Migrant Pentecostalism and the rise of Latin American street preachers in Barcelona

ABSTRACT

Street preaching can be defined as a religious practice in which evangelists seek to spread their Christian faith and messages to unknown people in open-air and free transit spaces (e.g. parks, avenues, boulevards, squares). Because of the increasing presence of street preachers in the streets of Barcelona, Spain, encountering evangelists or ‘being approached’ has become intrinsic to the urban experience of some inhabitants. Using a qualitative methodology based on in-depth interviews and ethnographic observations, I explore why and how Pentecostal believers—many of whom are from Latin American backgrounds—engage in street preaching in Barcelona. In so doing, I seek to engage in conversations about the visibility of religious minorities’ performance in European urban settings and contribute to the ‘reverse mission’ debate in World Christianity as well as to the study of migrant Pentecostalism in Europe. I argue that, in order to understand why some Pentecostal Latin American believers venture into urban spaces, it is crucial to complement recruitment-based approaches with perspectives that re-conceptualise street preaching from a social, ethnic, and spatial standpoint. I suggest that street preaching intertwines with Christian beliefs, moral representations of the city, and ethnic concerns and acts as a critical medium through which street preachers claim a space for God in the city of Barcelona.

KEYWORDS:

• Street preaching
• migrant Pentecostalism
• evangelisation
• Latin American believers
• religious minorities
• Barcelona

Acknowledgements

I thank all my research participants, especially my interviewees for sharing their experiences. I would also like to offer special thanks to Mar Griera, Julia Martinez-Ariñó, and my fellow PhD students Mark McErlean and Kathryn Fredricks for their comments on previous drafts of this article. Ramon Macià Trepat provided invaluable assistance with data collection. The referees of the Journal of Contemporary Religion have generously helped to improve this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 The COVID-19 global health crisis—which affected Barcelona after this study was completed—posed new challenges to street preachers in Spain and beyond. However, many churches participating in this study were resolved to resume their street preaching activities when the pandemic receded and restrictions were lifted.

2 The Catalonian Government created this map in 2001. It served as my contact guide.

3 Bourgeois élites in Catalonia often view popular Catholicism and its uses of urban spaces (which, in Barcelona, is associated with immigration from southern Spain) with suspicion, perceiving its exuberance as distasteful and embarrassing (Griera and Burchardt 2020). According to many of my interlocutors, Catalonians do not offer much appreciation of Pentecostal street preaching either.

4 To protect the identities of the interviewees, all the names used in this article are fictitious.

Additional information

Funding

This work was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness through the project Expresiones religiosas en el espacio urbano en Madrid y Barcelona (Religious Expressions in Public Space in Madrid and Barcelona), of which Mar Griera was the Principal Investigator (Ref. CSO2015-66198-P).

Notes on contributors

Antonio Montañés Jiménez

Antonio Montañés Jiménez is a Margarita Salas postdoctoral fellow affiliated with the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography at the University of Oxford, UK, and ISOR-Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona, Spain. His research interests include the Anthropology of Christianity, Sociology of Religion, and Romani Studies. This article was awarded the Peter B. Clarke Memorial Essay Prize in 2020 by the BSA (British Sociological Association) Sociology of Religion Study Group. CORRESPONDENCE: Department of Sociology, Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona: ISOR, Edifici B., Campus UAB (Despatx B3-117), 08193 Bellaterra (Cerdanyola del Vallès), Barcelona, Spain.