Cerullo’s passage about joining his School of Ministry Outreach: he describes his words as penetrating “deeply” into the ordinary person’s spirit, making them pregnant with the truth. In the prophecy, the words put into Ekman’s mouth invoke the sense of calling “from deep to deep,” linking the assimilation of words to the self with a different kind of growth—that of becoming spiritually mature. The American preacher offered his audience the opportunity to become a “child of God”; the Swedish preacher articulates a prophecy that involves God as parent helping his already born-again offspring to “grow up.” This kind of loose paralleling between narratives occurs again and again in Faith contexts and it demonstrates how an overarching and to some extent even transnational charismatic discourse can be constructed through the actions of multiple (authorized) speakers. I am not suggesting that Ekman and Cerullo are consciously echoing each other,19 but the two preachers are clearly drawing on some common assumptions about the workings of language and the performative power of metaphor.

Part Three: The Preacher Lester Sumrall is now deceased but was one of the father figures of the Faith Movement. At the time of this sermon in 1990, he was in his late seventies. He is speaking at a Word of Life conference on one of his many visits to Uppsala, and as he talks, his words are being recorded on audio- and videotape. Many thousands of people from a wide variety of countries are gathered in the sanctuary. The sermon lasts for well over an hour. Already some ways into his talk, Sumrall explains that the subject of his sermon is prophecy: The prophecy of the Son / and the prophecy of the Holy Ghost / And the prophecy of the Father. The whole Trinity / had prophesied / regarding the return of Jesus / and I wanna talk about all three of them.

In practice, Sumrall’s sermon moves to and from this theme in an apparently highly meandering fashion, and seems to be constituted by a series of passages, presumably drawn from many other sermons preached throughout the world during a fifty-year career, that are bolted together and occasionally linked to the time and place of this particular occasion. Briefly, Sumrall talks about his family (some of

210

Simon Coleman

whom are present in the hall), the history of Pentecostalism, Moses leading the Israelites through the desert towards the promised land, Jesus sitting on the Mount of Olives, the New Age and Reincarnation, the Resurrection, church building in Siberia, his own conversion and healing, and feeding the hungry of the world. The “voices” presented and often enacted in the sermon show similar complexity: Sumrall includes at least twenty throughout the piece as a whole, using both selfand allorepetition. He ranges from his own readings and summaries of the Bible to his reporting in direct and indirect speech what other pastors or nonbelievers have said. He even enacts the words of the Holy Ghost. Sumrall explicitly incorporates five or six readings from scripture in his sermon, but he does not get round to his first reading until he is over 10 percent of his way into the sermon. Even then he mentions the text briefly, only to interrupt himself once more: Turn in your Bibles to Matthew 24 / and verse three. / It says “the Lord Jesus was seated on the site of the Mount of Olives.” / Oh and before I get into my sermon, let me tell you / that tomorrow morning, I will be speaking here in the auditorium. …

This apparently willful inserting of the self and one’s own words in front of scripture might seem surprising to an outsider, but of course it echoes Ekman’s interruption of divine prophecy. With Ekman’s prophecy, we saw how the authority of the speaking voice was initially established by its invocation of scripture—God apparently quoted Himself from the Psalms, referring to the act of “calling” out. Sumrall’s approach is rather different yet arguably has the same effect. He intones: We command the blessing of God the Father to be upon you. / We command the blessing of God the Son to be upon you. / We command the blessing of the Holy Ghost to be upon you. / We command you to be blessed. / And blessed. / And blessed.

Again, repetition intensifies the message and feeds into Faith assumptions about the connection between reiteration and the accumulation of the performative power of sanctified language. But there is also a striking inversion of expected models of agency. Sumrall appears to be commanding God, in His three divine aspects, to act on behalf of humans. In fact such confident behavior is common within Faith circles, where it is assumed that the believer is empowered, through “positive confession,” to demand predictable responses from divinity. And note how Sumrall then immediately develops and enacts his theme of command. He turns the direction of his imperative mood away from God towards his audience:

Voices

211

Say “I am blessed!” / [The crowd responds with “I am blessed.”] Say “I am blessed!” / [Crowd responds.] Say it again! / I am blessed! / Hallelujah! / Praise God! / Tell your neighbor. / Say “I am blessed!”

We see here, right at the start of the sermon, how Sumrall converts his audience from listeners to speakers, a form of transformation we saw explicitly in Cerullo’s piece and implicitly in Ekman’s. The royal “we” of Sumrall’s initial command to God is translated into the first-person singular, with each person being instructed to appropriate the words of the original speaker: first by talking to the self and then by directing the language to another person, who becomes the receiver and then the giver in the verbal transactions that take place. Exact verbal mimesis of a preacher’s words becomes a form of apparent self-empowerment. We saw how God, via Ekman, posed the questions of confused believers—“Oh, how did this happen? Oh, how can it be this way?”—only to show how they could be answered in an instant. In this case, Sumrall’s invocation of divine blessing is immediately translated into its own kind of performativity: believers represent themselves to themselves as they take an active approach to language, simultaneously calling for blessings and signaling engagement—at least on a public level—in the sermon that is about to be preached. Note that what is said is not “I shall be blessed” or “I hope to be blessed” but “I am blessed”: in narrative terms, the act has been completed at the very moment that it has been uttered. Connections between Sumrall and anointed Words are demonstrated in many other ways throughout the piece. For instance, the prophetic themes are woven into a strong autobiographical strand that crops up at various points, as we follow Sumrall’s career from birth until old age. We even trace his spiritual development from before his birth as we learn that: I was born in Pentecost. / My mother spoke tongues every day I was in there. / And when I arrived on the earth / our house was where the women had their prayer meetings. … / I wondered which language I should speak on the street. / We heard as much tongues as we did English.

Here, Sumrall does not explicitly invoke the metaphor of growth that we have seen in other Faith contexts,20 but he is depicting a sense of how sacralized language can soak into the infant self in a way that is both physical and capable of taking over human consciousness. From his first days he seems to have been an authorized user of the Word.21

212

Simon Coleman

One use of biblical text is striking, however, repeated some ten times throughout a section that constitutes about a quarter of the total sermon. The text is from Acts 2:17, and involves the Lord saying, “I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh.” In Sumrall’s use of the text, its scriptural connections with—indeed exact reproduction of—Joel’s prophecy are suppressed, and the words are turned into a direct statement from God about what will happen in the last days. At other times, however, Sumrall himself voices the words in such a way as to imply that there might be a merger between himself and their divine author. Thus: This revival. / You’re here from all over the world. / You’re here from all kind of nationalities. / The Word of God has come through. / “I will pour my spirit upon all flesh.”

The audience is certainly aware that Sumrall is taking words from the Bible, but on this occasion he does not preface his quotation with a phrase like “The Lord said.” He uses the rather more ambiguous “The Word of God has come through.” “Through whom?” we might ask. It is as if Sumrall is partially appropriating the “I” of the remark, and it is striking that his words evoke an immediate response from the audience, who whoop their affirmation. Sumrall’s argument in this part of the sermon is that the present revival is exceptional, the last one in human history, because believers are finally unified on a global level— “You’re here from all over the world.”22 Thus in voicing the performative idea of spirit being poured upon all flesh, he is also implying that God’s prophetic statement of intent is now being fulfilled, that present circumstances are answering past predictions. The very fact that the sermon is taking place, involving such a congregation, becomes evidence of the truth of what Sumrall is saying. Alignment of the preacherly self not with God but with an important biblical figure occurs elsewhere in the text. Thus: In three years from now / I’m gonna really get going / because I’ll be eighty years old. / And that’s when Moses got going!

Sumrall’s remark provokes immediate signs of recognition and affirmation from the audience (clapping and some laughing), but of course he is not taking over Moses’s words so much as asserting parallels in their stage of life, claiming a kind of mimesis. A few minutes later, however, he comes closer to inserting himself into the paraphrased biblical text almost in replacement of Moses: Moses was a wonderful person. / And he left a lot of blessings for all of us. / So at eighty years old / I’m gonna preach deliverance / and bring the slaves out of Egypt.

Voices

213

This presentation—translation—of the self as contemporary Moses also implicitly poses the question to the audience: Are they the slaves who need to be brought out of Egypt? Are they the people whose deliverance not from Pharaoh but from secularism and the perils of the last days is dependent upon their relationship to empowered charismatic preachers? Sumrall’s authoring of himself in such ways brings the Bible “to life” in rather literal terms, implying that present-day people and situations can echo the sacred text as tokens do a type. Authorship can take even more dramatic forms, for instance, when Sumrall narratively depicts himself in dialogue with God or Jesus—a habit common among Faith preachers and more occasionally evident among ordinary believers. In the following, Sumrall talks of the very first vision he received, as a physically suffering young man: I saw a vision. / Beside my bed was a coffin. / An ugly coffin. / Just my size. / And God said: “That’s yours!” … / I turned my face away from it / and there on the wall / from the floor to the ceiling / was a Bible. / An open Bible / in giant print. / And God said: / “If you preach / I’d heal you.” / I thought “No!” / And the coffin was still there / and God said: “That’s yours!” / I looked back / and the Bible was still there. … / You say: “Which one did you take?” / What do you think?

Many charismatic tropes come together here. God is posing an either-or question that demands an immediate response from his human interlocutor. Soon, of course, Sumrall will be inviting members of his audience to respond to a similar question since he will ask them to come to the front to receive salvation or healing. Indeed, Sumrall immediately moves from the choice offered by God to posing his own rhetorical question of the audience: “What do you think?” The Bible is open, signifying that it is in use, though it takes on an iconic form here since no specific verse is being read. Sumrall is at first unwilling to accept his situation, but conquers his fleshly self in order to serve God, and in return for sacrificing his egocentric will receives bodily healing. By choosing to go the way of the Bible, Sumrall becomes a preacher, somebody who both embodies scriptural truth and constantly gives voice to its saving words, converting them from the written page to oral performances that are also performative in their effects. In one sense the story illustrates the weak humanity of Sumrall, his powerlessness in relation to God; yet it also demonstrates his special calling as a man whose human life actually depends upon performing this divine function. Such close, often physical, identification between preachers and the Bible is even expressed in forms of preacherly body language, where

214

Simon Coleman

the anointed speaker opens his or her arms out to the sides, while holding in one hand an open Bible. The scripturally empowered “voice” of the preacher is not merely a linguistic phenomenon but also an embodied one, just as speech itself is both verbal and physical in form.23

Filling In the Gaps The easy and sometimes ambiguous shifts in modes of address that we have seen in these sermons provide close parallels with Martin Lindhardt’s observation (2004: 267) of how sudden shifts from addressing human audiences to addressing divinity are common in Pentecostal and charismatic sermons and testimonies. Such shifts, in Lindhardt’s terms, constitute a strategy of ritualization, a rhetorical technique through which the context of powerful divine presence is established, while the ability to make or even comprehend such shifts is part of the disposition of the socially informed Pentecostal or charismatic body, reproduced through ritual practice. Faith ideology states that language can permeate the spirit of the born-again believer, but clearly the assumption that such effects are occurring is not enough. Listeners should themselves perform; partake of the charismatic habitus. Cerullo’s Russian audience must repeat his translated words; Sumrall’s multinational congregation must voice the fact of their own blessing, and so on. Pure repetition reenacts (and revoices) the words just uttered while bypassing the dangerous possibilities inherent in uncontrolled public interpretation. Such performance may also have a performative or—perhaps better—self-transformative effect if we are to assume that action and belief are in any way connected. Certainly, many Swedish charismatics are themselves convinced that to speak faith is also to create it in the self and others. Sermonizing is not just confined to the Sumralls and the Cerullos of the movement; it is inherent in street preaching, in everyday conversations that turn into monologues, in testimonies, all of which objectify the subjectivity of the speaker while placing words in the public domain, even as they are ignored, rejected, or accepted by others. In repeating the words of an anointed other, believers appropriate those words but also point to the legitimacy and authority of the original speaker. We see highlighted here the simultaneous effacement of the preacher and his reconstitution, even re-presencing as Word freed from flesh, through being quoted and imitated by others. In the marketplace of ministries, a preacher whose words cannot find a place on the lips of others is one whose charismatic stock is unlikely to be

Voices

215

worth very much. Much of the difference between star preachers and ordinary believers lies in issues of scale, of the degree to which the self is seen to be amplified in and through others. And this, I think, is one of the things that public ritual offers in this context. Word of Life members themselves are used to objectifying language in their domestic lives, speaking out words to themselves in their homes or in the street, as if the externalization and subsequent reabsorption of language from the self renders it efficacious; but what the rituals I have examined can offer is objectification on a potentially massive scale, incorporating multiple modes of address and levels of spatiality. My argument is not that, away from the context of a service, ordinary believers go around simply repeating large sections of a sermon they have just heard.24 If asked to recount the contents of a sermon given in the past week, say, most believers in my experience can remember little of the detailed argument25—not surprisingly, given the lack of coherent structure that is evident in such narratives. They are, however, likely to be able to associate the preacher with a given theme, phrase, or pervasive metaphor, usually one that draws on an alreadyfamiliar concept in the Faith ideological universe. Thus a person might say: “Lester talked about how God is pouring his spirit over all flesh,” or “Morris talked of how we are all participants in God’s truths.” The ubiquitous use of electronic media adds another dimension to the circulation and repetition of anointed language. The words of a favorite preacher can be played and replayed as the person goes about their everyday life—jogging in the park, relaxing at home while watching a video or DVD, and so on. So we see how the formal ritual of the meeting hall translates into the more informal ritualization of other spaces. And implicit in the rhetorical constitution of the believing public in Sweden and beyond are the construction and mapping of a charismatic landscape of agency, a temporally, spatially, and narratively constituted geographical imagination (Gregory 1994) where preachers and, more rarely, ordinary believers circulate in an intertextual and interoracular world. The juxtaposition of powerful charismatic personalities with significant places takes on particular significance for believers who are based in Uppsala. Members have talked to me of their wonder and pride at the fact that a ministry in Sweden can attract such charismatic luminaries to its services, and of course both Sumrall and Cerullo have been visitors to the group. The videos discussed also illustrate preachers in motion,26 away from their native lands, and on occasion Swedish believers have been actually offered the opportunity physically to accompany Sumrall and Ekman on visits to the Holy Land, for instance. The travel thus depicted and embodied

216

Simon Coleman

can itself be enacted by committed believers, who therefore visit an Israel materially mediated by the personhood of the preacher. Faith discourse is permeated by questions that often receive ready and instantly articulated answers. The call and response structuring of much of what is said provides sermons with a dynamic and engaging rhythm. A preacher who failed to answer his own rhetorical questions, or a congregation that refused to become verbally engaged in a sermon, would be decidedly out of place in this charismatic culture where certain forms of repetition and objectification are key to the construction of the subject. Yet I have also argued that all of the passages I have examined pose an implicit question that, for the most part, goes unanswered by the pastor or preacher. Is it God or Cerullo who is making us pregnant with the truth? God or Ekman who is predicting the future? God or Sumrall who is bringing blessings upon us? And in appropriating their words, are we bringing the divine into ourselves? Believers are always left to ask whether the animator of an anointed message is somehow the same as its originator. This is a question that acquires its power precisely because it does not receive an explicit or immediate answer. The question may not even be clearly formulated in the mind of the believer at any given time. Even so, the charismatic voice is one that engages its listeners because it provides access to two speaking worlds at one and the same time—the human and the divine—and in the process suggests that the translation of one into the other is an ever-present possibility.

Notes 1. Susan Harding (2000) is an honorable exception to this rule. 2. Here, I regard “voice” as indicating “responsibility” for a given utterance, as attributed by the speaker or writer. Of course, within a narrative, many voices may be invoked by a single person. Thus a given statement may be framed by the speaker or writer as the words of self (in the present, past, or future) or of some other person. As Tannen (1989: 133) notes, by appropriating each other’s utterances, speakers are bound together in a community of words: the creation of voices can aid the imagining of alternative, distant, and others’ worlds by linking them to the sounds and scenes of one’s own familiar world. 3. The phrase “Word of Life” refers to Jesus in 1 John 1. 4. Uppsala, a medium-sized city containing a well-known university, is located about an hour’s drive to the north of Stockholm. 5. Preachers valued by Faith Christians who do not come from the United States include the South African Ray McCauley, the German Reinhard Bonnke, and Paul Yonggi Cho, a Pentecostal from Korea and pastor of reputedly the world’s largest church.

Voices

217

6. Writing of Chilean Pentecostals and drawing on Mead and Ricoeur, Martin Lindhardt (2004: 227ff) has argued that autobiographical reconstruction takes place through a dynamic interplay between external and internal dialogues. In conversion, the voice of God, to which the convert is first introduced through interaction with human others, is internalized as the Other with whom the inner dialogue takes place, and hence new perspectives for self-objectification are offered, as the convert learns to tell himself and others new stories about himself. Conversion can be seen as a self-process where self-reflection takes the form of reflection upon a relation between the human “I” and the divinity. The Pentecostal self is constituted when God becomes identified with the perspective of the internalized and generalized Other that constitutes the “me” with whom the “I” is carrying out an internal conversation. I think much of this is relevant to the charismatics I am familiar with, but I am also attempting to emphasize here the potential place of the preacher within that dialogue: the Russian viewer is learning to view the self as Cerullo, or at least to accept that their voice can be adopted and adapted by the Cerullo whom they are viewing. The generalized voice of the divine is crucially embodied in a specific person. 7. As we shall see, the visual as well as verbal aspects of the video experience can be significant. As Meyer has noted (2004:101), despite its stereotype, vision plays a key role in Pentecostal practice more generally. Sermons, testimonies, and prayers relate the spiritual things observed by the speaker, which are often invisible to the secular eye, just as visions may be experienced in a dream or seen as coming from the spirit of discernment. Indeed, vision is seen as an extension of the Holy Spirit who grants the eye of God to his faithful servants, so that even prior to easy accessibility of new visual technologies, vision is central to Pentecostal practices of mediation. Yet if sermons are confined to oral discourse emphasizing the necessity of vision, films are able to mimetically reproduce vision itself (Meyer 2004). In Meyer’s case, this is significant in the fictional films produced for Ghanaian viewers, but it is also relevant to the more documentary-style videos I shall discuss, since the video provides means of positioning the viewer in relation to speakers in ways not always evident even in one-to-one encounters. 8. Cerullo’s extract demonstrates well the capacity of television to provide and juxtapose a multiplicity of narratives and temporalities, intercutting images and various modes of address. Taken as a whole, the interaction between the sections of the Cerullo extract are certainly intriguing. A number of authors refer to the liminal qualities of film discourse and use. Clark and Hoover (1997: 26) and White (1997: 43), drawing on Turner (1986), argue that film and other media offer the consumer spaces of cultural freedom, removed from everyday life and open to the possibility of change. 9. Rather strikingly, and perhaps at first sight paradoxically, active viewing is liable to propel the believer into a relatively passive, even feminized state of being pregnant (cf. Harding 2000). 10. The sense of a speaking “I,” which is not the self, is grounded in the fundamental embodied otherness that may secondarily be culturally objectified as a divine presence—but here a divine presence mediated in the body of a specific preacher—which might be Cerullo or others.

218

Simon Coleman

11. The Word of Life combines a congregation of around two thousand people with a university, missionary organization, international Bible school, media business, and numerous satellite offices around Europe and beyond. Many of its clientele seem to be disillusioned members of other Christian denominations, particularly Pentecostalists. To date, no firm information on class membership of members is available, although in broad terms, no firm trends are evident. Worldwide, Faith ministries attract working- as well as middle-class believers, who tend to be urban based. 12. A number of prophecies could therefore have been chosen for this chapter. I have selected this one because I was conducting fieldwork at the Word of Life at the time, and because the prophecy is delivered at roughly the same time as Cerullo’s and Sumrall’s (see below) narratives. 13. This prophecy is in the Word of Life Newsletter of April 1987, 8–11. The translation is mine. 14. Glossolalia of course is a sign of the presence of inspired language. Subsequently, the editor of the group’s newsletter was careful to note that the prophecy was published in full, indicating further that the words had divine force and status, and unlike sermons were not suitable to be paraphrased for the reader (cf. Keane 1997). 15. In Swedish: “Men jag vill inte att mina barn ständigt skall vara små barn inför mitt ansikte.” 16. The bolding of the words (in Swedish “på allvar”) are reproduced from the text printed in the newsletter. 17. In the written version of the text, this point is expressed as, “Ulf Ekman states that he had the following vision.” 18. Word of Life Newsletter, April 1987, 9. 19. I have not focused on the issue of cross-cultural interpretations of Faith discourse in this paper. For a discussion see Coleman 2000. 20. Although, he does elsewhere. When delivering a sermon at the inauguration of the new Word of Life premises in 1987, Sumrall exclaimed: “Our God is a big God!” 21. The main quotations are from Matthew 23:1–4; Timothy 4:1; Acts 2:17; Acts 2:9–11; Revelation 1 and 2. Many of these involve the act of speech: Jesus answering questions of his disciples concerning the end of the world, the Spirit talking of the latter times, God speaking of pouring the Spirit over flesh. 22. As Sumrall notes: “I have preached in 110 nations. I’ve never been in a place that didn’t have the Holy Ghost. God is pouring out his spirit.” 23. In a human exemplar of Faith teachings such as Sumrall, the inner spirit comes to permeate the outer body: the two levels of existence must always be distinct on this earth, but this does not mean that they cannot move ever closer in the person of the preacher, united in their mediation of the anointed Word to others. 24. Although, of course, the memorization of Bible verses is regarded as important. 25. Nonetheless, many do take copious notes. 26. Imagined audiences are crucial to the valorization of modern media. Many Faith products are valued precisely because they are commodified objects, theoretically capable of reaching huge audiences over time and space. Thomp-

Voices

219

son (1995: 10; 21) argues that in the contemporary era of mediated publicness, as symbolic forms are turned into commodities, so authenticity can be prized apart from uniqueness. Indeed, (1995: 99), personalities constructed at a distance can acquire an “aura” sustained in part by that distance. These general points take on specific coloring in the context of the Faith Movement. The inherent possibility contained within a video of reaching out to an often unidentified Other adds to its sanctity, with the mass-produced quality of the object actually increasing its aura rather than detracting from it.

References Bakhtin, M. 1981. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, edited by M. Holquist and C. Emerson. Austin: University of Texas Press Clark, L. S., and S. M Hoover. 1997. “At the Intersection of Media, Culture and Religion: A Bibliographic Essay.” In Rethinking Media, Religion, and Culture, edited by S. M. Hoover and K. Lundby, 15–36. London: Sage. Coleman, S. M. 2000. The Globalisation of Charismatic Christianity: Spreading the Gospel of Prosperity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2009. “Transgressing the Self: Making Charismatic Saints.” Critical Inquiry 35 (3): 417–39. Csordas, T. 1997. Language, Charisma, and Creativity: The Ritual Life of a Religious Movement. Berkeley: University of California Press. Harding, S. F. 2000. The Book of Jerry Falwell: Fundamentalist Language and Politics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Keane, W. 1997. “Religious Language.” Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 26: 47–71. ———. 2007. Christian Moderns: Freedom and Fetish in the Mission Encounter. Berkeley: University of California. Lindhardt, M. 2004 “Power in Powerlessness: A Study of Pentecostal Life Worlds and Symbolic Resistance in Urban Chile.” PhD diss., Aarhus University. Meyer, B. 2004. “Praise the Lord: Popular Cinema and Pentecostalite Style in Ghana’s New Public Sphere.” American Ethnologist 31 (1): 92–110. Munn, N. 1986. The Fame of Gawa: A Symbolic Study of Value Transformation in a Massim Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tannen, D. 1989. Talking Voices: Repetition, Dialogue, and Imagery in Conversational Discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Thompson, J. B. 1995. The Media and Modernity: A Social Theory of the Media. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Turner, V. 1986 The Anthropology of Performance. New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications.

c8C When God Interferes Ritual, Empowerment, and Divine Presence in Chilean Pentecostalism Martin Lindhardt

It is common knowledge among members of the Evangelical Pentecostal Church (EPC) in Valparaíso, Chile, that good things only happen when God makes them happen. A fundamental theological principle in this church is an understanding of human powerlessness and total dependence upon an almighty God as the source of all good things. According to Anthony Giddens, distinguishing features of modernity include a basic trust in the transformative potential of human agency and social institutions as well as new perceptions of determination and ambiguity that leave little room for religious cosmologies (1994: 36). But in the EPC, secular notions of transformative power as embedded in social institutions and exercised by human agents are continuously disqualified, as church members emphasize that only God has real power to influence the course of events in positive directions. The theology of impotence pervades ritual life as well as everyday conversation. Church members commonly stress that healing comes from God (though he may sometimes use doctors as his instruments) and that politics is corrupt and useless, as only God can solve social problems. I often heard preachers explain how the relative prosperity in Chile compared to neighboring countries is the result of divine blessings because of the high number of praying Pentecostals, rather than of well-informed political decisions. And when church members tell each other about good things that have happened to them, God rather than human effort, except that of praying Pentecostals who activate divine power, is given the credit. Thus they may explain how God has given them new jobs, homes, or furniture without making any reference to the human agency and contacts that such acquisitions usually depend upon (Lindhardt 2004: 327–28). When asked how they or fam220

When God Interferes

221

ily member are doing, the appropriate answer is “Fine, thanks to God” (Bien, gracias a Dios) and I was often corrected when I answered with a simple “Fine.” Based on ethnographic research between 1999 and 2009, this chapter explores how divine interference and human powerlessness are constituted as fundamental features of Pentecostal ritual life. I argue that Pentecostal church meetings can be seen as arenas where people construct new identities by challenging secular hierarchies and notions of power. I pursue this argument by analyzing different ritual strategies by use of which divine interference is established as the only true source of consequential action. The chapter starts out with a brief background section, after which I introduce a few relevant perspectives on ritual. The remaining part of the chapter consists of an analysis of ritual activities where divine presence and interference become manifest.

Background The EPC is the second largest and one of the most conservative Pentecostal denominations in Chile.1 It can be distinguished from other denominations by its reluctance to join interdenominational evangelical organizations, by maintaining rules for clothing and hairstyle (women should always wear long skirts, long hair, and wear no makeup; men should have short hair), and by a strict discipline, which means that members are encouraged not to watch television, go to the cinema, or listen to popular music (drinking, dancing, smoking, gambling, preand extramarital sex are forbidden or strongly discouraged in most Pentecostal churches). A theological dualism between the life with God and the godless, corrupted “world” is important in many Pentecostal churches in Chile and elsewhere, but it is particularly outspoken in the EPC. This dualism has a temporal dimension as testimonies of salvation generally take the form of a story about a journey from the “world” to the life with God. And it represents a perceived contemporary tension between the children of God and the remaining society with its political and Catholic institutions and a decadent mainstream culture. Most active members of the EPC in Valparaíso belong to the lower socioeconomic sectors of society and can with a Bourdieuan vocabulary be described as people with low amounts of economical, social, and cultural capital (Bourdieu 1986). Some of the younger “native” church members are pursuing higher education and entering the middle class, whereas most first-generational Pentecostals (ex-Catholics)

222

Martin Lindhardt

have low levels of education. Many Pentecostal men are either unskilled workers or self-employed in the informal sector. Approximately two-thirds of active members are women, the majority of whom are housewives or work as domestic servants or vendors in small shops or street markets. The message of human impotence and dependence upon God mainly appeals to Chileans who are not dominant actors within economic, educational, and political fields. Besides, the rejection of the “world” can be seen as a rejection of the public sphere, in which many lower-class women whose main domain is the domestic sphere have never been too involved. The antipolitical stance of many Pentecostal churches is quite compatible with a widespread indifference towards politics and democracy in Chilean society. A neoliberal political model, which the democratic governments in Chile have inherited from Augusto Pinochet’s military regime (1973–1989), has resulted in insecure working conditions, low wages, and impediments to collective negotiation. After the transition to democracy in 1990, little has been done to encourage social participation in the popular sectors, and the poorest third of the population is practically invisible in politics (Portales 2000). A general lack of transparency of political and parliamentary processes further contributes to the alienation of large sectors of society from political life. According to the Chilean sociologist Tomas Moulían, the neoliberal model has gained a hegemonic status and has succeeded in eliminating any cultural space for transformative ideologies, while at the same time lowering popular expectations in the state (2002, see also Paley 2004). During the 1990s, participation in national elections declined (Portales 2000: 457), and studies showed a decreasing confidence in political institutions as well as popular perceptions of politicians as persons who pursue their own interests and only care about the people during election campaigns (Manzi and Catalàn 1998: 540–42). In such a sociopolitical environment, it may not be all that surprising that some groups put their faith in the transformative power of God, accessible through and activated by ritual practice.

Ritual and Power Ritual has so far been a largely neglected topic in most studies of Latin American Pentecostalism (but see Lehmann 1996). Much more attention has been focused on the ways in which Pentecostalism enables people to cope with limiting social conditions, e.g., by offering new communal networks of support, fostering a certain work ethics, and

When God Interferes

223

transforming particular gendered comportments and patterns of consumption (Ossa 1991; Willems 1967; Bernice Martin 1995; Brusco 1995; Mariz 1994). Scholars have also discussed the potential contribution of Pentecostalism to processes of democratization in Latin America (David Martin 1990; Bastian 1993; Dodson 1997; Smilde 1998; Smith 1994; Gill 2004; Freston 2008). What seems to be undertheorized in much of the existing literature is the particular religious practices through which certain Pentecostal ways of relating to oneself and the social world are constituted. The Chilean sociologists Canales, Palma, and Viella suggest a focus on Pentecostal subjectivity, arguing that specific attention should be paid to the experience of the sacred and the definition of a relation between the subject and the sacred through which new forms of self perception and new subjectivities emerge (1991). I certainly sympathize with this suggestion, as I regard experiences of divine power and the constitution and nourishment of a relationship with God as defining features of Pentecostal subjectivity. But Canales et al. do not provide any analysis of the empirical processes through which this relationship is developed. In this chapter, I argue that a focus on ritual provides an important window onto cultural microdynamics of Chilean Pentecostalism. I conceive of Pentecostal ritual as an arena for symbolic struggles over definitions and categorizations of the social world. And I explore how dispositions for orientation towards the sacred are acquired and exercised through the engagement in different practices of worship. Members of the EPC commonly evaluate meetings according to whether or not divine presence and power could be felt rather than whether new wisdom or biblical insights were gained from a sermon. After meetings, church members sometimes comment that their batteries had been reloaded. Or they touch their chests and say that they feel strengthened by the power of God. The term most frequently used to refer to subjective experiences of divine empowerment is gozo, meaning sublime pleasure or enjoyment. Church members describe gozo as a sensation of energy, warmth, and extreme happiness that can pervade the whole body but is mostly located in the chest. The most visible manifestations of gozo occur when church members feel overwhelmed by divine power and start dancing, jumping, moving their arms, screaming, weeping, laughing, or speaking in tongues, but gozo is also experienced in less-manifest ways by church members who remain standing quietly on the spot. An increasing number of anthropologists have come to conceive of ritual as a contested arena for creative social action, resistance, and negotiation of identity (Comaroff and Comaroff 1993; Hughes-

224

Martin Lindhardt

Freeland and Crain 1998; Weiss 2004). In a study of South African Zionism during apartheid, Jean Comaroff illustrates how ritual provides actors for whom open political struggle seems like a distant option with an appropriate medium through which the values and structures of a contradictory world can be addressed and manipulated (1985: 196). Pursuing a similar analysis, I argue that Pentecostal ritual practice implicitly defies the logic of the dominant sociocultural system and redefines the social world and the position of Pentecostal subjects within it. The privileged access to divine power is an essential part of such defiance and redefinition. Not only is divine empowerment important as a fundamental contrast to the godless “world,” but by being the ones who activate transformative power through worship, members of the EPC—while emphasizing human impotence—indirectly constitute themselves as influential actors. Another important trend in recent anthropological literature is a move away from earlier views on ritual as a symbolic expression and enactment of prior patterns of belief, thought, and social organization. Thomas Csordas argues that ritual is better seen as structurally prior to the generation of such patterns (1997: 155) and similar arguments are made by Talal Asad and Catherine Bell who, like Csordas, mainly see ritual as creative social and bodily practice. Inspired by Marcell Mauss’s classic essay “Techniques of the Body” (1973), Asad pleads for a phenomenological approach to ritual as performance where certain embodied and linguistic skills are presupposed and acquired (1993). In a study of disciplinary rites in medieval monasteries, he argues that embodied practice including language in use is a precondition for religious experiences and that the ability to enter into communion with God is the ability of an experienced or taught body (Asad 1993: 76). In a similar way, Bell argues that the main purpose of ritualization is not social solidarity or conflict resolution but the production of ritualized agents with an embodied cultural sense or practical knowledge of ritual. Such practical knowledge is not an inflexible set of assumptions, beliefs, or body postures; rather it is the ability to deploy, play, and manipulate basic schemes in ways that appropriate and condition experience effectively. It is a mastery that experiences itself as relatively empowered, not as conditioned or molded. (1992: 221—emphasis added)

The term ritualization is proposed by Bell as an alternative to ritual. She defines ritualization as “a way of acting that is designed and orchestrated to distinguish and privilege what is being done in comparison to other, usually more quotidian activities” (1992: 74). Instead of trying to impose analytical categories of what is or is not ritual on

When God Interferes

225

different activities, we are better served by paying attention to specific cultural strategies for creating a distinction between categories of activity as sacred and profane (Bell 1992). What distinguishes Pentecostal ritual life from more mundane activities is the perceived presence and active interference of God. But the distinction is not clear cut. An advantage of Bell’s perspective is that it allows us to conceive of different activities and situations as more or less ritualized. Divine presence is frequently perceived by Pentecostals outside of strictly ritual contexts, e.g., during informal conversations or simply as a pleasant accompanying presence in everyday life. Nevertheless, I think that it does make sense to regard church meetings as distinguished—that is, more ritualized—activities, where certain strategies that work better in a structured (ritual) environment within a delimited church space are deployed in order establish a context of divine presence and interference. In the sections that follow, I provide a brief description of a typical church meeting in the EPC. I then examine different strategies of ritualization, namely, positional practices and rhetorical techniques. The latter include shifts between addressing human listeners and God, interruptions, emotional displays, shifts in tonality, and finally the constitution of speech acts where the uttered words appear to originate from God.

The Structure of Church Meetings Church meetings, lasting between one and a half to three hours are held each night from Sunday to Friday at 7 or 7:30 P.M. Once or twice a month, late night meetings are held on Saturday lasting up to five hours. Despite the absence of formalized liturgy, church meetings do have a clear structure. Meetings start with a hymn, announced by the leader of the day (always a man who has been a church member for some time and has a certain status in the church). Then all church members kneel and pray for a few minutes. Nobody screams at this point, but many members speak loud enough to be heard. After another hymn, money is collected, and the leader then reads a passage from the Bible. When he finishes, church members stand up and shout “Glory to God” three times with their arms stretched upwards in order to thank God for his message. More praying and singing then follows. During initial hymns, the first spiritual manifestations sometimes occur. A few members may start dancing, screaming, jumping on the spot, or moving their arms, but the atmosphere hardly ever becomes truly dramatic at this point. On Sundays, the choir performs a few hymns after the initial singing and praying.

226

Martin Lindhardt

After a few practical announcements, the sermon follows, usually lasting around one hour. Common themes include the difference between the life with God and the godless “world,” the privilege of being a child of God, and human impotence and divine omnipotence. Besides, the interference of God and the devil in human life is illustrated by numerous anecdotes. When the sermon has finished, it is again time to pray, and afterwards a few hymns are sung. During the last hymns, afflicted persons may come forward so that other church members can pray for their healing. It is especially during the last hymns that the most dramatic spiritual manifestations, dancing, screaming, jumping, and glossolalia occur. What might seem as uncontrolled behavior is actually subject to some control. When dancing around with their eyes closed, church members always avoid hitting or bumping into each other, and they only move forward, whereas I never saw anyone dancing towards the back of church. If some church members are still dancing, screaming, jumping, or speaking in tongues when a hymn has finished, the last bars are repeated two or three times in order to allow the Holy Spirit to work. Spiritual manifestations should never be interrupted abruptly by humans but be allowed to fade little by little, and the singing continues until most people are calm. The meetings end with one person saying a closing prayer on behalf of all the other church members who are now quiet (a few may be sobbing or murmuring a little). In that way spiritual manifestations, which take a form that resembles uncontrolled hysteria, are always encompassed by the protective order of the church community.

Positional Practices Despite the importance of the written word, the Bible, Pentecostalism is foremost a religion of oral and bodily practices. According to Quentin Shultze, the primacy of oral over literate culture among poor Latin Americans explains in large part the appeal of Pentecostalism. Whereas the printed word objectifies and rationalizes life, orality is characterized by powerful immediacy, commonality, playfulness, performance, and presentness (1994: 71). But the effects of spoken language are dependant upon extralinguistic factors such as an implicit consensus between speaker and listeners concerning the basic premises upon which utterances are made. Another important factor is the organization and positioning of human bodies in church space. When the choir of the EPC performs on Sundays, its members stand in front of the pulpit (turning their backs against it) and face the

When God Interferes

227

audience who are sitting on benches. When the singing has finished, it is time to give thanks to God for the performances of the choir. The choir members turn around and face the pulpit while turning their backs against the audience. The choir and the audience then raise their hands and shout “Glory to God” three times. After a theater play or a concert, the performers usually face the audience and receive their applause. But after choir singing, both performers and audience participate in the applause and do not look at each other’s faces (the audience only see the backs of the choir members), and the choir does not receive the applause. In this way attention is directed away from the interaction between human performers and audience and towards another dimension. And by thanking God rather than the performers, human creativity is strategically neglected and church members are reminded that only God can make good things such as beautiful singing happen. During communal prayers, all church members kneel and pray for themselves while facing the pulpit. The preacher also kneels at the pulpit, but he usually turns his body 90 degrees and faces the side wall of the church. Similar positional practices can be observed during collective singing, where spiritual manifestations most often occur. Church members stand up and face the pulpit while singing, and if someone in the back of the church starts screaming, dancing, or jumping, those standing in front do not turn their heads to watch him or her. Through such positional practices, divine power is experienced as having multiple origins. As the loudness of the singing and screaming church members may at some point appear to have a life of its own, it can contribute to sensations of divine power being present in the church room (see Csordas 1997: 110). If the church members were standing in a circle, divine power could be perceived as originating from within an introvert and enclosed human community. But this is avoided by the fixation of gazes as church members do not look at each other’s faces but only at the backs of the persons in front. At times, it seems that divine power comes from behind, especially for participants who are standing in front and who can hear but not see other singing, screaming, and dancing brothers and sisters in Christ in the back, or from the sides (when a neighbor is touched by the spirit), an effect that is supported by the acoustics of the church building. When the choir and all church members face the pulpit and give their applause to God, it is indicated that he is present in the front of the church. And the fixation of bodies and gazes during praise and prayers indicate that God is present in the front or the side of the church. Through such positional practices, the church space is constituted as a site that is pervaded by divine presence and empowerment.

228

Martin Lindhardt

A similar positioning of bodies can be observed on Monday meetings, which take place in small local church buildings in different parts of the city. On Mondays, the main activity is sharing. After a little singing, praying, and a brief sermon, the participants take turns in standing up and thanking God for being with them. They more often than not take the opportunity to share an anecdote about how God has manifested himself in their lives during the past week. Or they may retell their personal testimony of salvation in a summarized version. Through such storytelling, experience is structured and ultimately altered by being articulated within the terms of the religious community and in accordance with a certain politics of storytelling dictating that God rather than humans should be held responsible for all good achievements. At the same time, singular events and personal biographies become inscribed as episodes within a shared biblical metanarrative about the divine plan of salvation and the eternal tension between the church and the “world.” Hence sharing also becomes a public though implicit statement of commitment to the Pentecostal community as well as a confirmation of its basic theological and ontological premises. During sharing, the person who is speaking stands up on the spot while the listeners remain seated. Everyone is facing the pulpit except the leader, who is standing at the pulpit facing the other participants. In other Pentecostal churches in Chile and elsewhere, different spatial practices can be observed during sharing, as the speaker comes forward and faces the audience, a positioning that emphasizes the human community between them. But in the EPC, speaker and listeners do not look at each other. If someone who is sitting in the back of the church stands up to thank God, the church members sitting in front do not turn around and watch him or her but remain seated in the same position, looking forwards. The leader of the day, who stands at the pulpit, is sometimes looking directly at the speaker. But it is common for the latter to be looking forwards without searching for any eye contact with the leader, the only person whose face is available to sight. As speaker and listeners avoid looking at each other, the ritual community is extended beyond the human participants and a context of divine presence is produced.

Addressing God The integration of God into the ritual community is partly achieved through the use of rhetorical techniques that indicate that he is present

When God Interferes

229

as one of the listeners of the spoken word. This can be illustrated by quoting Carmen, a housewife in her early thirties who stood up during a Monday meeting and thanked God for being with her: The Lord is great and wonderful. I wish to glorify him because of how beautiful, perfect, and wonderful he is. He is the best. I used to be so sad, and now I am so happy. So many bad things happen in the “world,” but nothing happens to me, because you come to the church, and the Lord protects you, and you feel that the enemy [Satan] respects you, you feel you’re not alone, you’re with the Lord, so the bad things don’t happen to you. … Thanks to him, my husband has a job, my health is fine. All I want to do is to thank the Lord, because he is so nice, and he is present in my life, his divine protection is with us, he is so great. Now I’m so happy that I feel my heart is falling out of my body. He is here now, and all I want to do is to glorify him, I think that it is the most wonderful thing that has happened to any of us. If it hadn’t been for him, I don’t know what my life would be like, my soul would have been lost, if it hadn’t been for the Lord. There are so many persons in the “world,” who have it all, they have a house, a car, but how are their hearts? Sad! They don’t have any reward! They don’t have anyone who blesses them. We, the children of God, are short of many material things, but what does it matter? We have something greater, the Lord! And for me the Lord is the best there is, my Lord is so beautiful, and I want to say to you Lord, I love you, I love you and I don’t ever want you to leave me Lord, protect me, if it weren’t for you, I don’t know what I would do, Lord. I have no life without you Lord, and I want to glorify you.

Unfortunately a written reproduction of this declaration of love to God does not give the reader an impression of the passion with which it was made nor of the atmosphere in the church. At times Carmen was screaming, at times almost crying with joy. The other participants were truly excited and constantly interfered, shouting “Amen,” “Alleluia,” and “Glory to God.” When she finished, we all had to stand up and shout “Glory to God” three times and then sing a hymn. At the end of Carmen’s speech, an interesting shift can be observed. She suddenly changes from addressing the other church members to address God directly, telling him how much she loves him. Shifts between addressing human coparticipants to addressing a divine Other are common in many religious rituals, but they are often more clearly announced, e.g., with the words “Let us pray” or “Let us give thanks to the Lord” and with a different bodily attitude, e.g., the introvert and folded position of prayer, closed eyes, or looking upwards with raised arms instead of looking at the human audience—all of which indicates that the receiver of the spoken message is now another. The

230

Martin Lindhardt

sudden, spontaneous, and unannounced shift reinforces the sensation that God has actually been present as part of the audience the whole time. Neither the bodily attitude and position of Carmen nor her tone of voice, which was already loud and emotional, nor the informal and improvised nature of her speech changed when she addressed God directly. In this way, the different receivers of the speech, the human participants and God, become more integrated, and divine presence in the ritual community is presented as such a natural and common thing that it can (almost) be taken for granted. Spontaneous shifts from addressing other church members to addressing God directly are common in sermons and sharing, though they are sometimes accompanied by an altered tone of voice, weeping, and movements with the arms, which indicate that the speaker has been touched by the Holy Spirit. On Mondays when church members stand up and speak about divine interference in their lives, they frequently include God among their listeners as they shift between telling others how he has helped them and thanking him directly. The position of the body is hardly ever changed during such shifts. While God is obviously very different from the human listeners, the informal and spontaneous ways of addressing him serve to include him as an intimate and natural part of the ritual community.

Tonality, Interruptions, and Emotional Display Members of the EPC proudly emphasize that prescribed liturgy is absent from their meetings and that this is a crucial difference between Pentecostalism and Catholicism. It is believed that too much manmade liturgy, formalization, and human control inhibit the interference of the Holy Spirit. While such interference is certainly intended by human participants and must be facilitated and conditioned by their willful surrender, it can never be planned or programmed but must ultimately occur when and where God wishes it to occur. And while it is definitely disappointing when God does not interfere, the possibility that he might not is essential for the understanding of the nature of divine interference. Apparent unpredictability and spontaneity, the sensation that some aspects of actions occur independently of human preparation and planning, are fundamental phenomenological criteria for manifestations and experiences of the sacred (see Csordas 1997). Sudden bodily movements, shifts in tonality, emotional displays, and different outbursts are all characterized by an apparent independence of the intentions and plans of the actor who seems to be over-

When God Interferes

231

whelmed rather than in total control. Such behavior is seen as an index of divine presence and inspiration. I often heard Pentecostal preachers preach for up to an hour in an altered voice at the point of crying but without breaking into uncontrolled tears. It is also common that the tone of voice of the preacher changes from screaming and crying to whispering and laughing. A frequently used rhetorical technique in preaching and sharing is a gradual alteration of the voice towards a climax. On one occasion a preacher spoke about how divine healing, through praying, is far superior to the healing that can be found in hospitals. “Here in Valparaíso, we have Christian doctors. God has cured people here, in Valparaíso, in the church, in the Evangelical Pentecostal Chuuuuuurch.” During these sentences the tone of voice was gradually altered and the last words “Pentecostal Chuuuuuurch” were shouted with raised arms. Such changes in the tonality, leading to a climax, usually evoke responses among members of the audience, who may shout “Amen,” “Alleluia,” “Glory to God,” or even start dancing and jumping. It must be stressed, however, that while bodily movements and changes in tonality are important nonsemantic techniques of creating an atmosphere of divine presence, the utterances that most frequently evoke dramatic responses among the audience do have specific contents, namely, that God is present in the church or that the church members—unlike the people of the “world” who may be better off economically—enjoy spiritual privileges. Different kinds of interruptive outbursts are important and welcomed parts of ritual life. A whole regime of emotional display is at work as both preacher and members of the audience frequently start weeping, screaming, crying, and moving their bodies during sermons and sharing. Church members are, in fact, extremely careful not to confuse human emotions with spiritual interference. When I once referred to a recent church meeting as “emocionante” (touching, emotional), I was immediately asked by a Pentecostal friend if I really meant that or if I did not rather mean that the presence of the Holy Spirit could be felt during the meeting.2 But the display of behavior that to a nonPentecostal observer seems like very emotional outbursts (and despite possible objections from Pentecostal friends, I will stick to this term, since I believe that it will work better than other terms in enabling non-Pentecostal readers to imagine the kind of behavior that can be observed in church meetings), is an important strategy of ritualization by use of which divine presence becomes manifest. It is common for preachers to interrupt themselves during sermons because they feel overwhelmed with the divine power and love that they

232

Martin Lindhardt

are talking about. Such interruptions may be more or less dramatic. The pastor in the EPC frequently starts weeping and screaming “Alleluia” or “Glory to God” in the middle of a sermon. He then wipes away the tears on his face with a handkerchief and says “Alleluia” or “Glory to God” or “Blessed be the lord” in a mild tone of voice, half weeping, half laughing, before he continues preaching. On one occasion he was telling a story about woman who had a vision, where the hills of Valparaíso were filled with the light of the Holy Spirit. At the end of the story he suddenly said, “Days of glory are coming” three times, gradually altering his voice until he shouted the third “Days of glory are coming” with his arms raised, and at this point several church members started screaming. Such interruptions also occur during Monday meetings when church members share anecdotes about divine interference in their lives. They may suddenly feel so overwhelmed that they start weeping or screaming “Glory to God,” “Alleluia,” or “Praise the sweet name of the savior.” The listeners usually react to such outbursts by standing up and singing a hymn in order to welcome the interference of the Holy Spirit and encourage it to continue. Attempts to inhibit spiritual interference by encouraging the church members who make outbursts to sit down and be quiet and by insisting on proceeding with the sermon before the Holy Spirit has finished its manifestation are considered a serious sin. With such interruptions, sermons and sharing can be prolonged by several minutes. Spontaneous outbursts made by the preacher or the audience during sermons and witnessing often take a less dramatic form than screaming, crying, jumping, and dancing. The preacher may interrupt himself continuously with outbursts that are not part of the story that is being told or the explanation that is being given, like in the following excerpt from a sermon: The Lord is always worried about us brothers and sisters. Blessed be the Lord. I have a lot of experience, praise the Lord. I have seen how merciful our God is. I work as a carpenter, and sometimes there is no work. But the Lord has always helped us, brothers. When I did not serve the Lord, sometimes I did not have enough food or clothing. Oh blessed be the Lord, that is why I say that God is always worried about us, brothers, oh praise the Lord. Because God loves us. Let us praise the Lord [all church members stand up with raised hands and shout “Glory to God” three times].

Such outbursts (“Oh blessed be the Lord … oh praise the Lord”) are not particularly disturbing and do not represent major ruptures in the sermon except at the end of the excerpt when all members stand up and shout “Glory to God” three times. In a similar way, listeners often

When God Interferes

233

start saying or murmuring “Amen,” “Glory to God,” “There is power in your blood, oh lamb of God,” “Oh yes, Lord,” “That is right, Lord” during sermons. The constant outbursts from listeners and the regular interruptions of the sermons because the perceived presence of the Holy Spirit requires that all members stand up and praise God are expected and very much welcomed in church meetings. Apart from indicating that God is present, the outbursts also address him directly and hence establish and confirm a social relationship with him. And by making such outbursts, the audience members become active participants in a communicative process that involves God. The rhetorical constitution of divine presence during church meetings can be further illustrated by an example. In August 2000, the EPC choir made a weekend trip to visit a congregation in Santiago. On the following Monday, the program was changed. Instead of the usual local meetings, a big meeting in the central church building was organized to praise God for the blessing of the trip and allow all church members to share it. One choir member, a man in his late twenties, spoke for about one hour about the trip. The choir members had traveled to Santiago in an old bus. On the way out of Valparaíso, they were stopped by the police who wanted to check if the driver had all the necessary documents. No doubt this was a satanic attack, an attempt to sabotage the gozo that the choir members were about to experience in Santiago. So they immediately kneeled and prayed for God to help them, and after a while the police allowed them to continue. After this anecdote, a description of a church meeting in Santiago followed: The pastor said: “These brothers and sisters from Valparaíso, they have come a long way, but God has accompanied them and they will bring gozo back to their church” [several church members shout “Amen, Alleluia, Glory to God”]. … The meeting was supposed to end at 10 P.M., but we make our program and the Lord makes his own program [again church members shout: “Amen,” “glory to God”], the Lord manifested himself, he started to move his church and we started to sing and sing and sing. … [At this point the preacher seems to be entering some kind of mild ecstasy. He is speaking in a soft and mild tone of voice, laughing gently and joyfully] And then a sister prophesized. She said: “The Lord will return very soon, very soon! The windows of heaven shall be opened for the brothers [church members scream: “Amen”] and blessed be the youth of the church, it is soon time to enjoy the great second revival that the Lord has promised us” [a few church members start dancing, jumping, weeping, and screaming]. This is the promise of God [The preacher first starts weeping mildly. He then screams:] Oh Lord, receive the tears of your people, oh Holy Spirit of God. [Several church members now start dancing, weeping, jump-

234

Martin Lindhardt

ing, screaming, and moving their arms. The remaining church members all stand up and shout “Glory to God” three times with their hands raised and then begin singing a hymn. It takes several minutes before the preacher can continue.]

After the speech, another choir member, a boy in his early teens, came forward to thank God for giving him this incredible blessing, a trip to Santiago with the choir, and he was so overwhelmed that he spoke with a trembling voice and had to interrupt himself several times as he started weeping. The rest of the church members reacted by standing up and shouting “Glory to God” three times and then sang a hymn. In ritual rhetorical processes, a trip to Santiago, organized and paid for by the church members themselves, and participation in a church meeting, which according to the descriptions did not differ radically from many church meetings in Valparaíso, are constituted as tremendous divine blessings. Through shifts in tonality, shifts between addressing the human audience and God directly, emotional displays, and frequent outbursts from speakers and listeners, divine presence becomes manifest in Pentecostal ritual life, both as a perceived and overwhelming presence in the church room imposing itself on the communication between preacher and audience and as an interfering factor in the stories that are being told. Representation and presence become intertwined as church members simultaneously communicate about and are overwhelmed by divine presence and power. The fact that the church meeting in Santiago did not end according to manmade plans at 10 P.M. but had to be prolonged was seen as a clear and much-welcomed result of divine interference as were the frequent interruptions of the story about the trip to Santiago. Like positional practices, the different rhetorical techniques are important strategies of ritualizing communication and distinguishing it from other and more mundane forms of communication. Unlike church services in the Catholic church and mainline Protestant churches where prescribed liturgy is followed and unlike many “traditional” rituals studied by anthropologists, Pentecostal ritualized communication is not distinguished from other kinds of communication by a prevalence of highly formalized speech where choice of intonation and scope for improvisation are limited. On the contrary, divine interference becomes manifest in the aspects of communication that seem to be beyond human planning such as spontaneous shifts in tonality, emotional outbursts, and interruptions. Theoretical perspectives on ritual as conventionalized and formalized behavior that expresses public morality but is unfit for the sponta-

When God Interferes

235

neous expression of emotions (Bloch 1974; Tambiah 1979; Rappaport 1999) face some obvious limits in the case of Pentecostalism, where spontaneity and emotional display are essential ingredients of ritual life.3 But that does not mean that Pentecostal church meetings should be seen as occasions where prior and natural emotions are allowed to be articulated. While sermons, testimonies, and witnessing can be prepared, shifts in tonality, outbursts, and sudden urges to glorify God are all aspects of communicative action that seem to work independently of human intentions and preparations. But spontaneous and emotional outbursts are intentionally coordinated (see Csordas 1997: 113) and only occur in a restricted community of believers within an enclosed church space, where a context of intimate divine presence and power has been established through positional and other practices. The most dramatic divine manifestations such as loud emotional outbursts, sudden altering of the voice of the preacher, glossolalia, prophesies, laughing, screaming, weeping, dancing, and jumping very rarely occur at the beginning of church meetings and normally only after an intimate and intense ritual atmosphere has been produced by initial praying and singing. The love of God, the urge to glorify him, and the spontaneous inclinations to make outbursts are emotions that are organized and evoked through embodied ritualized practice including language in use. I fully agree with Csordas that ritual language should be seen as a technique of the body, “a tool for reordering the behavioural environment, cultivating the dispositions of the habitus, and creating the sacred self” (1997: 262). The abilities to use language in certain ways, to make sudden shifts in tonality, to talk for a long time in an altered tone of voice at the point of crying but without breaking into tears, or to start screaming, weeping mildly, and laughing during a speech are all acquired abilities of a ritually taught body with dispositions for being in communion with divine power. The use of such rhetorical techniques is not restricted to church meetings. In private contexts, church members frequently tell each other stories, very similar to the ones told during church meetings, about divine interference in their lives, and minor outbursts such as “Praise the Lord” or a few tears do occur, though never as dramatically as in church meetings. Hence the extent to which a given communicative situation can be classified as “ritual” is better measured across a continuum than in terms of a rigid sacred-profane dichotomy. It is the very informality of ritualized language that facilitates its partial penetration into everyday conversations, where divine presence is also sometimes perceived.

236

Martin Lindhardt

Look Who’s Talking Sensations of divine presence and empowerment in Pentecostal ritual life are reinforced by perceptions of spoken language as originating from God rather than human speakers. In the EPC, the constitution of speech acts where the uttered words seem to have certain autonomy in relation to the speaker is an important strategy of ritualization through which different kinds of language use can be distinguished from each other. Glossolalia and prophesy are the types of ritualized speech where divine presence and inspiration is most salient. As prophecies are seen as a direct message from God, they must be given spontaneously as a result of sudden divine inspiration rather than human planning (see Csordas 1997: 125). And the perception of the autonomy of spoken words is reinforced as persons who are prophesizing often seem to be in a state of trance, as if they were not being themselves. After a prophesy they may not even remember what they said. Glossolalia, the utterance of meaningless sounds, is seen as a direct communication with the Holy Spirit. People speaking in tongues usually have full awareness, and while they are able to stop if they wish, they cannot control what comes out of their mouth during glossolalia. As the uttered sounds have no semantic (human) meaning, language appears as an autonomous, nonhuman force. However, only very few members of the EPC and mostly elderly women possess the gift of prophecy, and sometimes weeks or months may pass without any prophecies in the church. And many church members have never spoken in tongues. Nevertheless, the experience of divine inspiration during speech is shared by all active church members with a testimony of salvation. Preaching in the church or on the street, witnessing, testifying, praying, or simply informal conversations are all linguistic activities, where divine authorship of spoken words can be perceived. In these speech acts, the divine “I” does not impose itself as compellingly upon the human speaking “I” as in glossolalia and prophesizing but is nevertheless still felt as an alien, though pleasant and intimate, presence. Several church members explained to me how the Holy Spirit imposed itself upon them during witnessing and street preaching or during conversations with non-Pentecostals whom they tried to convert. They would simply open their mouths and the words would flow by themselves. And sometimes they would even be surprised when listening to the words that came out of their own mouths. Church members frequently mention how God has spoken to them through instruments or how they have themselves been used as in-

When God Interferes

237

struments. By this is meant that God uses one Pentecostal to speak to another about a personal matter concerning the listener and of which the speaker could not have known beforehand, except through a divine revelation. One person may talk about something another person has been thinking but not told anyone. In such cases the presence of God in the speaking subject is less compelling than in prophesies and glossolalia but stronger than during inspired preaching, witnessing, and testifying. Some, mostly younger, church members told me that they felt that God had only inspired them during street preaching, witnessing, and personal conversations with other Pentecostals and nonPentecostals, but that they were longing and praying for a stronger experience of being taken and used by God, e.g., prophesizing, speaking in tongues, or being used as instruments. The experiences that they were longing for consisted in moments of speech, during which the spoken words would appear as more external to them, the speakers, than ever before. It is generally assumed that preachers in the church are under divine influence, and this assumption is reinforced by the reactions of listeners. Thus it is quite uncommon to congratulate a preacher with an inspiring sermon. Church members often say that the presence of God can be felt in a sermon and that God often uses a given preacher in beautiful ways but the rhetorical skills of a preacher are rarely praised. Church members who feel touched or inspired during a sermon frequently react by making outbursts such as “That’s right, Lord,” “Yes, Lord” (rather than “That’s right, preacher,” “Yes, preacher”). Rhetorical creativity is not ascribed to human speakers, since all consequential language use originates from God. The perceptions of divine authorship of language may at times lead to experiences of words as having a thing-like qualities. Edgardo, an unskilled worker in his forties, once described to me how he would feel touched by the words that were preached in the church: Sometimes the words that you hear in the church come upon you and they fill your whole life, it is like an ecstasy. The words come and they reach your soul. And you know, sometimes we speak in tongues, but that it is not something of our own—it is so great. We are just like the cups that are filled; this excellent power of God comes upon us.

We can see how glossolalia is characterized by an intense perception of a divine other imposing himself upon the speaking subject as if he were a cup waiting to be filled. But in Edgardo’s description, the semantically meaningful words that he hears preached in the church also appear as manifestations of divine power. Words are not just

238

Martin Lindhardt

signs, consisting of arbitrary phonetic signifiers referring to a signified, namely, divine presence and power. And the powerful and dramatic utterance of words is more than an icon of divine power and more than an index, indicating that the speaker is under divine influence. Certainly, spoken words contain all these qualities as signs, indexes, and icons of divine presence and power. But words also take on the virtual status of things in a kind of language fetishism. At some point during ritual, distinctions between the symbolic and the real are collapsed (Coleman 2000: 131), and it appears that the words are themselves the very power of God imposing itself upon speaking and listening subjects, filling their lives and reaching their souls. When spoken language appears to originate from God rather than the speaker, linguistic, acoustic forms may themselves be perceived as sources of power. But perceptions of divine authorship also serve to invest the message with extra authority. Evoking God as the ultimate author of spoken words is an important way of encouraging obedience and commitment. On one occasion, a preacher scolded his audience for not coming to church every day and for sometimes arriving late. He then added that someone might argue that he was in no position to tell others how they should behave, which would indeed be true, but the reprimand did not come from him but from the Holy Spirit. Church members also regularly remind each other that they should not come to church in order to listen to the sermon of a particular brother—and if they did, they might start focusing on all his imperfections, his physical appearance, etc.—but only to hear what God has to say. The divine authorship of preaching was made quite explicit during a church meeting when a preacher, at the end of a sermon, made the following statement: It is important to remember what the Lord has told us today, Sunday, September 9. Remember that I told you that it is important always to have good conduct, at home and in all other places. And I told you that my things are more important than anything else, more important than your homes or your guests.4

Here the preacher suddenly makes a shift from speaking about the Lord in the third person to speaking in the first person, a shift that was not accompanied by an altered tone of voice or by bodily movements. The “I” in the excerpt does not belong to the human speaker but to God. The smooth, spontaneous, and apparently very unproblematic and uncontroversial shift from speaking about God to speaking as God (no eyebrows were raised among the listeners, for whom such a shift seemed like a perfectly natural thing) indicates that he did

When God Interferes

239

not suddenly, dramatically, and out of the blue impose himself upon the speaker but that he had been an integral part of the communicative process the whole time. The shift does not announce a fundamental change in the authorship of the speech but mainly states explicitly what is already known and most of the time taken for granted. Divine authorship of spoken words is frequently manifested more dramatically. The exact extent to which words originate from God or from the animator is often unclear, but the rhetorical techniques described in the previous section, emotional displays, shifts in tonality, and bodily movements all serve as indexes that the balance between human and divine contributions to the speaking process has shifted and that the speaker is now mainly an instrument of God. On another occasion a preacher ended his sermon by encouraging all church members to pray: Dear brothers and sisters, come forward and pray [speaking in a slightly altered tone of voice]. The Lord asks you to come forward and pray [shouting, weeping and moving his arms].

In the first part of the excerpt, the preacher addresses the audience as “brothers and sisters,” that is, as fellow human children of the same heavenly father. In the second part, God is still being referred to in the third person, but at the same time he is now the one who really invites church members to come forward and pray. By uttering words in a more dramatic and emotional way, it is indicated that the human speaker is now foremost a channel through which God addresses his children. Through the use of different rhetorical strategies of ritualization, divine inspiration can be experienced and manifested in more or less dramatic ways. God manifests himself, sometimes as an extraordinary and overwhelming presence, producing intense reactions and sensations of gozo, and sometimes as a taken-for-granted, intimate, and almost ordinary part of the ritual communicative community of speakers and listeners.

Praying Veronica, a rather shy woman in her forties, once told me that she never participated in street preaching or in Monday meetings, because she always became extremely nervous when she had to speak in public. She was now asking God to help her with this problem and had already experienced some progress:

240

Martin Lindhardt

Now I pray a lot and I fast frequently so that the Lord will give me the words. I am a coward; I really don’t like to stand up and speak in public. But you know, today, I went to the meeting with the dorcas [a women group] and when the meeting finished, the leader asked me to stand up and say the final prayer. And I did not want to do it, but I stood up anyway and then the words just came out of my mouth. Afterwards I was shaking because the Holy Spirit had come upon me.

Spoken, prayed, words in a ritual contexts are here not presented as originating from the creativity and intentions of the speaking subject but as an external power, a gift that may or may not be given by God. Though praying is commonly conceived of as a communicative situation, where humans speak and God listens and sometimes answers, several Pentecostals explained to me how God enabled them to pray by letting the words come to them. The ease with which church members can pray for up to an hour or more without running out of words was repeatedly emphasized as a marked contrast to preconversion experience with praying. Rather than a monologue, praying takes the form of a dialogue or an intimate communion with God who is also the source of the words that are uttered by the human participant. This is particularly salient when someone starts praying in Spanish and ends up speaking in tongues, which is, however, not seen as the end of one activity and the beginning of a new, but merely as a continuation and climax of praying. The complexity of praying as a communicative situation where a person talks to and with God, senses his answers and attention, but where it is at the same time really God who talks through the praying person is also salient at the end of church meetings, when afflicted participants come forward and are prayed for. In such cases, the power of healing must pass through the person who prays with his or her hands imposed on the head of the afflicted. Rather than the praying person asking God to send his power directly to the afflicted—a situation where physical contact between the two human participants in the triad would be of minor importance—the one who prays becomes a necessary instrument or channel for the transmission of divine power. The praying consists in asking God for help and in demanding the problem and sometimes the demonic forces that may have caused it to leave. This demand is made by a praying human being with the authority that is given by God, but it is also, to an extent that is often not quite clear, made by God himself through the person who prays. It is worth noticing that experiences of divine presence, empowerment, and gozo, of pleasant streams of energy and warmth running through the body during praying for healing, are more frequently reported by the ones who pray than by the afflicted.

When God Interferes

241

The Otherness of Language In a fascinating study of ritual language in a North American Catholic charismatic community, Csordas argues that it is the otherness of language that makes certain kinds of linguistic action apt for cultural objectifications as divine presence and that the mystification of this otherness is a rhetorical condition for the efficacy of prophecy (1997: 241). Csordas proposes an interesting view on the existential otherness of language as grounded in the otherness that it shares as a feature of embodiment. He presents his argument through a discussion with Tambiah who sees language as being both outside us, in that it is part of a cultural heritage, and within us, since we generate it as agents (1968: 184, quoted in Csordas 1997: 237). Language, in this view, has certain objectivity and independence as a cultural system that preexists the speaking individual who must appropriate it. But, according to Csordas, the textualized approach of Tambiah leads him to see language as a representation rather than an instance of force. Drawing on Merleau-Ponty (1962), Csordas argues that the otherness, which makes language apt for certain mystifications, is better ascribed to language being part of our embodied existence. At its root, language is incarnate, a phonetic gesture with immanent meaning. While our bodies are compellingly ours, they are also alien presences, imposing limits on our being (e.g., by aging and tiring) and “to the extent that our experience of language is also experience of our bodies, it partakes of this ambiguous embodied otherness” (1997: 238). I find the perspective of Csordas both original and persuasive, but I think there may be a little more to be said about the autonomy of language as experienced by members of the EPC. In addition to the views of the otherness of language as grounded in processes of externalization and objectification and as grounded in the concrete otherness that it shares as a feature of embodiment, I suggest that the perceived autonomy of spoken language may also be the result of subjects being enrolled in a Pentecostal discursive formation with strict rules and doctrines for enunciation. Csordas sees glossolalia as the clearest example of speech as a phonetic gesture in which the speaker takes up an existential position in the world, in that glossolalia takes the form of nonsense. But he argues that all language is incarnate and has a gestural, existential meaning (1997: 238). Thus it is implied that his argument about the mystification of the embodied otherness of language also applies to other, less dramatic, ritual genres. But apart from glossolalia, Csordas’s main focus in the discussion on the otherness of language lays on prophecy. Glossolalia and prophesy are the ritualized speech acts where divine

242

Martin Lindhardt

inspiration is felt most compellingly. The argument that I am about to make may not enrich our understanding of glossolalia, but I think it may help us grasp how language can be experienced as speaking itself during less-dramatic forms of divinely inspired speech, such as preaching, sharing, giving testimony, and praying. At this point, it must be specified what is meant by discourse. Though they are closely related, discourse should not be reduced to or equated with language. Discourse can be defined as language that constitutes the objects of which it speaks, but that being said, it should immediately be added that in order to do so effectively, language use must be subjected to principles that, unlike grammar, are not inherent within language (as a system) itself. The aim of an analysis of discourse is to establish the conditions of possibility for some speech acts to be taken seriously rather than other. In the words of Foucault: In every society the production of discourse is at once controlled, selected, organised and redistributed by a number of procedures whose role is to ward off its powers and dangers, to gain mastery over its chance events, to evade its ponderous formidable materiality. … We know quite well that we do not have the right to say everything, that we cannot speak of just anything in any circumstances whatever and that not everyone has the right to speak of anything whatever. (1981: 152)

The rules of discourse or of a discursive formation govern not only what may be said by whom, but also how themes or objects of discourse should be conceptually elaborated. In the EPC, human powerlessness and divine omnipotence and the fundamental contrast between the life with God and the “world” of sin are pervasive principles, governing both how themes such as politics and healing should be addressed and how biographies and anecdotes about human fortune should be constructed. There are also rules for nonsemantic aspects of speech. Foucault uses the concept of ritual to refer to, among other things, the “gestures, behaviour, circumstances, and the whole set of signs which must accompany discourse (1981: 62). Finally, a discursive formation consists of rules for enunciative modalities (Foucault 1972: 73), that is, types of discursive activity, such as (in the case of Pentecostalism) preaching, sharing, praying, and prophesizing. Each of these modalities is tied to certain situations, locations, and positions. The latter may be more or less restricted. Most church members are allowed to participate in street preaching but only long-term and faithful male church members can preach in the church on Sundays. Kathleen C. Boone conceives of Protestant fundamentalism as a discourse in which objects are constituted and the role of fundamentalist

When God Interferes

243

subjects, leaders, and followers are transcribed. The rules of discourse operate according to a sort of uniform anonymity on all individuals who speak in a fundamentalist discursive field (1989: 82—Foucault 1972: 63). While individuals are to some extent able to manipulate a discourse, it mostly works the other way around: No single individual is smart enough or powerful enough to manipulate fundamentalist discourse fully, and in certain ways, the discourse manipulates him. To enjoy credibility, one must ensure that one’s own discourse is following the explicit and implicit rules of the general discourse. … The personal power of the preacher pales in comparison with the impersonal power of fundamentalist discourse. (Boone 1989: 15)

In order to produce valid “true” statements, church members are bound to follow the explicit and implicit rules of general discourse. And many enunciative situations are fairly standardized. When preaching on the street, members of the EPC walk from street corner to street corner, and only a few minutes are spent on each spot. The message is mostly limited to a brief explanation of how Christ died on the cross to offer the rest of us eternal salvation and how release from present frustrations can be found by giving one’s life to him. I never observed emotional outbursts like the ones described earlier during street preaching. This is not to say that Pentecostal enunciative modalities demand highly formalized, liturgical speech and repetition of standard utterances. And I am by no means suggesting that discourse should be seen as a negative social constraint that is enforced upon otherwise naturally free and creative communication (and nothing would be further from Foucault’s position). As Ortner points out (1990: 6), there is no freedom to narrate outside of a discourse though alternative discourses may be sought. The power of Pentecostal discourse does not work by coercion but as a structure of action that incites, induces, and guides the possibility of linguistic conduct. A partial synthesis of a Foucauldian analysis of discourse with a more phenomenological approach may help us understand how church members who follow the rules of discourse come to experience their own ritual linguistic mastery as empowered rather than conditioned. Being enrolled within a Pentecostal discursive formation, having internalized its rules (e.g., of conceptual elaborations) as part of one’s linguistic dispositions, and having developed bodily dispositions for being in communion with divine power, members of the EPC frequently find themselves in enunciative situations where it would simply not (or at least very rarely) occur to them to make certain statements and gestures, while others, though not learned and rehearsed beforehand, are made with an ease

244

Martin Lindhardt

and apparent naturalness so that it seems that all one has to do is to open the mouth and allow God to let the words flow. When church members share anecdotes during Monday meetings or in private contexts about good things that have happened to them, they do not feel constrained and obliged to include God in a story where he does not really belong and that would be much easier to tell if he could be left out. On the contrary, it would feel unnatural for them not to make God the main character in a story about human fortune. Human impotence and divine interference are fundamental ontological principles, inscribed, partly through ritual practice, as parts of the dispositions that spontaneously inform interpretation and narrative articulation of events. Pentecostal discourse manipulates its subjects, not by enforcing social constraints upon otherwise naturally free speech, but by modulating improvisation and spontaneity through the creation of enunciative modalities, where certain kinds of utterances, gestures, and outbursts seem to flow in an unforced way. Language appears autonomous as specific (more or less ritualized) enunciative situations and positions, combined with certain acquired embodied and linguistic dispositions, enable statements to be made spontaneously and with little effort, and this apparent autonomy can be objectified as divine inspiration.

Powerlessness and Authority In a study on language and secularization, Richard Fenn argues that human speech acts have become haunted by slipperiness, ambiguity, and uncertainty in modern society and that the scope for making authoritative statements has become limited. Ordinary discourse is caught up in the process of negotiating praise and blame and rarely gives the speakers or listeners the sense that all has been said and done. Fenn relates the growth of Pentecostalism to the successful secularization of educational, economic, or political institutions (1982: 119). In a modern world, where knowledge is constantly being revisited (Giddens 1996: 33), and the privilege of making relatively authoritative statements with a status beyond mere opinion is confined to experts, Pentecostalism reasserts a structure of authority. Not only can Pentecostals refer to the Bible as an indisputable source of authority but they can also speak with an authority that comes directly from God as he, to variable extents, inspires human speech. This authority contrasts with social powerlessness and perceived inability to make authoritative statements within political and other secular fields in

When God Interferes

245

Chilean society, where most lay members of the EPC do not enjoy the status of experts. In Pentecostal ritual, the sensations of powerlessness and insufficiency that many church members experience elsewhere are reevaluated as fundamental criteria for the efficiency of language use. Like other kinds of transformative action, consequential speech is not produced by autonomous creative individuals but by allowing God to take control. Through the strategic neglect of the power and creativity of human agency, Pentecostal ritualized practice constitutes an inversion of a modernist individualist ethos.

Conclusion Unlike many other religious fundamentalists, members of the EPC are not engaged in open political or militant struggles to gain dominance over political institutions and impose an ideal community upon the world. They are, however, engaged in ongoing symbolic struggles over definitions and perceptions of the social world and not least of their own position within it. In Pentecostal discourses and ritual practice, secular notions of power as embedded in political, economic, and scientific institutions and exercised by their agents are disqualified in favor of a notion of divine power, accessible to and activated by worshipping Pentecostals. By accepting and even idealizing human powerlessness and total dependence on God but at the same time establishing an intimate and embodied relationship with his transformative power, Pentecostals defy the logic of secular social and cultural hierarchies. Experiences of divine empowerment also present a marked contrast to the godless “world” to which Pentecostals perceive themselves as standing in opposition. As indicated by the high levels of ritual activity and the frequently stressed need to reload spiritual batteries, the rejection of the “world” and the journey towards intimacy with God are not confined to the moment of conversion but must be relived on a regular basis. My intention in this chapter has been to portray Pentecostal ritual practice as more than a symbolic representation of theological notions of divine power, human powerlessness, and dependency. In church meetings, divine power is experienced not as an intellectual construct but as an active force that moves among human participants, works on and through their bodies, and frequently interrupts their communication. It is only when God interferes that otherwise powerless humans are able to produce beautiful singing and consequential speech. And it is by planning church meetings, sermons, and testimonies only to let

246

Martin Lindhardt

those plans be undermined by divine interruptions that empowerment is found. The positioning of bodies, the bodily engagement in worship, and the different ways in which words are uttered should not be seen as arbitrary forms through which the real stuff, the meaningful content or the (biblical) message, of ritual life is presented. On the contrary, the endlessly repeated theological message that humans are powerless in themselves but that God is powerful and present in the lives of his children is inseparably intertwined with the communicative forms or strategies of ritualization through which divine presence, power, and interference become manifest in Pentecostal church meetings. A focus on ritual practice as an empowering bodily and communicative engagement with perceived divine presence can pave the way for better understandings of Pentecostal subjectivity and world constructions in Chile and elsewhere. Notes 1. Chile’s Evangelical population (16% in 2001) is distributed among several hundred, mostly Pentecostal, denominations. 2. According to Pentecostals, it does occur that a strong desire to experience divine presence leads someone to be fooled by his or her own emotions so that he or she may start acting as if God had manifested himself. But they insist that human emotional outbursts must be distinguished from true divine manifestations. As spontaneity and sensations of lack of control are perceived and acknowledged features of both emotional expressions and divine interference, the confusion of the two remains an ever-present possibility. 3. For a critique of such views, see Asad 1993. 4. It had been said earlier that a church member who receives a guest in his home should not skip a meeting on that account but instead bring the guest to the church.

References Asad, T. 1993. Genealogies of Religion. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press. Bastian, Jean-Pierre. 1993. “The Metamorphosis of Latin American Protestant Groups: A Sociohistorical Perspective.” Latin American Research Review 28 (2): 33–61. Bell, Catherine. 1992. Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice. New York: Oxford University Press. Bengoa, José. 2000. “La Desigualidad.” In La Desigualidad, edited by José Bengoa, Francisa Márquez and Susana Aravena. Santiago: Ediciones Sur. Bloch. Maurice. 1974. “Symbols, Song, Dance, and Features of Articulation: Is Religion an Extreme Form of Traditional Authority?” Archives Europen de Sociologie 15 (1): 55–84.

When God Interferes

247

Boone, Kathleen C. 1989. The Bible Tells Them So: The Discourse of Protestant Fundamentalism. Albany: State University of New York Press. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1986. Distinction. A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. London: Routledge. Brusco, Elizabeth. 1995. The Reformation of Machismo: Evangelical Conversion and Gender in Colombia. Austin: University of Texas Press. Canales, Manuel, Samuel Palma, and Hugo Viella. 1991. En Tierra Extraña, vol. 2, Para una sociologia de la religiosidad popular protestante. Santiago: Amerindia. Coleman, Simon. 2000. The Globalization of Charismatic Christianity. Spreading the Gospel of Prosperity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Comaroff, Jean. 1985. Body of Power, Spirit of Resistance: The Culture and History of a South African People. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Comaroff, Jean, and John Comaroff. 1993. “Introduction.” In Modernity and Its Malcontents: Ritual and Power in Postcolonial Africa, edited by Jean Comaroff and John Comaroff. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Csordas, Thomas. 1997. Language, Charisma, and Creativity: The Ritual Life of a Religious Movement. Berkeley: University of California Press. Dodson, Michael. 1997. “Pentecostals, Politics, and Public Space in Latin America.” In Power, Politics and Pentecostals in Latin America, edited by Edward L. Cleary and Hanna W. Stewart-Gambino. Boulder, CO: Westview. Fenn, Richard K. 1982. Liturgies and Trials. The Secularization of Religious Language. Oxford: Basic Blackwell. Foucault, Michel. 1972. The Archaeology of Knowledge. London: Tavistock. ———. 1981. “The Order of Discourse.” In Untying the text: A Post-structuralist Reader, edited by Robert Young. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. ———. 1982. “The Subject and Power.” In Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, edited by Hubert L. Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow. New York: Harvester Press Limited. Freston, Paul. 2008. Evangelical Christianity and Democracy in Latin America. New York: Oxford University Press. Giddens, Anthony. 1994. Modernitetens konsekvenser. Copenhagen: Hans Reitzels. ———. 1996. Modernitet og selvidentitet. Copenhagen: Hans Reitzels. Gill, Anthony. 2004. “Weber in Latin America: Is Protestant Growth Enabling the Consolidation of Democratic Capitalism?” Democratization 11 (4): 42–65. Hoover, Mario. 2002. El Movimiento Pentecostal en Chile del siglo XX. Santiago: Eben-Ezer. Hughes-Freeland, Felicia, and Mary M. Crain. 1998. “Introduction.” In Recasting Ritual. Performance, Media, Identity, edited by Felicia Hughes-Freeland and Mary M. Crain. London: Routledge. Lehmann, David. 1996. Struggle for the Spirit: Religious Transformation and Popular Culture in Brazil and Latin America. Cambridge: Polity Press. Lindhardt, Martin. 2004. “Power in Powerlessness. A Study of Pentecostal Life Worlds and Symbolic Resistance in Urban Chile.” PhD diss., University of Aarhus. Loveman, Brian. 2001. Chile, the Legacy of Hispanic Capitalism. New York: Oxford University Press.

248

Martin Lindhardt

Manzi, Jorge, and Carlos Catalán. 1998. “Los cambios en la opinión pública.” In Chile en los noventa, edited by Christián Toloza and Euginio Lahera. Santiago de Chile: Dolmen Ediciones. Mariz, Cecília Loreto. 1994. Coping with Poverty: Pentecostals and Christian Base Communities in Brazil. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Martin, Bernice. 1995. “New Mutations of the Protestant Ethic among Latin American Pentecostals.” Religion 25: 102–17. Martin, David. 1990. Tongues of Fire: The Explosion of Protestantism in Latin America. Cambridge: Basil Blackwell. Mauss, Marcel. 1973. “Techniques of the Body.” Economy and Society 2 (1): 70–88. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 1962. The Phenomenology of Perception. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Moulián, Tomas. 2002. Chile Actual: Anatomia de un Mito. Santiago: Lom Ediciones. Ortner, Sherry B. 1990. “Narrativity in History, Culture and Lives.” Paper presented at the annual meetings of the American Anthropological Association. New Orleans. Ossa, Manuel. 1991. Lo ajeno y lo propio: Identidad Pentecostal y trabajo. Santiago: Rehue S. Paley, Julia. 2004. “Accountable Democracy: Citizen’s Impact on Public Decision Making in Post Dictatorship Chile.” American Ethnologist 31 (4): 497–513. Portales, Felipe. 2000. Chile: Una Democracia Tutelada. Santiago: Editorial Sudamericana. Rappaport, Roy A. 1999. Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schultze, Quentin J. 1994. “Orality and Power in Latin American Pentecostalism.” In Coming of Age: Protestantism in Contemporary Latin America, edited by Daniel Miller. Boston: University Press of America. Smilde, David A. 1998. “‘Letting God Govern’: Supernatural Agency in the Venezuelan Pentecostal Approach to Social Change.” Sociology of Religion 59: 287–303. Smith, Christian. 1994. “The Spirit and Democracy: Base Communities, Protestantism, and Democratization in Latin America.” Sociology of Religion 55 (2): 119–43. Tambiah, Stanley J. 1968. “The Magical Power of Words.” Man 3: 175–208. ———. 1979. “A Performative Approach to Ritual.” Proceedings of the British Academy 65. Weiss, Brad. 2004. “Introduction.” In Producing African Futures, edited by Brad Weiss. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Willems, Emilio. 1967. Followers of the New Faith: Culture Change and the Rise of Protestantism in Brazil and Chile. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press.

c9C Quiet Deliverances Jon Bialecki

In anthropological and sociological literature, charismatic Christianity is often thought through in experiential and embodied terms; this is particularly true of writing on the Vineyard, a Southern California– originated, worldwide denomination that sees itself as combining the best of both pentecostal and evangelical practice. Tracing its roots back to the “Jesus Movement” of the 1960s, the Vineyard is now a denomination that rejects its denominational status, presenting itself as a church-planting “movement.” The Vineyard, however, has effects that exceed its own body (denominational or otherwise): the Vineyard is seen as playing a vital role in the “Californianization” of American Protestantism (Shibley 1996), and in acting as a vital “way station” for the global propagation of neocharismatic and Pentecostal Christianity (Martin 2002: 38) (see generally Bialecki 2008: 369–70). Primarily (but not exclusively) middle-class, educated, and white, the members of the Vineyard, with their strong interest in spirit-filled, supernatural religious practices, almost seem as if they were made-to-order to refute the theory of modernization as disenchantment. In light of this charismatic activity, it is not surprising that commentators on the Vineyard often see the visceral and immediate aspects of both practice and (unmarked) ritual as the key to understanding this denomination’s particular appeal (see e.g., Luhrmann 2004a, 2004b, 2005, 2006;1 Miller 1997). While this is not always stated openly, this focus on embodiment is often subtly put forward as running contrary to models that see the power of theologically conservative religion as emanating not from its use of the body, but rather from its distinctive, everyday ritual uses of language and rhetoric (Lurhmann 2004; see Crapanzano 2000; Harding 1987, 2000; Meigs 1995; Stromberg 1993) to at once raise and assuage anxieties, and to allow access to a set of transcendent referents that can be deployed to grant an imminent authority in the here and now. 249

250

Jon Bialecki

Like many other discussions, this debate occurs because the opposing points are both correct—Charismatic linguistic and hermeneutic practice is indeed complex and powerful in the Vineyard (Bialecki 2009a) as well as in American charismatic and Pentecostal Christianity generally (Bielo 2008, 2009; Csordas 1997, 2001; Shoaps 2002), and few who have witnessed speaking in tongues, charismatic healing, or ecstatic worship could deny the sensory and embodied aspects that seems to be a vital part of the thrall that this form of religiosity is capable of producing (Csordas 1994, 2002). In point of fact, this debate has been productive in fleshing out the contours of charismatic Christianity, and to the degree that one can imagine that a sense of self and the capacity to represent are imbricated with, if not actually an aspect of a unified semiotic ideology—a point lost on none of these authors— these seemingly cross-cutting analytics are perhaps more tightly connected, and easier to harmonize, than the previous discussion would make it seem. But even if we do think that these processes may not be at loggerheads, it still leaves unexplained instances where neither category seems to be fully apposite. What are we to make of, say, social charismatic ritual in which there is no special language indexing any extraordinary status, in which the vital body movements are unmarked, and in which the two parties involved may have radically different understandings of what has transpired? That is the question that this chapter will take up. Here, this specific improvised ritual serves as a limit case against which embodied and discursive narratives of charismatic religious practice can be tested, and while they shan’t be found wanting, what will be discovered is that in the end, both of these practices must be thought through as partial explanatory frames, and that ideational material—that is, the charismatic cosmological imaginary—also has a vital role to play.

Quiet Deliverances The ritual that this chapter concerns itself with is deliverance from demons—the removal of evil spirits who can have influence (though only very rarely complete control) over fully professed, born-again Christians. We will first discuss them in prototypic form before we turn to the variant that actually concerns us here, if only because that is the only way that the variant is even understandable as a variant. While akin to exorcism in many ways, deliverance rituals differ in that they are often spontaneous, and can be (in theory) conducted by anyone

Quiet Deliverances

251

who is operating “in Jesus’ name.” In the most striking cases, they are triggered by someone’s sudden violent, abusive, or obscene reaction to Christian language or practice—particularly when such a reaction appears to be at variance with the person’s previously stated religious commitments. Because of their improvised nature, deliverances can occur almost anywhere—at a prayer session in a home, during a religious conference, or in the church office. These rituals can be rather florid and dramatic affairs at times, requiring the demonized subject to be forcibly held down while the person or people conducting the deliverance shout prayers, encouragement, and exhortations in an attempt to loosen the demon’s hold (for a description of what a fully developed, fully elaborated deliverance looks like, see Bialecki 2009b: 89–100). But—and this is vital to our discussion—not all deliverances are like this. Rather than being showy and striking, they can be modest, and often times so quick as to occur without others in the room noticing—including, often, the object of the deliverance. In fact, they are so slight, so unmarked, that they can be folded into other quotidian charismatic practices, such as intercessionary prayers over a person during a meeting. In fact, I had observed this “quiet” ritual numerous times before its particular nature was brought to my attention. Sitting in a sunny court outside of a Southern California coffee shop, (a common occurrence during my fieldwork) a church smallgroup leader2 was recounting how she has had to, at times, pray over people who seemed to have something “unclean” and “not of Jesus” in them. After discussing rather florid instances, in which she could intuit the presence of a demonic alter in some inarticulable, wild aspect of the eyes of the people she was praying over, and how after casting these beings out “in Jesus’ name” the sufferers would report a sense of freedom, she stated that there were other, similar kinds of prayer practices that she engaged in as well. Sometimes, she reported, she would get a sense that when people she was praying over were “in a rut,” where the person is getting the same prayer every week, where things were just not getting better, and especially where it seemed that people were being held down by feelings of shame, fear, and guilt, she would prophylactically cast out demons. The form this would take was simply a prayer asking for the emotion or psychic state to be gone “in the name of Jesus” or “in Jesus’ name.” When this was mentioned to me, it was a bit of a shock; during my time in the Vineyard, I had often heard prayers of this sort being uttered, but I had never paused to consider that these prayers for emotional relief were envisioned as doing anything other than requesting a

252

Jon Bialecki

providential uplift in the person’s emotional state, or perhaps at most a miraculous change in one’s subjective experience of self. Indeed, prior to her statement, I had paid these kinds of prayer no mind, other than to note that there was something odd about the implicit physicality and agency of addressing and casting out psychological states. Only after our conversation did I realize that what was going on in these small moments was something other than what they appeared to be, and that it was the naming of the unclean object of deliverance after an affective state that allowed it to be couched in what appears to be a psychological idiom (Csordas 1994: 165–99); rather than being the expulsion of an agentive entity that is manifestly present, it is put forward as the banishing of a subjective and ephemeral state. Because it is articulated in this language, the person being prayed over may have no idea that the frame being invoked is that of the demonic, and because the person conducting the “deliverance” is not presenting any exegesis (as opposed to other instances where there is a disparity of knowledge between the patient and healer, such as Hanks 1996), someone not versed in the details of the Vineyard’s demonology (and there are many casual members of Vineyard churches who fit in that category) may only retroactively, if ever, come to an understanding of what occurred. Indeed, though in my later discussions about this phenomenon no one actually put it forward in exactly this language, there is a sense that, since less charismatically experienced church members tend to effectively overreact to the presence of evil spirits, in some ways it may be best that they do misapprehend what has transpired. There is certainly nothing that would make it stand out; because this occurs as part of the prayer process, the physicality of this intervention is identical to that of other forms of intimate prayer—hands touching or extended towards the head, back, or, where not sexually suggestive, the chest— and from the times I have seen small group leaders or other “ritual specialists” conduct this prayer, the prosody used does not stand out as different either. Given that the person who is being prayed over often has no conception of this as an exorcism, and that this could alternately be thought through as a form of psychic healing—a common charismatic activity (see Csordas 1994: 109–40)—instead of as an instance of thwarted demonic attack, without there being any apparent change in outward practice, it seems natural to ask why this is even framed as a moment of demonic attack. What kind of work is being done by this framing, and for whom? To understand this, we have to follow the understanding of the deliverance, both in the Vineyard and in the greater American Protestant community, and see what other associations are ensnarled

Quiet Deliverances

253

with this idea; only then can we understand this odd “improvised ritual” that at once stands for something different than quotidian prayer, while not being outwardly discernable as being different in any way. My argument is this—given the almost covert nature of this activity in comparisons to other exorcisms, and the fact that this differs in form in no way from other forms of charismatic prayer, we can understand these improvised quiet deliverances not by a close reading of the situation in which they occur, nor by paying attention to the microphysics of the body, the aesthetic experience of the rite, or the interpolative or contagious power of the language used, but rather by seeing what the prototype on which this practice is based stands for in the imagination of these practitioners. Only then can we see how elements from that initial object are redeployed in this new setting, where instead of the thrashing demonized, we have simple emotions quietly being kept at bay.3

The Demonological Prototype But what power does both demonization and deliverance have in the imagination of the Vineyard such that it is the frame through which some members understand some otherwise quotidian prayers? Despite the fact that deliverance and demonization are not regular occurrences, the answer is that, for at least those well steeped in the Vineyard, deliverance is a strong motif through which to think through what is special about the Vineyard in particular, and Pentecostal and charismatic Christianity in general. The fact that demonization is not peripheral to either the Vineyard’s self-conception or its image in the wider culture is evidenced by the fact that Vineyard members are often seen by people external to the organization as being in effect “ritual specialists” in the demonic.4 According to pastors, exorcisms are the service most requested of the church by both nonparishioner believers and by non-Christians; the list of those who have requested deliverance at the particular Vineyard I spent the most time with, for instance, includes Hindu immigrants who reportedly felt that their native religion had no means of coping with “evil presences,” and patients referred to the church by secular psychological counselors. The exact number of exorcisms held at a mid-sized church (around 150 to 250 members) is difficult to determine because of the nature of demonic deliverances, which are informal, uncertain, and often private affairs, and by the fact that records are not kept as a matter of course,5 but there is some evidence by which one can gauge

254

Jon Bialecki

the frequency with which the demonic is battled. The current head pastor of the aforementioned Vineyard church—who had held the position there for merely two years at the time this research took place, and had served as associate pastor for only two years prior to that— estimated that he had engaged in well over a hundred deliverances over the course of his career. Many other individuals I spoke to, particularly vocal group members or ones in a leadership position, also had experiences of either assisting in or being the subject of deliverances (or, in a twist that resembles many classical narratives of shamanic initiation, both). Given that we’ve already observed that demonic deliverances can be performed by any member of the intercessionary group, labeled the “prayer team,” that stands at the front of the church during the end of services; by home group leaders through the medium of the small groups that stand at the center of the Vineyard’s structure; or even by anyone who has either the institutional or personal charisma necessary to gloss resistance during an emerging prayer encounter as a demonic confrontation, we can assume that deliverances are common—and this is not counting the frequent, unmarked “cryptodeliverances” discussed above.6 That deliverances should be common is surprising. The surprise is not because of any general rarity of possessive states worldwide (Boddy 1994), nor because of any lack of an ecstatic tradition in American folk religion (Taves 1999), but because over the past century, the demonic affliction has not always been regarded as something that should be focused on, or at times even acknowledged as possible, by many religious practitioners. Ever since the fundamentalist/mainline split in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the “modernist” (or mainline) Protestant wing has distanced itself from the outright endorsement of any explicitly supernatural activity, especially contemporary supernatural activity; this was a part of the mainline attempt to reimagine itself as a religion compatible with modernist standards of naturalism and rationality (Mullin 1996). On the theologically conservative side of that Protestant divide, demonic possession was also denied, though for different reasons. Starting in the early twentieth century, most North American fundamentalist Christians adhered to “premillennial dispensationalism,” a theological creed centering around the “end times” that holds that in the current age, most of the supernatural activity that is found in the Bible, such as demonic possession, has been foreclosed by divine decree. While dispensationalism grants that the supernatural occurred historically in biblical times and in the early church era, and will be seen again during the upcoming apocalypse, it is held that God’s over-

Quiet Deliverances

255

arching plan has no room for such activity in the “church age,” as the current temporal dispensation is understood (Boyer 1992; Harding 1994, 2001; Weber 1979). Because of this denial of the demonic from both wings of Protestantism, most practicing evangelicals are skeptical of the demonic—as stated by a pastor in one of the Vineyard Handbooks, demonic affliction was something that did not accord with their seminary training (Springer 1988: 206). Even much of miraclefriendly Pentecostal theology, while acknowledging the existence of the demonic, discounts it as an issue for true believers, on the logic that, having submitted oneself to Christ, one is inoculated against demonic assault (MacNutt 1995: 72). Since its initial days, though, Pentecostal and Charismatic practice has taken quite a different tack. For early Pentecostals, the demonic was a real presence that could be found in “swarms” and “herds” throughout the landscape (Wacker 2002: 91). Under the revival tent, demons could be found assaulting not just the unsaved, but their Christian brethren as well. As described by Grant Wacker, demons enjoyed the ability to torment Holy-Spirit baptized believers along with non-Christians. Sometimes they disrupted Pentecostal meetings by prompting erroneous or even vile messages in tongues. On occasion “religious demons” caused “professors of holiness” to do nonsensical things such as running around the house screaming or climbing trees for no good reason. Sometimes saints speaking in prayer found that a demon had slipped in and taken control of their jaws. Everyone knew that evil spirits caused most illnesses. Therefore in many cases divine healings involved exorcism of the tormenting spirits, which required placing one’s hand on the “afflicted part” and in the name of Jesus commanding the demon to depart. Dramatic contests ensued. (Wacker 2002: 92)

The Vineyard, as an evangelical church that has adopted Pentecostal practices, has genealogical links to exactly these sort of early Pentecostal preachers that Wacker discusses.7 As we shall see, there is more than a passing continuity between these early Pentecostal demonic events and the current Third Wave/Vineyard model of how the demonic functions. Given the Vineyard’s charismatic roots, it shouldn’t be surprising that, despite the injunction against the idea of possession found in both fundamentalist and mainline Protestantism, the existence of demons and of their capacity to cause harm to believing Christians is accepted by many Vineyard believers. Mainline arguments against the demonic and demonization are dismissed out of hand—as one pastor said, it’s ridiculous to think that just because people can make airplanes now,

256

Jon Bialecki

demons have gone away. Dispensationalist arguments regarding the church age have been swept away, in part due to the weakening of the hold of dispensationlism, and in part to dispensationalism being adopted by Pentecostal groups such as the Assemblies of God.8 The challenge posited by the classical theological ban on the demonic possession of Christians has been met through a more carefully crafted folk-theological sublation: Current Third Wave demonological folk theory takes a stance between the absolute denial of the demonic, on the one hand, and a feeling that one is utterly and continually open to the demonic, on the other, by reformulating one’s openness to the demonic from a binary system—you are either possessed or you are not, you are either vulnerable or invulnerable—to one in which the extent to which one is “demonized” is measured across a continuum. In short, they have reimagined the common American folk model of pure possession as one of a range of influence. Given that possession-type phenomena are usually seen as a complete overwriting of the possessed agency by a supernatural alter, it is worth noting that one of the chief results of this rearticulated demonization/deliverance model is that the afflicted individual would seem to never be entirely without any measure of agency, even if that agency is impure and waning. In the words of the Vineyard’s effective founder, John Wimber, “I do not believe that demons may own people absolutely while they still live on earth; even when demons gain a high degree of control, people are able to exercise a degree of free will that may lead to deliverance and salvation” (Wimber and Springer 1987: 109). Of course, as in classical models of possession, issues of free will can rapidly become problematic. Evidence for free will comes from the fact that individuals often request prayer. Many of the narratives related to me started with the afflicted individual willingly submitting him- or herself to prayer (though often this submission is not without significant resistance, and in many narratives, this resistance only grows exponentially as the process continues). This request for prayer can include requests to rid oneself of demonic affliction; the amount of free will that can be attributed to the demonized individual is evidenced by the fact that at least one of Wimber’s books states that an individual possessed by demons can perform a “self-deliverance” by immediately taking a series of steps of moral reformation, religious rededication, and, most vitally, commanding the spirits within to leave through invoking Jesus’ power (Wimber and Springer 1987: 124–25). Even during assisted deliverances, the turning point in many affliction narratives is when the individual makes a decision of one sort—usually a decision, as in the case above, to either directly accept Jesus, or, indi-

Quiet Deliverances

257

rectly, to renounce either a particular evil (such as, say, pornography) or evil in general, through the medium of accepting Jesus. At the other end of this spectrum of control, however, are forms of demonic afflictions marked by an individual’s apparent loss of agency. The classical case of demonization is the instance where the demons speak through the mouth of the afflicted individual, where the afflicted person seems to be speaking in the plural. Use of plural language such as “We will kill you” is often the sign of demonization (MacNutt 1995: 17) because this language seems to suggest that more than one set of hands are on the body’s metaphorical rudder. Subjectively, individuals who are being demonized report that when the demon comes to the fore (which typically only happens in the prayer confrontation between the person offering interceding prayer and the demonized person), a feeling of being alienated or disconnected from the acts and words emanating from their bodies occur (Bialecki 2009b: 100–111). In one possession tale, a victim reported that “she felt like a spectator during the experience, as though she had no control over what was happening” (Wimber and Springer 1987: 98). Alternately, an individual may find him- or herself acting for no apparent reason whatsoever, with the usual causal chain between volition and action being severed; in such an instance reported to me, an individual suffering from demonic attack suddenly tackled someone near him during group prayer for reasons that were mysterious, even to himself. There are times, though, when the question of one’s agency is less clear, and the issue of whether an individual is exercising his or her will is difficult to resolve. Not all these cases are as florid, however—which allows us to see the connection to the quiet deliverances that started us out on this exploration. In these less-extreme cases, the inner working of possession may make its outward appearance as a shift in mood or an imbalance of physical or sensual appetites. For these forms of demonization, it is only outward signs that have nothing to do with selfcontrol (such as expert opinion from someone with much experience in spiritual warfare, or at other times, unnatural coldness, a common sign of supernatural evil; MacNutt 1995: 79) that finally point to the true state of affairs. In short, as a loss of will that can be conquered by an exercise of will, demonization is not always clearly on one pole or the other of agency, but instead stands at once for agency’s obviation and triumph. It is this twilight state that leads to the problem of how to properly identify whether one is demonized. In the prototypical example, there are several ways that this can be done. The easiest way is to judge by external indexes evidenced by behavior—one account lists them as be-

258

Jon Bialecki

ing “altered voices, eyes and facial expressions that weren’t normal, stiffening up of the body, shrieking, etc.” (Wimber and Springer 1987: 187). In explaining how demonization is identified, one pastor gave a generic example—that while being prayed over at the end of a service or during an evening revival or seminar on prayer, an individual will start to moan or growl, often in an animalistic way; the individual will give a particularly bad reaction to the mention of either Jesus or God. Alternately, the equivalent of a spiritual symptom may occur—with the afflicted person complaining of an apparently physiological symptom, such as heaviness in the legs. This symptom may be something visible to the observer, but unnoticed to the individual who is bearing it: the most common example of this would be a clouded or “off” look in the eyes. Under all these approaches, detecting the demonic is a process of deduction based on obvious, public, and consistent signs, which makes it merely another act of verification through reproducible sense evidence of an otherwise invisible phenomenon, like magnetism. However, there are other ways of uncovering demonic presence. Some individuals will have the “gift” of discerning demons. An example of this would be the wife of Francis MacNutt, the charismatic-Catholic author of the book that many members of the Vineyard consider to be authoritative on the subject: Deliverance from Evil Spirits—A Practical Manual (1995).9 MacNutt’s wife is capable of visually determining the presence of unclean spirits, not by inferring them from the outward behaviors of those they attack, but by directly observing them through the supernatural assistance of the Holy Spirit. Others can similarly intuit the presence of demons through their senses, though not always visually. One pastor has told me that he can sense darkness in individuals through bodily proximity, a darkness that pretty reliably points directly to issues of demonization. This sensation was often perceived through incidental contact—for instance, the casual contact that occurs during a baptism.10 In what is important for us to keep in mind in our consideration of “quiet deliverances,” this direct, intuitive sense is triggered by proximity, but not by the overt behavior of the demonized. MacNutt reports individuals who can sense the presence of demons through their tactile (the feel of the hairs on ones neck in one case, a familiar tingle in an earlobe in another) or olfactory (an “unpleasant, unfamiliar” smell) senses (1995: 82). Others have this gift, as well—and whom these others are is an important point in understanding Vineyard discourse regarding modernity. The Vineyard discourse is full of accounts from “the mission field” of “non-Westerners” who have an easy access to the supernatural. In general, short-term mission trips are often imagined to be op-

Quiet Deliverances

259

portunities for confronting temple-ensconced demons through prayer, or for miraculous healings of natives suffering from crippling disease; this is particularly the case among younger (college to mid-twenties) believers. When some Vineyard church members left for a mission trip to visit Christian Burmese hill-tribe refugees, more than one member expressed an anxious expectation that they would see miracles on this trip—miracles being the natural provenance of the poor, marginal, and non-Western. This is often presented not as a sign of native backwardness, but rather of an atrophied openness of moderns to the supernatural—a lost capacity that is concomitant with a hyperrationalization that has without justification foreclosed an important supernatural aspect of the world. These accounts are often derived from the works of Christian anthropologists, who are taken quite seriously in the Vineyard literature (and increasingly so in the evangelical world, given the global growth of Christianity). This Third Wave material often uses their accounts of non-Western supernatural powers as an incentive for North Americans to stretch their own supernatural senses to the limit in order to recapture this lost ability, as exemplified by the following passage from a series of “conversion stories” of traditional ministers who have come over to “Spirit-led” Vineyard style spiritual practice, in this case a secondhand recounting and analysis of a story by a missionary anthropologist: He had been working with a primitive tribe in East Africa. One day he had an interesting exchange with his native informant. “You must be very lonely,” the informant told him. “Oh? What makes you think so?” the anthropologist replied. “Well, when I have a problem I talk to the spirit of my father, and the spirit of my grandfather, and they talk it over with the spirit of my great grandfather. Then they give me their advice. It comforts me.” “So what makes you think that I don’t talk to the spirits of my father and grandfather?” “You don’t. I can’t see them. They’re not around you.” As I listened the penny dropped. The identity of the spirits with which the informant conversed is neither here nor there; most Christians would say he was talking with demons. But I saw that a “primitive” East African retained an ability to perceive the spirit world, even though his perception was distorted and misleading. I had no such ability. Demons could be all round me … yet I could only deduce their presence occasionally by a process of logic. I could not perceive them. Had I as a Westerner lost the capacity to perceive the supernatural, a

260

Jon Bialecki

capacity largely retained by non-Westerners? (Springer 1988: 76 emphasis in original)

The narrator’s reaction to this is to pray for this discernment, so that he can take up his part in “fighting evil.” This belief in the spiritual potency of the non-West is tied to a certain low regard for modernity, one of the few traits that the Vineyard shares with its more fundamentalist cousins (Ammerman 1987; Harding 2001; but see Percy 1996 ). In his books and talks, one of Wimber’s favorite punching bags was what he called the “Western World View,” which comes off as a mélange of secularism, self-reliance, materialism, and rationalism. For him, all these are negative categories. The scientific method has become elevated to the position of “Holy Writ,” and reason has become “the only and highest authority”; at the same time, moral and spiritual ideas not being treated with the same rigor as “relativism” becomes the rule of the day (Wimber 1985: 95–98). In this account, the usual narrative of modernity as progress has become inverted, and instead of an ever-increasing knowledge and technical mastery, modernity is characterized by a constantly growing blindness to both the spiritual and supernatural. It is because of the supposed miraculous nature of Christian belief, in addition to its Judaic roots, that some Vineyard members (particularly ones exposed either to seminaries or the Vineyard’s in-house replacement for seminaries, VLI) sometimes refer to Christianity as a “non-Western” or “Eastern” religion. This points to another important aspect of discernment: that it is attainable, through training, and thus is a sign of someone who is well integrated into the church. An individual who wishes to acquire this ability must, of course, pray, but he or she must also learn to monitor his or her senses carefully. This training is to enable the person to identify not just the presence of the often idiosyncratic sensations that point to the proximity of evil spirits, but also to be able to distinguish the sensation from the sensory equivalent of day-to-day mental and physical white noise. As John Wimber stated, “Over the years I have learned to recognize when these insights are from God and when they are a result of my imagination—or indigestion” (Wimber 1985: 80). Given the fact that the Spirit speaks in “half a whisper” (Springer 1988: 148), this distinguishing is a careful act indeed, and must be honed by a mix of taking chances—letting oneself be “led by the Spirit” in Vineyard parlance—and careful practice. One of the skills that must be learned is to work through the complex relationship between demonic possession and the category under-

Quiet Deliverances

261

stood as “mental illness.” At first, these two categories would appear to be antithetical. An illustration of this is a chart in a Vineyard book that contrasts “Public” (that is, secular) beliefs, with the “Private” beliefs considered to be peculiar to Evangelical culture. Alongside such public/ private oppositions as “Science::God,” “Politics::Morality,” and “Relative values::Absolute right and wrong” we find “Modern Psychology” and “Angels and Demons” as contrasting explanatory models (Wimber 1985)—an odd opposition, given that, as will be pointed out, demons are essentially presented as at once agentive beings and as characterological or psychological states. Oftentimes the process of diagnosis simply seems to be determining what evil spirit is making the individual act insane, and removing the spirit so that the demonized person can return to a normal state. One example is that of a lesbian bipolar psychiatric patient who was cured of both “conditions” after a demonic deliverance by her psychiatrist; since the demons have been cast out, her Christian psychiatrist insists, she had not needed any medication at all for her “supposed” mental illness (Springer 1988: 75). The relationship between these two categories, however, is much more complicated than that of simple opposition. Demons, which usually have names that indicate their chief characteristics or mode of afflicting their victims, often take their monikers directly from affective states, psychological modes, or diagnostic categories. Since demonic names are not arbitrary, but titles that reveal the core nature of those that bear them, we can see that differentiation between the demons and the diseases that these demons are named after is an unstable one. Demons are not just the true cause of phenomena thought to be mental illness; in many cases, the very essence of demons is that of mental illness. Furthermore, while often mental illness can simply serve as a mask, a false diagnosis covering the true demonic condition, one must be careful to determine whether mental illness actually is also present, and if so, what link it may have (if any) with demonization. A person acting peculiarly may be demonized, may be simply insane, or may be suffering from both conditions, with either demons or madness being the primary causal agent. At times, it may be impossible to separate the two causal strands, as in the case of one early twenties-aged victim of demonic attack who, it was believed by some his friends, was too narcissistically and pathologically attached to the attention his demonic attacks brought him to be able to effectively renounce them in the manner required. A particularly difficult psychology-rooted problem for someone attempting to determine the presence of a demon is the possibility of multiple personality disorder (MPD), which can mimic demonization

262

Jon Bialecki

in many of its external aspects. The possibility of confusion is more than just an inconvenience; it is a risk to the well-being of the candidate for deliverance. MacNutt warns that attempting to deliver a person’s “alters”—which he views as being a psychological mechanism provided by God to deal with extreme trauma—can be a mistake that will result only in more splitting of the ego, since in some MPD cases there is no demonic presence to be expelled (MacNutt 1995: 79–81, 230–31). It would be interesting to think through the reasons why Third Wave Christians have apparently accepted MPD, a process that is of debatable clinical validity and certainly with its own odd intellectual history and personal practice centered on fixing and stabilizing identity. (See Antze 1996; Hacking 1995.). As we shall see, the reason may lie in the way in which MPD suggests a radical contingency and openness of the subject, while still maintaining the overall foundational importance of the subject qua subject, a dynamic we will also identify in the Renewal/Third Wave supernatural subject. Even when there is a causal relationship between demonic activity and mental illness, removal of the offending supernatural entity may not result in an immediate cure. Wimber cautions that the aberrant behavior may continue for a while after deliverance, and that additional conventional support and counseling may be required to make the person whole (Wimber and Springer 1987: 97). I have even heard hearsay that one of the fruits of deliverance is that demonized individuals with mental health disorders will begin to be able to respond to their drug therapy once demons have been expelled from them. The causes of demonic attack are just as important to the work that the original prototype does when it is invoked in the form of quiet deliverance. The importance here lies in the answer to the riddle of how it is that a Christian can fall into a state of being demonized, and whether there are any means of inoculating oneself against demonic activity. The answer to this is something that may at first seem obvious, but upon further examination becomes cloudy. All sources are unanimous on this question: the cause of demonization is sin. The complexity arises in who must sin for demons to be present, and how the contagion of sin is passed to the demonized individual. The most clear-cut source for demonic activity is traffic with the occult, where one willingly engages with the supernatural. While that is the most sure-fire way to become demonized, moral failing is without doubt the most common. Again, in the words of John Wimber, “Unrighteous anger, self-hatred and hatred of others, revenge, unforgiveness, lust, pornography, sexual wrongdoings, various sexual perversions (like transvestism, homosexuality, bestiality, sodomy), and

Quiet Deliverances

263

drug and alcohol abuse commonly open the doors to demonic influence” (Wimber and Springer 1987: 118). At another point, Wimber states that the only way to be certain to avoid demonization is to “walk in faith and live righteously” (Wimber and Springer 1987: 116). If one fails to comport oneself properly, there is a danger that the situation could snowball, with the demonized individual further tempted by his or her supernatural invisible interlocutors, thus inviting an even more heightened level of demonic activity. “The world, the flesh, and the devil work in concert to tempt us. They have a diabolical interrelationship that seeks to trap men and women in sin and death. When we yield to the temptations of the flesh and the world, we become more vulnerable” (Wimber and Springer 1987: 107). Demonization is part of the wages of a dissolute life, and the greater the dissolution, the greater the demonization. However, demonization is not necessarily the wages of the sufferer’s dissolute life. Demonization can result from the bad activities of others. When it comes to diagnosing demons, Wimber knows that one must ask about the activities and affinities of one’s friends and especially one’s family. Family ties to the occult, which has a capacity to openly and purposely invite demons into this world, is particularly suspect. As John Wimber states, “So when I pray for people who I suspect are afflicted by evil spirits, I always ask if they or a close relative have been involved in the occult or false religions, particularly Eastern religions” (Wimber and Springer 1987: 118). However, other sins can work their way through the family, being passed down from parents to children in a way that seems reminiscent of a genetic disorder. Demonization can even be the result of a violation of a person, with the arc of demonic affliction passing from violator to the violated. “For example, people who have been sinned against sexually usually have serious demonic problems. Seventy percent of all children of alcoholics become alcoholics; I believe in many instances demonic influence contributes to their problem” (Wimber and Springer 1987: 119). Even trauma caused without malevolent intent can be the opening for a demon. McNutt recounts the story of one pastor whose small daughter wandered off, only to be found playing in a neighbor’s garage after her parents had ransacked the neighborhood. The pastor’s wife exclaimed that she had thought she was never going to see her child again; this opened the way for a “spirit of fear” to enter the child, which the father would have to cast out later that evening (MacNutt 1995: 91). This link between trauma and demonization is so strong that, during a small-group meeting that occurred after a full-blown demonic deliverance, one group member’s statement during a discussion re-

264

Jon Bialecki

garding the demonization that had occurred could transition, without any external markers, from being a discussion regarding the awesome nature of the supernatural manifestations that had been seen to one on the vulnerability of human relationships. One group member mentioned that she was really affected by the thoughts that human beings had “inflicted” that kind of hurt on the victim, that the victim was tormented as a result of the other’s “relational malfunction.” It is equally telling that for her, the aftermath of viewing an instance of demonization was not a renewed vigilance towards the supernatural, but instead, a heightened concern of day-to-day interactions: she then stated that one of the biggest things that we can do as Christians is to concentrate on healing broken relationships. While it appears that demons work entirely in a psychological realm, that is not always the case. Demons can exert their energies on the body, as well, and can produce a broad range of symptoms and disorders. Pain, partial or complete loss of bodily functions, misshapen limbs, and even serious diseases such as cancer can be the result of demonic activity. This results in the kind of inchoate, polysemous prayers that we see in instances of quiet deliverance, and other similar practices. Particularly, there is a blurry line between the demonic and illness in some ways; I have seen individuals “cast out” illnesses using the same formula used to cast out demons. While not the only way that illness is prayed for, it is not unusual to hear someone say while laying hands on someone during prayer something of the nature of “back pain [or chest cold, etc.], in the name of Jesus, I order you out.”11 When dealt with this way, the personification of illness makes drawing borderlines between demons, demon-created illness, and natural illness a difficult subject; it is not surprising that written works or conversations on this issue deal with this problem in an ad hoc and fuzzy manner. Here, due to our interest in quiet deliverance, it is important to note that at some point, it appears that any misfortune could possibly be related to, or actually be, demonic. Wimber, citing others, notes that “sins, unwanted habits, physical illness, emotional wounds, psychological problems, ‘bad luck,’ disunity in relationships, problems in relating to God, fears, and compulsions” are “just some” of the modes of Satanic—and hence, demonic—interference in Christian life (Wimber and Springer 1987: 102). I have heard a small-group leader complain about answering-machine malfunctions, general irritability, and marital bickering, all of which were read as incidents of “enemy attack” linked to upcoming small-group meetings. Vineyard leaders are not unaware of how odd this can look to secular eyes, and even at times try to make use of this apparent oddity of their world-

Quiet Deliverances

265

view for the sake of humor—one Vineyard pastor, speaking against the backdrop of a recurrence of the wildfires that periodically darken Southern California skies, jokingly tried to explain the difference between the Vineyard and Pentecostals this way—a Pentecostal would automatically assume that the fires were caused by the devil, but a Vineyard pastor would wait to see if the fires were a bad thing first, before making up his mind. The fact that seemingly quotidian or naturalistic problems, and not merely the histrionic spectacles associated with full demonization, unfold from supernatural origins is mirrored by the equally quotidian attitude that answers them. One of the points touched on again and again regarding demons is that they are “no big deal,” and that, since victory through Jesus’ name is assured, neither fear nor drama is called for. While this certainly matches the Vineyard’s laconic, understated style of speech and self-presentation, this also points to the fact that, if one is to allow a full range of phenomena to be demonic in nature, one’s response must be calibrated downward to the mundane, real-world level of the injury as well. Looking back on the depiction of the demonized subject, it may seem that the Christian body and psyche is one that is spectacularly open to demonic interference. Such a picture, while not inaccurate, would be incomplete if it did not include the ways in which Vineyard believers are also open to a series of voices and powers of a more beneficial nature. While there is not space here to fully explore the issue, we should observe that a host of divine gifts runs through the individual, including speaking in tongues, prophecy, discernment, and direct communication with the divine. Let’s take, as our focus here for a moment, speaking in tongues. While the public, highly audible act of speaking in tongues is something that has become slightly less common over time in the Vineyard,12 it does still occur and is not sanctioned when it appears. Even more common is the subvocal speaking in tongues, whispered or simply mouthed by individuals when they are engaged in intense prayer, both publicly and privately. Subvocal tongues are a particularly uncanny sound—to my ears, more unnerving in their raspy rushing silence than their full-throated cousin, which only comes out during conferences or special occasions—but for all that, they are easily overlooked, even by members of the church (I have had individuals who belong to prayer groups that feature as many as three or four subvocal users of tongues ask me what praying in tongues sounded like, only to be surprised by my answer that they themselves have overheard speaking in tongues numerous times already). The comparison here to quiet deliverances should be obvious.

266

Jon Bialecki

What is interesting about speaking in tongues is that it displays some of the same problems of agency that can be found in the demonic. The widely understood model in the Vineyard holds that, contrary to some earlier Pentecostal understandings (Synan 1997: 87–92; Wacker 2002: 35–51), tongues are not instances of xenoglossy. They are instead words composed in an idiosyncratic divine praise language that is coming from the individual and made possible through the efforts of the Holy Spirit—or, as it was explained to me more than once, a private language between lovers. What is confusing about the ownership of this language, though, is that while the individual is the one who speaks, and the meaning of the speech reflects his own message of praise to the deity, he or she is not the one who is allowed to say what the meaning is, or to choose the form that meaning will be expressed in. When tongues are said out loud during worship, ideally immediately after the individual who has spoken in tongues has sat down, another individual will stand and “interpret” the message, allowing the broader worship audience to understand the import of the message. Depending on whom you talk to, of course, the original speaker often is understood to be unaware of the content of the tongues message until he or she has actually heard his or her own message in translation. Under this understanding of tongues, the origin and ownership of the speech act is as confused as is the act of a demonized person. The speech act is directed towards God, but it is also made possible by God; while it is the person’s own words of praise, those words cannot be communicated in a way that is sensible to those around him or her, and he or she must depend on others to understand what he or she is saying in the first place. There is no place where the individual can stand and say that the act is wholly his, or wholly other. The same can be said about one’s senses when one receives information from a supernatural source, an occurrence known as “words of knowledge.”13 When this comes to pass, the information will often be given through the alteration of one’s visual perception—the picture that one receives through one’s sensory apparatus will be changed, but in such an obvious and heavy-handed manner that the individual who receives it knows immediately that some sort of divine doctoring of one’s sensual input has occurred. The word of knowledge is often received literally as a word, either of a commandment of some sort—the sudden appearance of words written in fire, such as “ministry!” which was taken as an order to enter into pastoral work. The word of knowledge is often received literally as a word, often that of a sin written on someone’s face—examples include the word “pride” written on the face of a congregant who refused to admit his sinful activity to his pastor until he

Quiet Deliverances

267

was confronted during a pastoral counseling session (Springer 1988: 114), and that of an airline passenger engaged in an adulterous affair who happened to be sitting across the aisle from John Wimber, who clearly saw the word “adultery” on the man’s face; Wimber quickly led the man to repent and then to accept Jesus before the plane flight was over (Wimber 1985: 53–55). One’s own ideation is vulnerable to divine influence, as well. When people talk about conversing with God, they may mean many things— one of which can include an audible voice, or at least a voice that appears to be audible to the recipient (while acknowledging the possibility that others in the room may not have heard or have been capable of hearing the message)—but it can also mean something more subtle. A sudden thought, an odd idea that does not seem to arise from the previous chain of thought or that breaks dramatically with one’s typical mode of reflection, or one associated with an extreme affect—sometimes even feelings such as panic—is often taken as an indication of divine will, even if it phenomenologically seems the same as one’s normal experience of reflection. It is only striking content of the thought, as opposed to its form, that allows the individual to know that it “is the Lord” and not merely another instance of quotidian cognition. Another notable commonality with all these phenomena is the fact that, like demonization, at no time is the agency of the individual completely erased. Whether it is the prophetic eruption of some words of knowledge, with the “heart-attack”–like physical indicator, visions, or the sudden upsurge of tongues, the person experiencing the gift always maintains the possibility of a certain level of control, even if it is merely the passive ability to hold back on communicating the divine message. Given this, it seems that it is unfair to state that the demonic marks some sort of special threat to the mental or physical boundaries of the Third Wave Pentecostal. Rather, it appears that any intercourse with the supernatural, be it malevolent or benign, risks a certain overrunning of one’s corporal and psychic barriers (Luhrmann 2007). The difficulty does not rise in keeping these barriers intact, then, but instead in correctly identifying the nature of whatever has come across them. As one practitioner has said, there is no supernatural caller ID that tells you if a message is from God, Satan, or merely the Flesh. One must simply be vigilant in questioning one’s senses and thoughts, looking as much for signs of the provenance of their alterations as for the alterations themselves. Considering the fact that most Americans imagine themselves as being oddly resistant to influence, with their thought and their will under their own control and immune from outside sources (Myers 2002), these particular charismatic sensibilities seem to stand apart.

268

Jon Bialecki

Conclusion—Quiet Deliverance as an Ideal Practice Having reviewed demonization and deliverance as a set of related prototypes, we can now think about how they are being invoked when the everyday improvised ritual of praying for the emotional (and, as we have seen, physical) health of others is understood as a form of deliverance, rather than merely as intercessionary prayer. First, though perhaps not in prominence, framing prayer as deliverance in this way is a reflexive act of self-classification, of seeing oneself as someone who is knowledgeable about charismatic activity and skilled in its practice. As we saw in our discussion, while the power to handle the demonic heralds ultimately from the divine, the practice of deliverance is not an unskilled one. Discernment is a capacity developed over time, and one needs to know how demons operate in order to cast them out. As we also saw in our discussion of prototypical deliverance, among those expert in the field, this skill is also joined by enough experience with the demonic to take the Vineyard viewpoint that demons are “no big deal.” Therefore, to view one’s own habit of prayer in this manner demands a bit of bravado. What greater sign could there be that one is no longer impressed by demons than believing that they can be prayed out of someone in a way almost sub rosa, with no attention brought to exactly what kind of act you are engaged in? Second, this small, quiet deliverance is also a small, quiet moment of resistance to a regnant secular. As we saw, deliverance and demons are seen as at once a factual occurrence that stands as an empirical refutation of the tenets of modernity. In the Vineyard, then, to invoke the demonic as a framing trope is to invoke a trope that is “willfully antimodern,” a phrase used by Susan Harding (2001) to show how dispensationalism undoes the modernist narrative of secularization and progress by positing its own inverted timeline. In a sense, demonization and deliverance is the platform for the Vineyard that Bible prophecy was for Harding’s fundamentalists, an opportunity to sum up and refigure modernity, progress, morality, and human agency in a single compelling thought. Thus, just as dispensationalist narratives serve as a reminder of, and a technology for, a kind of radical antimodern subjectivity, emotion-banishing prayer-as-exorcism exists as an interpretive possibility that serves the same antimodern purpose. Even if it does no work for those who are being prayed for, this alternate way of framing this practice serves as a tacit reminder to the one praying of the cosmology that enables that prayer to exist in the first place. Here, though, while belief and practices regarding both demons and demonization stand as a challenge to the concept of progress in

Quiet Deliverances

269

the way that they suggest that medical and scientific models are fundamentally incorrect, they are also antimodern in their claims that human are essentially not autonomous and agentive but porous and vulnerable to injury from the associative social ties that modernity famously struggles to occlude and dissolve. This is the third bit of business that is done by framing prayer in this manner. At the same time that framing prayer as emotional healing acknowledges the possibility of a gap between responsibility and emotion, it also preserves the possibility of human agency by foregrounding the moment of decision. It is here, then, that we can see the other reason why prayer that is presented as forthrightly asking for providential emotional healing is internally read by some Vineyard believers as being an entirely different metaphysical procedure. As pointed out by Roy D’Andrade (1987) in his work on the folk model of the American mind, feelings and desires are the one internal category where one is understood as not in control; as opposed to intentions and beliefs, where agency and control is the norm, affects run ahead of the person, resistant to all but the more careful of reflexive management. Despite this lack of control, there is still an element of responsibility, as evidenced by the fact that people would “confess” about feelings of anger or jealousy during small prayer groups. Viewing prayers to banish emotions as merely a remedy for those emotions, as the literal and surface reading of these quiet exorcisms would lead us to do, would still leave the juridical guilt that the emotion has brought into being; further, the fact that one has had to turn to the divine to expiate the emotion further highlights the absence of agency associated with the internal tumult of feeling. Viewing these small prayers as an exorcism, though, changes the playing field for those who opt for that reading. By presenting the emotions as alien agents themselves, one stays true to the phenomenology of emotion as outside of conscious control. However, by seeing it as an intrusive force that is turned away by an agentive act, not only is the responsibility for the emotions removed, but to a degree agency is restored, as deliverance is so tightly associated with an agentive turning to God and rejection of evil, even if the decision is sometimes implied and not expressly stated. Framing prayers in this way also is a preservation not only of human agency, but, as we saw, of supernatural agency as well. Though given different moral charges, the idea of demonic influence is not formally unlike the kind of divine influence that occurs in certain prophetic moments. Supernatural influence on human will through means other than happy providential accident is vital to charismatic religiosity, and any way in which things can be framed so as to make

270

Jon Bialecki

that kind of intervention seem more reasonable strengthens that religiosity; so framing a prayers as an exorcism instead can be seen as either an effect of, or a way of producing, a charismatic sensibility. This charismatic folk model of the mind, though, does more than preserve human and divine agency in the abstract. In can also be seen as preserving relationships; let us refer back to the initial evidence that brought this tactic of quiet deliverance to my attention. The smallgroup leader explained to me that this act of prophylactically casting out demons was something that was done when she was praying over someone “in a rut,” someone who was bringing the same prayer request to the small group each week. Under normal circumstances in a prayer group, there is always the potential for prayer requests from someone that suggest a certain lack of responsibility, of agency, in handling their problems, particularly if it touches on characterological failures (as opposed to one that might be seen as the result of unfortunate circumstances). While no one ever stated that they were exasperated by the inability of a fellow small prayer group member to change their ways, framing the problem as slightly demonic is a way of coming to peace with the apparent repeated failures of someone with whom you will be spending several hours a week of your life, potentially, for years into the future.14 The idea of agency is preserved as it is overwritten—your friend is just afflicted. Just as important, of course, is the idea that this is a framing that, because it carries no outward discursive or performative markers that set it apart from other intercessory prayers, can always be later held at a distance as far as its supposed ontological framing: is it depression or the spirit of depression you are praying over, is it an unfortunate character trait or an autonomous, malevolent spirit who bears that trait’s name? In the “perhaps, it could” tone of voice that these prayers are analyzed post hoc, one suspects that even those who engage in these prayers don’t truly know. That unfixed nature frees these prayers not only from being “nailed down” as one kind of ritual act or another at the time; it also allows for future whitewashing of these events. As a battle against the demonic, these quiet deliverances can later be questioned, reimagined, forgotten, or denied, and they can even “occur” retroactively, read back into prayers that were not intended as deliverances at the time they were performed, should the severity of an issue that is prayed for later approach the dramatological heights associated with full-on spiritual warfare. Indeed, this open-ended indeterminacy, or irony, as put by Michael Lambek in a discussion of another (perhaps) purposefully ambivalent instance of spirit possession (2003), maybe be an element that in part allows this practice, and its practitio-

Quiet Deliverances

271

ners, to “pass” in a Christian-inflected, but still secular-leaning, American modernity, a site that is willing to accept providential grace, but not willing to sign on to radical evil. Finally, this process tells us something about Pentecostal and charismatic ritual as well. As we have seen, there is nothing in the language used, nothing in the way that the “rite” is conducted, that would lead one to suspect that this prayer for someone to heal physically or psychically might be a form of deliverance. The kind of invocations used (“in the name of Jesus,” “order out”), while certainly not the most common formulation for a prayer of healing, is not so odd as to garner notice among most lay members. And, as we noted, it did not—this model of prayer as deliverance was not uniform, or even widespread, though it was more common to those with a more in-depth or long-term commitment to the particular church, or the Vineyard as a denomination. Nor was it carried out in a way distinguishable from the other smallgroup or conference prayers, in which these quiet deliverances were normally embedded. The significance, then, is not on the level of the spoken content, or the performative act, or the embodied aesthetics of the practice. The difference here that makes a difference was in what was believed, internally and subjectively, to be taking place by the person conducting the ritual. This is not to discount these other analytics, of course—as work in the field has shown, they have been useful in unpacking the seemingly oxymoronic practice of charismatic ritual, the ritual done by a population that, on the whole, has rejected ritual. But they should not be our only avenues of investigation. Despite all the justified interest in models that foreground embodiment and experience in ritual, or in language, language ideology, and hermeneutics, we should be surprised if either of these avenues provides total explanatory frameworks. Even in Pentecostalism, which has tongues as a figure to stand for the proposition that semantic meaning and cultural proposition are not the chief analytic concern, internal beliefs—at least at the level of particularistic understandings of what is occurring in ritual, if not belief in the larger Geertzian sense—still do some work, and should be attended to, as they recode and help intermesh the different stratas of action, matter, and communication that constitute the ritual moment.

Notes 1. By contrast, in her more recent work, Luhrmann has been emphasizing instead techniques of self-production that effect a retooling of cognitive capacities to adjudicate agency and train participants to read supernatural agency behind ostensibly naturalistic events—see Luhrmann 2007.

272

Jon Bialecki

2. Small groups (or occasionally, cell groups) are the names given to weekly or biweekly meetings of church members in the private homes of individuals; they are places where members forge personal relations in a way that would be harder to in the church itself, given the scale of the larger Sunday worship meetings (Wuthnow 1994a, 1994b). Small-group leaders are often important figures in the church, serving as a node in the chain between the pastor and the congregants; because of this status, they usually have to go through some type of formal training, and will be well versed in the positions and beliefs of their pastor specifically, and the church in general. 3. Csordas (1994) has noted a similar process in ritual charismatic Catholic deliverances, in which demons may not be cast out by ritual specialists by name, or even may be cast out without any bringing the practice to the attention of the demonized person; the “command” is uttered “silently or under his or her breath” instead (177). Unlike the cases that will be discussed here, which are predicated on a knowledge or interpretive differential between parties, Csordas points out that “well versed” (178) patients may understand this to have been a deliverance anyway, despite the fact that it was never formally marked as such. Csordas’s analytic concerns in these cases are also quite different—he asks what this means for the performative process that presumably is the engine of deliverance’s therapeutic effectivity, when only the healer who speaks of the prayer is aware of what is “actually” transpiring. Csordas counters with the observation that this may simply be a way of calibrating the level of affect in deliverances to a new, lower level of intensity that may actually better achieve the intended therapeutic goals, and be more acceptable to a middleclass, Catholic milieu—though complete erasure of the patient’s knowledge of the deliverance may be an overcorrection. These points are probably correct readings of his particular ethnographic case, but they do speak to the question of disarticulating the various strata (ideational, sensory, linguistic) that constitute and inform a ritual space and time, which is what this essay takes up. 4. This, of course, is by no means an exclusive hold on this market; as evidenced by Anglophone North American popular culture, the Roman Catholic church is still seen as one of the primary institutions to deal with demonic possession, usually through its office of exorcism. 5. Of course, that does not mean that divine record keeping is something that never occurs—at one point in my fieldwork, I was handed a hefty, two-volume photocopied dossier by a pastor, who had gone out of his way to record all of the miracles that had occurred as part of what he considered to be a revival centered around his church. 6. In fact, given the information above, for full-blown deliverances, it is even possible to hazard a per annum average—we can assume that the actual number of deliverances each year for that church is probably at least in the neighborhood of thirty or so. The number of thirty is arrived at by assuming that the two hundred over a four-year career, given a baseline of fifty per year, cut in half to take account of the possibility of accidental overreporting, with an additional “deliverance” at the level of one per every small group that was run out of this church at the time (there were five “nonthemed,” that is, not explicitly centered around a particular orientation such as gender or status [survivors

Quiet Deliverances

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

273

of sexual abuse, etc.] small groups at the start of the field work, though by the time I left there were seven). Most particularly, through an institutional engagement in the late 1980s and early 1990s with a group of “Latter Rain” Pentecostals (a mid-twentieth-century movement that emphasized healing and the immanence of the Tribulation) that were known colloquially as the “Kansas City Prophets;” this relationship was eventually undone by the fallout from the controversial “Toronto Blessing” revival, but has left its mark. While there are many dispensationalists within the denomination, the Vineyard has left the questions of apocalyptic eschatology open, allowing many Vineyard pastors to distance themselves from both that particular apocalyptic narrative and the division of time into separate “ages.” See Bialecki 2009b: 179–97. One Vineyard pastor said in a low-voiced, knowing affirmative, “Oh, ya, that’s the book,” when I took it out of my satchel to reference during an interview at a coffee shop, which was probably the most unmitigated endorsement of any text I ever received in my fieldwork. Baptism is a rather quick affair in this denomination—usually a full immersion in water, lasting only a handful of seconds. At Shores, Baptismal candidates were usually teenagers or young adults, and, in line with the evangelical roots of the denomination, baptism was understood as serving primarily as a public declaration of faith, rather than having any soteriological significance. These baptisms occurred at the beach, on what (according to the pastor’s joking complaint) were invariably the coldest days possible in Southern California. The baptisms I saw at Vineyard churches with less access to the ocean would be held in other locations, such as the spa portion of a believer’s backyard swimming pool. Oftentimes older preteen children would be baptized at these events, in addition to recent adult converts. Those who are familiar with more detailed medical terminology, from academic or professional training, will often bring their specialized vocabulary to bear in these venues, describing in detail the exact condition to be exorcised. The reason for the deemphasis of tongues in the Vineyard is complex and uncertain. Some longtime members of the Vineyard claim that the movement away from tongues is related to the issue of “edification”—that prodigious displays of tongue that go uninterpreted do not convey any knowledge or moral encouragement to the audience. Other reasons for the ebbing of tongues may be the current Vineyard’s desire to move away from a more old-fashioned Pentecostal style of worship, which had been associated (in the minds of some of the older Vineyard members) with a series of rather strong revivals in the 1990s that ended up bringing negative attention to the church and encouraged many, on both the individual and the church level, to leave the Vineyard. While this expression was only rarely used by my informants, its meaning was understood, and it oftentimes appeared in their primary literature on charismatic gifts. Though there is a limit on this as well—while particular small groups did sometimes last for several years, there was an expectation that as members spent time in them, they would develop in their giftedness, and perhaps form

274

Jon Bialecki

their own small groups; current small-group leaders, it was also hoped, would advance to other positions of responsibility in the church. While this was seen as a form of equipping people with gifts, and creating an air of constant discovery, it could be that this hoped-for growth also acted to keep groups in transition and prevent the kind of spiritual “ruts” expressed common to any long-standing formal or informal institution—including in this case, perhaps, repeated prayer requests.

References Ammerman, Nancy. 1987. Bible Believers. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Antze, Paul. 1996. “Telling Stories, Making Selves: Memory and Identity in Multiple Personality Disorder.” In Tense Past: Cultural Essays in Trauma and Memory, edited by P. Antze and M. Lambek, 3–24. New York: Routledge. Bialecki, Jon. 2008. “Between Stewardship and Sacrifice: Agency and Economy in a Southern California Charismatic Church.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute N. S. 14 (2): 372–90. ———. 2009a. “The Bones Restored to Life: Dialogue and Dissemination in the Vineyard’s Dialectic of Text and Presence.” In The Social Life of Scriptures: Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Biblicism, edited by James Bielo and Brian Malley. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. ———. 2009b. “The Kingdom and its Subjects: Charisms, Language, Economy, and the Birth of a Progressive Politics in the Vineyard.” PhD diss., University of California, San Diego, Department of Anthropology. Bielo, James S. 2008. “On the Failure of ‘Meaning’: Bible Reading in the Anthropology of Christianity.” Culture and Religion 9 (1): 1–21. Boddy, Janice. 1994. “Spirit Possession Revisited: Beyond Instrumentality.” Annual Review of Anthropology 23: 407–34. Boyer, Paul. 1992. When Time Shall Be No More. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Crapanzano, Vincent. 2000. Serving the Word: Literalism in America from the Pulpit to the Bench. New York: The New Press. Csordas, Thomas J. 1994. The Sacred Self: A Cultural Phenomenology of Charismatic Healing. Berkeley: University of California Press. ———. 1997. “Prophecy and the Performance of Metaphor.” American Anthropologist 99 (2): 321–32. ———. 2001. Language, Charisma, and Creativity: Ritual Life in the Catholic Charismatic Renewal. New York: Palgrave. ———. 2002. Body/Meaning/Healing. Houndmills, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. D’Andrade, Roy. 1987. “A Folk Model of the Mind.” In Cultural Models in Language and Thought, edited by D. Holland and N. Quinn, 113–47. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hacking, Ian. 1995. Rewriting the Soul: Multiple Personality and the Science of Memory. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Quiet Deliverances

275

Hanks, William. 1996. “Exorcism and the Description of Participant Roles.” In Natural Histories of Discourse, edited by M. Silverstein and G. Urban, 160–200. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Harding, Susan. 1987. “Convicted by the Holy Spirit: The Rhetoric of Fundamentalist Baptist Conversion.” American Ethnologist 14 (1): 167–81. ———. 1994. “Imaging the Last Days.” In Accounting For Fundamentalisms: The Dynamic Character of Movements, vol. 4, edited by M. Marty and S. Appleby. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ———. 2001. The Book of Jerry Falwell: Fundamentalist Language and Politics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Lambek, Michael. 2003. The Weight of the Past: Living with History in Mahajanga, Madagascar. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Luhrmann, T. M. 2004a. “Yearning for God: Trance as a Culturally Specific Practice and Its Implications for Understanding Dissociative Disorders.” Journal of Trauma and Dissociation 5 (2): 101–29. ———. 2004b. “Metakinesis: How God Becomes Intimate in Contemporary U.S. Christianity.” American Anthropologist 106(3): 518–528. ———. 2005. “The Art of Hearing God: Absorption, Dissociation, and Contemporary American Spirituality.” Spiritus 5 (2): 133–57. ———. 2006. “Learning Religion at the Vineyard: Prayer, Discernment and Participation in the Divine.” University of Chicago Divinity School, Martin Marty Center for the Advanced Study of Religion, Religion and Culture Web Forum. http://divinity.uchicago.edu/martycenter/publications/webforum/092006/ commentary.shtml (last accessed October 29th, 2009). ———. 2007. “How Do You Know That It Is God Who Speaks?” In Learning Religion: Anthropological Approaches, edited by D. Berliner and R. Sarro, 83–102. Oxford: Berghahn Books. MacNutt, Francis. 1995. Deliverance from Evil Spirits. Grand Rapids, MI: Chosen Books. Martin, David. 2002. Pentecostalism: The World Their Parish. Oxford: Blackwell. Meigs, Anna. 1995. “Ritual Language in Everyday Life: The Christian Right.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 63 (1): 85–103. Miller, Donald. 1997. Reinventing American Protestantism: Christianity in the New Millennium. Berkeley: University of California Press. Mullin, Robert Bruce. 1996. Miracles and the Modern Religious Imagination. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Myers, David G. 2002. Intuition: Its Powers and Perils. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Percy, Martyn. 1996. Words, Wonders and Power: Understanding Contemporary Christian Fundamentalism and Revivalism. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. Shibley, Mark A. 1996. Resurgent Evangelicalism in the United States: Mapping Cultural Change since 1970. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press. Shoaps, Robin. 2002. “‘Pray Earnestly’: The Textual Construction of Personal Involvement in Pentecostal Prayer and Song.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 12 (1): 34–71.

276

Jon Bialecki

Springer, Kevin, ed. 1988. Power Encounters: Among Christians in the Western World. San Francisco: Harper and Row. Stromberg, Peter. 1993. Language and Self-Transformation. Publications of the Society for Psychological Anthropology, vol. 5. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Synan, Vinson. 1997. The Holiness Pentecostal Tradition. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. Taves, Ann. 1999. Fits, Trances, and Visions. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Wacker, Grant. 2002. Heaven Below. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Wimber, John. 1985. Power Evangelism: Equipping the Saints. Anaheim: Vineyard Doin’ the Stuff. Wimber, John, and Kevin Springer. 1987. Power Healing. San Francisco: Harper & Row. Wuthnow, Robert. 1994a. Sharing the Journey: Support Groups and America’s New Quest for Community. New York: Free Press. ———, ed. 1994b. “I Come Away Stronger”: How Small Groups Are Shaping American Religion. Grand Rapids, MI: William E. Eerdmans.

c 10 C Imperfect Vessels Emotion and Rituals of Anti-Ritual in American Pentecostal and Charismatic Devotional Life Gretchen Pfeil

[Sometimes] language seems a nearly transparent garment. But one must say with Charles Sanders Pierce: “This clothing cannot be completely stripped off; it is only changed for something more diaphanous.” —Jakobson, “Closing Statement, Linguistics and Poetics”

Attempts to discuss the central ritual forms of American Pentecostal and charismatic Christianity, among them conversion narrative and sermon, are troubled by a seeming conflict. They seem to be ritual forms, and at the same time, to be something more, even opposed to ritual action. The urgency and personal quality of these forms of devotional practice lead, sometimes, to readings of them as transparent statements of fact. Conversion narrative, for example, is both clearly a form of devotional practice and also “real,” compelling as autobiography and a source of information about practitioners’ lives. This chapter unpacks this paradoxical quality to suggest that it is deeply consequential to both understanding American Pentecostal and charismatic theology and to a semiotically informed rethinking of the analytic value of the category “ritual.” To illustrate this paradoxical quality in a different way, I begin with an example not, or not exactly, from American Pentecostal ritual, but from contemporary American television. American “reality,” at least when it is realized in that new set phrase “reality television,” finds its defining moment in a kind of ritualized action: the visible and audible overflow of emotion that accompanies and gives meaning to “the reveal.” This moment is the definition and center of one terrifically popular variety of the genre, the makeover show. In ABC’s Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, perhaps the best example of the subgenre, a deserving family’s home is made new, whole, and fabulous at no cost to the owner. After the hard work of making over, the com277

278

Gretchen Pfeil

munity volunteers and professional television hosts unveil the home to its inhabitants. This is it, “the reveal.” The camera focuses directly on each of the members of the family assembled before their home, as they perform—in a state of apparent ecstasy and shock—a series of bodily postures startlingly familiar to those who study Pentecostal and charismatic Christianity. We see on screen the bodily posture of worshipful prayer: the devotee’s face is marked with a wide smile, tears stream down; hands are raised above the head, spread wide, palms up. The camera cuts to the show’s host; on one episode he says, “This is awesome, you know he is feeling something … real. I don’t know what to say.” Following the presentation of a transformed object, evidence of transformed internal states is made visible to others in this moment of embodied action. Affect—while perfectly recognizable, perfectly expected—is here taken as anything but rote performance. We the viewers are to understand the tears as absolute proof that the parties involved have truly been touched, deep within themselves. The viewer simultaneously accepts these poses as natural signs of a profoundly touched internal state and feels a nagging sense that this is a staged show, that it is coached. One is conflicted, feeling that what appears on the screen is not transparently interpretable, but in fact a sign of the irreducible opacity of these people’s internal states. It is perhaps surprising that the bodily vocabulary of devotional practices of American Pentecostal and charismatic churches appear now as a key emblem of “the real” emotional states of people in this televised medium. At the same time, the visual reference to Pentecostal ritual forms on the screen1 draws me to focus on a more interesting though less concrete parallel between this genre of television and contemporary American Pentecostal and charismatic devotional practice. Observers watching an instance of testimony or worship in a Pentecostal or charismatic church are often plagued—however momentarily, however provisionally—by a seeming contradiction. As in the televised makeover, there is a sense of the intense urgency and specificity of the present: this family, these tears, this specific triumph over adversity. Many aspects of these practices suggest a spur-of-the-moment, inspired quality: no notes, stumblingly disfluent talk, and, most importantly, emotional display to the point, at times, of real physical distress. At the same time, however, a sense of familiar and repeated motifs and moves appears as we watch the video another time.2 Looking back over notes or transcribed testimonies and sermons, it becomes clear that Pentecostal and charismatic devotional practice has a strongly marked ritual structure.

Imperfect Vessels

279

In this chapter, I argue that this tension that emerges in our immediate experience of Pentecostal and charismatic devotional practices and again in their interpretation is no accident of analysis. Through examples drawn from my own fieldwork, focused on conversion narrative and sermon, I want to suggest that this seeming paradox is the central tension worked through, heightened, and commented upon by Pentecostal and charismatic ritual forms. The conflict between these interpretations animates American Pentecostal and charismatic devotional practices and the theological and semiotic commitments—models of the nature of the divine and the nature of signifying practices—that those devotional practices both witness and work through. These devotional practices articulate the working out of a problem that vexes Christian theology. They also point to a question in longstanding anthropological definitions of ritual and discussions of ritual practice. In this chapter, I locate these related questions and tensions through a discussion of what I call “rituals of anti-Ritual,”3 specific, conventionalized devotional practices developed within Pentecostal and charismatic communities.

Seeing Ritual through Pentecostal and Charismatic Practice Pentecostal and charismatic ritual consistently highlight and valorize the specificity of action and experience in the moment in which they occur. Rather than bringing forward the repetitive or “traditional” quality of ritual action, they focus on the ritual as an event of the present moment, through the performance and valorization of “spontaneous” and highly affectively marked forms of practice, including speech. It is precisely these forms of practice in Pentecostal and charismatic churches that serve as the visible mark of theological difference from, and an opposition to, other Christian groups, mainline Protestant, Calvinist, Fundamentalist, Catholic, and others. As such, these practices also provide analytic insight into what Pentecostal and charismatic groups have in common: an orientation toward the doing of devotion that demands a performance of attention to the here-and-now and the mundane through apparent spontaneity to the point of a seeming loss of bodily control. This kind of ritual might be paradoxical within Durkheim’s view of religion (1995). Rather than separate the sacred from the mundane through consecrating formalized action, Pentecostal and charismatic practice demands the mundane as a necessary medium of devotion, perhaps even to the point of exaggerating or staging the mundane. In

280

Gretchen Pfeil

these practices, the transcendent and the material are not opposed but mutually implicated in a reach toward the apparently unmediated. A certain tension between the specificity of the participants and context of a ritual action and the ongoing roles and structure of a ritual is likely a universal feature of ritual under any rigorous anthropological definition.4 However, in this chapter I propose that Pentecostal and charismatic rituals are different because they, in a deep and theologically consequential way, stage specificity at the forefront of the event, actively working against the perception (or the participants’ own experience) of devotional practice as “ritualized” action. This is what I mean by calling these forms of ritual practice “rituals of antiRitual.” If rituals of anti-Ritual are consistently framed not as rote performances but as spontaneous moments of divinely inspired interaction, they are not elevated as moments of “the sacred” but artfully embedded in the lowly here-and-now of everyday talk and action. As such, these forms of ritual action challenge observers and analysts to think carefully about two things. First, they ask us to rethink the role of certain aspects of participants and interaction: is emotional performance analytically separable from participation in devotional practices in these groups? Are seemingly mundane moments of life as narrated and lived by members of these groups, especially moments of material suffering, to be placed outside the scope of anthropological analyses of devotional practice in these groups? Second, they ask us to think about the analytic category of ritual itself, perhaps in quite foundational ways. How can we understand a ritual that does not depend on elevating a moment of the everyday into the sacred? We are confounded by a ritual that achieves its ends not by formally bringing the stuff of the everyday into order, but rather by making signs of the divine hand accessible to devotees in a form of devotion that focuses on examining the everyday in practices that must be arranged so as to appear disordered and messy. It is a form of ritual action that depends, in important theological terms, on its status as not “ritualized” and not separate.

Case Study: Glory Chapel This chapter examines examples of two common forms of devotional practice—testimony and sermon—to lay out an argument about the complex structure and status of ritual in American charismatic and Pentecostal devotional life. To do so I draw on nine months of fieldwork conducted in 1999, at a charismatic church in Portland, Oregon.5 The

Imperfect Vessels

281

church, Glory Chapel,6 is affiliated with a global network of churches with the same name. Each Glory Chapel claims descent from a church founded by a single man, John Friedrich, in Orange County, California. At the time of my fieldwork, the Southeast Portland church was housed in a recently refurbished church building (the building had been condemned), and Sunday services drew around two hundred participants. Wednesday night services were slightly less crowded. The congregation was composed of young families and single mothers. Most of the adults, Caucasians in their late twenties through early forties, worked in the service industry, manufacturing, and clerical jobs. On my first visit to Glory Chapel, I came early, and as people slowly gathered for the service, I addressed myself to an older woman in the congregation. Or rather, she’d attached herself to me as soon as I walked up to the door, hugging me emphatically and handing me a “Welcome Packet”: a small manila envelope filled with forms for me to fill out, a ballpoint pen imprinted with the church’s name, a flier explaining the church services by answering doctrinal questions, a “Faith” bookmark, and a cassette tape (about which, more later). She stood holding my elbow while I filled out all of the forms—my name, marital status, age, address, material needs, spiritual needs—and asking me what brought me to church that Wednesday night. As soon as I began my rehearsed explanation of my research project, she interrupted me; looking me in the eye with the concerned face of a social worker, she asked, “What do you do for work? Are you married?” A long pause. “How are you doing?” Derailed, I answered her questions, apparently to her satisfaction. The woman nodded, hugged me, patted me on the back, and told me that she understood why I’d come, and that she was sure that they could help me with my school project. While my interlocutor continued to hold me by the arm, I looked around the now full sanctuary. People stood in pairs or threes, holding each other in much the same pose. My conversational partner then pointed out the pastor, about twenty feet away. He was talking with a young woman, holding her arm with one hand as my interlocutor held me. His other hand offered her one of the many boxes of tissues available in the sanctuary. She cried and wiped her face again and again, as her young son ran around the room. The service began with singing. Everyone sang along with the band from the words projected from a transparency and an overhead projector, arms reaching up, tears streaming down their faces. After the songs, the pastor—a Caucasian man in his early thirties, dressed in the casual sportswear recognizable at that moment in Portland’s poorer neighborhoods as “nice”—mounted the small stage and the sermon began. It was a strikingly informal, casual, and off-the-cuff talk: the pas-

282

Gretchen Pfeil

tor gave scriptural exegesis, talking without notes, just a worn copy of the New International Version of the Bible. His tie-tack microphone allowed him to move around the front of the church, energetically staging mock dialogue with present members of the congregation. His questions and admonitions drew responses from both individual members of the congregation and the group as a whole. They shouted answers to the pastor’s questions, affirmed his statements, laughed at his jokes. More than verbal responses, the congregation answered in tears. They cried and then they laughed so hard that they cried. At the end of the sermon, the pastor made the altar call and many of the people surrounding me went to the front of the church, to be “prayed over” or to “pray over” others. Each pair held onto each other with a hand on a partner’s upper arm, or hand-in-hand, leaning forward, praying “in tongues.” The pastor wiped his brow and his tear-stained face as he prayed over the congregation, a triumphant cacophony of his own tongues speech. Exhausted, I made my way to the bus stop to go home, type up notes, and listen to the tape from the manila envelope.

Testimony as Intimate Ritual The tape, labeled “The Pastor’s Testimony,” frames itself as a text of both denotational and interactional value: it tells the listener something, and it is meant to accomplish something in the world. It is, according to the unidentified framing voice, presented as a follow-up to the service, a forum for explanation of the many questions a new visitor might have. At the same time, the tape promises to build a relationship between the listener and the pastor. The tape begins: Thank you for being our guest at Glory Chapel today. We hope you’ve enjoyed our time of prayer praise worship and the word. Some of the most frequent questions we hear are Who is the pastor? What’s his background? What does he believe? And what is the purpose and vision of the church? We offer you this tape to answer the questions.7

After this anonymous framing voice introduces the purpose of the tape, the pastor’s voice begins, restating the purpose of the tape by quoting the Bible. You know the Bible says that they overcame him by the #blood of the lamb# by the word of their testimony and they loved not their lives unto the death one of the:

Imperfect Vessels

283

reasons why I put together this tape is to let you get to know me a little bit better.

The tape continues with the pastor’s testimony, the narrative account of his conversion. It is, as one might expect, a story of tremendous suffering, of deprivation, and finally of salvation through Jesus Christ and the community of faith at Glory Chapel. A highly structured Bildungsroman of faith, the testimony also participates in other genres. It frames the current instant of listening-after-a-first-churchservice—it serves as a personal introduction—and at the same time acts proleptically, anticipating and forming a social relationship between pastor and listener. The narrative thus models a relationship between the listener and both God and the church community. The first time I listened to the tape, it was not the familiar plot that stood out but rather the tremendous affect that dots and colors the story’s narration. The pastor’s voice, recounting moments of past hardships and fleeting signs of grace, wavered and dipped on the tape. His tears, like those I had seen at the service, were palpable in this mechanically reproduced telling. This recording of the pastor’s testimony is different from the other pieces of testimony I would later hear: it was distributed to me already recorded, it had been recorded before the speaker had any reason to know anything about me, and it was beautifully put together and certainly rehearsed. That said, it is strikingly like all of the conversion narratives I heard throughout the course of my work with this church, stories told to me by men and women, teens and middle-aged people, and it is strikingly like the conversion narratives presented and analyzed in other anthropological work on charismatic Christian groups (Luhrmann 2004; Lawless 1988; Stromberg 1993).8 I take this narrative, which arrived with the title “The Pastor’s Testimony,” as an exemplar of testimony and conversion narrative in this community both precisely because it is a beautiful telling, and because it is an exemplar. It is distributed to church visitors as a sign of who the pastor is, and, I will argue, as a model for what “a testimony” is. As a source text, the pastor’s testimony contains episodes and features that the other testimonies share. Church members’ testimonies, while they all drew formal elements from the pastor’s narrative, bear a stronger family resemblance to his narrative than they do to each other. In all the conversations I would later have at the church, and during all the services I would attend, the same pattern emerged: personal suffering was the theme of narration, and telling of hardships and trials was always accompanied by tears.

284

Gretchen Pfeil

Thematic Structure: Intimate Conversational Pairs and Transmission of Salvation The pastor’s autobiography is structured around a series of intimate pairings. In his earlier years, these intimacies were classically—sometimes hyperbolically—“abusive.” His mother, he tells us, was a drugaddicted Los Angeles street prostitute; she was imprisoned when he was very young. He was placed in foster care and separated from his only sibling, a sister. He grew into a young man who himself abused drugs and physically abused his girlfriend (later to be his wife). The pastor’s life improved; he was reunited with his sister and he and his girlfriend created a happy and stable marriage. This transformation from bad to good personal relationships became possible only through the intervention of Jesus, an intervention described as action carried out on and developed literally inside the narrator, in his heart.9 The story ends with a personal appeal to the listener to recognize him- or herself in his talk, to join the speaker/pastor, and finally, to become a partner in intimate talk with Jesus. He concludes by telling the listener how to pray, earnestly asking Jesus into her heart. The narrative thus moves slowly from pairs of people in which closeness and mutual respect are expected and denied to happier and more intimate pairings including his present love for God and his “beautiful marriage” figured in terms of physical proximity and the heart. It begins with figures of separation and moves to images of perfect intimacy in relationships, both human and divine, which encompass the present, not the moment of recording, but the moment of listening it anticipates. Near the middle of the testimony the pastor describes—in a little narrative that sums up the whole—the shape of a conversion, how it happens over time: But as time went on That seed of Christ remained in me. That witnessing, That tool began to (.4) make sense then as I began to search more and more for purpose in life, God brought a gentleman into my life by the name of John Friedrich who eventually became my pastor. And this man told me that I needed to live for God. He began to show me that Christ. (.4) The Christ of the Bible was real and wanted to live in my heart.’ And I can remember the day that I bowed my knee to the Lord Jesus Christ. (.5)

The narrative as a whole, summed up at its middle by the passage above, tells the story of his development from child to father (foster

Imperfect Vessels

285

child to pastor) in nine episodic segments and an epilogue. Each segment begins with a location in time and place (as in each scene in a play) and ends with an evaluation/summary of the segment as a whole. The first and last episodes are told mostly in the present tense, with a small piece of past narration. The second through eighth segments begin with a simple transition—and so (it was) at this time/well time went on—from the summary to a new stretch of narration in past tense. Each episode presents a character with whom the character Wilton (who later became the pastor)10 interacts: 1) The “man who thinks a minister must have gray hair” 2) The pastor’s prostitute mother and his younger sister 3) His adoptive mother and the Mormon Church15 4) People who say “You’re not a Christian” 5) Lisa (girlfriend/wife) 6) John Friedrich 7) God 8) The church and his children

The ninth episode projects a future interaction, between the current listener “you,” and the pastor, “I.” While the narration that constitutes each episode explains how interacting with that person changed Wilton, the ninth episode presents the changed Wilton—now the pastor—for inspection. It presents him as someone with whom the listener can have a relationship that will change him or her. That relationship, seemingly already begun in this listening, will, in the pastor’s words, “let you know that—you know what, you can have problems and frailties—but if you trust in the living God he’ll work in you, and he’ll work through you.” Having been himself transformed through a series of intimate interactions, the pastor offers himself and this interaction as a potential site for a parallel transformation. Taking personal, intimate dyadic relationships as its theme, the narrative also formally structures itself as personally, intimately, dyadically addressed. Just as the woman who greeted me had held me and interrogated me during my first visit to the church, the testimony verbally grabs the listener, posing the pastor as proximate, available, understanding. He is “human” and he has made mistakes: narrated mistakes and errors of his own past, and small mistakes of speaking in this recording. Narrated hardship and suffering are a part of this addressive stance of intimacy. At the end of the narrative, the pastor justifies his telling in just these terms, echoing the beginning of his testimony:

286

Gretchen Pfeil

And you might be listening to this tape. Remember these words that I’ll say. As you come here you’re gonna find something out about me as a pastor. You’re gonna find out that I’m human That I desire to be transparent to you.

Immediately after this segment the pastor says, “If God can use somebody like myself,” that is, he reminds us, precisely “someone who was raised up from a broken home and … got involved in false religions and drug addictions and mental hospitals.” The pastor then says, “If God can use me, just think what he can do with you.” The talk is shot through with characteristic tropes of informality in colloquial American English speech. A stylistic claim to “transparency,” his style encourages a sense of the immediacy of unrehearsed and unschooled speech. His plain style of speech is also frequently shaped by standard marks of affect in American English: speech that speeds up and slows down, whispering, choking back tears, and stumbling disfluency in some of his citations of scripture. Not only is this testimony beautifully structured as a device of performed transparency, the thematic content or explicit message of the testimony also maps a teleology of growing intimacy in conversational relationships, leading to both a narrated conversion (the pastor’s) and an anticipated one (the listener’s). The reported conversations within the testimony present a sequence that maps an implicit lineage of the message of salvation—linked moments of addressed speech reaching back in time from the listener’s projected prayer to God back to the apostolic circle and Christ himself. Thus we can say that the authorizing function (Asad 1993; Caton 2006) is established through the lamination or calibration (Silverstein 1993) in this narrative of a series of represented speech events: Fig. 1 Speakers Pastor (on the tape) Reported witnesses Christ person listening to the tape

Addressees person listening to the tape Pastor’s past self Apostles God

The presentation of these pairs brings with it a series of nested and analogous sets of conversational roles.

Imperfect Vessels

287

This structure is similar to that of many forms of ritual in other contexts and groups: the participants in ritual action are lined up with characters, places, or times in previous actions and in a larger, transcendent order. However, this ritual arranges its participants in a slightly different way. Having established these pairs, the narrative sets them against each other, partially collapsing them into a didactic schema calling for the listener’s response and shaping her as a self in conversation with the pastor and Christ. That is, the real listener of the tape is the last voice narrated on the tape: in the pastor’s words, the listener becomes a speaker. The collapse of these roles informs the listener’s role as a future speaker, perhaps even didactically: you, the listener will speak. It also marks a genealogy of speech, tracing a history of dyadic conversation in which the listener is now, simply by virtue of listening, implicated. These simultaneous functions of the analogies above both equate the pastor and his listener, forming a seemingly egalitarian speaking relationship, and creating a chain of licensed tellings. This structure forms an icon-like verbal image for an imagined history of the spread of the Gospels, from Christ’s original speech to the apostles who heard the news, from the apostles, to those who heard it from them, etc. This establishes ordinal priority of Christ to the apostles, of the apostles (through some of mediating steps) to the pastor, and of the pastor to the listener. While these pairings present an ordinal value, the apostles are closer to Christ than the pastor, by virtue of order, they also elide the mediating distance that the order presents. The pairs of speakers represented are framed as analogous, models for each other. In each case they demonstrate not hierarchy and distance but a coeval intimacy between equals. It is an authority, but an authority of a very specific kind. Similarly, by listening to the tape, one participates in a ritual of the classic sense, one that creates a specific relationship between persons. This ritual is a little odd, however, because it creates a relationship between the listener and God himself as radically intimate, to be understood in the mundane forms of human bodily proximity and everyday talk. The pastor’s paradoxical position of authority—an authoritative vector of salvation and at the same time the listener’s equal—is also established in the narration of past hardships and suffering. His background frames him as an exemplar of a believer, a downtrodden man “raised up to glory” by the power of God. At the same time, this characterization echoes and instantiates key figures in the transmission of the Gospels; it indexes Christ, the apostles, and also the Old Testament prophets before them. The pastor frames his personal history—as both a victim and a perpetrator of abuse, a drug addict, and an uneducated

288

Gretchen Pfeil

man—as signs that he is an imperfect vessel for the divine. But a nagging question animates his talk: Is it precisely these imperfections that reveal him to be a possible vessel for the divine? The pastor’s selfpresentation as “human,” and “not superhuman,” gestures towards Christ’s own perplexing ontological status. It also suggests the ordinariness of the apostles before they joined Christ, and the Old Testament prophets, who are in this community also read as imperfect vessels of the divine message. His age, “just approaching the thirties,” recalls Christ’s age at the crucifixion, and his reported interaction with a man who “cannot sit under a man’s ministry if he does not have gray hair,” suggests various denunciations of Jesus by the rabbis and mainstream contemporary religious and civil authority more generally. Beyond these citational references, the form of narrative representation of personal suffering itself has a long history within the Christian church as a form of Imitatio Christi, the imitation of Christ’s life and suffering in one’s own self as a form of devotional practice (Fulton 2002; Perkins 1995). At the same time, these marks of weakness and the pastor’s history of trouble create a narrative setting in which the hand of the divine is visible in the material state of the pastor’s body and domestic life, any movement upward (and where can a narrative go once the narrator has hit rock bottom?) may become a sign of being “raised up,” and any raising up must be an act of God.

Conversion Narrative as Conversational Ritual The animation of the Gospel text and the speaker’s own performance of Imitatio Christi in the narration of his own suffering in this testimony accomplishes three tasks expected of a ritual form (Silverstein 2004; Tambiah 1981). First, it retells one of the most meaningful stories for the group, in this case its foundation myth: Christ’s life. Second, it diagrammatically aligns the participants in the speech situation—the pastor and the listener—with characters and values from the mythic realm, the Gospels (reading down the columns in fig. 1) and as recipients and beneficiaries of the Gospel’s power (reading across the rows in fig. 1). Third, it enacts the communion of the here-and-now with the eternal truth of the Gospel, ending with change of status of at least one of the participants, in this case, the receipt of the Gospels by, and potential conversion of, the listener. Through participation in the testimony both the speaker, and perhaps more so the listener, are placed within the Gospel narrative. They are both participants in the founding moment of Christianity, through personal suffering, and par-

Imperfect Vessels

289

ticipants in its expansion. Crucially, the lineage of talk also represents the pastor (and the listener) as licensed vectors of salvation. In a further parallel to Silverstein’s analysis of the Eucharist (2004: 626), the testimony incorporates the listener chiastically, in the moment that it anticipates her incorporation of it, in her anticipated performance of a version of the “Sinner’s Prayer.”12 In the Catholic church, the institutional structure of the church and the replication of the liturgy as it has been passed down—including the priest’s replication of Christ’s words at the last supper—themselves provide for the backing of this moment of transmission, brought into the devotee’s body by the act of consuming the wafer. Here, however, each link in the transmission of the divine is framed as “just conversation,” real and intimate conversation, ordinary talk accompanied by tears. As much as this conversion narrative fits with a model of ritual developed in linguistic anthropology—even seeming quite close in structure to the Eucharist—“The Pastor’s Testimony” seems to be an imperfect example of ritual speech in the classic sense. Though they are a locally named genre, “testimony” narratives do not at first appear to be the completely bounded forms that we expect from ritual speech (in formulations as in e.g., Keane 1997b). Here ritual is accomplished not in the elevated and expanded form we might expect, nor is it achieved in a register marked off from everyday talk. The work of preparing the way for transcendence—a transcendence with all the salvific effects we expect in a Protestant theology, salvation that can happen should the listener properly prepare and open the heart—is achieved in and through talk of the lowest register, in the most common way, about the most banal, bodily, and ugly of things. Transcendence is possible not in spite of the earthy and banal; it depends on the most base forms and aspects of everyday human embodiment, of everyday incarnation.13 It is something of a commonplace in both linguistic anthropology and the anthropology of religion that religious speech is distinct from other forms of talk within a community. Similarly, that the use of “plain talk” constitutes a turn away from ritual, this term here understood in a rigorous analytical sense. While recent work, especially in the anthropology of Christianity, pushes implicitly against this model, showing how devotional practices occur in the most common and lowly of registers,14 it may be useful to consider the question a moment longer. Bloch’s claims that religious speech is more “formal” than other kinds of speech (1975) have been refuted through a systematic decomposition of the category “formality” (Irvine 1979). Still, the association between ritual as an analytic category and religious speech as an eth-

290

Gretchen Pfeil

nographic object remains. Ritual itself has been defined as a form of speech and social action that derives its efficacy from its conventionality (Rappaport 1990) or through an effect of depersonalization (Du Bois 1986). Indeed, the association between ritual as a category and the tightly formal “poetics of ritual” is the center of Silverstein’s recent reformulation of the relationship between language and “cultural concepts” (2004: 626), worth quoting at length: The very hypertrophic orderliness of multiple metricalizations thus bounds the performed text of ritual, giving it a semblance of formal plenitude-in-itself. In and by this property of seeming to self-entextualize, to stand as formally autonomous totality, a ritual text as a whole traced over space-time projects as its contextualization that which it dynamically figurates along a “cosmic axis,” an axis of knowledge or belief. Such dynamic, directional spatiotemporal movements in ritual entail in this fashion the causal (re)ordering of cosmic conceptualizations as figurally indexed, such as aspects of sacred or foundational knowledge, feeling, and belief, made figurally “real” in the here-andnow of experienceable semiosis.

The formal and analytical insight that ritual action (and language) is richly structured is absolutely essential to the productive study of ritual forms generally. It is also necessary to the study of Pentecostal and charismatic ritual. It is not, however, sufficient to exhaust Pentecostal and charismatic forms of devotion. Rather, American Pentecostal and charismatic forms of devotional practice are structured in reference to precisely these expectations of religious speech and ritual action. Like an enjambed line in the climactic moment of a sonnet—which gains its drama by apparently breaking with convention, while still perfectly matching the required meter—anti-Ritual is a play on anticipation. AntiRitual plays with a common-sense understanding of “Ritual” to mark these forms of devotion as consequentially different from “Ritual.”

Testimony as Anti-Ritual In many ways, the “Pastor’s Testimony,” as an example of Pentecostal/ charismatic ritual, does precisely what we take ritual to do. However, its formal qualities challenge our analytical model of ritual as well, in ways consequential to both this ritual instance (or each instance, as the tape is replayed and circulates) and to our understanding of ritual as a category. It is both a ritual and ritual’s seeming opposite: staged in the most banal of mundane talk, the “Pastor’s Testimony” appears not to be bounded, not to stand as a whole, but to bleed off into the stuff

Imperfect Vessels

291

of the everyday. That these forms of testimony appear not to be ritual, the tension to which I gesture at the beginning of this paper, is more than a clever illusion. This appearance not to be ritual is consequential for a rigorous semiotic theory of ritual precisely because it forces us to refine our definition of ritual by examining it in relationship to the folk (or lay, or commonsense) model of “Ritual” active in American life. Pentecostal/charismatic devotional practice should fall under a good analytic definition of ritual, yet it functions only as it instantiates a form of action opposite to “Ritual” in its everyday, nonanthropological, nonspecialist sense. To make the point more technically, the “Pastor’s Testimony,” like other forms of Pentecostal and charismatic ritual, does create a dynamic figuration, indexing sacred knowledge, making it (to repeat Silverstein’s words) “figurally ‘real’ in the here-and-now of experienceable semiosis.” Further, it is a tightly poetically structured narrative; participating in a recognizable form; it participates in a genre (Bahktin 1986). Under a careful analytic eye, the testimony is a formally coherent ritual form, structured through and through by the crystalline poetics we expect of ritual forms. In this way it is “a ritual.” However, the testimony does not initially appear as a “formally autonomous totality.” Rather than a moment in which participants understand themselves to step outside of time and place to enact moments of the cosmic order, the testimony appears to be radically mundane. In the words of many a kitchen wall hanging, “God bless this mess.” Indeed, while conversion narratives are standard forms, even across congregations separated by small doctrinal differences, by space, and by time (as in Stromberg 1993; Luhrmann 2004; Harding 1987), each instance of conversion narrative seems highly tailored to the here-andnow of fresh speech. “The Pastor’s Testimony,” a text bounded by a text artifact—a repeatable experience of listening, just press rewind and play—is structured as if it were a face-to-face, intimate personal conversation, continually grounded in deictics of the here-and-now, “showing” the truth of scripture by instantiating doctrine in the world inhabited by both speaker and listeners. Testimony as a genre presents itself as simple and transparent autobiographical narrative, the stuff of that everyday American genre, “getting to know you.” It is styled as offthe-cuff “fresh talk” (Goffman 1981). More importantly, it is marked with high affect, framed as the outward sign of profound interiority: it is the tearful telling of the speaker’s past. In this way the testimony is radically “anti-Ritual”; it appears spontaneous, not an execution of timeless order; it appears wholly of this earth, revealing the divine in stuff that it artfully frames as mundane, of the here and now, and of the

292

Gretchen Pfeil

body. Do all of the marks of colloquial “informality,” of “spontaneity,” and of localness mean that these pieces of talk are more like “conversation”—interaction ritual, to be sure—and less like the “ritual” of which high-church liturgy is the exemplar and prototype? The answer is both yes and no. Conversion narrative is ritual action. At the same time, its divergence from a broader sense of “Ritual,” of which the Catholic liturgy (and its climactic Eucharist) is clearly the prototype within groups that identify as Christian, is highly structured and meaningful. That it is distinct from and opposed to Catholic liturgy is no mistake; it is a formal move with real theological stakes to those who participate in Pentecostal and charismatic devotion. The stakes are, at times, made explicit within the talk that partially constitutes such devotional practices.

Sermon: Personalization and Supplementing Talk At Glory Chapel, and I argue, perhaps more generally in similar American churches, talk itself is not free from charges of being prepared, false, an unsuitable medium for revealing the connection between the human and the divine. Possibly “legalistic,” prepared talk is not sufficient to “show the Father’s heart.” Talk itself—in this community—is not a suitable anti-Ritual form but is suspect. It is liable to fall into habit as rote repetition. Every form of devotional practice, from church service, to testimony, to prayer, seems to strain to mark out its value as “genuine” and “heartfelt.” Here I examine one sermon from Glory Chapel to show the ways in which talk is framed as suspect. I highlight interactional moves made to correct talk and create a sermon that is not rote or “dead,” but living real worship, something “real” and not “Ritual.” Robin Shoaps (2001) argues that pressure on members of the (Pentecostal) Assemblies of God church to be “earnest” in prayer leads to particular strategies of entextualization. Chief among these strategies is “transposition,” which “highlights the situatedness of the text in a particular performance and as emanating from a particular speaker” (2001: 35). Further, the trope is crucial in the formation of group identity and religious experience within this church community, both taken to be “earnest” and highly personal forms of religious practice. Within the community Shoaps presents, “personalization” of religious experience is highly valued, and the desire for “personal” contact with the divine is taken to distinguish American Pentecostal practice from “mainline” churches, which are “criticized among other things for the lack of feeling and passion in their services” (Shoaps 2002: 35).

Imperfect Vessels

293

Glory Chapel church services are similarly structured so as to “personalize” the participant’s experience, framing interaction between church members as symmetric, informal, and intimately solidary, and thus, indirectly indexing the “genuine feelings” people share when they can “just be themselves.” Four such strategies appeared most frequently in my transcripts of sermons. The first of these is the use of marked vernacular forms (e.g. “dude” and “’kay,” as in “okay”). The second is the use of direct personalized address and description of individual present members of the congregation in the body of the sermon. The third—common to many contemporary forms of sermon—is Biblical exegesis through the construction of a parallel between the episodes of the Bible passage in question and quotidian episodes from domestic life. Fourth, the structure of call-and-response, or questionand-answer, structures the service as a whole and further models what happens in church as “a relationship,” indexing the prototype image of a personal relationship both within the church and in its larger cultural context: the conversation. These four tropes of casual and spontaneous interaction are perhaps best illustrated in a segment at the beginning of one Sunday night sermon. My transcript begins immediately after the singing that opens the service has ended. The pastor clears his throat and begins to describe the direction that sermons have been going in, locating tonight’s sermon in a larger sequence of sermons.15 Just after “compromise,” the pastor shifts his footing, literally turning to his right a little to look at Susie, a young woman in the pews whom he picks out to address directly in the following line: OK But this Sunday we are going to uh God’s really gonna help us this week um I want to encourage you to come open … this Sunday. One of the things the Lord’s showing me is that there needs to be a house cleaning in your house—in my house … in our lives. Sin will block the blessing of God and we cannot live a lifestyle of compromise. Susie I love you girl you You live a lifestyle that’s not … uh uh … cutting edge.

The pastor seems here to keep interrupting himself, stumbling. This apparently artless move to direct address—in fact a direct address that frames the person addressed as an example of the general phenomenon discussed—is repeated again about a minute into the ser-

294

Gretchen Pfeil

mon. Here again the pastor seems to be interrupting himself. Though these shifts in footing appear spontaneous—and are also marked by extreme informality toward the individual addressed—they serve as examples and supports for the doctrinal points the pastor argues here as he moves into his sermon on Acts: And I’m believing this month that we’re gonna see things happen in our midst. How ’bout you? Not just in our midst but in our homes and so forth. Mark’ I just’ Every time I see you it just blesses me brother—man’ I just, you can just see the joy of the Lord (.3) and you know cause I remember the first morning he came, it was before I went on vacation. I remember that To see you now you’re a different dude. (.6) Don’tcha know. (.3) Du:de, you’re a different dude (loud exhaling sigh). And it’s just, it’s wonderful. It’s the power of salvation workin’ in your life and uh If you haven’t got to know Mark yet #get to know Mark# why don’t you? Waive your hand there and your beautiful wife there. And just get to know ’em, Say hi to ’em. [He] Just gave his heart to the Lord a few weeks back (loud applause from the congregation) and it’s awesome. So we’ve been preaching and in this place we left last time um … ah … something that I also ministered Sunday night.

The sermon on Acts continues. Its argument, much simplified, is that the “Jerusalem” of Acts 8 is “the home front,” that a person’s faith is best judged in the status of his or her domestic life. Later in the sermon, the pastor narrates a past argument with his wife, in which she was mad at him for leaving his socks on the floor, in a markedly casually style. He even uses the mock obscenity “she doesn’t give a flip.” This story elicits laughter from the congregation, and the pastor’s wife begins to shout similarly mock-obscene retorts in response. The sermon contin-

Imperfect Vessels

295

ues, “personalizing” segments of the lesson by picking out individual people around the room, and thus framing the whole as “personalized” to a group composed of distinct and specific individuals. As in Shoaps’s data (from a distant and unrelated Pentecostal congregation, note) the service is formally structured so as to appear “informal,” “personal,” and spontaneous. And, as in the congregation Shoaps discusses, this implicit self-styling is the topic of explicit positive commentary. That the service is so structured is not only one of its “good” qualities, it is precisely these qualities that distinguish the group, in its own eyes, from others. This topic becomes explicit later in the sermon when the pastor acts out a conversation in which he takes on a popular radio preacher. The radio preacher (the “Bible Answer Man”) demonstrates an inferior understanding of Christianity, like other conservative Protestants, “boldly preaching holiness.” Because, in stressing “regulations”16 (in fact, crisp and formulaic “answers” in the mode of other forms of literalist exegesis; see Crapanzano 2000) he, on the Glory Chapel pastor’s account, “fail[s] to show the Father’s heart.” Beyond the explicit discussion of scripture and of other groups, the sermon makes parallel theological claims in its very form and mode of poetic entextualization.

A First Conclusion: Anti-Ritual as Ritual Critique? In this chapter, I have attempted to show that Pentecostal and charismatic devotional practice is importantly both ritual and a staging of its opposite, and that the terms in which these practices are opposed to ritual are consequential. Here, by means of a conclusion, I would like to suggest that role of the body as figure of the true and a space of signification in these groups represents a position on a much larger epistemological problem. It embodies a potentially much larger critique. Prayer accompanied by tears, bodily agitation, marked affect, and, of course, tongues speech are, as signs of the “Baptism of the Spirit,” the small marks of practice that distinguish Pentecostal and charismatic Protestantisms from other, otherwise doctrinally close forms of Protestantism. Within Pentecostal and especially charismatic communities, tears and the other bodily postures that may culminate in ecstatic states are understood to be signs that a participant’s experience is “real,” “authentic,” and “heartfelt,” in opposition to mainline Protestantism’s practices that are criticized within these groups as “dry,” “legalistic,” “rote,” and “dead.” The terms of this opposition point to a larger structure of meaning—a devotional ideology—present in Protes-

296

Gretchen Pfeil

tantism (and perhaps Christianity) more generally. That is, this opposition gives meaning to a series of other oppositions: it lines certain forms of meaningful practice up with values within this religious community. It is both a linguistic, and more broadly a semiotic, ideology (Keane 2003; Silverstein 1979; Woolard 1998) in which the implicated values are both specifically religious and consequentially sectarian. They mark an opposition not only between more and less godly practice but also between the inside (“us”) and the outside (“them”) of the group of devotees. This devotional ideology opposes what it calls “Ritual,” “lawgoverned,” or “ornamented” action as “empty” and requires believers to seek an opposite form of practice. The term anti-Ritual therefore does not apply to a specific, formally describable set of practices. Rather, it must be understood as an ideological construction of certain forms of religious—and more broadly semiotic—practice defined in a particular context as “not ritual.” That is, anti-Ritual is valorized (and exists!) only as it comes into being as a form diametrically opposed to “Ritual,” however that term is locally understood at the moment. If “Ritual” is “dead,” formal, and not “real,” anti-Ritual is designed (through tremendous semiotic effort) to overcome and transcend the “rote” and dead law and to present a naked truth. While mainstream Protestantism, and especially Calvinism, has found an escape from “Ritual” by constructing referential and denotational language as a transparent medium for “sincere” Christian devotional practice,17 Pentecostal and charismatic forms of Christianity find even these forms of action to be insufficiently anti-“Ritual.”18 Words fail them. Emotional performance, understood within a larger (“Modernist”?) language ideology as closer to the true interiority of the subject, has come to stand, along with other codified marks of spontaneity, as a sign of the anti-Ritual quality of charismatic devotional practice. Thus, the terms of this opposition are not arbitrary; rather, they are the central structure of oppositional formation of church groups— schismogenesis (Bateson 1958, 2000)—within Protestantism. They are, arguably, retrospectively understood to be the terms on which the Christian faith as a whole is separated from antecedent Judaism. Tears and bodily performance, though sometimes criticized by evangelical and charismatic Christians as signs of the Catholic-ness (perhaps because of their revelation of the body?) of Pentecostal groups are, by this logic, potentially a symbolic opposition to Catholicism, in hypertrophied form. One might even say that viewed from within these groups, through the lens granted by their own ritual forms and devotional practice, these tears are the distinctive marks of an opposition to Calvinism, mainline Protestantism, different forms of American

Imperfect Vessels

297

fundamentalism, Congregationalism; in short, to all but the one true church, the true body of Christ. These same tears are thus understood in this context to be just as much an escape from the fetish-like objectual practices that compose routinized form as is plain and rational speech in the Calvinist church and thereby threaten the possibility of an access to the divine unmediated by human signs—the inescapably human and bodily qualities of tears notwithstanding. The theological claims made by Pentecostal and charismatic groups in their oppositional embrace of markedly casual, emotional, and “antilegalistic” forms of talk are related to a larger issue of doctrine, best understood as an epistemological issue. “Tongues speech,” the emblem of charismatic and Pentecostal Christianities—or perhaps their shibboleth?—is also crucially ideologically constructed within these churches as spontaneous, unrehearsed, and a true sign of the sanctification of the speaker. Further, it is performed, and has been described to me, as a moment of passionate, almost erotic individual encounter with God. Tongues speech is taken by some, but not all, charismatic and Pentecostal groups as the necessary and sufficient sign of conversion, rebirth, and sanctification. Though it is the most salient form of charismatic practice to the practitioners themselves, it is one of a set of similar phenomena called “the gifts of the Holy Spirit” or the charismata, from which charismatic Christianity derives its name. These “gifts” minimally include the ability to speak in tongues, to prophesy, and to heal with the power of the Holy Spirit (through the laying of hands). The gifts are understood to have been given to the apostles as signs to be used to convince others of the truth of the Gospels. The proper role of the charismata is a site of explicit discussion of the theological differences between charismatic and Pentecostal groups on the one hand and evangelical and fundamentalist Christianities on the other within the American Protestant press. The popular evangelical writer C. Peter Wagner characterizes the standard evangelical position as follows: John Walvoord, the president of Dallas Seminary, feels that miracles have declined in the church since the age of the apostles. His colleague, Merrill Unger, writes that the fact that the “miraculous charismata passed away after the apostolic period is well attested by church history.” Unger argues that the miraculous gifts were given to the apostles as a form of credentialing, as proofs of the gospel, and therefore ceased to be active “when apostles no longer existed and the Christian faith no longer needed such outward signs to confirm it.” (2005: 12)

In a comprehensive review of the church-historical literature Robbins provides an account of the animosity between fundamentalist and

298

Gretchen Pfeil

Protestant/charismatic Christianity that resonates with and expands on the evangelical press’s take on the distinctive quality of Pentecostal and charismatic practice presented above: Several analysts point to cultural differences between [the two opposed groups] that suggest reasons for their incompatibility and indicate the analytic reasons it is useful to distinguish them. Cox (1995) distinguishes between “fundamentalist” religions focused on doctrinal purity and “experientialist” ones that stress the ability of followers to experience the transcendent. (2004: 123)

Pentecostals themselves make a similar claim in naming tongues speech as “initial evidence,” the necessary sign of the work of the Holy Spirit in beginning the adherent’s sanctification and rebirth (Goff 1988; Dayton 1987). At stake here, in multiple and sometimes conflicting accounts from both within and outside the groups involved, are the fraught terms that form the boundary between Pentecostal/charismatic and other conservative Protestantisms. From the perspective of both those who identify as Pentecostal or charismatic and those who strongly oppose themselves to those they so identify, the opposition turns on the role of a certain form of evidence of the adherent’s relationship to God: bodily experience (including emotion) as opposed to either sincerely and truthfully “accept[ing] Jesus as [one’s] Lord and Savior” and/or the strict adherence to biblical law. Recalling Shoaps’s discussion above, the opposition between Pentecostal/charismatic and mainline (and Calvinist) Protestantism is thus understood within Pentecostal and charismatic groups as one of “spontaneity” as opposed to “stiffness.” But it also reflects what we might call an epistemological quarrel, a distinction based on what counts as proof of an adherent’s relationship to God. While mainline Protestantism holds truthful and sincere speech as sufficient to communicate with God and to index his agency in one’s life, in Pentecostal and charismatic groups this kind of proof is, in the words of one of Troy Abell’s (1982) consultants, “better felt than said.” To appropriate the words of Glory Chapel’s pastor to slightly different ends, words themselves can be insufficient to “becom[ing] transparent to you” so as to “show the Father’s heart.” The attempt to find good proof, unmediated proof, leads to different media and forms for anti-Ritual in different communities. Affect, ideologically grounded as it is in understandings of the heart, the body, and thus “the real,” is chosen at Glory Chapel and in similar communities. However, like all semiotic practices, even affect as anti-Ritual is necessarily formally structured, and thus necessarily involves ritual in a technical sense. As

Imperfect Vessels

299

in the Jakobson epigraph that begins this chapter, it is not a perfect garment, only “something more diaphanous.” If the Puritan Royal Society’s encouragement of a “naked, natural way of speaking” was a call for a religious speech that was precisely not distinct from everyday talk, and as such, not “routinized,” not “Ritual,” in fact, anti-Ritual, it was based on a model of the subject that locates rational and truthful speech as emanating from and a sign of the interiority of a subject. The voluntary gross muscular movements of the body—the kneeling Pascal had advocated in his famous seventeenth-century apologetic Wager—took on meaning as “works,” and worse yet, as exterior to the truthful intentions of the subject. They can be performed as empty and rote. That is, the movement of the body became marked as problematic “Ritual.” Speech, by contrast, is understood in this context as inherently closer to the interiority of subjects. Though people can lie (and within the space of this model of language, they certainly do), speech can be a medium for expressing the inner states of the subject in ways that the body cannot. This model of the subject, onion-like, proposes a further level of subjective interiority, truth, and sincerity: the emotions, figured in the real, material heart, and the “uncontrollable” and “natural” processes and movements of the body. I propose that we understand Pentecostal and charismatic ritual as a form of practice that articulates and makes present this aspect of this specific longstanding model of the subject. In naming plain speech as potentially “Ritual,” these forms of devotion present an attempt to find “proper” devotion and real proof—“anti-Ritual”—in attempting to reach beyond it, in the medium of tears, repeated and performed suffering, in the moments when words fail. To put it differently, perhaps more consequentially for a theory of ritual more generally, these forms of anti-Ritual present us with the possibility of an unending peeling away of ideologically structured layers of mediation via an endless escalation of signs framed—however momentarily—as the final layer of mediation, whatever material form those signs might take in that context.

Second Thoughts: “Emotional Build-Up” I will try to clarify the consequences of anti-Ritual through a momentary return to reality television, the potential anti-Ritual quality of tears in a home makeover, and to another perspective on their transparency. On one first-season episode of the reality show Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, a Malibu, California, single father (a widower) and his many

300

Gretchen Pfeil

children were selected to be the recipients of a free “home makeover.” The family members were all devout, born-again Christians, professing a charismatic faith. As in other similar reality shows, the family was sent away while a team of experts went to work, remodeling and redecorating the home. It was a large house that had fallen—the viewers were told—into disrepair after the wife’s death. When the family returned, they were delighted with the bright new home. While they wept with joy at the beautiful paint and new furniture, they raised their hands and gave their thanks and praise to God. The show cut to the father’s new home office, complete with a huge oak desk opposite a study table on which his and his deceased wife’s Bibles were arranged, side by side, mirroring the placement of their bodies in a wedding photo hung above the table. The man began to cry. Another cut moved to the head decorator on the team—a young bleach-blond southern Californian—who said (of the homeowner) to the camera “He was so happy, if there’s such a thing as a state of grace, he was in it.” The family, the father said, could now be as God meant it to be. He could be reunited with his wife here, in this arrangement of their Bibles. If the reunion, however symbolic, was the trigger of this “state of grace,” then the father’s tears were its sign. When I first saw this episode, in 2004, I was startled by the central role charismatic worship played in the episode. The show became a major success for the ABC network in the United States and by 2008 was in global syndication. Only much later, in mid-2008, did it become clear that the show, ostensibly about satisfying the purely material needs of people (often focused on fixing up houses to accommodate the recently disabled, for example), might in fact be another form of devotional practice parallel to those I have discussed here. In concluding this chapter, I would like to suggest that the same complex anxieties about presence, the real, and the fear of the rote—with all their theological baggage—might animate the show’s signature style, lovingly training cameras on the materiality of both process and result. Sledge hammers, caulk, sweat, tears of joy, flushed faces, and quivering voices may be the epistemologically complex signs on this form of devotion. While the show frames the emotional performance of classic charismatic devotional practice as a locus of truth and the sign of a “state of grace,” this reading and the epistemological stance it involves are open to contemporary critique. A recent piece titled “Emotional Buildup” in a special supplement to the New York Times (Halpern 2008) discusses Extreme Makeover: Home Edition through an examination of the semiotic labor that goes into making that emotional display as palpable and immediate as possible to the end viewer.

Imperfect Vessels

301

A passage in which the show is thus criticized for the ways in which recipient families are chosen demonstrates the overall tone of the piece: The show’s producers are tight-lipped about its selection process, but some inkling is [given by a] 2006 memo, obtained by the Web site thesmoking gun.com, from an ABC employee outlining ideal situations. The list includes victims of hate crime, families with several kids who have Down syndrome and children with “congenital insensitivity to pain.” On this last score, the memo notes, “There are 17 known cases in U.S.—let me know if one is in your town!”

The purposeful choice of families in particular kinds of material and physical trouble is not the only target for the New York Times reporter’s critical eye. Halpern is at great pains to pick out each and every aspect of the show’s production in which events are staged for greater emotional effect, often pairing these moments with quotations in which the Extreme Makeover crew reference or speak quite directly about the religious meaning of the makeover and the emotional response. So doing, Halpern seems to suggest that a further level of truth is available below the “emotional build-up” of the show, lying perhaps behind or beyond the readily readable signs of grace the show presents in the recognizable idiom of charismatic Protestantism in the United States.

Notes This chapter represents a long and somewhat disjointed engagement with this material and these questions, an engagement that has been shaped by the work and support of many people and institutions. A great debt is owed to Michael Foat, John Haviland, Nathalia King, Paul Manning, Joel Robbins, Danilyn Rutherford, and Michael Silverstein. Thank you for your guidance and indulgence. Many thanks for ongoing commentary, companionship, and needed corrections are due to Shunsuke Nozawa, Jeremy Jones, Megan Clark, and Erin Debenport. I also thank the pseudonymous Southeast Portland church, Reed College, and the Interdisciplinary Christianities Workshop at the University of Chicago. Special thanks to Martin Lindhardt for a great generosity of spirit and editorial care, and for his instrumental work in pulling this work out of cold storage. All errors and absurdities in the paper are, as always, my own responsibility. 1. The reference is more than a coincidence of form, and becomes quite explicit at points. I discuss this further in the conclusion. 2. Bialecki strikes a slightly different, though related note in passing in his discussion of the tears he came to expect during his fieldwork at a Vineyard church and one particular moment in which the “cliché … of tears from the pulpit” marks a more complex and surprising political move (2009: 112). 3. I use the capitalized form “Ritual” here to signify a lay or popular sense of the

302

4.

5. 6. 7.

8. 9. 10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

Gretchen Pfeil

term, in opposition to the many analytical senses of “ritual” as a category of anthropological investigation. I expand on the significance of this distinction throughout the chapter. The tension between enduring categories and current exemplars, or to cast it the other way round, between the stuff of everyday existence and type-level phenomena, is a much larger problem that haunts any rigorous study of social life. Mauss (1985) points to the tension quite nicely in his discussion of “the person” as a particularly vexing example of these two perspectives on social action. All texts are drawn from purchased tapes available for sale to the general public; however, all names and identifying information have been changed. This is a pseudonym as are all proper nouns. If there is a Glory Chapel in Portland, I am unaware of it and it is certainly not the church described here. Segments of transcript are drawn from a longer transcript not presented here. In this version I maintain some conventions marking prosody and vocal quality, as they are relevant to the argument. Underlining indicates emphasis on the word. Phrases bounded by “#” are spoken together and more rapidly than the phrases that immediately precede them. Pauses are marked with “ …” and longer pauses are indicated with the length of the pause in seconds, inside brackets. For example (.3) indicates a pause of .3 seconds. A word-final apostrophe marks a sudden fall in intonation. “:” following a vowel indicates that the vowel is lengthened. It is also resonant with conversion narratives told in other conservative Protestant groups, as represented in e.g. Harding 1987 and 2000. For slightly different discussion of the figure of the heart in contemporary evangelical rhetoric, see Bielo 2004 and Bialecki 2008. In an attempt to analytically separate the world in which the pastor speaks from the narrated world in which he is a character—Jakobson’s (1990 [1971]) “Es” and “En”—I call the narrator “the pastor” and the first-person narrated character in the testimony “Wilton,” which is the pastor’s surname. This is a wonderful mini-narrative within the story in which he joins the Mormon church only to discover it to be a false church and a site of his continued abuse. The prayer, one of the most common witnessing tools in evangelical, Pentecostal, and charismatic Christian groups, is the ubiquitous mark of witnessing and the standard closing of all forms of the genre, even tiny printed comicbook-style Chick tracts. Its prominence is commonly justified through reference to Romans 10:9–10. The similarity to American country music as described by Aaron Fox (2004) is striking. Here too, suffering told in the moment and tears accompanying performance confer a quality of transcendence in immediacy to the performance. It may be worth thinking about the long history of association of these musical and religious genres and practice in this light. For example, in Elisha’s ongoing work on “small group” practices within Knoxville, TN, megachurch. The status of these “informal” practices is fleetingly addressed in his 2008 paper. Bauman’s much earlier (1983) discussion of Quaker speech also works through this tension, in interesting ways.

Imperfect Vessels

303

15. Cf. the liturgical calendar. 16. These are, in fact, crisp and formulaic “answers” in the mode of other forms of literalist exegesis. For further description of the theological and semiotic commitments articulated in this orientation toward scripture—to which members of Glory Chapel oppose their own, at times quite vehemently—see Crapanzano 2000. 17. See Keane 1997a, 2002, 2007. 18. Keane finds that Calvinists work through this opposition by regulating speech, yet other media are equally subject to ideological regimentation as sites in which the “Ritual” can be purged from ritual practices to convert them to proper Christianity, as it were. Schram’s 2007 discussion of the opposition of “Christian” feasting with previous modes of feast in Auhelawa (Normanby Island, Papua New Guinea) presents a similar kind of purification in a very different ideological context. Here, food is no longer exchanged among certain kin in ritual mourning practices, thereby, in the eyes of Auhelawa, transforming “custom” into “Christian custom.”

References Abell, Troy. 1982. Better Felt than Said: The Holiness-Pentecostal Experience in Southern Appalachia. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press. Asad, Talal. 1993. “Towards a Genealogy of the Concept of Ritual.” In Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and the Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Bateson, Gregory, 1958 [1935]. Naven. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. ———. 2000 [1972]. “Culture Contact and Schismogenesis.” In Steps to an Ecology of Mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Bauman, Richard. 1983. Let Your Words Be Few. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bialecki, Jon. 2008. “Between Stewardship and Sacrifice: Agency and Economy in a Southern California Charismatic Church.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 14 (2) 372–390. ———. 2009. “Disjuncture, Continental philosophy’s new “political Paul,” and the question of progressive Christianity in a Southern California Third Wave Church.” American Ethnologist 36(1) 110–123. Bielo, James S. 2004. “‘Walking in the Spirit of Blood’: Moral Identity among BornAgain Christians.” Ethnology 43(3): 271–289. Bloch, Maurice. 1975. Political Oratory in Traditional Society. New York: Free Press. Caton, Steven C. 2006. “What Is an ‘Authorizing Discourse’?” In Powers of the Secular Modern: Talal Asad and his interlocutors, edited by D. Scott and C. Hirshkind. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Crapanzano, Vincent. 2000. Serving the Word: Literalism in America from the Pulpit to the Bench. New York: New Press. Csordas, Thomas J. 1994. The Sacred Self: A Cultural Phenomenology of Charismatic Healing. Berkeley: University of California Press.

304

Gretchen Pfeil

Dayton, D. W. 1987. Theological Roots of Pentecostalism. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press. Du Bois, John. 1986. “Self-Evidence and Ritual Speech.” In Evidentiality: The Linguistic Coding of Epistemology, edited by W. Chafe and J. Nichols, 313–36. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Durkheim, Émile. 1995 [1912]. Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, translated by K. Fields. New York: Free Press. Elisha, Omri. 2008. “Moral Ambitions of Grace: The Paradox of Compassion and Accountability in Evangelical Faith-Based Activism.” Cultural Anthropology 23 (1): 154–89. Fox, Aaron. 2004. Real Country: Music and Language in Working Class Culture. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Fulton, Rachel. 2002. From Judgment to Passion: Devotion to Christ and the Virgin Mary 800–1200. New York: Columbia University Press. Goff, James R. Jr. 1988. Fields White Unto Harvest: Charles F. Parham and the Missionary Origins of Pentecostalism. Fayetteville, AK: University of Arkansas Press. Goffman, Erving. 1981. Forms of Talk. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Halpern, Jake. 2008. “Emotional Buildup.” Key Magazine (A Real Estate Supplement to the New York Times) 3 October 2008. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/05/ realestate/keymagazine/105Extreme-t.html?_r=2&scp=18&sq=extreme%20m akeover%20home%20edition%20magazine&st=cse. Accessed 3 October 2008. Harding, Susan. 1987. “Convicted by the Holy Spirit: The Rhetoric of Fundamentalist Baptist Conversion.” American Ethnologist 14 (2): 167–81. ———. 2000. The Book of Jerry Falwell: Fundamentalist Language and Politics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Irvine, Judith. 1979. “Formality and Informality in Communicative Events.” American Anthropologist 81 (4): 773–90. Jakobson, Roman. 1958. “Closing Statement: Linguistics and Poetics.” In Style in Language, edited by Thomas A. Sebeok. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. ———. 1990 [1971]. “Shifters, Verbal Categories, and the Russian Verb.” In On Language, edited by Linda R. Waugh and Monique Monville-Burston. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Keane, Webb. 1997a. “From Fetishism to Sincerity: On Agency, the Speaking Subject, and Their Historicity in the Context of Religious Conversion.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 39 (4): 674–93. ———. 1997b. “Religious Language.” Annual Review of Anthropology 26: 47–71. ———. 2002. “Sincerity, “Modernity,” and the Protestants.” Current Anthropology 17 (1): 65–92. ———. 2003. “Semiotics and the Social Analysis of Material Things.” Language & Communication 23 (3–4): 409–25. ———. 2006. “Epilogue: Anxious Transcendence.” In Words and Things in the Anthropology of Christianity, edited by Fenella Cannell. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. ———. 2007. Christian Moderns: Freedom and Fetish in the Mission Encounter. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Imperfect Vessels

305

Lawless, Elaine J. 1988. “‘The Night I Got the Holy Ghost … ’: Holy Ghost Narratives and the Pentecostal Conversion Process.” Western Folklore 47: 1–20. Luhrmann, Tanya M. 2004. “Metakinesis: How God Becomes Intimate in Contemporary U.S. Christianity.” American Anthropologist 106 (3): 518–28. Mauss, Marcel. 1985. “A Category of the Human Mind: The Notion of Person, the Notion of Self.” In The Category of the Person: Anthropology, Philosophy, History, edited by Michael Carrithers, S. Collins, and S. Lukes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Perkins, Judith. 1995. The Suffering Self: Pain and Narrative Representation in the Early Christian Era. New York: Routledge. Rappaport, Roy. 1990. Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Robbins, Joel. 2001a. “God Is Nothing but Talk: Modernity, Language, and Prayer in a Papua New Guinea Society.” American Anthropologist 103 (4): 901–12. ———. 2001b. “Ritual Communication and Linguistic Ideology.” Current Anthropology 42 (5): 591–614. ———. 2004. “The Globalization of Pentecostal and charismatic Christianity.” Annual Review of Anthropology 33: 117–43. Schram, Ryan. 2007. “Sit, Cook, Eat, Full Stop: Religion and the Rejection of Ritual in Auhelawa (Papua New Guinea).” Oceania 77(2): 172–190. Shoaps, Robin A. 2002. “Pray Earnestly: The Textual Construction of Personal Involvement in Pentecostal Prayer and Song.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 12 (1): 34–71. Silverstein, Michael. 1979. “Language Structure and Linguistic Ideology.” In The Elements: A Parasession on Linguistic Units and Levels, edited by Paul R Clyne, William F. Hanks, and Carol L. Hofbaur, 193–247. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society. ———. 1993. “Metapragmatic Discourse and Metapragmatic Function.” In Reflexive Language: Reported Speech and Metapragmatics, edited by John Arthur Lucy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2004. “‘Cultural Concepts’ and the Language and Culture Nexus.” Current Anthropology 45 (5). Stromberg, Peter G. 1993. Language and Self-Transformation: A Study in Christian Conversion Narrative. New York: Cambridge University Press. Tambiah, Stanley J. 1981. A Performative Approach to Ritual. London: British Academy. Wagner, C. Peter. 2005. Your Spiritual Gifts Can Help Your Church Grow. Ventura, CA: Regal. Woolard, Katherine. 1998. “Language Ideology as a Field of Inquiry.” In Language Ideologies: Practice and Theory, edited by Bambi B. Schieffelin, Kathryn A. Woolard, and Paul V. Kroskrity. New York: Oxford University Press.

c 11 C Public Rituals and Political Positioning Venezuelan Evangelicals and the Chávez Government1 David Smilde

Introduction This chapter differs from the other chapters in this book insofar as it looks not at the way ritual forms part of charismatic Christian practice at the microlevel, in personal or interpersonal religiosity. Rather, it looks at the way ritual is utilized by evangelical organizations in Venezuela, in their efforts to publicly position themselves in a complex political field. Such an analysis of this ritual activity will help us not only understand evangelical churches and associations, it will also help us understand some key issues in the study of Latin American politics and popular movements. In the past ten years there has been considerable change in the political field in Latin America. While at the beginning of the 1990s most Latin American nations seemed to have relatively stable elite democracies in place that had largely converged behind the neoliberal prescriptions of what is now known as the “Washington Consensus,” the third millennium has brought about considerable diversity, in large part through the unexpected success of nontraditional political actors. There are several explanations of the success of these latter—such as the corruption and implosion of existing political parties—but one key dimension of their power is the accentuated cultural idioms they use to mobilize support and make their views known. I will briefly mention three examples. First, indigenous groups, marginalized from power for centuries, have suddenly gained unprecedented power. In Mexico, the Zapatista movement has held the Mexican government at bay for over a decade. 306

Public Rituals and Political Positioning

307

And in Ecuador, indigenous groups have become the key political player, bringing down several presidents and becoming a key block of support for newly elected socialist president Rafael Correa. Needless to say, Bolivia for the first time ever elected an indigenous president, former coca activist Evo Morales. Most interestingly, these indigenous groups did not gain this political power by assimilating to modern society, but by accentuating their identities, coming together into panindigenous networks and taking advantage of global communications and networks (Pallares 2002; Brysk 2000; Olesen 2005). Second, nationalist movements have also gained power. The clearest case, of course, is the Bolivarian movement in Venezuela. Hugo Chávez, a mid-ranking military officer in the 1980s, led a coup and then a popular movement to power on the back of an accentuated nationalist discourse based on the ideas of nineteenth-century Venezuelanborn hero Simón Bolívar. In addition to his nationalist rhetoric, he has freely mixed in elements of Christianity and socialism (Hellinger and Ellner 2003; Smilde and Hellinger forthcoming). Finally, religious organizations have become political actors in any number of Latin American countries. On the one hand, in many countries, a general institutional crisis combined with a continual flow of corruption scandals has raised the status of the Catholic church, and the decline of political parties has thrust the church into an important political role. On the other hand, the continued growth of evangelical groups has translated, in some cases, into political success. But in even more cases, new social and political actors have reached out to evangelical groups, adopted their discourses, and begun to pursue their interests as a means of combating traditional social elites. When they do engage in political action, Catholic and evangelical churches do so using Christian images, symbols, and discourses (Smilde 2004a, 2004b). Below I will discuss how this plays out in the Venezuelan context, but let us briefly consider the way social scientists have looked at the changes of the past five to ten years. First, these developments really caught Latin America scholars by surprise. In the early 1990s, if Latin America scholars did not believe they were witnessing Fukuyama’s “end of history,” they did work with the expectation that there would be slow consolidation of Latin American democratic states into fully liberal democracies. I think we can see why scholars were unprepared if we look at the analytic tools used. Most discussion of Latin American democracy has been based on the political pluralist model. On the one hand, this model focuses on the central institutions of the state including the congress, the presidency, political parties, and perhaps labor unions and local governments. On the other hand, it focuses on

308

David Smilde

popular movements and associations through the lens of “civil society.” This perspective tends to look at incipient movements and evaluate their potentials for contributing to a bourgeois public sphere along the lines of the modern West. Such research usually focuses on discrete, bounded, coherent social actors, looks at their values and dispositions, and evaluates what their contribution to democracy is likely to be (Dahl 1971; Huntington 1968, 1991). If we look at the literature on the political implications of the growth of evangelical Protestantism in Latin America, we will see the same thing. We see case studies on evangelical groups that look at their organization, their discourses and values, and then evaluate whether they could become viable social actors in the future. These conclusions are most often negative, arguing or empirically demonstrating that evangelical organizations are easily absorbed into clientalistic relationships, and are therefore not likely to be effective (Bastian 1994; Chesnut 1997; Gaskill 1997; Freston 2001, 2004). Nevertheless, we have a clear resurgence of the importance of religion and religious rhetoric (along with nationalism and panindigenous movements) in politics (Smilde 2007). So where did analysis go wrong? In my view, Latin America scholars went wrong precisely by the exclusive focus on bounded, coherent social actors. While such a focus certainly helps us understand the traditional forms of political power exercised by parties and political elites, an exclusive focus on bounded, coherent actors prevents us from understanding the decentered, fragmented power of popular social movements and nontraditional political powers. To do better, we need to rethink the way these latter contribute to the public sphere.

Networks, Publics, and Rituals in Popular Movements Of course bounded, coherent social actors make intuitive starting points for analysis, and finding alternatives can be difficult; however, scholars influenced by new directions in “relational” social science have begun to do so. Historian Jeffrey Rubin, for example, uses concepts from poststructuralism to suggest that social movements usually have their impact not by directly gaining power but by putting forth discourses, fragments, exclusions, and possibilities out of which new political subjects are made (Rubin 2006). Sociologist Eiko Ikegami (2005) provides another example. In her study of the origins of Japanese political culture, she uses network theory to rethink our understandings of the public sphere. She argues that Japan never developed the bourgeois public

Public Rituals and Political Positioning

309

sphere outlined by Habermas in which there was a discursive space free from the interference of the state and the economy. In Tokugawa Japan, the shogunate maintained a tight control on feudal society, prohibiting the organization of any political parties or voluntary associations that might end up challenging their rule. Nevertheless in the following Meiji period there were numerous democratic movements that built upon the clear existence of a democratic culture. To explain how this could happen, she looks at the development of “aesthetic publics.” By aesthetic publics she means social spaces in which prevailing network identities are suspended and free exchange of ideas can be had. It was in these aesthetic publics that the democratic aspects of Japanese culture developed, and a certain type of aesthetic culture germinated and gained considerable power. In my analysis here, I use this perspective to understand the involvement of charismatic Christianity in contemporary Venezuelan politics. First, I use the term networks as a metaphor for a social structure that emphasizes concrete social ties rather than categories such as “gender” “race” or “socioeconomic status.” It has the advantage of being intuitively understandable and has shown itself to be an especially robust concept in understanding religion (Smilde 2007). The term public does not refer to the masses. Rather, it is a concept that serves as a counterpart to networks. Publics are relational contexts in which people from different networks come into contact and communicate. To do so they need to suspend, at least in relative terms, their established network identities. They adopt more abstract discourses, or public-specific discourse. This is a term through which classic liberal notions of the public sphere are being rethought. Rather than the idea of free social space, publics are thought to be shot through with power—but simply with a different kind of power from prevailing networks. Thus they provide alternative spaces in which new discourses and identities can emerge. Publics, of course, do not simply occur. They are most often explicitly organized with the purpose of extending the influence of networks and their associated discourses, or with the purpose of modifying and deepening networks (Mische 2008; Smilde 2004). You may have noticed a clear affinity between this theory of publics and the theory of ritual used in this book. Ikegami and others shy away from the concept of ritual seemingly because of its use in classical functionalist sociology. In this view, ritual is a part of the social structure; it is a formal apparatus for manifesting and reinforcing the established order. In terms of Ikegami’s theory, ritual is a form of social conduct more appropriate for consolidating and perpetuating net-

310

David Smilde

works, and since she wants to focus more on the agentive and creative side of publics, it is understandable that she steers clear of it. But if we look at more recent theorizations of ritual, we can more closely engage the concepts of ritual and public. In Interaction Ritual Chains, Randall Collins (2004) takes off from the microsociological theory of Erving Goffman in which ritual is a main form of microsocial action, and these microsocial actions concatenate into histories or trajectories—what Collins calls “interaction ritual chains.” Collins defines ritual as “a mechanism of mutually focused emotion and attention producing a momentarily shared reality, which thereby generates solidarity and symbols of group membership” (Collins 2004). To structure my analysis of these rituals, I will be working with concepts from Randall Collins’s framework. The strength of Collins’s conceptualization is that it can understand ritual both in the classic sense of an act in which existing cultural structures, beliefs, and practices are reaffirmed and reproduced, as well as in the sense emphasized in this book: as a creative act in which new ways of being, thinking, and interacting are created. He articulates four basic characteristics of rituals: • Bodily copresence: Two or more people are physically assembled in the same place, so that they affect each other by their bodily presence, whether it is in the foreground of their conscious attention or not. • Social barriers: There are boundaries to outsiders so that participants have a sense of who is taking part and who is not. • Mutual focus: People focus their attention upon a common object or activity, and by communicating this focus to each other become mutually aware of each other’s focus of attention. • Shared mood: Participants share a common mood or emotional experience (Collins 2004).

Through these mechanisms, rituals generate sentiments and symbols that endure after the ritual experience is over. These rituals are always creative. In some cases they may simply reaffirm existing cultural discourses, beliefs, and practices. But this reaffirmation also amounts to a value-added process of adding something that wasn’t there previously. More commonly, these rituals create cultural discourses, beliefs, and practices that might not have existed in the same way before. Of course they don’t do so de novo; they always build up from existing discourses, beliefs, and practices, selectively accentuating certain aspects and stretching them in new directions.

Public Rituals and Political Positioning

311

I believe that this definition of ritual fills out the theory of publics as Ikegami defines it, and in the empirical analysis of this chapter I use the term public rituals. In short, I think the theory of publics adds to the theory of ritual, conceptualizing one potential source of its power, i.e., its “publicness.” And I think the theory of ritual can provide some substance to overly liminal views of publics.

Evangelicals and Politics in Venezuela Before proceeding to the empirical analysis, I need to provide some background on Venezuelan evangelicals and their varying political stances. Hugo Chávez’s rise to power is a story that has been told elsewhere, and I will not dwell on it here other than to mention that as a populist, political outsider, one of his strategies to take power in the mid-1990s was to reach out to aspects of civil society including evangelical Protestants. He did this during the mobilization period before his 1998 election and has continued to do so since, using policy initiatives to break down the social hegemony of the Catholic church and favor evangelical Protestants. He has also tried to include the evangelical movement in various aspects of the governments push toward participatory democracy (Smilde 2004a, 2004b). The response of evangelicals to this initiative has been complex. One the one hand, among the majority of average evangelicals belonging to classic Pentecostal churches such as the Assembly of God, Hugo Chávez’s public mentions of evangelicals and attempts to reach out to them have been wildly popular. They have interpreted these outreaches as evidence that God is working through Hugo Chávez. Nevertheless, the majority response among the leaders of these sectors has been one of reserve and caution. The principal evangelical associations in the country have consistently maintained that they are apolitical. They welcome the government’s initiatives on their behalf and have participated in various aspects of the government’s participatory democracy, serving on commissions and nominations boards, but shy away from open support for or opposition to the government. A secondary response that has existed from the beginning but among a small minority is the response we would expect from evangelical groups from the middle and upper-middle classes. Among these groups whose form of evangelical practice is closest to historical Protestantism, evangelical religiosity is tied up with a conservative sociopolitical point of view that emphasizes the individual, liberal democracy, and capitalism. From the beginning of the Chávez administration, there

312

David Smilde

have been evangelical critics saying he represents Castro communism or a form of totalitarianism incompatible with the Bible. Former evangelical congressman Godofredo Marin represented this perspective through 1999 before he retreated from the political scene (Smilde 2004b). A final, more recent, but highly visible response has come from neo-Pentecostal groups. These are groups that existed long before Chávez’s rise to power and that increasingly became aligned with the government through the period of intense social conflict of 2002–2004. This relationship is quite surprising because members of these neoPentecostal groups do not generally come from the lower classes as do most Chávez supporters, but from the rising middle classes. These are young, aspiring white-collar workers from nonelite backgrounds attracted by neo-Pentecostal theology’s mix of Christianity with entrepreneurial positive thinking and elements of New Age thought. NeoPentecostal leaders are themselves quite entrepreneurial as we shall see, and have taken advantage of funding opportunities from the government to open substance abuse centers as well as facilitate networks of microentrepreneurs. However, this is not necessarily a simple case of self-interest. Neo-Pentecostal churches in Venezuela, long before Chávez’s arrival on the scene, practiced a form of dominion theology in which they see themselves as key facilitators of God taking over human society and bringing it to an era of grandeur. One of the key federations of neo-Pentecostal churches in Venezuela is called the Christ for All Nations federation (CCN). Their particular form of dominion theology grafts, in a very unforced way, onto Hugo Chávez’s particular brand of populist nationalism. They both emphasize that the Venezuelan crisis of the 1980s and 1990s came from moral degradation, and they both see a return to “true” values and beliefs as key to Venezuela becoming a developed nation with a leadership role in the world (Smilde 2004b; Smilde and Pagan 2010). In this chapter, I look at the way these groups position themselves in the political field through public ritual—through public assemblies of members proclaiming certain definitions of the world. I am going to present data from three different public rituals, supplemented by data from others, as they play out in each of these three political trends. In what follows, we will look at three different directions deriving from one theological tradition—evangelical Protestantism. In the first two cases, we will see public rituals with clear partisan tendencies. In each case, there is an attempt to create a clear boundary and generate a concrete mutual focus. In the last case, we will see a public ritual dramatizing nonpartisan neutrality through a quite different focus.

Public Rituals and Political Positioning

313

Evangelicals for Chávez: “A Million Prayers for Peace in Venezuela” (31 July–1 August 2004) The period of intense political conflict in Venezuela from 2002–2004 had at its center a recall referendum. In the month before it was finally held in 2004, there was a continuous flow of public rallies in favor or against recalling President Hugo Chávez. One of these events, called “A Million Prayers for Peace in Venezuela,” was carried out by a coalition of neo-Pentecostal groups and churches, and was openly supportive of the government of Hugo Chávez. So much was this the case that it received government financial support and included an appearance and forty-minute speech by the president. During the Chávez government, several evangelicals have held important political positions, such as Edgar Hernandez Behrens who has held several different positions in state financial institutions. In 2004 he was president of Banfoandes, a state bank. Like all legally constituted organizations in Venezuela, public or private, it has to give a certain percentage of its budget to social causes. When, in June 2004, Banfoandes was approached by the leaders of several neo-Pentecostal churches with a project that included a couple of events for peace in Venezuela, these openly pro-Chávez churches were granted around $400,000. With ample funding, this coalition was able to organize a series of events in a roofed coliseum in eastern Caracas. The last of these was attended by Chávez and members of his government. Chávez began his speech with the national anthem and saying that “Christ is the true commandante of all of this,” referring to his government. He began by saying: I want to thank God, our Lord, for the cause he has given us. He has prepared us as soldiers in Christ’s army, fighting for true justice as the only path to true peace. I am grateful for these blessings and I carry them here in my soul, my brothers, for this daily battle, this daily challenge, above all at this moment, a moment in which we are engaged in a battle for the dignity of the human being, for the independence of our homeland, for the sovereignty of Venezuela, to defend, in addition to everything we have done, to defend the road ahead of us. We cannot permit them to rob our future, we can’t permit the forces of evil, pushed from Washington. We cannot permit imperialism to take control of Venezuela.

We can see here Christian images of clear right and wrong, of a struggle for justice, and how they are grafted on to nationalism and antiimperialism. He went on to say that the whole world was watching Venezuela and that God had given them this role to play among nations. He ended by saying:

314

David Smilde

This government that I have the honor of presiding over is a government surrendered to Christ. It is fundamentally a Christian government. And I am a simple human being, a soldier of the people, a soldier of Christ. Yes, I am a Christian and will always be a Christian. And I give my life over to Christ the Redeemer and with him I will walk my whole life, full of love, of faith and hope. Long live Christians! Long live Venezuela!

Chávez in effect ends by anchoring his government and himself in Christianity through the Christian notion of surrender. At another point in his speech he says, “When God is with us, who can oppose us?” Some of these same images are present in what the pastor of the Christ for All Nations Church said about the event the week following: The president of Venezuela, Hugo Rafael Chávez Frias, attended the event. We prayed for him, we anointed him and blessed him. The environment was electrified with the presence of God. The commander and chief of this whole process of change that we are experiencing in this country confessed that it had been a long time since he had been in an event where it was he that was ministered to. He received our prayers and blessings and declared that he has Christ in his heart and that he is the Lord of his life. I remembered that God is a God with a plan for nations, for families, for individuals and that we cannot do anything with out God’s help. And when we are within God’s plan, those actions we take (such as the event on 31 July) are also marked by God.

Now let us look at some of the ritual characteristics of this event. The event was all about achieving bodily copresence. Organizers brought evangelicals from all over the country in buses to this one location. The buses generally were decorated saying where they were from, and the discharged passengers on the shoulder of the highway created a significant bottleneck from cars changing lanes and also slowing to see what was happening. The event took place in what is called the La Urbina Coliseum, which is used mainly for basketball games. All of this created a sense of masses of people coming together into a megaevent, significant enough to disrupt daily life. Collins suggests that ritual events must have some sort of social barriers defining who is involved and who is not. The event was public in the sense that theoretically anybody could simply walk up and enter—there were no tickets or other controls in place. Nevertheless, it was in an arena with the highway on one side, parking lots and fields on the others, and only one access road that nobody would simply venture down without having a reason to do so. Thus those in attendance were there for the event. But while there were some loose social barri-

Public Rituals and Political Positioning

315

ers regarding physical presence, it was absolutely open to public view in the sense that it was televised by state television. Having some sort of social barriers is important precisely because a ritual event requires a degree of mutual focus among those involved. A crowd of people waiting by the gate in a bus terminal reading newspapers, listening to their MP3 players, or daydreaming are absorbed into their own world, not engaged in a ritual event. The coliseum where the Million Prayers event was held was built for sports events such as basketball or gymnastics. As such, inside, the seats form a complete circle with the rows of seats highly inclined—although in this case, the stage was set up at one end with the result that about one quarter of the seats were behind it, unoccupied. Nevertheless, even with this setup, from any given seat you can see not only the whole floor but also all of the other attendees—many of whom appear closer to you than does the event taking place on the coliseum floor. Those who attend usually sit in groups according to region, with banners saying where they are from. They compete with cheers to see who is the loudest. The entire coliseum is made of cement and other hard surfaces, and the noise that is created by five thousand people is deafening. The total effect of the buses lining up to discharge passengers, a coliseum used for sporting events, everyone looking at everyone else, and the deafening noise is to create a shared mood of power, grandeur, and triumph. This is the shared mood generated by most neo-Pentecostal rituals (see ONeill 2009), and the Million Prayer events clearly fit within the genre. Impact and Trajectory Collins sees rituals forming chains that create trajectories. Of course, it is always difficult to determine the impact of real historical events like public rituals, but here we can say that the Million Prayers event was one of a number of events in which Chávez appeared with new social and political actors in Venezuelan society—such as peasant associations, women’s groups, and land rights movements—leading up to the 15 August 2004 referendum that he won handily after trailing just weeks before. Much of this victory had to do with an improving economy and popular social policies. But these rallies generated a sense of Chávez being at the epicenter of new forms of participation and multiple manifestations of civil society that had been excluded in the previous decades of democracy. However, rituals do not occur in a vacuum having only their intended effect. They occur in complex fields of existing social relations and cultural discourses, and their impact generates reactions and other

316

David Smilde

chains of events that can lead in unintended and unpredictable directions. The Million Prayers event resulted in an unusually clear public airing of division among Venezuelan evangelicals. As they are still a small religious minority, evangelicals generally try to address their differences behind closed doors and project a common front in public. However, in this case the Venezuelan Evangelical Council (CEV) put out a press release covered in the local press in which they rejected the fact that the leaders of these events had spoken on the part of the “evangelical people” as if they represented everyone. CEV president Samuel Olson argued that the member churches of the CEV are officially apolitical, and asserted that the churches that organized these two events “have forgotten the healthy separation of church and state.” Elias Rincón, the president of a neo-Pentecostal umbrella group called Unicristiana and one of the organizers of the events, responded that the CEV only represents a small percentage of Venezuela’s evangelical population and has no more right than they do, to speak on behalf of the evangelical population. Speaking directly to Olson, Rincón said: “We are living in a different age from when you and I were formed as Christians. It’s not true that the church is completely apolitical. It never has been. I know this from the sixty-one years I have been part of it and the forty-three years I have been a minister” (Agencia Latinoamericana y Caribeña de Comunicación, 18 August 2004). This public conflict soured relations between Pentecostals and neoPentecostal churches in Venezuela. The relationship between the CCN and the CEV was never close, but they were cordial and collaborative with each other. After the Million Prayers event and the public dispute afterward, relations were not antagonistic but largely nonexistent. The CEV steered clear of the CCN, not wanting to work with them but also seeking to avoid any conflict that might lead them to run afoul of an ever-more-powerful government. The CCN seemed a little burned by the public conflict as well. It continued to collaborate with the government—for example, Elias Rincon serves as the “representative of the churches” on the “Social Responsibility Directory” of the National Telecommunications Commission. This is the organ that is responsible for declaring certain media contents inappropriate or in violation of the media law’s social responsibility clauses. The CCN also received another $600,000 from the government for its work with the homeless. But the CCN and other neo-Pentecostal churches avoided public events demonstrating their political connections to the government. Thus the trajectory of the CCN and Unicristiana, of which the Million Prayers event was a key moment, was towards a closer but quieter rela-

Public Rituals and Political Positioning

317

tionship with the Chávez government and a more distant relationship to the rest of the religious field.

Evangelicals Against Chávez: Solution Party (September–October 2006) In the 2006 electoral cycle that concluded with a landslide victory for President Hugo Chávez, some evangelical leaders grouped into a party called “Solución”—Sociedad Luchadora de Independientes Organizados por la Nación” (“Solution” in English, standing for Activist Society of Independent People Organized for the Nation) decided to openly support the leading opposition candidate, Manuel Rosales. This group is led by Lorenzo Tovar, a lawyer who served as head of the consumer protection agency in the government of Rafael Caldera. When Caldera’s term ended, Tovar organized Solución as an independent party and ran unsuccessfully as a candidate for the constitutional assembly in 1999 and for mayor in 2000. In 2001, he became evangelical and subsequently organized the Christian Institute for Social Studies, which sought to work against the political polarization Venezuela was suffering during the conflict of 2002–2004. In 2004, he revived Solución, this time as an evangelical party, and began to mobilize evangelical leaders from across Venezuela. In 2006, Solución discussed the possibility of naming Tovar as its presidential candidate but thought that would only divide the opposition further and facilitate Chávez’s reelection. Thus they decided to throw their support behind Manuel Rosales. Solución held a public meeting on 22 September 2006 in the Caracas Civic Center. The slogan of the meeting was “A Vote for Peace.” During his speech, Lorenzo Tovar said the decision to form a party that would support Manuel Rosales was based on the leaders’ evaluation of the situation of Venezuela. They decided that they had a commitment to God in seeking, following, and preserving peace and rejecting all violence: Jesus has charged us with taking God’s plan and converting it into reality. We are called to rid ourselves of our personal interests and, in a serious, responsible, and respectful way, begin to express ourselves and contribute to the reestablishment of our country. We can’t just stay at home or in our churches preaching a gospel that we don’t preach out in the street. We can’t close our eyes before what is happening in our country. (Santiso 2006: 2)

In his speech, Tovar spoke of the events surrounding the expulsion of the New Tribes Missions from their work with indigenous groups in Venezuela’s interior, as well as a situation that was occurring that

318

David Smilde

month in which the mayor of metropolitan Caracas, from Chávez’s party, was forcibly evicting a church from the space it had occupied for eleven years, and which had been purchased by the municipality. Tovar maintained, “When [the government] acts in this way, of course we cannot remain passive” (Sansito 2006). Tovar went on to explain that the political commitment they were assuming was not with Rosales but with God, “who has always guided us towards success, reconciliation, and understanding” (Sansito 2006). Tovar also said that they would not use the pulpit to speak badly of the government but rather they would work through conscience and heart to defend human rights. “We need to help our country progress, and we are the only ones that can change our country’s destiny” (Santiso 2006). The ritual characteristics of what was essentially a press conference were quite different from what we saw above. The space that was used is in Caracas’s main cultural complex, and the combination of a central location yet low cost means these auditoriums are frequently used for the meetings of aspiring social and political actors, including civil associations and political parties. As such, it is well known to the media (Interview, Lorenzo Tovar 2007). In terms of bodily copresence, the meeting was relatively small, with about forty people attending. However, it was held in a relatively small space and so seemed well attended. The meeting was open to the public and advertised as such. Thus while it had no explicit social barriers, it is not a space that people just happen by. It seemed to be calculated then not so much to make bridges to nonevangelicals so much as to make an impact on the media and political elites. While there was bodily copresence, those in attendance were oriented towards the front where the main speakers were talking. In other words, they focused on the same thing but not explicitly on each other. However, because of the de facto social barriers and the domination of the event by the speaker, there was a clear shared mood. Those in attendance applauded and cheered, interspersing “Amen” in the speeches of Lorenzo Tovar. Impact and Trajectory Solución’s public event was not terribly successful insofar as it received little media coverage and little public notice beyond the evangelical press. However, Tovar says it was noticed by the Rosales campaign, which a month later asked for a meeting with evangelical leaders including those of Solución and the CEV. The meeting was held in the auditorium of the Maranatha Church, with the presence of the main

Public Rituals and Political Positioning

319

leaders of the VEC as well as other representatives of the evangelical movement. This meeting did receive widespread attention and was transmitted by several media outlets. In this meeting Rosales promised to include evangelicals in his government after his victory. After Rosales finished, the president of the CEV, Samuel Olson, gave a prepared speech. In my interview with him six months later, he said the event was misinterpreted in the press as him giving the “evangelical vote” to Rosales. Actually, said Olson, “I read a document that I wrote about the Biblical and ethical responsibility of a country’s leaders. … It was something very Biblical … that I could have read to any person” (Olson, interview with author, 2007). However, looking at the speech, we can see that it reflects the concerns of the CEV at that moment, as well as the organized opposition to Hugo Chávez, a concern about an emerging totalitarianism centered on the figure of Hugo Chávez, and a concomitant lack of liberty and space for other institutions. Olson emphasizes that God created all things and warned what can happen if any part of that creation is itself taken to be God. “When human beings give any aspect of God’s creation the worship they should reserve for the Creator, invisible forces line up and mobilize to dominate them. When he who should be a servant is treated like a lord and master, humans quickly lose their freedom of thought, action and conscience.” On this basis he gave the CEV’s vision of what a good government would look like: A good government preserves the responsibilities established by God, expressed in the other institutions of society, such as churches, social service organizations, educational institutions, the family, the right to free association, entrepreneurs and the living forces that establish and maintain order and justice. … As people of faith, we believe and demand protection of: freedom and equality of religion, the freedom of conscience, and human being’s worship of a transcendent God…The cult of false gods that is occurring today in our societies, whether it be ideology, abuse of power, the idolatry of economic systems, or the human being, all of them and many others lead to the dehumanization of the human being. (Olson 2006)

Lorenzo Tovar had a prominent place in this meeting and spoke to the press afterwards. While Olson threaded the needle by showing the CEV’s affinity to the Rosales candidacy while not openly supporting it, Tovar was naturally more open in his statements. He said that it was an important sign that the CEV, an organization that has traditionally stayed on the sidelines of political debate, had been visited by a

320

David Smilde

political candidate. He went on to say: “Rosales’s message of unity is consistent with Christian principles and values that are written in the Gospel. And this message unites all Venezuelans in the same goal: to construct a system in which there is truth, justice, and peace for all Venezuelans.” This meeting received wide coverage in both the pro and antiChávez press and consolidated an image of Olson as a Chávez opponent. It also consolidated a latent fissure between the CEV and the Pentecostal Evangelical Council of Venezuela (CEPV). This is an association that groups together most Pentecostal churches in the country and whose membership largely overlaps with the CEV. Indeed most churches that are members of the CEPV are also members of the CEV. However, they have cultivated their political neutrality more carefully than the both the CEV and the neo-Pentecostal churches and organizations described above. Indeed the Pentecostal Evangelical Confederation of Venezuela had also been asked to the meeting with Rosales but rejected the invitation.

Evangelicals and Partisan Neutrality: The March for Jesus In the first two cases, we saw public rituals in which Venezuelan evangelical organizations positioned themselves either for or against the government of Hugo Chávez. This should not be taken to mean that most evangelicals are political partisans. Not only would that be inaccurate, it would also miss the fact that political partisanship is not the only way to be politically relevant or involved in national life. Indeed, one important political position in Venezuela is often referred to as “ni ni,” which means “neither, nor”—referring to the political battle between Chávez supporters and opponents. Political polls asking about political affiliation even ask the question that way, and throughout the Chávez period the “ni, ni” option has surpassed both the pro- or antigovernment options (Datanalisis, October 2009). This position is not antipolitical but rather sees political polarization as the real culprit in the conflict that has wracked Venezuela. It is into this political tendency that the October 2006 “March for Jesus” fit. The March for Jesus (Marcha para Jesús, MPJ) is an international, interdenominational Christian event that has spread around the world since its beginning in England in 1987. The basic idea is for Christians from a given city or region to march from one point to another where they meet for singing and preaching. While it is nondenominational, in message and attendance it is largely evangelical.

Public Rituals and Political Positioning

321

In Venezuela, the organizers maintain that the event has four important symbolic points: Prophetic Symbolism Marching for Jesus is a prophetic act that gives spiritual conscience to people. Moses raised his staff and the Red Sea opened so that the Jews could march to the promised land. Joshua mobilized the people of Israel to march around the walls of Jericho. Josaphat marched through the desert singing praise to God. Nehemiah organized a march around the walls of Jerusalem. For this reason, when we march, we are acting prophetically and ask God to spill the Holy Spirit and bring saintliness to our society. Rescuing Spaces When we march for Jesus, there is a natural sensation that we are rescuing the places over which we are walking. We let loose in the spiritual world what God wants: “I have delivered to you all the places that the soles of your feet touch (Joshua 1:3) Why does the Enemy have to remain the owner of our barrios, of our neighborhoods, of our cities and even of our nation? Let us rescue for the Lord Jesus everything we touch with soles of our feet in Caracas. Public Repentance Every time that Israel repented for its sins, God came and cured the people and their land (2 Chronicles 7:14: “If my people humble themselves, and my name is invoked, and they pray and seek me, and convert from their sinful path; then I will hear them from the heavens, pardon their sins and sanctify the land”). When we march, we are raised up like intercessors, closing the breach left by the impious acts of our nation. Destroying Fortresses In 2 Corinthians 10, Paul speaks of enemy spiritual fortresses. As our focus is exalting Christ and praising God, we are destroying the fortresses raised by the enemy in certain areas of our cities and regions, declaring with faith that the Lord Jesus Christ is the LORD OF VENEZUELA. (http://www.marchaparajesus.com.ve, accessed November 2006).

The 2006 MPJ took on special importance in Venezuela since it took place less than two weeks before the national presidential election in a country that had seen considerable political conflict and instability during the previous years. In contrast to the events described above, its partisan position was officially and aggressively neutral, focusing on the idea of God taking over Venezuela rather than supporting any given political project. A small note announcing the event in El Universal several days prior said, “It has religious, not political overtones;

322

David Smilde

several evangelical organizations are organizing, for next October 12, ‘The March for Jesus.’” (El Universal, 8 October 2006) The 2006 march was the largest ever in Venezuela, with participation estimated at eighty thousand people. As can be seen in the information provided above from the organizers’ web site, such a march as this is highly reflexive. The idea of masses of people walking together through some of the main avenues of Caracas emphasizes not only bodily copresence but also the idea of pilgrimage, of being in the world but not of it, of commitment and sacrifice. This is important symbolism for a march that tried to demonstrate its absence of political position. An interesting contrast to the other cases is presented by the spatial aspects of this meeting. The MPJ began in two different places in Caracas. From one direction, it came from the relatively well-to-do areas of eastern Caracas; from the other, from one of the poorer areas of western Caracas. In each case, participants marched several kilometers to the final destination: the Avenida Libertador, a main thoroughfare in downtown Caracas, closed by permit, but open to pedestrian traffic. Rather than distinguish who was participating and who wasn’t, the march seemed to maximize contact with nonparticipants. There was no neat border between participants and nonparticipants as the boundary where the gathering faded into passers-by was not at all clear. Here, as in the Solution meeting, and in contrast to the Million Prayers event, participants were oriented towards the stage in front of them, not towards each other. Nevertheless, there were other aspects that facilitated mutual focus. The final meeting spaces had impressive views of the arrival of each group of marchers, for those already there. I got to the meeting place early. The MPJ that originated in eastern Caracas came down the Avenida Libertador going up and then down an elevated section of the street. The march became visible as it came down towards the final meeting place. When it appeared, people let loose hoots and hollers of joy. The arrival of the other march was even more impressive. This march came from the west down the Avenida Andres Bello, and when it was parallel to the Avenida Libertador, came down two blocks on a side street. The narrowness of the street and the inclination gave this march a feeling that it was an unstoppable and powerful flood sweeping down. It too brought screams, whistles, and exclamations of “wow!” Nevertheless, in the meeting place itself, there was less mutual focus than in the other events. In this case, the march itself was the most important part. The common mood generated by the MPJ was one of abstract spirituality and unity. The rally focused on contemporary Christian music

Public Rituals and Political Positioning

323

with very little by way of sermons. The environment was one of joy and enjoyment with messages consisting of abstract references to the Christian life, the supernatural, and the nation. One pastor that spoke from the stage proclaimed: Pastor: We have the authority to undo the work of the devil … against Caracas and all of Venezuela, and in the name of God, against any diabolic plan against this country and this city. We come with the power of the Holy Spirit in the name of Jesus in order to undo the work of Satan. We pull up, we ruin, we pull down, we destroy, we undo all of the enemy’s works. We break his evil work and all of his curses. We destroy all works of darkness to enthrone Jesus as the lord and sovereign king of Venezuela. We speak, to enthrone Jesus: Jesus is the Lord of Venezuela, Jesus is the Lord of Venezuela, Jesus is the Lord of Venezuela, Jesus is the Lord of Venezuela, Jesus is the Lord of Venezuela, Jesus is the Lord of Venezuela, Jesus is the Lord, applause for the King! Host: I want everyone to say at the same time: Jesus is the Lord of Venezuela! Crowd: Jesus is the Lord of Venezuela!

Impact and Trajectory It is difficult to think about the political impact and trajectory of an event that seemed to have a nonpartisan goal. Rather than supporting or criticizing Chávez or opposition candidates, the MPJ seemed oriented toward carving out a space free from partisan political conflict. After the march, I was able to talk to some of the participants who largely seemed to have captured the intention of the ritual event, repeating many of the phrases of the event. When I simply asked them what the march was about, they never mentioned politics, invariably saying something along the lines of “celebrating Jesus” or “bringing people to Jesus.” When I asked them directly about the political implications, they usually made a statement about moving Venezuela beyond politics. One young man walking hand-in-hand with his wife said the march was “to unify our country because our country is very

324

David Smilde

divided.” Another man who was sitting with a group responded, “We don’t have any political coloring here because this is about the Lord. … He has not told us to vote for this person or that but rather from our heart. In any case, the Lord is the one who places and removes kings.” A woman with another group simply said the message of the march was “that we are all Venezuelans.” Indeed, while in size it eclipsed the ritual events described above, it did not itself generate any public division and debate. All of the media coverage was positive, and the event was seen as an unmitigated success. El Universal, a Caracas newspaper with national circulation, ran a story and photo with the headline “Political March Gives Way to ‘Demonstration for Christ.’” The reference was to the location of the march in an avenue that the week before had been home to a massive political march for the opposition candidate. This fact was also indicative that they were providing something different, turning politics on its head. The online news service of the Latin American Council of Churches located in Ecuador also covered the march the next day. It included an interview with one of the leaders, evangelist Luis Ascanio: “This was a march to glorify Jesus. [We didn’t march] for any institution nor any political party but rather for Jesus” (http://www.clai.org .ec, 13 October 2006). One of the reasons the MPJ was so successful in 2006 was that its nonpartisan message resonated with a population exhausted by political polarization. Indeed the MPJ seems to have been part of a process of depolarization that occurred after 2004. The MPJ was not held from 2000–03 during the period of intense political conflict in Venezuela. It was reinitiated in 2004 shortly after the recall referendum. It was just the right moment, as Chávez’s referendum victory marked the end of the process of intense political polarization. The 2006 MPJ came shortly before a landslide election in which Hugo Chávez took 63 percent of the vote. However, even that lopsided result was not completely representative, as his popularity that year was consistently around 70 percent, largely as a result of economic growth and unemployment reduction that led 80 percent of people to evaluate their personal situation as positive (Datanalisis October 2009). The 2006 election would end up being the first election in several years that was not disputed. In the two years following the 2004 referendum, the most radical elements of the political opposition had progressively lost power to the more moderate elements led by Manuel Rosales. It is hard to say what role the MPJ might have played in this process of depolarization. But its message certainly seemed to resonate with the participants’ desire for unity and reconciliation among Venezuelans.

325

Public Rituals and Political Positioning

Comparison If we systematically compare the three public rituals (see Table 11.1) we can see that the one event that does not have a partisan tendency is different in two ways from the two that do. First, each of these events has a public dimension insofar as there is no strict boundary maintenance between those who are involved and those who are not. However, the one without a partisan tendency, the MPJ, is much more open to the public. It seems to have engagement of nonparticipants as one of its central goals. Unsurprisingly, the common mood it generated is much more abstract and diffuse. It would seem that the two events with clear political agendas have a tighter control of the ritual event in order to have a tighter control over the shared reality that is being created. Put differently, these rituals differ in their degrees of “publicness.” All three are public; but they differ in how open-ended and open to contingency they are. Table 11.1. Characteristics of Three Public Evangelical Rituals Thousand Prayers

Solution

March for Jesus

Political Engagement

Pro-Chávez

Anti-Chávez

Neutral

Bodily Copresence

Five thousand people gathered within a small space

Forty people meeting together

Eighty thousand people in one space

Social Barriers

Open to the public but a confined space not in a high-traffic pedestrian zone

Open to public but Completely open in a confined space space in a highnot in a high-traffic traffic, central area pedestrian zone

Mutual Focus

Circular, steep coliseum three-quarters occupied by people looking at each other and at the stage

Seats oriented towards the speaker in front

Crowd oriented towards the front, apart from when marches arrived

Shared Mood

Music, mutual focus, cheers, deafening sound

Everyone engaged with what is going on

People are engaged in music, but messages are abstract

Discussion Public rituals such as these do not simply reflect shared realities, they create them. The impact is best conceived not as the whole-cloth cre-

326

David Smilde

ation of a new reality, but as the crystallization and enlivening of a diffusely felt set of sentiments and perceptions. A ritual gives shared but diffuse realities robust existence. This is more clearly the case with the first two politicized positions. Evangelical Christians do not have a history of political engagement in Venezuela, and leaders who try to develop and express one are always on unstable terrain. However, even the stance of the MPJ, while consistent with the historical political position of Venezuelan evangelicals as politically neutral, represented a truly innovative stance coming at a time in which the larger society was profoundly polarized. This portrait helps us understand the increasing political relevance of evangelical Christianity in Venezuela as one manifestation of a larger wave of popular cultural mobilization in Latin America in the past ten to fifteen years. Collins’s idea of ritual chains underlies the temporality and causality of ritual. He sees individual biographies as temporal chains or interaction rituals that lead to path-dependent outcomes. The series of interactions a person has been through in his or her life determines the path his or her social psychology and personality take into the future. The same can be said for organizations, movements, and populations. These types of public rituals put shared realities into collective discourse that then provide the resources through which new political trajectories are created. If we want to understand the transition towards cultural forms of political cleavage and discourse, we need to, among other things, look at the type of public rituals marginalized groups use to solidify and extend their networks and associated discourses and identities. We can contrast this with the way political mobilization is normally thought about. Asking if the CCN, Unicristiana, the CEV, Solución Party, or the March for Jesus foundation are becoming autonomous political actors that can vie for power, the answer would have to be no. With the exception of Solución, these organizations all say they are religious and do not seek political power. Solución does, but does not seem to have any realistic chance of succeeding. However, if we look instead at the way they project their public discourses into space and develop new networks, we can see how these constitute “fragments” from which policies, positions, plans, alliances, coalitions, rivalries, agreements, and confrontations are formed. The Million Prayers event provided President Chávez an opportunity to again portray his revolution as having religious meaning. It also consolidated a quiet but enduring collaborative relationship with the government, including more funding as well as the work of Elias Rincón on the National Telecommunications Commission. It also made diffuse differences with

Public Rituals and Political Positioning

327

the CEV into clear lines of demarcation. Solución Party’s original press conference to support presidential candidate Manuel Rosales led to the latter’s request for a meeting with the CEV. Despite all claims to the contrary, this led to clear public perceptions that the CEV supported Rosales and opposed Chávez. The MPJ provided a religiously based, antipartisan message of national unity and consensus right at a time when the population was exhausted by political conflict. In a context in which Chávez’s popularity was around 70 percent, this position facilitated his reelection. This focus on public rituals helps us understand how varying forms of evangelical Christianity are having important political effects in Latin American countries like Venezuela. As such, it helps us understand aspects of democratic deepening in these countries. A greater variety of groups with a greater variety of perspectives are now being heard in Latin American democracies. However, the diversity of the events, organizations, and political positions examined here should lead us to set aside easy romantic notions that this new political voice represents any sort of Christian or even evangelical consensus, nor even that their impact will be positive for democracy, religious practice, or everyday life.

Notes 1.

I would like to thank Martin Lindhardt and Genevieve Zubzrycki for their comments on previous drafts of this article. It also benefited from presentations at the Denmark conference, the 2007 meetings of the Association for the Sociology of Religion in New York, the 2009 Latin American Studies Association Congress in Rio de Janeiro, and the 2009 Georgia Workshop on Culture, Power, and History.

References ACI Digital. 2001. “Iglesia en Venezuela rechaza controvertido proyecto de ley de cultos.” [Agencia Católica de Informaciones en América Latina], 25–28. Agencia Latinoamericana y Caribeña de Comunicación. 2004. “Secuela del referendo: polémica entre evangélicos.” 18 August. http://alcnoticias.org. Bastian, Jean Pierre. 1994. Protestantismos y modernidad latinoamericana: Historia de unas minorías religiosas activas en América Latina. México: Fondo de Cultura Económica. Brysk, Allison. 2000. From Tribal Village to Global Village: Indian Rights and International Relations in Latin America. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Collins, Randall. 2004. Interaction Ritual Chains. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

328

David Smilde

Chávez Frias, Hugo R. 2004. “Acto ‘un Millón de Oraciones por la Paz de Venezuela’.” http://www.mre.gov.ve/Noticias/Presidente-Chavez/A2004/DiscurChavez 213B-04.htm. Chesnut, Andrew R. 1997. Born Again in Brazil: The Pentecostal Boom and the Pathogens of Poverty. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1997. Dahl, Robert A. 1971. Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Datanalisis. 2009. “Informe de Encuesta Nacional Omnibus.” October. El Universal. 2006. “Preparan una Marcha en Homenaje a Jesús.” 8 October. Ellner, Steve, and Daniel Hellinger. 2003. Venezuelan Politics in the Chávez Era: Class, Polarization, and Conflict. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner. Freston, Paul. 2001. Evangelicals and Politics in Asia, Africa and Latin America. New York: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2004. Protestant Political Parties: A Global Survey. Burlington, VT: Ashgate. Gaskill, Newton. 1997. “Rethinking Protestantism and Democratic Consolidation in Latin America.” Sociology of Religion 58 (1): 69–91. Huntington, Samuel P. 2006. Political Order in Changing Societies. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. ———. 1991. The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Ikegami, Eiko. 2005. Bonds of Civility: Aesthetic Networks and the Political Origins of Japanese Culture. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Marcha para Jesús. http:www.marchaparajesus.com.ve (accessed November 2006). Mische, Ann. 2008. Partisan Publics: Communication and Contention across Brazilian Youth Activist Networks. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Olson, Samuel. 2006. “Palabras del Presidente del Consejo Evangélico de Venezuela” Visita Institucional del Candidato a la Presidencia de la República Bolivariana de Venezuela, el Sr. Manuel Rosales, al Consejo Evangélico de Venezuela. 31 October. ———. 2007. Interview with Author. 17 May. O’Neill, Kevin. 2009. City of God: Christian Citizenship in Postwar Guatemala City. Berkeley: University of California Press. Pallares, Amalia. 2002. From Peasant Struggles to Indian Resistance: The Ecuadorian Andes in the Late Twentieth Century. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Rubin, Jeffrey W. 2006. “In the Streets or in the Institutions?” LASA Forum 37: 26–29. Santiso, Robert. 2006. “Partido Solución propone ‘atreverse’ por la paz.” Verdad y Vida, 1 October, 2. Smilde, David. 2004a. “Contradiction without Paradox: Evangelical Political Culture in the 1998 Venezuelan Elections.” Latin American Politics and Society 46: 75–102. ———. 2004b. “Los Evangélicos y la Polarización: la Moralización de la Política y la Politización de la Religión.” Revista Venezolana de Economia y Ciencias Sociales 10 (2): 163–79. ———. 2007. “Relational Analysis of Religious Conversion and Social Change: Networks and Publics in Latin American Evangelicalism.” In Conversion of a Continent: Religious Identity and Change in Latin America, edited by Timothy

Public Rituals and Political Positioning

329

J. Steigenga and Edward L. Cleary. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Smilde, David, and Coraly Pagan. 2011. “Christianity and Politics in Venezuela’s Bolivarian Democracy: Catholics, Evangelicals and Political Polarization.” In Venezuela’s Bolivarian Democracy: Participation, Politics and Culture Under Chávez, edited by David Smilde and Daniel C. Hellinger. Durham: Duke University Press. Tovar, Lorenzo. 2007. Interview with Author. 21 May.

cC Notes on Contributors

Jon Bialecki is a lecturer in anthropology at the University of California, San Diego. His research and writing has been on the logic of self implicit in the charismatic practices of the Vineyard, a Southern California–originated church-planting movement, and on the relationship that these constructions of personhood have with the Vineyard’s political and economic imaginary. He has also written on Pentecostal and charismatic Christianity as a global phenomenon, both as the object of an emerging anthropological subdiscipline and as a way to critically think through praxis as envisioned by critical theory. Kelly H. Chong is currently assistant professor of sociology at the University of Kansas. She is the author of the book Deliverance and Submission: Evangelical Women and the Negotiation of Patriarchy in South Korea, published by Harvard University Press in 2008. She is also the author of numerous journal articles and book chapters, including “Negotiating Patriarchy: South Korean Evangelical Women and the Politics of Gender” (Gender & Society, 2006); “Coping with Conflict, Confronting Resistance: Emotions and Identity Management during Fieldwork in a South Korean Evangelical Community” (Qualitative Sociology, 2008); “What It Means to Be Christian: The Role of Religion in the Construction of Ethnic Identity and Boundary Among Second-Generation Korean-Americans” (Sociology of Religion, 1998); and “Fundamentalism and Patriarchal Gender Politics” (Journal of Women’s History, 1999, with Martin Riesebrodt). Simon Coleman is Jackman Professor at the Department and Centre for the Study of Religion, University of Toronto, and co-editor of the journal Religion and Society. He works on charismatic Christians in Sweden, London, and Nigeria, and on pilgrimage to Walsingham. Books include The Globalisation of Charismatic Christianity (Cambridge University Press, 2000), and Reframing Pilgrimage: Cultures in Motion (ed. with John Eade) (Berg, 2004). 330

Notes on Contributors

331

Thomas J. Csordas is an anthropologist whose principal interests are medical and psychological anthropology, comparative religion, anthropological theory, cultural phenomenology, and embodiment. He has conducted ethnographic research with charismatic Catholics and Navajo Indians and is author of The Sacred Self: A Cultural Phenomenology of Charismatic Healing (1994), Embodiment and Experience: The Existential Ground of Culture and Self (1994), Language, Charisma, and Creativity: Ritual Life in the Catholic Charismatic Renewal (1997), Body/ Meaning/Healing (2002), and Transnational Transcendence: Essays on Religion and Globalization (2009). Paul Gifford is Professor of African Christianity at the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London. He has written widely on African Christianity, notably Christianity and Politics in Doe’s Liberia (Cambridge University Press, 1993); African Christianity: Its Public Role (Hurst, 1998); Ghana’s New Christianity: Pentecostalism in a Globalising African Economy (Hurst, 2004); Christianity, Politics and Public Life in Kenya (Hurst, 2010). Martin Lindhardt is lecturer in ethnology at the University of Copenhagen. His research mainly focuses on Pentecostalism in Chile and on charismatic revivalism, witchcraft, medical pluralism, and occult economies in Tanzania. He is the author of numerous book chapters and journal articles including ‘“If you are saved you cannot forget your parents”: Agency, Power and Social Repositioning in Tanzanian bornagain Christianity’, Journal of Religion in Africa 2010 and ‘More than Just money. The Faith Gospel and Occult Economies in Contemporary Tanzania’, Novo Religio 2009 (winner of the Thomas Robbins Award for Excellence in the study of New Religious Movements). Martyn Percy is Principal of Ripon College Cuddesdon and the Oxford Ministry Course. He is also Professor of Theological Education at King’s College London, a Canon of Salisbury Cathedral and Canon Theologian of Sheffield Cathedral. His publications include Clergy: The Origin of Species (2006) and Salt of the Earth: Religious Resilience in a Secular Age (2003), both published by Continuum. His academic writing and research has mostly focused on the study of Christianity in contemporary culture, with interests spanning Anglicanism, theological education, and modern ecclesiology (including work on fundamentalism and revivalism).

332

Notes on Contributors

Gretchen Pfeil is a doctoral candidate in anthropology at the University of Chicago. Her dissertation research addresses the articulation of epistemological and moral concerns at the intersection of contemporary American evangelical missionary giving projects and local modes of sacrifice and almsgiving in Dakar, Senegal. Joel Robbins is Professor and Chair of Anthropology at the University of California, San Diego. His work focuses on cultural change, the anthropology of Christianity, the globalization of Pentecostalism, and the study of language, exchange, and ritual. He is the author of the book Becoming Sinners: Christianity and Moral Torment in a Papua New Guinea Society (2004) and is coeditor of the journal Anthropological Theory. Jacqueline Ryle’s recently published monograph, My God, My Land: Interwoven Paths of Christianity and Tradition in Fiji (Ashgate 2010), encompasses doctoral and postdoctoral research. Based on extensive multi-sited fieldwork conducted between 1993–2006 in different denominations and churches in Fiji, the book focuses on the relations between Christianity, tradition, and politics and on processes of reconciliation. David Smilde is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Georgia, Editor of the journal Qualitative Sociology and Chair of the Venezuelan Studies Section of the Latin American Studies Association. He is author of Reason to Believe: Cultural Agency in Latin American Evangelicalism (2007) and coeditor (with Daniel Hellinger) of Venezuela’s Bolivarian Democracy: Participation, Politics, and Culture under Chavez (forthcoming). He has also published twenty articles and chapters including: “A Qualitative Comparative Analysis of Conversion to Venezuelan Evangelicalism: How Networks Matter,” American Journal of Sociology (2005); and “Popular Publics: Street Protest and Plaza Preachers in Caracas.” International Review of Social History (2004).

cC Index

Index note: page references with an f or a t indicate a figure or table on the designated page. Abell, Troy, 298 aesthetic publics, 309 Africa demonic interference in, 16 faith gospel influences in, 179 Ghana, 16, 18, 22, 24, 26, 38n9 historic missionary outreach in, 25 Kenya, 34, 179–197 names and naming practices in, 27 Nigeria, 16 Pentecostalism influence in popular culture, 2, 21, 22 ritual use of Bible in Pentecostal churches, 179–195 Tanzania, 17, 22, 29 Zimbabwe, 11–12, 27 Albrecht, Daniel, 8, 9, 14, 21, 50, 60, 62 Amana communities, 133 anti-Ritual, 4, 36, 50 in American Pentecostalcharismatic devotional life, 277–303 case study of, 280–286, 286f, 287– 295, 298, 302nn6–10 conversion narratives as, 277, 283, 288–290, 291, 292, 302n11, 303nn15–16 defining, 280, 301–302n3, 302n5 sermon strategies and, 292–295, 303n19 as spontaneous moments of divine inspiration, 279–280, 302n5

testimony as intimate ritual, 282–286, 286f, 287–288, 290–292, 302nn9–11 thematic structure of testimony, 284–286, 286f, 287–288, 302–303nn12–14 transcendence in the everyday, 289, 303n16 Arnott, John, 153 Asad, Talal, 3, 73, 224 Ascanio, Luis, 324 Asia historic missionary outreach in, 25 Pentecostal-charismatic populations in, 2 Assemblies of God, 62, 98, 256, 292, 311 Austin, J., 34, 180 Azusa Street Revival, 25, 61 Becker, Anne, 81 Behrens, Edgar Hernandez, 313 Bell, Catherine, 73, 224, 225 Bennett, John, 133, 134, 148 Berger, Peter, 71 Bethel Bible College, 25 Bialecki, Jon, 34, 35, 36 Bible African ritual uses of, 179–195 biblicized style of delivery, 188–190 blessings and divine fundraising with, 192–193

333

334

Index

composites of, 186–187 as historic and contemporary document, 179–180 major narratives of, 180–182 New Testament narratives in, 183–185 obscure texts and snippets from, 185–186 performative or declarative use of, 180, 187–190, 194–195n3, 212–213 personal prophecy and fundraising, 193 preacherly body language and, 213–214, 218n23 prophetic themes in, 182–183 ritual uses of, 34, 179–197 status of pastor and, 187–188 using scripture leading to related rituals, 190–192 Blacking, John, 54 Bloch, Maurice, 2, 6, 289 Blumhoffer, Edith, 59, 62 “Body Techniques” (Mauss), 73 Bolívar, Simón, 307 Bolivia, indigenous political power in, 307 Bonnke, Reinhard, 26, 216n5 Boone, Kathleen C., 242 Bourdieu, Pierre, 19, 28, 71, 73, 148, 221 Brazil Pentecostal radio shows in, 24 Pentecostal soundscapes in, 11 popular evangelical music genres in, 22 Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, 17 Bruner, Jerome, 145 Burdick, John, 22 Burmese hill tribes, 259 Byamukama, Henry, 195n6 Caldera, Rafael, 317 California Azusa Street Revival, 25, 61 Seventh Day Adventists in, 148

Vineyard Christian churches in, 34, 249–276 Calvinism, 296, 303n21 Canales, Manuel, 223 Catholic Church charismatic ritual language of, 3 deliverance from demons rituals of, 253, 272nn3–4 Eucharistic Mass of, 77, 85, 86, 93, 289 in Latin America, 307 Pentecostal community life and, 6, 31 power of Christ’s stigmata, 88, 89 social hegemony of, 311 traditional pilgrimages of, 130 Vatican II, 69 Cerullo, Morris, 26, 201–204, 207, 208, 209, 211, 214, 216, 217nn6–10 Chávez, Hugo coup lead by, 307 evangelicals opposition to, 317, 318, 319, 320 government of, 311–312, 324, 326, 327 participation in “A Million Prayers for Peace in Venezuela,” 313–314, 315–317, 325t Chesnut, R. Andrew, 53, 54 Children of a Lesser God (1986), 88 Chilean Pentecostalism addressing God by, 228–230 complexity of praying by, 239–240 divine authorship of preaching in, 237, 238–239 divine interference in lives of, 35, 221–246 dualism between life and godless world in, 221–222, 224, 226 Evangelical Pentecostal Church (EPC) in, 220, 221, 223, 224, 225, 226, 230, 232, 236, 241, 242, 245, 246n1 evangelical TV programs in, 24 gozo as divine empowerment in, 223, 233, 239

Index

members coping with limiting social conditions, 222–225 otherness of language experiences in, 241–244 populations of, 6, 31, 217n6, 220–246 positional practices in, 226–228, 246 as religion of oral and bodily practices, 226–235, 246 rhetorical strategies of, 228–235 ritualization in everyday life, 20, 222–225 rules and discipline of members in, 221, 222, 241, 242, 243 spiritual manifestations in, 226 street preaching by, 242, 243 structure of church meetings in, 225–226, 234, 238, 246n4 theology of impotence and, 220, 224, 226, 244–245, 246 tonality, interruptions and emotional display in, 228–230, 246n2 Cho, Yonggi, 98, 123n5, 216n5 Chong, Kelly, 33, 35 Christ for All Nations (CCN) federation, 312, 326 Christianity, medieval and postReformation, 3 Church of England, charismatic worship in, 22 Clark, L. S., 219n8 Clark, Steven, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 140, 149n12 Clinton, William J., 16 Coleman, Simon, 2, 19, 24, 26, 28, 29, 34, 35 Collins, Randall, 13, 19, 30, 31, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 310, 314, 315, 326 Comaroff, Jean, 28, 30, 224 Comaroff, John, 28, 30 communitas, spontaneous, 10, 12, 14, 131 communities, intentional, 131–134, 149nn2–6 conscience collective, 198

335

Correa, Rafael, 307 Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly, 10 Csordas, Thomas, 3, 4, 5, 11, 17, 18, 19, 20, 26, 27, 31, 32, 37n3, 50, 60, 71, 88, 214, 224, 235, 241, 272n3 dancing, experiencing divine presence through, 9, 12, 27, 40n17 D’Andrade, Roy, 269 Davis, Charles, 72, 73 deliverance from demons conductees unaware of, 251, 252 dispensationalism and, 254–255, 268, 273nn7–8 folk model of the mind and, 256, 269, 270 as form of psychic healing, 252 as improvised prayers for emotional relief, 251–252, 268, 270, 273–274n14 mental illness and, 261–262 in modern history, 254–255 quiet/modest or showy/striking, 251 records of, 253–254, 272–273nn5–6 rituals of, 250–274 by self or assisted, 256–257, 270, 273–274n14 settings of, 251 speaking in tongues and, 265–266, 273nn12–13 triggers of, 251 See also demonic interference Deliverance from Evil Spirits—A Practical Manual (MacNutt), 258 demonic interference, 16, 23, 28, 34 causes of, 262–264 on a continuum of possession, 256–257 demonological prototypes and, 253–269 identifying, 257–264, 268, 270, 273–274n14 illnesses related to, 264 ritual language and, 36 as in a rut, 251, 273–274n14 as swarms and herds, 255 as unclean or not of Jesus, 251, 252

336

Index

words of knowledge and, 266–267, 273n13 See also deliverance from demons de Witte, Marleen, 24 discos, charismatic music and, 22 dispensationalism, 254–255, 268, 273nn7–8 Doerksen, Brian, 154 dominion theology, 312 Durkheim, Emile, 57, 133, 198 The Economist, 51 Ecuador, 307, 324 Ekman, Ulf, 200, 201, 204–209, 210, 211, 216, 218nn12–19 embodied presence, acknowledgment of, 3 “Emotional Buildup” (Halpern), 300 Engelke, Matthew, 11–12 “Eternity” (Doerksen), 154 Europe, historic missionary outreach in, 25 Evangelical Pentecostal Church (EPC), in Chile, 220, 221, 223, 224, 225, 226, 230, 232, 236, 241, 242, 245, 246n1 Evens, T. M. S., 134 exorcisms, 23, 102 Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, 277–278, 299–301 faith discourse call and response structuring in, 216 charismatic/parapersonalities in, 200–201, 216nn3–4 as intersubjective spacetime, 200, 201 model of self-extension and objectification of, 199 in Pentecostal-charismatic ritual, 198–219 preacherly body language in, 213– 214, 218n23 sociological tension in, 200 star preachers of Faith circuit, 200– 201, 216n5

transformative function of, 203, 211, 217nn9–10 visual aspects of, 202, 217n7 voicing, 199, 216n2 See also ritual language faith gospel churches, 179, 194n2 Faith Movement, 198 Fenn, Richard, 244 Festinger, Leon, 155 Fiji Catholic Charismatic revival movement in, 68–94, 94–95nn1–2 charismatic healing practices in, 31, 68–97 healing as collective reconciliation, 70 hierarchical society of, 76, 79, 80, 85–91 perceptions of sickness and healing, 69–70 pre-Christian cosmology of, 76 Sacred Heart Cathedral in, 85 social etiquette and healing rituals, 79 See also Thomas, Fr. Fiji Catholic, 91 flow experiences, 10, 12 folk-theological sublation, 256 formalism, social power of, 5, 37n5 Foster, Laurence, 132 Foucault, Michel, 35, 242 Foundations in Christian Living, 135 Friday Masowe Church, 11–12 Friedrich, John, 281 Fukuyama, Francis, 307 fundamentalism, 64, 102, 122–123n4 Geertz, Clifford, 71, 157–158, 271 Gemeinschaft-Gesellschaft dichotomy, 133 Ghana charismatic music industry in, 22 evangelical TV programs in, 24 Pentecostal-charismatic populations in, 16, 18, 26, 38n9 Pentecostal rituals of rupture in, 28 Giddens, Anthony, 220

Index

Gifford, Paul, 22, 34 global south, Pentecostal-charismatic populations in, 1, 8, 49–67 glossolalia, 5, 23, 102, 148–149n1 of Chilean Pentecostal members, 236, 237, 241 emotional excitement and, 10 in everyday situations, 9, 12 God, Pentecostal-charismatic intimate relationships with, 4, 5, 8–13, 37–38n6 Goffman, Erving, 57, 310 Good, Byron, 145 Great Revivals, 165 Habermas, Jürgen, 309 habitus, 19 Hagin, Kenneth, 204 Hagin, Kenneth, Sr., 198 Halpern, Jake, 300, 301 Harding, Susan, 14, 15, 202, 203, 216n1, 268 healing, 7, 30, 31, 33–34, 53, 68–97, 98–128 Health and Wealth movement, 153 hierophany, 11 Hinn, Benny, 153 holy hug, 19 Holy Spirit baptism in, 134, 149n7 guiding divine inspiration, 5 manifestations of presence of, 148–149n1 relationships with, 140 Hoover, S. M., 219n8 Hopewell, James, 156, 159, 166, 167 “Horizon Christian Fellowship” (Luhrmann), 12–13 Howard-Browne, Rodney, 153 Humphrey, Caroline, 10 Hurt, William, 88 Hutterites, 133 hyperritualization, 32, 129–151 Ikegami, Eiko, 308, 309, 311 Imitatio Christi, 288 India, Jain rituals in, 10

337

intentional communities isomorphism of, 133, 149n6 paradoxes of, 133–134, 141 permeability of, 133 perpetuation strategies of, 133 psycho-social theories about, 131– 134, 139–140 value indeterminism of, 133 intentionality, 37n4 interaction ritual chains, 13, 30, 31, 57, 61, 63, 310, 326 Interaction Ritual Chains (Collins), 310 The Interpretation of Cultures (Geertz), 157 Iser, Wolfgang, 145 Islam, 16, 29 Israeli kibbutzim, 134, 149n3 Jackson, Michael, 71 Jakes, T. D., 195n6 Jakobson, Roman, 299 Japan, 308–309 Jesus, Pentecostal-charismatic intimate relationship with, 4, 5, 8–13, 37–38n6 Jesus People commune, 132 Kanter, Rosabeth Moss, 133 Kariuki, Mark, 195n6 Keane, Webb, 11, 37n4, 199 Kenya Mombasa Jesus Celebration Centre, 180, 194–195n3 Nairobi Pentecostal-charismatic churches in, 181, 185, 187–188, 190–192, 193 Nakuru Overcomers’ Church in, 192 Pentecostal-charismatic populations in, 34, 179–197, 184–185 ritual uses of Bible in charismatic practices, 34, 179–197 Kenyon, E. W., 198 Kern, Louis, 132 kinesthetic engagement, experiencing divine presence through, 9, 12 Lai, Wilfred, 180, 187–188, 194–195n3

338

Index

Laidlaw, James, 10 Lambek, Michael, 270 Latin America forms of demonic interference in, 16 growth of Protestanism in, 308 indigenous groups and power in, 306 nationalist movements in, 307 Pentecostal-charismatic populations in, 2, 6 religious organizations as political actors, 307 Latin American Council of Churches, 324 Lee, Jae Bum, 122–123n4, 123n6 Life in the Spirit seminars, 135, 149n8 Lindhardt, Martin, 34, 35, 73, 198, 214, 217n6 linguistic habitus, 20–21 Living Faith Church Worldwide (Winners’ Chapel), 182–183, 188, 195n5 Local Knowledge (Geertz), 157 Lock, Margaret, 71 Lord’s Prayer, 4, 78 Luhrmann, Tanya, 12, 60, 249, 271n1 MacNutt, Francis, 258, 262, 263 Madagascar, Merina of, 6, 38n7 “Man and Woman in Christ” (Clark), 136 March for Jesus (MPJ), 320–324, 325t, 326, 327 Marin, Godofredo, 312 Marshall, Ruth, 16 Martin, Bernice, 52 Martin, Ralph, 134, 135, 137, 138 Masinde, J. B., 195n6 Matarese, Susan, 133 Mauss, Marcel, 71, 73, 224 Maximum Miracle Centre, 184–185 Maxwell, David, 27 McCauley, Ray, 216n5 McManus, Jim, 85 mental illness, as demonic disturbance, 34, 262–262 Merina of Madagascar, 6, 38n7

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 17, 71, 241 Methodism, 25 Mexico, Zapatista movements in, 306 Meyer, Birgit, 16, 18, 26, 28, 217n7 Meyer, Joyce, 179 millennialism, 180 “A Million Prayers for Peace in Venezuela,” 313–317, 322, 325f, 326 Mombasa Jesus Celebration Centre, Kenya, 180, 194–195n3 Morales, Evo, 307 Mormons, 132 “Morris Cerullo in Red Square,” 201– 204, 208, 214, 217nn6–10 Moulían, Tomas, 222 Muiru, Lucy, 195n6 Muiru, Pius, 184, 185, 188, 190–191, 192 multiple personality disorder (MPD), 261–262 Munn, N., 200 Munroe, Myles, 179 music charismatic industry of, 22 worship in charismatic churches, 21, 22 Mwangangi, William, 181 Nairobi, Kenya Jesus is Alive Ministries in, 185 Jesus Manifestation Church in, 181 Uhuru Park in, 188, 190 Universal Church of the Kingdom of God in, 192, 193, 195n7 Winners’ Chapel in, 182–183, 188, 189, 193, 195n5 World Harvest Church in, 180 Nakuru Overcomers’ Church, Kenya, 192 Neitz, Mary Jo, 10, 20 neoliberal global order, 52–55 neo-Pentecostal groups, 312, 316 New York Times, 300, 301 Nigeria, Pentecostal-charismatic populations in, 16

Index

North America birth of Pentecostalism in, 25, 61 forms of demonic interference in, 16 Holiness movement in, 25 Pentecostal-charismatic populations in, 32 Word of God community in, 129–151 novena, 92, 96n12 Noyes, John H., 132 “The Obvious Aspects of Ritual” (Rappaport), 49 Olin, Spencer, 132 Olson, Samuel, 316, 319, 320 Oneida community, 132, 133 Oosterbaan, Martijn, 11, 24 oral engagement, experiencing divine presence through, 9, 12 Ortner, Sherry B., 243 Otabil, Mensa, 179 Oyedepo, David, 189, 190, 195n5 Palma, Samuel, 223 Papua New Guinea, Upramin Pentecostal rituals in, 27 Parham, Charles F., 25 Parmentier, Richard, 11 Peirce, Charles Sanders, 11 Pentecostal-charismatic Christianity adoption and recast of popular culture modes by, 7, 21–25 avoiding sinful bodily practices, 29, 40n18 background sounds of, 24, 39n14 bodily vocabulary of devotional practices, 60, 277, 278, 279, 301–302nn2–3 community life of, 7, 8, 13–15, 31 deliverance sessions of, 17, 18, 28 demonologies and, 7, 8, 15–19, 23, 28 drama of rupture with past, 8, 17– 19, 23, 28, 38–39n12 emphasis on spiritual warfare by, 15–19 empowerment and, 7, 8

339 experiencing divine presence and, 8–13 faith discourse in ritual of, 2, 198–219 features/characteristics of, 1, 37n1 forms of worship, 4, 37n3 fostering of discipline in, 7 gender dynamics in, 7, 8 global growth and spread of, 1, 7, 8, 25–29, 49–67, 51, 52–55, 59–64 healing practices of, 7, 30, 31, 33– 34, 53, 68–97, 98–128 history of movement in South Korea, 101–104 individualism and, 7 intimate relationships with God or Jesus, 4, 5, 8–13, 37–38n6 loud praise and loud singing in, 11, 27, 40n17 model of charismatic redistribution in, 198 as movement of Holy Spirit, 102– 103, 112, 113, 123n5, 123nn8–10 political stances in Venezuela, 306–329 as portable practices, 27, 28, 30, 40n16 positional practices of, 31–32 prosperity and meaningful living in, 8, 53 relating to indigenous contexts of, 26, 27, 30 religious identities/selves, 7, 8 responsible ascetic behavior in, 7, 8 from revival movement to church institution, 7, 8 self-reliance and self-discipline beliefs of, 54, 55 sermons as divine inspiration, 5 spiritual in-filling of, 4, 17 spontaneity and divine inspiration, 4, 5–6, 50 struggle in world of sin, 8 testimonies of, 14–15, 23, 32, 38n10, 188, 277–305, 282–286, 287–292 third wave of, 62, 63 worship characteristics of, 2, 3

340 Pentecostal Evangelical Council of Venezuela (CEPV), 320 Peoples’ Temple, 148 Percy, Martyn, 32–33, 34, 36, 62, 64 personhood, 30 Pfeil, Gretchen, 4, 31, 32, 36, 50 phenomenology, 3 Pilarzyk, T. J., 132 Pinochet, Augusto, 222 Poewe, Karla, 28 Poloma, Margaret, 155 popular culture, Pentecostal/ charismatic adoption and recast of, 7, 21–25, 38n10, 40n15 praying, experiencing divine presence through, 9 prophesy, 5, 148–149n1, 236–239, 241 Puritans, 299 Rappaport, Roy, 3, 49, 61 reconciliation, 30 Rhema movement, 153, 198 rhythmic engagement, experiencing divine presence through, 9, 12 rice-Christian mission strategies, 54 Riesebrodt, Martin, 102 Rincón, Elias, 316, 326 rites of passage, 7 ritual as bodily and rhetoric practices, 3, 68–97 bodily copresence, 310, 318, 322, 325t characteristics of, 310, 325t charismatic healing practices in, 7, 30, 31, 33–34, 53, 68–97, 98–128 classical perspective of, 2 communication and interpretation of, 2 constitutive and transformative role of, 36 defining, 224, 310 deliverance from demons, 250–274 in everyday life, 19–21, 50, 62, 129–150, 225 faked spiritual behaviors and, 32, 143, 144

Index

generating contradiction and tension, 32, 129–151 as giving shape to social life, 50, 55–59 interaction ritual chains and, 13, 30, 31, 57, 61, 63, 310, 326 interiority of subject and, 4, 37n4 liminal moments in, 14 mutual focus and frequency of, 56–59, 60–61, 310, 322, 325t as new way of being-in-the-world, 3 Pentecostal-charismatic forms of, 2 public positioning in Venezuela, 306–327 shared mood in, 310, 325t sincerity and, 4, 37n4 social barriers and, 310, 325t social power of, 2, 3 spiritual in-filling with, 4, 17 studies of process of, 29–37 as symbolic activity, 3 technical activity of, 3 time spent on, 6 traditional or repetitive forms of, 279, 302n4 See also anti-Ritual Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity (Rappaport), 49 ritualization of everyday life, 19–21, 50, 62, 129–140, 225 civic space transformation in, 129 domestic space transformation in, 129 geographic and natural space transformations in, 130 laying on of hands in, 129 time/ritualized temporality in, 130 transformation of interpersonal space in, 129 ritual language anti-Ritual forms of, 36, 50 of charismatic healing services, 68–95 in Chilean Pentecostalism, 236–239 as divine inspiration, 5–6, 8 ever-present possibility and, 35 formality of, 2–3, 6, 38n7

Index

ideational and material inner beliefs in, 35, 36 of Pentecostal-charismatic practices, 34, 179–197, 198–219 prophecies in, 129 rhetoric of passionate romantic love, 36 spoken word as divine power, 34–35 as technique of the body, 235 See also faith discourse Robbins, Joel, 1, 7, 13, 15, 22, 24, 29, 30, 31, 37n4, 297 romantic love, 5, 30 Roof, Wade Clark, 159 Rosaldo, Michelle, 37n4, 72 Rosales, Manuel, 317, 318, 319, 320, 324, 327 Rosner, Menachem, 134 Rubin, Jeffrey, 308 rupture, ritual and drama of, 8, 17–19, 23, 28, 38–39n12 Russia, Cerullo preaching in, 201–204, 214, 217nn6–10 Ryle, Jacqueline, 31, 35 Salmon, Paul, 133 Saussurean language theory, 11 Scheper-Hughes, Nancy, 71 schismogenesis, 296 Seeker Churches, 173, 176n10 Seremetakis, Nadia, 72 sermons, divine empowerment and, 5, 35, 292–295 Seventh Day Adventists, 148 Shaker communities, 132, 133 shamanistic beliefs and practices, 103, 254 Shoaps, Robin, 4, 5, 37n5, 292, 295, 298 Shultze, Quentin, 226 Silverstein, Michael, 289, 290 Simmel, Georg, 168 sincerity, 37n4, 199 singing experiencing divine presence through, 9, 12, 27, 40n17 flow experience in, 10, 12

341

standing versus sitting, 9–10 Smilde, David, 13, 24, 31 Smith, Brian, 6 Solución (Activist Society of Independent People Organized for the Nation), Venezuela, 317– 320, 322, 325t, 326, 327 South Africa, 224 South African Zionist church, 54 South America, historic missionary outreach in, 25 South Korea cell group meetings as female social space, 100–122, 123n11 confession and self-revelation in female cell groups, 109–111, 124n14 “dying of self” by evangelical women in, 117–119, 124nn17–18 education and status production issues in, 107, 123–124nn12–13 evangelical women’s charismatic ritual practices in, 99–122 healing practices in evangelical female cell groups, 33, 98–128 history of evangelicalism in, 101–104 native shamanistic beliefs and practices of, 103 North River Church, 118 patriarchal family and gender system in, 104, 106, 122 Pentecostal-charismatic movement in, 98, 122n2 Protestant churches in, 98, 101–104, 122n2 religiosity of women in churches, 98–99, 122n2 self-criticism and redomestication in female cell groups, 114–119 surrender to divine power in women’s cell meetings, 111–114, 124nn15–16 Yoido Full Gospel church, 98, 102, 123n5, 123n7 speaking in tongues, 265–266, 273nn12–13, 297, 298

342

Index

Spikard, James, 10 spirit discos, 27 spiritual agency and engagement, 73–74 Spiro, Melford, 134 spontaneous communitas, 10, 12, 14 Spread of Fire magazine, 164 Ssuna, Martin, 180, 181, 183 Steven, James, 9, 10, 22 Strathern, Andrew, 72 street preaching, 23, 242, 243 Stringer, Martin D., 2 Sumrall, Lester, 209–214, 218nn20–23 Susuma, Shimazono, 14, 15 swaying, experiencing divine presence through, 9, 12, 27, 40n17 Sweden Social Democratic party in, 200, 205 Word of Life ministry in, 24, 29, 35, 200–201, 204–209, 216nn3–4 Sword of the Spirit community, 136, 137, 138 Tambiah, Stanley, 2, 3, 37n5, 241 Tannen, D., 202 Tanzania New Life Christ movement in, 29 open-air revival meetings in, 22 Pentecostal-charismatic populations in, 17 “Techniques of the Body” (Mauss), 224 Thomas, Fr. on disclosure and healing, 83–84, 95–96n9 handling the Body of Christ, 91–92, 93 as healing facilitator in Fiji, 68–70, 74–85, 87–92, 94, 95n6 Healing Testimony Form and Healing Prayer given by, 92 inviting people to touch the altar, 85–91, 93 on reconciliation and healing brokenness, 80–85, 93 Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship/ Toronto Blessing

cellular structure of, 170 charismatic worship by, 32–33, 34, 62, 63, 152–178 Christian Bar Mitzvah practice of, 170–171 conferences and programs of, 154, 175n2 decline of movement and worldwide mention, 155, 168–169, 171, 175– 176n7, 175n3 Father’s Blessing at, 152, 175n1 fellowship building of, 153 feminine turn in, 172 having a complex system of meaning, 157 Internet and television promotion of, 154 language of harvest and growth in, 169–170 narratives of adventure by, 161, 166–171, 174–175, 175–176nn7–8 observations and study of, 155–160 performative healings in, 166 pilgrimages to, 152–153, 168–169, 170, 171, 176n9 revival and ritual activities in, 34, 62, 63, 64 rhetoric of passionate and romantic intensity in, 161, 162–163, 167, 171 slain in the Spirit events, 152, 165–166 “soaking” ministry of, 163, 165, 166 Statement of Faith and creedal articles of, 160 worship and revival meetings of, 160–166, 175nn4–6 Tovar, Lorenzo, 317, 318, 319 Towner, James, 133 Townerites, 133 trance, 23 Turner, Terence, 88 Turner, Victor, 10, 14, 32, 131, 219n8 Uganda, Pentecostal-charismatic churches in, 195n6

Index

Unicristiana, 316, 326 United States Faith Movement in, 198, 201 Jesus Movement in, 249 Moral Majority in, 200 Washington Consensus of, 306 See also Vineyard Christian churches El Universal, 321, 322, 324 Venezuela Banfoandes in, 313 Bolivarian movement in, 307 Chávez government in, 311–312, 324, 326, 327 Christ for All Nations (CCN) federation in, 312, 326 Christ for All Nations Church, 314 Christian Institute for Social Studies in, 317 March for Jesus (MPJ) as partisan neutrality, 24, 31, 320–324, 325t, 326, 327 “A Million Prayers for Peace in Venezuela,” 313–317, 322, 325t, 326 National Telecommunications Commission of, 316, 326 neo-Pentecostal groups in, 312 networks and social ties in, 309 New Tribes Missions in, 317–318 non-Pentecostal groups in, 312 Pentecostal-charismatic populations in, 24, 31, 306–327 Pentecostal Evangelical Council of (CEPV), 320 public and ritual contexts, 309–310 Solución (Activist Society of Independent People Organized for the Nation) in, 317–320, 322, 325t, 326, 327 La Urbina Coliseum, 314 Venezuelan Evangelical Council (CEV), 316, 318, 319, 327 vestibular system, 10 Viella, Hugo, 223

343

Vineyard Christian churches baptisms of, 258, 273n10 as Californization of American Protestantism, 249 demonology of, 252 folk model of the mind, 256, 269, 270 movement of, 34, 62, 63, 153, 172– 173, 249–276 prayers for emotional relief in, 251–252 short-term mission trips of, 259 small/cell groups in, 251–252, 272n2 Third Wave model of demonic functions in, 255, 256, 259, 262, 267 in Toronto, 152, 175n1 in United Kingdom, 173, 176n11 See also deliverance from demons Vineyard Leadership Institute (VLI), 260 Wacker, Grant, 255 Wafula, Robert, 195n6 Wagner, Peter J., 297 Wanjiru, Margaret, 185, 186, 194–195n3 Weber, Max, 132, 133, 157 wedding rituals, 37n2, 61 Wesley, John, 104 Whitfield, George, 165 Wigglesworth, Smith, 165 Wimber, John, 136, 153, 172, 173, 175n1, 256, 260, 262–263, 267 women charismatic ritual practices in South Korea, 98–122 Confucian-Christian virtues of, 100, 106, 107 evangelical healing rituals and, 33–34 life in Word of God communities, 136, 141, 149n10 Toronto Blessing prayer meetings by, 163, 175n4 Word of God community, 130–131, 149n2

344 control and spontaneity in, 140, 145, 147 covenant of, 135, 149n9 field interviews/study of, 137–138, 138t, 139–148, 149–150n15 history of, 134–137, 149nn7–14 as intentional community, 131, 149n2 Life in the Spirit seminars of, 135, 149n8 pressure of compliance in, 141–142 Resting in the Spirit as ritualized response in, 143, 146 schism in, 134, 137, 138, 144 specialized groups in, 135–136, 137

Index

Training Course of, 136, 137 Word of Life ministry, Sweden accusations of, 200 membership of, 204, 218n11 public viewers of the Word and, 202–203, 217nn8–9 theatricality of worship in, 200 visiting preachers to, 200, 201, 209 Word of Life Newsletter, 204, 207, 208 Zimbabwe Assembly of God ministries, 27 Friday Masowe Church in, 11–12