Consuming Is Believing: Pentecostal Material Culture in Argentina

ALGRANTI JOAQUIN

The Pentecostal World

Routledge

Lugar: New York; Año: 2023; p. 431 - 442

Two of the predominant features of the Pentecostal experience, which set it apart both from Catholic and unaffiliated individuals, consist in regular attendance to the temple and the key role played by consumption of a spiritually marked material culture. Pentecostalism suggest biographical projects that include a moment of decategorization of hegemonic cultural patterns, followed by recategorization cycles in a new religious language in which church sociabilities and different kind of goods design alternative lifestyles. These new believes are not exempt from examinations, disenchantment and negotiations which are constitutive to the act of inhabiting religious worlds.In this chapter, we will focus on the system of objects that make up the Evangelical material culture, exploring how books and movies participates both in church life and in moments of leisure, entertainment and enjoyment. Consumption expresses, in this case, a kind of social relation, i. e., a potentially creative way of joining a given religious project (Hervieu Léger 2004, 185-205; Atglas 2014). The goal of this article is to analyze the relationship between religion and consumption through the Evangelical material culture produced in Argentina. This work is divided into three parts. (a) In the first one, we intend to describe the preferences related to written, audiovisual and iconographic culture with Evangelical markings, based on quantitative data.(b) We will then in the second part study two examples of cultural goods manufactured by the organization Argentina Oramos por Vos (AOXV) [Argentina we pray for you], which express a local refraction of global Pentecostal themes related to the problem of unity and growth. In the first example, we will address the structure and content of reading materials designed to lead a national prayer campaign. In the second one, we will tackle the main features of Christian short film La deuda [“The Debt”]. (c) Both cases will allow us to explore the spiritual marking and unmarking strategies of cultural goods and the reflexive development of a common project concerned with two main tasks: the unity of the evangelical landscape -through Pentecostal leadership- and the making of an “extra-religious” offer where consumption, leisure and spirituality converge.