Challenging Authority, Averting Risk, Creating Futures: Intersectionality in Interpreting Christian Ritual in Samoa

Abstract

This article explores how prayer group leaders manage and interpret risk-in-ritual during a home-based Pentecostal intercession. The group was formed in an office setting and led by three female managers. They interceded together during their lunch hour for over a year. The intercession was the one time the prayer group moved from the office to the home of one of the female leaders. This transition sparked a number of problems associated with group unity, which indicated risks-in-ritual. Managing risk was focused on managing forms of social difference such as age, gender, rank, and denomination. I draw from the feminist theory of intersectionality to argue that in the process of translating social differences of gender, age, rank, and denomination into spiritual differences in ritual, future ritual agendas are created. This future-creating capacity of ritual reinforced the authority of those who adjudicated and interpreted those risks-in-ritual. My example is taken from 14 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Samoa between 2011 and 2012.

Keywords:

• Samoa
• ritual
• intersectionality
• temporality
• Christianity

Acknowledgments

This research was funded by a Wenner Gren Dissertation Grant. Many thanks to Annie Claus, Casey Golomski, Anna Jaysanne-Darr, Christina Kwauk, and Ram Natarajan for providing helpful feedback on earlier drafts.

Notes

1. All names in this article are pseudonyms.

2. The Congregational Christian Church of Samoa reports having 192 churches and, according to the 2011 Census (Samoan Bureau of Statistics), 51,131 members or 31.8% of the population. The World Council of Churches reports that the Methodist church in Samoa has a membership of 35,983 (13.7% of the population) and 279 pastors (World Council of Churches); the 2011 census recorded membership to be 22,079 (Samoan Bureau of Statistics). The 2011 census recorded Catholic membership to be 31,221 (19.4% of the population).

3. The AOG reports having 3 Bible schools, 108 pastors, and 18,000 adherents (World Assemblies of God). The 2011 census recorded AOG membership to be 12,868—8% of the population (SBS). There are several evangelical churches local to Samoa, including Worship Center and Peace Chapel, as well as others that originate from elsewhere, including the Church of the Nazarene and Open Brethren. Membership for these churches is difficult to assess because the 2011 census includes all these evangelical churches as ‘other’.

4. All extracts are selections from transcripts of the prayer meeting on 12 June, 2012. Over the course of fieldwork I worked with ten research assistants transcribing and translating all the data presented here. The data selected for this chapter were then back-translated by one research assistant.