Browsing by Subject "Pentecostalism"

Now showing 1 - 5 of 5

Godmentality : Pentecostalism as performance in Nigeria
(2017-06-06) Adelakun, Abimbola Adunni; Jones, Omi Osun Joni L., 1955-; Canning, Charlotte; Thompson, Lisa; Bonin-Rodriguez, Paul; Falola, Oloruntoyin
This dissertation employs the concept of “Godmentality” as a framework for capturing the embodied performances of faith actors in the Nigerian Pentecostal movement. From Africa to Asia to Latin America, and North America, Pentecostalism is a huge global phenomenon that not only imbues places and spaces with the breath of the Holy Spirit, it also inscribes time and space with its distinct flavor of worship. In Africa, the Pentecostal movement is sweeping through the urban spaces and covering the spatial and cultural landscape with its activities and promises of redemption. In Nigeria, as people perform their Pentecostal faith and make Pentecostalism a cultural performance, God and faith have become a mentality. The band of believers who form the army of God marching through times and space are continuously configured through various disciplinary techniques. Those subjectivation techniques turn them to subjects whose bodies have been reshaped such that the performance of their faith is a “natural” activity. Godmentality explores the subjectivity of Pentecostal Christians and the modes by which they acquire it, how their performative actions shape the social and cultural ecology of Nigeria, and how Pentecostals assert their human agency within the nexus of the various rituals of worship that revise their consciousness. This study builds on existing scholarship on global Pentecostal studies to interrogate the disciplinary techniques of Pentecostal faith, the creativity of faith actors, and the knowledge they create through their embodied behavior. Through ethnographic methods, oral interviews in physical and virtual formats, archival materials, documents and church publications, close readings of church activities, and historical analysis, I interrogate the dramatic nature of Pentecostal worship. From the spectacular performance of miracles, dramatic and intense corporeal worship, prosperity gospel, their domination of the traditional and the New media, apocalyptic vision, and the ways they try to monopolize the public space, I demonstrate the making of the Pentecostal subjectivity, how Pentecostals make their environment to be more amenable for their faith performances, and the ways Pentecostalism has shaped the ways Nigerians understand ourselves as subjects of God
Local believers, foreign missionaries, and the creation of Guatemalan Protestantism, 1882-1944
(2012-05) Dove, Stephen Carter; Garrard, Virginia, 1957-; Kamil, Neil; Butler, Matthew; Tweed, Thomas; Sullivan-González, Douglass
This dissertation examines how Guatemalan converts transformed missionary Protestantism into a locally contextualized religion in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Using archival materials from local religious groups and public archives in Guatemala alongside missionary documents from the United States, this research identifies how converts adopted certain missionary teachings but reinterpreted or rejected others. This selective application not only altered the definition of Protestantism in Guatemala but also affected the early growth of the movement by creating contextualized forms of Protestantism that attracted more interest than foreign versions. The first section of the dissertation analyzes the theologies and goals that early missionaries brought to Guatemala and explains the intramural conflicts that created the first Protestant communities in the country. Between 1882 and 1921, five North American Protestant denominations and several independent missionaries entered Guatemala, each with particular ideas about how to improve the country both spiritually and materially. This internal diversity provided new converts with the ability to choose between multiple versions of Protestantism, but more importantly it also taught them how to carve out their own space between imported religious ideologies. The second section of the dissertation analyzes how local believers reinterpreted Protestantism within those spaces by pursuing four important areas of innovation: theological primitivism, Pentecostalism, political involvement, and nationalism. Despite protests from many foreign missionaries, between 1920 and 1944 numerous Guatemalan Protestants adopted variations of these four themes in attempts to create a culturally and socially relevant religious product. As new converts opted for these new local communities over missionary-led options, these four themes became defining hallmarks of Guatemalan Protestantism, which by the twenty-first century was practiced by one-third of the country’s population. This dissertation argues that these contextualized challenges to missionary ideas in the early twentieth-century made Protestantism an attractive local product in Guatemala and sparked the movement’s growth. It also demonstrates how poor and working class Guatemalans in the early twentieth century used Protestantism as a tool to participate in national conversations about race, gender, and class.
“Selling God in Uganda” : a critical cultural study of persuasion in mediatized neo-Pentecostalism
(2020-12-09) Jenga, Fred; Brummett, Barry, 1951-; Jarvis, Sharon; Stroud, Scott; Falola, Oloruntoyin
This Africa-focused study explored the mediatized religious rhetoric of neo-Pentecostalism in Uganda. Situated at the intersection of communication and religion, I explored the construction of neo-Pentecostal rhetoric and also questioned the long term social impact of such rhetoric on Uganda and other developing countries. Interdisciplinary in nature, my study focused on three Ugandan pastors who own media houses, and have a long term presence in media. Through a contemporary rhetorical analysis of television broadcast programs and popular books written by the pastors, I examined the construction of the rhetoric in relation to the Ugandan socio-economic and cultural context. The study reveals that through a good reading of Ugandan traditional cultural beliefs and practices, and a good understanding of Ugandan socio-economic challenges, the pastors have strategically created religious rhetoric that is effectively aligned with the needs of a Ugandan audience. Through appropriation of media technology, the pastors produce and circulate rhetoric that promises hope, economic upward mobility, and good health for all through a miraculous intervention of God. While the neo-Pentecostal rhetoric has provided some answers to help Ugandans cope with their challenges, in primarily proposing faith in God, relentless prayer, donations to God through the pastors, and honor and obedience to the pastors, neo-Pentecostal rhetoric has potential of shifting attention away from social and systemic causes like bad governance that underpin many Ugandan social challenges.
Sexual initiation and religion in Brazil
(2010-08) Verona, Ana Paula de Andrade; Potter, Joseph E.; Burnett, Virginia G.; Hopkins, Kristine L.; Miranda-Ribeiro, Paula; Pullum, Thomas W.; Regnerus, Mark D.
With the growth of Pentecostalism over the last few decades, conservative values and punitive sanctions related to the sexual behavior of adolescents and unmarried youth began to play an important and systematic role in Pentecostal and renewed Protestant churches as well as in charismatic Catholic communities. Simultaneously, religion has become an important and highly present factor in the lives of many adolescents and youth in Brazil. In terms of attempting to attract this age group, these churches and communities, stand out, as they have used their resources to create a space for this segment of the population to participate in a religious environment. Youth groups, dating groups, trade courses, lectures, aid work in poor communities, confirmation and other activities such as retreats and religious trips, have been frequently observed in these churches and charismatic communities. In this dissertation, I examine the associations between religious involvement and sexual initiation in Brazil. More specifically, I investigate (1) whether religious denomination and religiosity are associated with age at premarital first sexual intercourse, (2) whether these associations have changed over the last three decades, (3) how different churches and religious leaders address sexual behavior issues, and (4) the mechanisms through which religion can influence adolescents’ sexual behavior in Brazil. These research questions are assessed by employing multiple data sources and methodologies including three Demographic and Health Surveys carried out in Brazil in 1986, 1996, and 2006 and event history analysis, as well as in-depth interview data and participant observation among different religious groups and affiliations by attending several Catholic masses, Protestant religious services, youth groups, Sunday schools, and religious talks/lectures. Quantitative and qualitative findings of this dissertation show that adolescents and youth from Pentecostal churches and communities seem more likely to delay or abstain from premarital sexual initiation when compared to traditional Catholics. I conclude by suggesting that the dissemination of conservative norms and sanctions as well as the availability of greater space for youth to maintain close relationships with these churches have helped create mechanisms through which religion can directly and indirectly influence the lives and sexual behavior of young people in Brazil.
The heartfelt spirit : capitalism, affect, and Pentecostal modernity in the Americas
(2017-01-09) Doran, Justin Michael; Garrard, Virginia, 1957-; Tweed, Thomas; Graber, Jennifer; Butler, Matthew; Sánchez-Walsh, Arlene
This dissertation examines how local experiences of capitalism have been mediated by Christian charismatic practices into a global Pentecost over the twentieth century. It analyzes those mediations through a series of historical vignettes that link the origins of nineteenth-century American primitivist piety to the confluence of twenty-first century global Pentecostalism in Houston. Its narrative arc embodies a continuous lineage connecting watershed changes in Christian piety across the Americas, including the proliferation of divine healing, speaking in tongues, baptizing in Jesus’ name, casting out devils, and providential sacrifice. Together, these vignettes demonstrate how Pentecostalism operated as a dynamic circulatory system for charismatic practices rather than a network of churches linked by common doctrines. The circulation of these charismatic practices both sustained local congregations and vitalized global Pentecost. I argue throughout that the historical intimacy between late capitalism and Pentecostalism suggests that Pentecost is a kind of modernity, rather than a reaction to it. In Pentecostal modernity, Christians re-formed themselves through Pentecost amid lifeways that were continually being fractured by capitalism’s relentless integration of human components into the machinery of accumulation.