The Problem with Presence: The Ambiguity of Mediating Forms in Ifugao Pentecostal Rituals

ABSTRACT

For members of the Pentecostal congregation Christ is the Answer Church in the highland province of Ifugao, the Philippines, Sunday services are important rituals with which they address societal and environmental problems. Through mediating forms such as testimony, singing praise and worship songs and praying, they attempt to make God present and thus bring about societal transformations. However, as I show in this article, these mediating forms contain also the possibility for the presence of Satan, and in many cases, the actual outcome of these mediating forms remains uncertain. While many have debated the ‘problem of presence’, this article draws on the ambiguity of mediating forms and demonstrates the problems that presence potentially creates. I use this case further for developing an approach to rituals that goes beyond the instrumental view on rituals that has often dominated anthropology and which emphasises their hazardous character.

KEYWORDS:

• Pentecostalism
• ambiguity
• rituals
• problem of presence
• liminality

Acknowledgements

This article grew out of an original draft that was discussed at a workshop in Oslo as part of the Anthropos and the Material project. I would like to thank those who attended and commented upon the draft, including Tom Bratrud, Signe Howell, Thorgeir S. Kolshus, Benedikte V. Lindskog, Keir Martin, Maya Mayblin, Matt Tomlinson, Jone Salomonsen, and Joe Webster. I will especially extend my thanks to the two anonymous reviewers whose comments were very helpful.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Fieldwork for this paper was conducted in 2007–2008.

2 Romans 12:12.

3 In part of the ethnographic descriptions, I include myself as an active participant. This is not because I was in any way a Pentecostal Christian myself. Indeed, I stressed several times for my Pentecostal collaborators that I was not, although they seemed to see the Holy Spirit working with me, as they said. I did, however, try as best as I could to be a respectful member of the congregation by singing, dancing and praying during services.

4 Conflicts between Pentecostals and non-converts took a variety of other forms as well. Many of the wealthier tourist lodge owners in Banaue were members of Pentecostal congregations, and some villagers pointed out the paradox of them profiting on tourists coming to see the ‘pagan’ Ifugao while on the other hand condemning such traditional practices. A few years earlier, I did fieldwork in the area primarily with non-converts, and when I returned to do research also on Ifugao Pentecostal practices, some of my friends found this quite disturbing.

5 See Cannell (2001) and Rafael (2005) for similar present-oriented divine reciprocations in Filipino Christianity.

6 For those who had newly converted to Pentecostalism, testifying at a Sunday service ritual was of absolute importance. Baptism did not play a major part in CITAC ritual practices. Indeed, during the year I spent there, no baptisms were performed at all. Testifying became all the more important, since this was considered one of the first steps in conversion and an action that initiated one’s relation with God.

7 That tongues were a language or a discourse was, however, uncertain. While Harkness (2017) argues that although glossolalia impose strict limits on language, the insistence by congregation members that this is still language implies an ideological commitment to language itself. While several linguistic limits where identifiable also in the CITAC case, the emphasis on flow and embodied sensation in praying and tongues suggests, I would argue, that the sensational performativity of these practices were foregrounded (Bialecki 2017: 139).