do the reading and answer the questionsplease have a writer who has an anthropology background
Untitled 12 Aug 2004 9:40 AR AR225-AN33-06.tex AR225-AN33-06.sgm LaTeX2e(2002/01/18) P1: IBC 10.1146/annurev.anthro.32.061002.093421 Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 2004. 33:117–43 doi: 10.1146/annurev.anthro.32.061002.093421 Copyright c⃝ 2004 by Annual Reviews. All rights reserved THE GLOBALIZATION OF PENTECOSTAL AND CHARISMATIC CHRISTIANITY Joel Robbins Department of Anthropology, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California 92093-0532; email:
[email protected] Key Words Pentecostalism, religion, cultural change, modernity ■ Abstract Pentecostal-charismatic Christianity (P/c), the form of Christianity in which believers receive the gifts of the Holy Spirit, is rapidly spreading and can be counted as one of the great success stories of the current era of cultural globalization. Literature on P/c presents a paradoxical picture of the cultural dynamics accompanying its spread. Many scholars argue that P/c is markedly successful in replicating itself in canonical form everywhere it spreads, whereas others stress its ability to adapt itself to the cultures into which it is introduced. Authors thus use P/c to support both theories that construe globalization as a process of Westernizing homogenization and those that understand it as a process of indigenizing differentiation. This review argues that approaches to P/c globalization need to recognize that P/c posesses cultural features that allow it, in most cases, to work in both ways at once. After considering definitional and historical issues and explanations for P/c’s spread, the review examines how P/c culture at once preserves its distinctness from the cultures into which it comes into contact and engages those cultures on their own terms. Also discussed are the conceptions that allow P/c to establish locally run and supported institutions in a wide range of settings. A final section considers the nature of the culture P/c, in its homogenizing guise, introduces, examining that culture’s relation to modernity and its effects on converts’ ideas about gender, politics, and economics. INTRODUCTION The form of Christianity in which believers receive the gifts of the Holy Spirit and have ecstatic experiences such as speaking in tongues, healing, and prophesying is one of the great success stories of the current era of cultural globalization. Com- monly called Pentecostal-charismatic Christianity (P/c), its origin can be traced to early twentieth-century developments within Christianity in the West, partic- ularly in North America. Yet despite its originally Western provenience, just a hundred years after its birth two thirds of P/c’s 523 million adherents live outside the West in areas such as Africa, Latin America, Asia, and Oceania, as do most of the nine million people who convert to it each year (Barrett & Johnson 2002, 0084-6570/04/1021-0117$14.00 117 A nn u. R ev . A nt hr op ol . 2 00 4. 33 :1 17 -1 43 . D ow nl oa de d fr om w w w .a nn ua lre vi ew s.o rg A cc es s p ro vi de d by M ac qu ar ie U ni ve rs ity o n 02 /1 7/ 20 . F or p er so na l u se o nl y. 12 Aug 2004 9:40 AR AR225-AN33-06.tex AR225-AN33-06.sgm LaTeX2e(2002/01/18) P1: IBC 118 ROBBINS p. 284). Although some question these statistics (Corten 1997, p. 313; Levine 1995, p. 157; Stoll 1990, p. 6), even conservative estimates see the P/c movement as having at least 250 million adherents worldwide, and all agree that its most explosive growth has occurred in the southern hemisphere (Martin 2002, p. xvii). This growth has made P/c the “the most dynamic and fastest growing sector of Protestant Christianity worldwide” and one that many predict will soon surpass Catholicism “to become the predominant global form of Christianity of the 21st century” (Casanova 2001, p. 435). P/c’s success as a globalizing movement is attested to not only by its rapid growth, but also by the range of social contexts to which it has spread. Appearing throughout the world in urban and rural areas, among emerging middle classes and, most spectacularly, among the poor, it has been deeply engaged by many populations that otherwise remain only peripherally or tenuously involved with other global cultural forms. As such, P/c represents a paradigm case of a global cultural flow that starts historically in the West and expands to cover the globe. In recent decades anthropologists and other scholars have begun to register the global impact of P/c. A number of edited volumes taking regional or comparative approaches have appeared (Boudewijnse et al. 1998, Cleary & Stewart-Gambino 1997, Coleman 2002a, Corten & Marshall-Fratani 2001b, Dow & Sandstrom 2001, Garrard-Burnett & Stoll 1993, Glazier 1980, Hunt et al. 1997b, Poewe 1994, Robbins et al. 2001), as have several widely read synthetic accounts (Brouwer et al. 1996; Cox 1995; Hollenweger 1972, 1997; Jenkins 2002; Martin 1990, 2002). All of these works make the global spread of P/c central to their discussions. What is striking, however, is the apparently paradoxical picture these and other works present of the spread of P/c as a cultural process. On the one hand, many argue that P/c consistently replicates its doctrines, organizational features, and rituals in canonical, Western form wherever it is introduced. Lehmann (2003, p. 121), for example, notes that P/c churches are “notoriously uniform across the globe” and that they display a “radical similarity of practice” despite the radical “dissimilarity” of the contexts in which they appear (see also Berger 1990, p. vii; Brouwer et al. 1996, p. 179; Coleman 2000, p. 67; d’Epinay 1969, p. xxxii; Lehmann 1996, p. 8; Lyon 2000, p. 102; Meyer 1999a, p. 159; Olson 2001, p. 24; Robbins 2001a; Smilde 1997, p. 347). On the other hand, many authors, including many of those who remark on P/c’s ability to replicate itself successfully in different cultures, stress that converts are quick to indigenize P/c forms of Christianity, and they credit these churches with a remarkable ability to adapt themselves to the cultures into which they are introduced (Bastian 1993, Manning 1980). In terms of debates on cultural globalization, then, P/c appears to weigh in both for theories that stress processes of Western cultural domination and homogenization and those that emphasize the transformative power of indigenous appropriation and differentiation (Robbins 2003). In response to such seemingly contradictory assertions, it is hard to dispute Corten’s (1997) claim that the study of the cultural processes underlying P/c’s spread has been beset by a “lack of precision” (p. 321). As an initial remedy, one A nn u. R ev . A nt hr op ol . 2 00 4. 33 :1 17 -1 43 . D ow nl oa de d fr om w w w .a nn ua lre vi ew s.o rg A cc es s p ro vi de d by M ac qu ar ie U ni ve rs ity o n 02 /1 7/ 20 . F or p er so na l u se o nl y. 12 Aug 2004 9:40 AR AR225-AN33-06.tex AR225-AN33-06.sgm LaTeX2e(2002/01/18) P1: IBC GLOBALIZATION OF PENTECOSTAL AND CHARISMATIC CHRISTIANITY 119 might be tempted to refuse the distinction between indigenizing differentiation and globalizing homogenization and instead construe the globalization of Pente- costalism as a prime example of a widespread kind of cultural hybridization poorly captured by either of these alternatives. Yet, in reviewing the P/c literature, it is more productive to note how important these two frameworks of interpretation have been and ask what about P/c Christianity leads it to globalize in a way that appears to fit both of them (cf. Casanova 2001). Following Droogers’ (2001) call that scholars attend to the “specific characteristics of Pentecostalism” (p. 41) in discussing its globalization, I assume that specific elements of P/c culture have steered its globalization in this paradoxical direction. After a section defining P/c and briefly recounting its history, and another considering explanations for its growth, I focus on issues of globalization in three sections: one on world-breaking that examines how P/c introduces its own cultural logics while also preserving those of people’s traditional cultures; a second on world-making that considers how P/c’s globally diffused cultural form establishes churches that are organiza- tionally local and responsive to local cultural concerns; and a third that takes up the relation of P/c to the globalization of modernity by examining its impact in the three well-studied spheres of gender relations, political engagement, and economic behavior. HISTORICAL AND DEFINITIONAL ISSUES There is little standardization in social scientific usages of terms such as Pentecostal and charismatic, and several scholars have worried that these terms have become so broad as to be meaningless (Corten & Marshall-Fratani 2001b, p. 4; Droogers 2001, p. 46; Kamsteeg 1998, pp. 10–11). The problem stems from at least two sources. First, all of the terms social scientists use as analytic categories (Pentecostalism, charismatic Christianity, fundamentalism, evangelicalism, etc.) are also folk terms possessed of a wide range of meanings (Kamsteeg 1998, pp. 9–10). Scholars often employ the folk terms used by the groups they study, mistakenly assuming that local meanings will be widely understood by those working elsewhere. In the literature on Spanish-speaking Latin America, for example, scholars often translate the folk term evangélico as “evangelical” even when it is clear that the groups they are discussing are best understood, for comparative purposes, as P/c (Annis 1987, p. 76; Brusco 1995, pp. 14–15; Kamsteeg 1998, pp. 9–10; Smilde 1998, p. 287). A second reason for terminological confusion among social scientists is their lack of attention to P/c’s history. Although a basic historical sketch cannot solve all definitional problems, it can establish some useful terminological parameters. Pentecostalism’s roots lie in the Protestant evangelical tradition that grew out of the eighteenth–century, Anglo-American revival movement known as the Great Awakening. Evangelical Christianity, which includes such denominations as Methodists and Baptists, is marked by its emphasis on conversion. People are A nn u. R ev . A nt hr op ol . 2 00 4. 33 :1 17 -1 43 . D ow nl oa de d fr om w w w .a nn ua lre vi ew s.o rg A cc es s p ro vi de d by M ac qu ar ie U ni ve rs ity o n 02 /1 7/ 20 . F or p er so na l u se o nl y. 12 Aug 2004 9:40 AR AR225-AN33-06.tex AR225-AN33-06.sgm LaTeX2e(2002/01/18) P1: IBC 120 ROBBINS not born into the evangelical faith but must “voluntarily” choose it on the basis of powerful conversion experiences (often glossed as being “born again”). Because evangelicals believe