Portable power, religious swag: mediating authority in Brazilian Neo-Pentecostalism
This study is an ethnographic and conceptual analysis of religious objects, their uses, and mediation of authority within the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God (Universal Church) in Brazil. Drawing on scholarship within media studies, religion and media, and material religion, I distinguish bet...
| Publié dans: | Material religion |
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| Auteur principal: | |
| Type de support: | Électronique Article |
| Langue: | Anglais |
| Vérifier la disponibilité: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | En cours de chargement...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Publié: |
Taylor & Francis
[2018]
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| Dans: |
Material religion
Année: 2018, Volume: 14, Numéro: 3, Pages: 389-413 |
| Sujets / Chaînes de mots-clés standardisés: | B
Brazil
/ Pentecostal churches
/ Sacred object
/ Power
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| RelBib Classification: | CB Spiritualité chrétienne KBR Amérique Latine KDG Église libre |
| Sujets non-standardisés: | B
material microstructure
B religious objects B Universal Church of the Kingdom of God B religion and media B Authority B Neo-pentecostalism B Brazil B Mediation |
| Accès en ligne: |
Volltext (Resolving-System) |
| Résumé: | This study is an ethnographic and conceptual analysis of religious objects, their uses, and mediation of authority within the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God (Universal Church) in Brazil. Drawing on scholarship within media studies, religion and media, and material religion, I distinguish between artifacts used to cement implicit contracts between Universal Church followers and their church community, which I call contractual media, or swag, and those that followers bring to meetings to be blessed and then take home to mediate both good and evil forces in family, work, and social life-these I call portable media. While portable object media are seen by their owners as powerful tools, contractual media, on the other hand, create implicit power relations that keep followers tied to the institutional church in a reciprocal exchange predicated upon expected prosperity as evidence of faithful attendance, fidelity, and personal sacrifice. The physical exchange of material goods in religious spaces constitutes a perpetuation rather than a disruption of institutional religious authority. As infrastructure, contractual object media establish and maintain conditions for otherwise mundane materials to mediate power on a daily basis. Through attention toward portable and contract object media, as part of what I am calling material microstructure, we can further complicate religious authority as it is mediated through objects, not just in one-way flows but as dynamic exchanges and trade-offs between personal empowerment and institutional control. |
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| ISSN: | 1751-8342 |
| Contient: | Enthalten in: Material religion
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1080/17432200.2018.1488506 |