scholarly journals A more powerful sorcerer: conversion, capital, and Haitan transnational migration

2008 ◽  
Vol 82 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 3-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen E. Richman
Keyword(s):  
Transnational Migration ◽  
South Florida ◽  
Economic Success ◽  
Escape Route ◽  
Evangelical Protestantism ◽  
Protestant Churches ◽  
The Us ◽  
Evangelical Protestant

Focusses on how since the arrival of Haitians in South Florida since 1979 many of these increasingly joined and converted to Haitian evangelical Protestant churches, and came to disavow the combined Catholic and Vodou beliefs they adhered to. Author points out how this echoes trends in Haiti since the 1970s of increased conversions to evangelical Protestantism, with these localized/Haitianized Protestant churches later also moving to Florida. She further examines the motivations behind and meanings of these conversions, and argues that poor Haitian migrants construe conversion as a rhetoric and set of behaviours for mastering a model of individual, social, and economic success in the US. At the same time, she shows how this Protestant evangelical practice offers converts an escape route from familial and other obligations and interdependence connected to traditional, transnational domestic and ritual ties, that are also spiritually and magically enforced. Author however indicates that while the pastors model for their flock an assertive, separatist disposition, central to Protestantism's historical appeal, combined with a modern, ascetic approach, underneath this is often an instrumental logic aimed at instant money and private ambition. As these traditionally were illicit rewards of sorcery and magic, the pastors are seen by some as renewed and successful sorcerers. Author further examines the conversions relating these to the moral dialectic from Vodou, known as Guinea and Magic, mediating the conflicts between individualism and community, and gives examples of often pragmatic motivations for conversion. She thus concludes that Haitians' interpretations of their conversions are unique in that they are filled with their cultural concerns, images, and morality.

Charismatic, Pentecostal, and Evangelical Movements in Europe, the US, and Brazil

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Detlef Pollack ◽  
Gergely Rosta
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
Social Deprivation ◽  
Religious Change ◽  
Evangelical Protestantism ◽  
Secularization Theory ◽  
Explanatory Factors ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
Healing Rituals ◽  
The Us ◽  
Latin American Countries

The growth of Evangelical Protestantism and Pentecostalism is widely regarded as a potent argument against the validity of secularization theory. To explain this growth, Chapter 12 draws on theoretical approaches to analysing new social movements, which allows an expansion of the repertoire of explanations concerning religious change and a testing of alternatives to the models provided by secularization theory. To explain the worldwide growth and relative resilience of the Evangelical and Pentecostal movements, the chapter identifies a number of conditions and explanatory factors: cultural and social confirmation, religious syncretism, social deprivation, and the widespread magical worldview and broadly accepted spiritistic beliefs in Latin American countries that are conducive to the acceptance of Pentecostal experiences and healing rituals.

The Evangelical Discovery of History

2013 ◽  
Vol 49 ◽  
pp. 330-364 ◽  
Author(s):  
David W. Bebbington
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Churches Of Christ ◽  
England And Wales ◽  
Evangelical Protestantism ◽  
Protestant Churches ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Cross ◽  
The Church

‘From some modern perspectives’, wrote James Belich, a leading historian of New Zealand, in 1996, ‘the evangelicals are hard to like. They dressed like crows; seemed joyless, humourless and sometimes hypocritical; [and] they embalmed the evidence poor historians need to read in tedious preaching’. Similar views have often been expressed in the historiography of Evangelical Protestantism, the subject of this essay. It will cover such disapproving appraisals of the Evangelical past, but because a high proportion of the writing about the movement was by insiders it will have more to say about studies by Evangelicals of their own history. Evangelicals are taken to be those who have placed particular stress on the value of the Bible, the doctrine of the cross, an experience of conversion and a responsibility for activism. They were to be found in the Church of England and its sister provinces of the Anglican communion, forming an Evangelical party that rivalled the high church and broad church tendencies, and also in the denominations that stemmed from Nonconformity in England and Wales, as well as in the Protestant churches of Scotland. Evangelicals were strong, often overwhelmingly so, within Methodism and Congregationalism and among the Baptists and the Presbyterians. Some bodies that arose later on, including the (so-called Plymouth) Brethren, the Churches of Christ and the Pentecostals (the last two primarily American in origin), joined the Evangelical coalition.

Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
James D. Strasburg
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Third Way ◽  
Evangelical Protestantism ◽  
Protestant Churches ◽  
Global Engagement ◽  
Political Commitments ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Second World ◽  
Christian Nationalism

The introduction sketches out the theological, diplomatic, and political commitments of ecumenical and evangelical Protestantism in twentieth century America. It likewise discusses the twentieth-century origins of Christian nationalism and Christian globalism in American Protestant thought, surveying in particular how the two world wars and onset of the Cold War both activated and refined these competing theologies of global engagement. Beyond the American context, it outlines the German Protestant pushback to American efforts to reconstruct Germany on an American basis. Wrestling with the legacy of their own nationalist theologies, German Protestants drew on the devastation of the Second World War to outline a new “third way” theology that positioned Protestant churches as global mediators within the intense ideological landscape of the Cold War. When a growing number of American Protestants found themselves converted to this line of thought, it became clear that their efforts to remake Europe had in fact begun to remake them.

scholarly journals The Presbyterian Church and Zionism Unsettled: Its Antecedents, and Its Antisemitic Legacy

Religions ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (6) ◽  
pp. 396
Author(s):  
Cary Nelson
Keyword(s):  
Jewish People ◽  
Jewish State ◽  
Political Issue ◽  
Presbyterian Church ◽  
Protestant Church ◽  
Protestant Churches ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Gift ◽  
The Status ◽  
Apartheid Regime

The new millennium has seen increased hostility to Israel among many progressive constituencies, including several mainline Protestant churches. The evangelical community in the US remains steadfastly Zionist, so overall support for financial aid to Israel remain secure. But the cultural impact of accusations that Israel is a settler colonialist or apartheid regime are nonetheless serious; they are proving sufficient to make support for the Jewish state a political issue for the first time in many decades. Despite a general movement in emphasis from theology to politics in church debate, there remain theological issues at the center of church discussion. The Protestant church with the longest running and most well-funded anti-Zionist constituency is the Presbyterian church in the US. In the last decade, its Israel/Palestine Mission Network (IPMN) has produced several increasingly anti-Zionist books designed to propel divestment resolutions in the church’s annual meeting. The most widely debated of these was 2014’s Zionism Unsettled: A Congregational Study Guide. This essay mounts a detailed analysis and critique of the book which documents the IPMN’s steady movement toward antisemitic positions. Among the theological issues underlying debate in Protestant denominations are the status of the divine covenant with the Jewish people, the role that the gift of land has as part of that covenant, and the nature of the characterization of the Jews as a “chosen people”. These, and other issues underlying Protestant anti-Zionism, have led to the formation of Presbyterians for Middle East Peace (PFMP), a group, unlike IPMN, that supports a two-state solution. The competing positions these groups have taken are of interest to all who want to track the role that Christian denominations have played in debates about the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.

Part III Regimes and Doctrines, Ch.43 Transnational Migration, Globalization, and Governance: Theorizing a Crisis

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Chantal
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Transnational Migration ◽  
Economic Life ◽  
Central American ◽  
Life Changes ◽  
Economic Production ◽  
Global Power ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Intervention

This chapter emphasizes the role of political economy, and the ways in which global governance has affected (or failed to affect) it, in generating immigration crises. Going beyond politics toward political economy illuminates both the origins of US intervention in Central America, and the ways in which that intervention has shaped migration from the region. US involvement stemmed from global power struggles over the organization of economic production: namely, its concerns about the turn to socialism, particularly after the Cuban Revolution. If foreign policy origins stemmed from economics, often so did policy tools; such measures oriented Central American economies towards the US as a destination for its exports, and increased the Central American presence of US investors and imports. They also engendered profound changes in Central American economic life: changes that each in their own way have reinforced patterns contributing to the current migration surge.

New Missions with a New Generation: The Experiences of Korean American Churches and Missions

2019 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 174-182
Author(s):  
Dae Sung Kim
Keyword(s):  
Second Generation ◽  
Korean American ◽  
Korean Immigrants ◽  
Protestant Churches ◽  
Generation Immigrant ◽  
Immigrant Churches ◽  
The Us ◽  
New Challenges ◽  
New Generation ◽  
American Churches

Korean immigrants have continued to form Protestant churches in the US and to contribute to overseas missions. As the American-born second generation grows, however, ethnic congregations of Koreans are experiencing generational struggles. These new challenges represent the potential for Korean American churches to broaden their missionary perspective and empower their missionary practices. Through gathering and witnessing with the second generation, immigrant churches can transform their churches into missionary communities that evangelize and cooperate with other Asian Americans. Second-generation Christians can also lead the immigrant churches to reach other ethnic groups in the US beyond their Korean enclaves.

Central American-American Feminisms

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yajaira M. Padilla
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Production ◽  
Women Of Color ◽  
Intergenerational Relationships ◽  
Transnational Migration ◽  
The United States ◽  
Central American ◽  
American Women ◽  
Multiple Generations ◽  
Feminist Politics ◽  
The Us

Central American-American feminisms have come into existence within the recent span of the late 20th to early 21st century as communities of Central Americans have become more established within the United States and multiple generations of US Central American women have come of age. Central American-American feminisms are conceived of in a collective fashion and share some general characteristics. However, they are also characterized by their heterogeneity, reflecting the diversity of US Central American women and their emergent feminist politics. Among the key influences that have helped shaped Central American-American feminisms are women of color or Third World women feminisms. The theory making and feminist praxis that form the basis of Central American-American feminisms register many of the central tenets of the latter, including an emphasis on intersectionality and the notion of shared struggles against broader systems of dominations among women and peoples of color. Within the scope of these broader women of color feminist influences, Chicana feminisms have been particularly important, partly due to the cohabitation of US Central American and Mexican American/Chicano communities in areas such at the US Southwest. In as much as US Central American women identify with Chicana feminist paradigms and experiences of oppression, they also disidentify with them, responding with their own sense of US Central American feminist politics and paradigms that draw on their Central American roots and diasporic experiences. In keeping with their transnational or transisthmian nature and sensibilities, Central American-American feminisms also bear the imprint of the histories of oppression and resistance and of migration of Central American women. Indeed, such histories, and the ongoing struggles tied to them, are understood within US Central American feminist politics as ones that remain inherently linked to those of women in the Central American diaspora. This helps to explain why diasporic experiences and issues related to the legacies and traumas of war, transnational migration and family separation, intergenerational relationships between mothers and daughters, and notions of identity and belonging are prominent within Central American-American feminisms. Such issues and experiences are integral aspects of the everyday lives of US Central American women, immigrants and subsequent generations alike, and, as such, are foundational to US Central American feminist politics. The literature and cultural production, as well as scholarship, of US Central American women, both feminist and not, has been instrumental to the cultivation and emergence of Central American-American feminisms. Looking to such texts provides a useful means of helping to define what Central American-American feminisms are and to make discernible their general characteristics and limitations, the US and Central American-based influences that have shaped them, and the issues that drive them. Many of these works also push back against the multiple mechanisms and structures that have silenced multiple generations of Central American women in and outside of the isthmus. In this sense, such works do more than just offer fertile ground for exploring many key dimensions of Central American-American feminisms. They also constitute an example of US Central American feminist praxis.

Work, Autonomy, Belonging

2021 ◽  
pp. 25-42
Author(s):  
Ken R. Crane
Keyword(s):  
Housing Construction ◽  
Refugee Resettlement ◽  
Economic Base ◽  
Economic Success ◽  
Inland Empire ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
Self Reliance ◽  
The Us ◽  
Labor Recruitment ◽  
Resettlement Programs

Iraqi refugees arrived in the US at the onset of the Great Recession, just as the economic base of the Inland Empire—housing construction—had collapsed. This chapter follows several working- and middle-class Iraqi families through their economic difficulties and adjustment struggles. The most pressing theme to emerge in their narrative is the frustration of unemployment. Refugees are not granted entry based on employment eligibility or labor-recruitment criteria, yet refugee-resettlement programs, beginning in the 1970s with refugees from Southeast Asia, have been justified in terms of achieving economic self-reliance. Iraqi youths reflect on the meaning of economic success in America—the “money country”—and worry that the preoccupation with economic success could tear families apart.

A Moravian Mission and the Origins of Evangelical Protestantism among Slaves in the Carolina Lowcountry

2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 38-63
Author(s):  
Aaron Spencer Fogleman
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
South Carolina ◽  
Leadership Role ◽  
Global Missions ◽  
Evangelical Protestantism ◽  
Port Royal ◽  
White Resistance ◽  
Evangelical Protestant

This article investigates the German Moravian slave mission in South Carolina (1738-1740), including its role in beginning evangelical Protestantism among Lowcountry slaves. It documents responses of planters, townspeople, and especially slaves and shows how the mission was connected to the transatlantic evangelical Protestant awakening. Following Wesley’s brief encounter in 1737 and preceding Whitefield’s visit in 1740 and the subsequent slave revival in Port Royal, the Moravians offered sustained contact with the new religious style. Several slaves responded enthusiastically, including a woman named Diana of Port Royal, who played a leadership role, while others defiantly rejected their message as the religion of barbaric masters. Disease, white resistance after the Stono Rebellion, internal problems, et al. forced the mission to close, but its brief history reveals the interests, struggles, hopes, and fears of slaves, planters, and missionaries in the mid-eighteenth century and how they were connected to other Atlantic and global missions.

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