Reason to Believe: Cultural Agency in Latin American EvangelicalismEvangelical Protestantism has arguably become the fastest-growing religion in South America, if not the world. For converts, it emphasizes self-discipline and provides a network of communal support, which together have helped many overcome substance abuse, avoid crime and violence, and resolve relationship problems. But can people simply decide to believe in a religion because of the benefits it reportedly delivers? Based on extensive fieldwork among Pentecostal men in Caracas, Venezuela, this rich urban ethnography seeks an explanation for the explosion of Evangelical Protestantism, unraveling the cultural and personal dynamics of Evangelical conversion to show how and why these men make the choice to convert, and how they come to have faith in a new system of beliefs and practices. |
Contents
Part II Imaginative Rationality | 45 |
Part III Relational Imagination | 153 |
Epilogue | 223 |
Appendix A Status of Evangelical Respondents after Five Years | 225 |
Appendix B Methods and Methodology | 228 |
Appendix C Quantitative Analysis of Networks and Conversion | 237 |
Glossary of Spanish Terms | 243 |
References | 245 |
Index | 259 |
Other editions - View all
Reason to Believe: Cultural Agency in Latin American Evangelicalism David Smilde Limited preview - 2007 |
Reason to Believe: Cultural Agency in Latin American Evangelicalism David Smilde No preview available - 2007 |
Common terms and phrases
Accept the Lord action akrasia analysis argued asked Augusto barrio becoming Evangelical belief Bible brother Caracas causal chapter Chicago Press Christ Christian concepts concrete conflict confront context conversion crime cultural agency drugs dualistic economic El Caracazo Elster Emmanuel Church Enrique Evan Evangelical church experience explained faith healing family of origin fieldwork frequently friends gelical God’s Gospel hermanos household ical imaginative rationality individual interview Jesus Jorge José Juan Carlos Latin American Evangelicalism living with family look moral mother narrative neoliberal non-Evangelical Parque Central complex participant observation participation pastor Pentecostal Pentecostal Evangelicals person political portray problems prosperity theology Ramiro relationship religion religious conversion religious meaning religious practice Río Chico sectors Smilde social Sociology street substance abuse talk theory things told Ugeth University Press Venezuela Venezuelan Evangelicals Victory Outreach violence wife women Yonathon
Popular passages
Page 197 - Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!
Page 100 - The Dualism of Human Nature." Our intelligence, like our activity, presents two very different forms: on the one hand, are sensations and sensory tendencies; on the other, conceptual thought and moral activity. Each of these two parts of ourselves represents a separate pole of our being, and these two poles are not only distinct from one another but are opposed to one another. Our sensory appetites are necessarily egoistic: they have our individuality and it alone as their object. When we satisfy...
Page 102 - Religion is solely the creation of the scholar's study. It is created for the scholar's analytic purposes by his imaginative acts of comparison and generalization. Religion has no independent existence apart from the academy.
Page 101 - states that are essentially by-products" (Sour Grapes 43). Elster explains that "Some mental and social states . . . can only come about as the by-product of actions undertaken for other ends. They can never, that is, be brought about intelligently or intentionally, because the very attempt to do so precludes the state one is trying to bring about
Page 106 - LORD, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell; but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.
Page 180 - He defined agency as the stream of actual or contemplated causal interventions of corporeal beings in the ongoing process of events-in-the-world.
Page 100 - Our thought, like our actions, takes two very different forms: on the one hand, there are sensations and sensory tendencies; on the other, conceptual thought and moral activity. Each of these two parts of ourselves represents a separate pole of our existence, and these two poles are not only distinct from one-another but are opposed to one-another.
Page 152 - Men have functioned as subjects in the mode of governing; women have been anchored in the local and particular phase of the bifurcated world. It has been a condition of a man's being able to enter and become absorbed in the conceptual mode, and to forget the dependence of his being in that mode upon his bodily existence, that he does not have to focus his activities and interests upon his bodily existence. Full participation in the abstract mode of action requires liberation from attending to needs...
Page 119 - Thus, what appears to anthropologists today to be self-evident, namely that religion is essentially a matter of symbolic meanings linked to ideas of general order (expressed through either or both rite and doctrine), that it has generic functions/features, and that it must not be confused with any of its particular historical or cultural forms, is in fact a view that has a specific Christian history. From being a concrete set of practical rules attached to specific processes of power and knowledge,...
Page 119 - From being a concrete set of practical rules attached to specific processes of power and knowledge, religion has come to be abstracted and universalized.