Charismatic Economies: Pentecostalism, Economic Restructuring, and Social Reproduction

Abstract

Pentecostalism is one of the world's fastest growing religions, expanding most quickly in Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, and parts of Asia. To make sense of this expansion in so many developing regions, I suggest that Pentecostalism fosters norms and behaviors that harmonize with neoliberal economic restructuring. I frame this theoretically with Polanyi's notion of double movement. In our current era of weakened state governance vis-à-vis neoliberal trade and fiscal policy, non-state sites of reaction have emerged. Pentecostalism is one such site, and, in contrast with Polanyi's example, I suggest that Pentecostalism has embedded the self-regulated aspects of neoliberal capitalism. I make this argument by using the feminist political economy theorization of social reproduction to interpret a number of empirical studies of Pentecostalism. Pentecostalism addresses dilemmas of social reproduction engendered by neoliberalism, and so may be said to embed this form of economic organization in human social life in a way that reinforces neoliberal capitalism.

Notes

¹ Jeffrey Gros, “Confessing the Apostolic Faith from the Perspective of the Pentecostal Churches,” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 9:1 (1987), p. 12.

² Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation (Boston: Beacon Press, 2001 [1944]). For excellent sets of essays on Polanyi's contributions to contemporary social science scholarship, see Politics & Society 31:2 (June 2003) and Kenneth McRobbie and Kari Polanyi-Levitt, Karl Polanyi in Vienna (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1999).

³ John Gerard Ruggie, “International Regimes, Transactions and Change: Embedded Liberalism in the Postwar Economic Order,” International Organization 36:2 (1982), pp. 379–415.

⁴ Allan Anderson, Introduction to Pentecostalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 281; see also Paul Freston, Evangelicals and Politics in Asia, Africa, and Latin America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).

⁵ For a similarly structured argument regarding the symbiotic dynamics of neoliberalism, see Wendy Brown, “American Nightmare: Neoliberalism, Neoconservativism, and De-Democratization,” Political Theory 34:6 (2006), pp. 690–714.

⁶ Though influenced by Polanyi, several contemporary scholars have parted with this interpretation, suggesting instead that liberal capitalism can be embedded in social relations. See, for example, Mark Granovetter, “Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness,” American Journal of Sociology 91:3 (1985), pp. 481–510, and more recently, and more implicitly, V. Spike Peterson, A Critical Rewriting of Global Political Economy (New York: Routledge, 2003).

⁷ David Held, Democracy and the Global Order (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995).

⁸ Polanyi, op. cit., p. 57.

⁹ In contrast with Marx and Engels for whom pre-capitalist societies suffered from “the idiocy of rural life” (The Communist Manifesto), Polanyi seems at times nostalgic for the past. For Polanyi, pre-capitalist economic activities were successfully embedded in cultures and mores that enabled the social sustenance of a community's members. This more positive appraisal is due largely to Polanyi's historical anthropological perspective.

¹⁰ See, for example, how Peterson, op. cit., p. 91, spins a critical feminist interpretation of social reproduction out of Polanyi's work.

¹¹ Isabella Bakker, “Social Reproduction and the Constitution of a Gendered Political Economy”, New Political Economy 12:4 (December 2007).

¹² Isabella Bakker and Stephen Gill (eds), Power, Production and Social Reproduction (New York: Palgrave, 2003), pp. 4, 32.

¹³ Bryan Roberts, “Citizenship, Rights, and Social Policy,” in Charles Wood and Bryan Roberts (eds), Rethinking Development in Latin America (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001), pp. 142–143.

¹⁴ Bryan Roberts, “Citizenship, Rights, and Social Policy,” in Charles Wood and Bryan Roberts (eds), Rethinking Development in Latin America (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001), 147; see also Bila Sorj, “Childcare as Public Policy in Brazil,” in Mary Daly (ed.), Care Work (Geneva: International Labor Office, 2001), pp. 120, 123.

¹⁵ Bakker and Gill, op. cit., pp. 32–36. See also Sorj, op. cit.

¹⁶ Saskia Sassen, Globalization and its Discontents (New York: New Press, 1998).

¹⁷ Guy Standing, “Global Feminization through Flexible Labor,” World Development 17:7 (1989); Peterson, op. cit.; Alejandro Portes and Kelly Hoffman, “Latin American Class Structures: Their Composition and Change during the Neoliberal Era,” Latin American Research Review 38:1 (February 2003), pp. 41–82.

¹⁸ Brigitte Young, “Financial Crises and Social Reproduction,” in Bakker and Gill, op. cit., p. 103.

¹⁹ Saskia Sassen refers to this process as the “feminization of survival” in “Women's Burden: Counter-Geographies of Globalization and the Feminization of Survival,” Journal of International Affairs 53:2 (2000), pp. 503–534.

²⁰ Polanyi, op. cit., p. 141.

²¹ A body of Polanyi-inspired feminist scholarship is also growing. This work has generally focused on the gendered and racialized aspects of the social dislocations set in motion by neoliberal restructuring. See all the essays in Bakker and Gill, op. cit. See also Lourdes Benería, “Economic Rationality and Globalization: A Feminist Perspective,” in Marianne Ferber and Julie Nelson (eds), Feminist Economics Today (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), pp. 115–134.

²² Peter Evans, “Fighting Marginalization with Transnational Networks: Counter-Hegemonic Globalization,” Contemporary Sociology 29:1 (January 2000), pp. 230–241; Stephen Gill, “Globalization, Democratization and the Politics of Indifference,” in James Mittelman (ed.), Globalization: Critical Reflections (Boulder, CO: Lynne Reinner, 1996); Valentine Moghadam, Globalizing Women: Transnational Feminist Networks (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005); John Gerard Ruggie, “Taking Embedded Liberalism Global: The Corporate Connection,” in David Held and Mathias Koenig-Archibugi (eds), Taming Globalization (Cambridge: Polity, 2003).

²³ Bernice Martin, “New Mutations of the Protestant Ethic among Latin American Pentecostals,” Religion 25 (1995), p. 101.

²⁴ Acts 2:3–4 (Revised Standard Version).

²⁵ Corinthians 12 and 14.

²⁶ Harvey Cox, Fire from Heaven (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 1995).

²⁷ Harvey Cox, Fire from Heaven (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 1995), ch. 7.

²⁸ Dispensationalism reflects the literal interpretation of passages from the Bible such that human history is understood to be made up of several stages. History will culminate in the separation of true believers and all others, destined for either eternal heaven or eternal hell. Anderson, op. cit., pp. 218–219.

²⁹ Dispensationalism reflects the literal interpretation of passages from the Bible such that human history is understood to be made up of several stages. History will culminate in the separation of true believers and all others, destined for either eternal heaven or eternal hell. Anderson, op. cit., p. 282.

³⁰ Dispensationalism reflects the literal interpretation of passages from the Bible such that human history is understood to be made up of several stages. History will culminate in the separation of true believers and all others, destined for either eternal heaven or eternal hell. Anderson, op. cit., p. 221.

³¹ Steven Brouwer, Paul Gifford, and Susan Rose, Exporting the American Gospel (New York: Routledge, 1996), pp. 197–198.

³² For example, Brouwer et al., drawing on the case of Guatemala, suggest that theological distinctions split along class lines, with the prosperity gospel appealing to middle-class Pentecostals around the world, while the older theology of strict personal discipline continues to be practiced by poor, working-class Pentecostals. Brouwer et al., op. cit., pp. 59–64.

³³ For example, Brouwer et al., drawing on the case of Guatemala, suggest that theological distinctions split along class lines, with the prosperity gospel appealing to middle-class Pentecostals around the world, while the older theology of strict personal discipline continues to be practiced by poor, working-class Pentecostals. Brouwer et al., op. cit., p. 198.

³⁴ David Barrett, George Kurian, and Todd Johnson, World Christian Encyclopedia, 2^nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).

³⁵ Some scholars have taken issue with how broadly Barrett et al. construe Pentecostal/Charismatic. See Anderson, op. cit., pp. 11–13. But the fact of explosive growth is uncontested.

³⁶ Brouwer et al., op. cit., p. 179.

³⁷ This is the point that Amy Sherman makes in her favorable appraisal of the coexistence of evangelical Christianity and economic restructuring, noting that the free market needs the kind of “moral-cultural context” provided by “orthodox Protestant communities” in order to function well. Amy L. Sherman, The Soul of Development: Biblical Christianity and Economic Transformation in Guatemala (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 18.

³⁸ Anthony Gill and Erik Lundsgaarde have gone so far as to develop a model using data from the World Values Survey and from the IMF and World Bank to argue that state welfare spending and religious participation are inversely related. This would suggest that in an era of welfare retrenchment, religious participation will go up. They interpret the “strong negative relationship” (abstract) between welfare state spending and religiosity as based on a “substitution effect” (p. 25). So, it would follow that in the case of welfare state retrenchment, religious institutions will substitute for the state by providing social services to attract parishioners. Anthony Gill and Erik Lundsgaarde, “State Welfare Spending and Religiosity: A Cross-National Analysis,” paper presented at the American Political Science Association National Meeting, Philadelphia, 2003.

³⁹ Hannah Stewart-Gambino and Everett Wilson, “Latin American Pentecostals: Old Stereotypes and New Challenges,” in Edward Cleary and Hannah Stewart-Gambino (eds), Power, Politics, and Pentecostals in Latin America (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997), p. 233.

⁴⁰ Hannah Stewart-Gambino and Everett Wilson, “Latin American Pentecostals: Old Stereotypes and New Challenges,” in Edward Cleary and Hannah Stewart-Gambino (eds), Power, Politics, and Pentecostals in Latin America (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997), p. 234.

⁴¹ Sorj, op. cit., p. 123.

⁴² Thanks to Kate Bedford for making this point in comments on an earlier draft.

⁴³ The pastoral authority demarcated here seems to contradict earlier forms of Pentecostalism, which de-emphasized pastoral leadership. Scholars suggest that this shift toward greater pastoral authority is the result of the gradual institutionalization of church communities, as well as the increased use of the mass media for evangelism.

⁴⁴ B. Martin, op. cit., p. 107; David Martin, Pentecostalism: The World Their Parish (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001).

⁴⁵ Elizabeth Brusco, “The Reformation of Machismo: Asceticism and Masculinity among Colombian Evangelicals,” in Virginia Garrard-Burnett and David Stoll (eds), Rethinking Protestantism in Latin America (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993), pp. 143–158; Carol Ann Drogus, “Private Power or Public Power: Pentecostalism, Base Communities, and Gender,” in Cleary and Stewart-Gambino, op. cit., pp. 55–76; Anne Motley Hallum, “Taking Stock and Building Bridges: Feminism, Women's Movements, and Pentecostalism in Latin America,” Latin American Research Review 38:1 (February 2003), pp. 169–186.

⁴⁶ Brusco, op. cit., p. 149.

⁴⁷ Anna Peterson, Manuel Vásquez, and Philip Williams, Christianity, Social Change, and Globalization in the Americas (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2001), pp. 9–10.

⁴⁸ Brouwer et al., op. cit., p. 246. For a fascinating analysis of the relationship between World Bank policies and the heterosexual “nuclearization” of family life, see Kate Bedford, The World Bank's Employment Programs in Ecuador and Beyond: Empowering Women, Domesticating Men, and Resolving the Social Reproduction Dilemma, unpublished dissertation, Department of Political Science, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, 2005.

⁴⁹ Brouwer et al., op. cit., p. 222.

⁵⁰ D. Martin, op. cit., p. 75.

⁵¹ Brouwer et al., op. cit., p. 26.

⁵² Brouwer et al., op. cit., p. 84, quoting Tom O'Dowd, a US pastor who presides over a poor congregation on the plantation island of Negros in the Philippines.

⁵³ Brouwer et al., op. cit., quoting Butch Conde, a Filipino pastor who presides over a mega-church in the Philippines.

⁵⁴ Brouwer et al., op. cit., p. 83, quoting Juan Vencer, the first non-Westerner to head the World Evangelical Fellowship. At that time, he was also appointed head of intelligence for the Armed Forces of the Philippines under the Ramos administration.

⁵⁶ Brouwer et al., op. cit., pp. 251–252.

⁵⁵ Brouwer et al., op. cit.

⁵⁷ Much of the following is drawn from B. Martin, op. cit., and “From Pre- to Postmodernity in Latin America: The Case of Pentecostalism,” in Paul Heelas (ed.), Religion, Modernity, and Postmodernity (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998).

⁵⁸ B. Martin, “New Mutations,” op. cit.

⁵⁹ B. Martin, “New Mutations,” op. cit., p. 111.

⁶⁰ B. Martin, “From Pre- to Postmodernity,” op. cit., p. 136.

⁶¹ B. Martin, “New Mutations,” op. cit., p. 110.

⁶² D. Martin, op. cit., p. 81.

⁶³ D. Martin, op. cit., p. 74.

⁶⁴ Brouwer et al., op. cit., p. 117.

⁶⁵ See also Malcolm Gladwell's discussion of the cellular structure of the largest church in the United States, Rick Warren's Saddleback Church in Orange County, California. Gladwell quotes Robert Putnam's positive appraisal for the church's capacity to organize small groups in what represents a “desert in social-capital terms” (p. 63). Gladwell also notes that the church serves as an alternate site for needs provision and even for fighting global poverty (p. 67). “The Cellular Church,” The New Yorker, September 12, 2005, pp. 60–67.

⁶⁶ Anderson, op. cit., p. 223

⁶⁷ Anderson, op. cit., p. 223

⁶⁸ Peggy Levitt, The Transnational Villagers (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2001).

⁶⁹ Rijk van Dijk, “Time and Transcultural Technologies of the Self in the Ghanaian Pentecostal Diaspora,” in André Corten and Ruth Marshall-Fratani (eds), Between Babel and Pentecost (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2001).

⁷⁰ Simon Coleman, The Globalisation of Charismatic Christianity: Spreading the Gospel of Prosperity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000)

⁷¹ Simon Coleman, The Globalisation of Charismatic Christianity: Spreading the Gospel of Prosperity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 68.

⁷² Van Dijk, op. cit., p. 221.

⁷³ Coleman, op. cit., p. 67.

⁷⁴ The passage reads: “Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven. And at this sound the multitude came together, and they were bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in his own language.” Acts 2:5–6 (Revised Standard Version).

⁷⁵ Coleman, op. cit., p. 67

⁷⁶ Coleman, op. cit., p. 67

⁷⁷ Nancy Folbre, The Invisible Heart: Economics and Family Values (New York: New Press, 2001).

⁷⁸ Karl Marx, “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right: Introduction,” in The Marx-Engels Reader, ed. Robert Tucker (New York: W.W. Norton, 1^st ed., 1972), p. 12.