Only (Dis-)Connect: Pentecostal Global Networking as Revelation and Concealment

Abstract

Contemporary forms of Pentecostalism, such as that of the Faith Movement, are often represented as inherently global, constituting a religion 'made to travel' and to missionize across the world. I argue that while much attention has been paid to proselytization as a catalyst in encouraging transnational activities among such Christians, more analysis is needed of how Pentecostalists represent each other in the construction of global imaginaries. The imagined and enacted networks that result assert connections between like-minded believers but also valorize the power of distance in the creation of landscapes of religious agency whose power is illustrated through such tropes as 'number', 'mobility', 'presence' and 'conquest'. I juxtapose two Prosperity-oriented movements, that of the Swedish Word of Life and the Nigerian Redeemed Christian Church of God, to indicate further how Christians who appear to be conjoined via common forms of worship appear, from another perspective, to be inhabiting and moving across disjunct global landscapes and cartographies as they engage in very different forms of mobility.

Geometries of ‘global’ evangelicalism

“…His approach highlights the dynamics of multi-scalar relationality, which resembles Massey's concept of global connectivity. Simon Coleman (2013) grounds this conceptualization in the enactment, and imagination, of global Pentecostal networks, and shows how a Swedish and a Nigerian Pentecostal movement will pursue different mobilities on different global imaginary cartographies. Coleman draws on Vásquez's approach to show how the church groups of his two case studies (the Swedish Word of Life and the Nigerian Redeemed Christian Church of God) share a 'global' outlook, which differs in content and scope because of different colonial and postcolonial histories.…”

“…Smith (2013) traces this importance back to the Protestant Reformation and the link with the emergence of a Western 'Judeo-Christian tradition'. Coleman (2013) aptly describes Israel as located at the 'centre' of the evangelical cartographies, namely, the centre of the world in the evangelical imaginary of the global. As most evangelicals, including Hillsong, would attest, this is a 'spiritual map'.…”

“…The etic dimension refers to Christianity as a phenomenon that has spread quickly and has been translated into many distinct cultural contexts (Coleman 2000;Coleman and Hackett 2015;Hefner 1998;Tweed 2006;van der Veer 1996). Yet, while especially evangelical Christianity has been thriving in many contexts outside the North American and European ones (Jenkins 2011), to speak of a 'global' phenomenon is to disregard the fact that it has spread unevenly, at different speeds, and within different networked geographies (Coleman 2013). While the study of 'global' Christianity sums up a certain theoretical outlook (scholars often draw on concepts of transnationalism or globalization), it is useful to ask what the 'global' in global Christianity really means.…”

Short-term youth mission practice and the visualization of global christianity

“…Theological and missiological sources offer statistical documentation on mission and frame it in the context of global Christianization (Barrett and Johnson 2001;Barrett, Johnson, and Crossing 2007;Jenkins 2002;Milbank and Ward 2008;Priest 2008;Priest et al 2010;Weber and Welliver 2007). 9 This is explored in research on "translations" of Christian metaphysics into vernacular cosmologies (Comaroff and Comaroff 1991;Keane 2007;Meyer 1999;Robbins 2004;Tomlinson 2009;Viswanathan 1998), on the mediation of culturally distinct Christianities (Bornstein 2003;Cannell 2006;Engelke 2007;Engelke and Robbins 2010;Howell 2003) and on Christians' cultivation of global subjectivities (Coleman 2000(Coleman , 2013Goh 2008). 10 North American mission's contemporary globalization is rooted in over two centuries of European and North American imperial expansion, including the extension of US influence through the twentieth-century moral reform movements and global humanitarianism (Barnett 2011;Beyer 2006;Comaroff and Comaroff 1991;Hill 1985;Keane 2007;Nichols 1988;Robert 1996Robert , 2008Tyrrell 2011;van der Veer 1996;Velho 2009).…”

Ontological (in)Security and African Pentecostalism in Ireland

“…The presence of African evangelism in the austere landscapes of late-modern Europe has already attracted considerable anthropological attention (e.g. Maskens 2008;Smit 2009;Blanes 2013;Coleman 2013;Garbin 2013;Krause 2014). Of course, revivalist, charismatic and evangelical forms of Christianity have a long history, and many Pentecostal practices, from glossolalia to energetic testimonies, are old, enduring and remarkably portable.…”