The Global Portability of Pneumatic Christianity: Comparing African and Latin American Pentecostalisms

Abstract

This article argues that Pentecostal Christianity is able to spread so quickly across the globe because it provides its adherents with the conceptual tools to deal with desire and materialism in a world of limited means and lack. It thus offers adherents an authentic belonging that is located globally as well as in the afterlife, rather than bound by geographical territory. This is particularly relevant for poor migrants – such as the African migrants in South Africa – who are faced with misfortune and lack of success. The Pentecostal imagination of what it means to be human offers them tools by which to remake their self and on which to build their hopes for a better future. It allows adherents to deal with the tension of a globalised world economy that imposes systems of exclusion and lack in third world areas.

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