![Sample our Humanities journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5939/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Humanities.jpg"})
Abstract
This article focuses on networks of South-American preachers, led by charismatic characters such as the Argentinean pastor Carlos Annacondia, who export themselves not only to countries within the Americas but also to Europe. The prevailing justification among Latin-American Evangelicals for undertaking this ‘reverse mission’ (Freston) is in the view that especially the ‘old’ Roman Catholic Europe is spiritually ‘cooled down’ and that the time is ripe for re-evangelizing it. This study analyzes the way in which network-based charismatic entrepreneurship has encouraged transnational imaginaries of re-conquering Europe spiritually, more specifically in terms of the meanings the members of these networks attribute to the ‘spiritual re-conquest’. I conclude by suggesting that, similar to flows from other regions in the global South, such as Africa, the much vaunted ‘reverse mission’ to Europe is vested with meanings that transcend the spiritual re-conquest as such. In the case of Latin America, this article argues, the chief motivation is symbolic: to strengthen the status of local churches and their leaders against the backdrop of a highly competitive religious market on the Latin-American sub-continent.
Notes
1 This study is located within the following projects: “Transnacionalisation religieuse des Suds: entre ethnicisation et universalisation", an international project supported by the French Centre National de Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) and co-ordinated by André Mary, Stefania Capone, and Kali Argyriadis; “Transnacionalização religiosa” of the Program of Capacitação de Aperfeiçoamento do Pessoal do Ensino Superior (CAPES)/Netherlands Universities Foundation for International Cooperation (NUFFIC), a partnership between the Programa de Pós-Graduação em Antropologia Social (PPGAS)/Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) and the Free University of Amsterdam; “Pentecostal Charismatic Research Initiative”, co-ordinated by Paul Freston. In another study (Oro and Mottier 193–202), we have also analyzed the Latin-American evangelical transnationalization towards Europe.
2. This is a Pentecostal church which was founded by Edir Macedo in 1977 in the city of Rio de Janeiro and which has become an economic and media empire in Brazil. This church owns the second largest television channel in Brazil, the Rede Record de Televisão. Moreover, this church’s presence in institutional politics is significant, as several of its pastors and bishops have been elected to political office.
3. David Miranda founded this church in São Paulo in 1962. Like the Universal Church, it, too, has an important presence in the media, but in radio rather than television. It has thousands of temples in Brazil.
4. A former military officer of peasant origins called Eusebio Joaquin Gonzalez founded La Luz del Mundo in 1926. Its early success was in Guadalajara, from where it spread across Mexico. Since 1964, it is run by Gonzalez’s son Samuel Joaquín Flores (De la Torre 22).
5. This concept is close to, but not synonymous with globalization and mondialisation. We agree with Marc Abélès (37–8) that the concept of globalization (a favorite in the Anglo-Saxon world) or mondialisation (a term preferred by the French) refers to “une accélération des flux de capital, d´êtres humains, de marchandises et d´images et d´idées. Cette intensification des interactions et des interconnexions produit des relations qui transcendent les frontières géographiques et politiques traditionnelles.” Therefore, for this French anthropologist, globalization has a double cross-border dimension: factual and imaginary. In other words, globalization is both a fact and an imagination.
6. The term ‘social networks’ was coined by Nielan Barnes in 1954. During the 1950s and 1960s, there was a boom in the use of this concept, which also became a method. In 1979, Jeremy Boissevain counted more than 1,000 articles that were published on this topic. The study of transnational social networks began in the 1970s, prompted by a series of conferences sponsored by the UN on themes such as the environment and women’s and human rights, following the increase of the number of NGOs around the world. During the 1990s, transnational networks came into sharper focus in the aftermath of the Rio-Eco 92 Conference, the 1995 World Conference on Women in Beijing, and the 1999 Seattle riots against the World Trade Organization (Barnes, Reilly and Pisani 63).
7. Ulf Hannerz (10–15) proposed the notion of symmetric and asymmetric ‘flows’ to describe spatial movements that also have a time dimension, against the classic center–periphery angle on global cultural exchanges.
8. For these authors (70), transnationalization refers to “toute relation qui, par volonté délibérée ou par destination, se construit dans l’espace mondial au-delà du cadre étatique national et qui se réalise en échappant au moins partiellement au contrôle ou à l´action médiatrice des États”.
9. Stefania Capone (237) also considers the nation state as a distinctive element in the terms ‘international’ (actions carried out by the state) and ‘transnational’ (actions carried out by social actors who belong or do not belong to organized groups that cross national borders). In the words of this Italian anthropologist, “Si le terme ‘international’ est normalement utilisé pour désigner des activités menées par des États-nations, le terme ‘transnational’ définit toute activité initiée et menée par des acteurs non-institutionnels, qu’ils soient des groupes organisés ou des individus qui croisent les frontières des États-nations”.
10. Interview granted on 16 June 2009 to Daniel Alves, at the time a PhD student in the Social Anthropology graduate program at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil.
11. Hilario Wynarczyk (87) underlines that “Mensaje de Salvación no es propriamente una iglesia, sino una organización para-eclesiástica de campañas evangelísticas, sanidad y liberación” (The Message of Salvation is not properly a church, but a para-ecclesial organization of evangelizing campaigns, health and liberation—author's translation).
12. Annacondia’s ministry has a web site (http://www.carlosannacondia.org) that offers to the public: 11 DVDs, which cover his campaigns, for 9 US dollars each; 23 CDs, for 5 dollars each; his books, among them the most famous, Oíme bien, Satanás (Listen to Me, Satan), translated into various language, for 3 dollars.
13. In his five-part testimony entitled “capturado por su fuego” (captured by its fire), available on his web site (see www.scataglini.com/, access date: 8 March 2013), Scataglini reports his conversion in the United States on the day of Pentecost in 1997.
14. Annacondia claims to maintain close relations with pastor Mikko Viljanen in Finland, whose church is based in the city of Kaarina; in France, his privileged relations are with pastor Freddy de Coster; in Italy, he collaborates frequently with pastors Salvatore Interlandi and Dario Scuoto in Naples.
15. Mariana Reinisch Picolotto is a PhD student who is part of the research team.
16. Real (plural reais) is the Brazilian currency; 1 Euro amounts to 2.7 reais.
17. For Mary (“Politiques” 135), the same explanatory key applies to movements of re-Africanization and re-Indianization that are taking place on both sides of the Atlantic.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Ari Pedro Oro
Ari Pedro Oro is Professor of Anthropology at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul in Porto Alegre, Brazil. He has published a number of books and articles on religion in Brazil and abroad. His current research is about the relationships between religion and politics in Brazil as well as the transnationalization of Evangelicals churches in Brazil and Europe. CORRESPONDENCE: [email protected]