(Page 2 of 22) - Engendering Charismatic Economies: Pentecostalism, Global Political Economy, and the Crisis of Social Reproduction authored by Barker, Isabelle.

Pentecostalism is the fastest growing religion in the world today. A number of explanatory
theories exist, but in this paper, I hone in on the nexus between economic restructuring and
Pentecostalism to explore this extraordinary expansion. Bringing together the work of
feminist political economists and of Karl Polanyi, I argue that neo-liberal globalization
threatens mechanisms for meeting social reproductive needs. Neo-liberalism cannot meet
these needs on its own, and I suggest that Pentecostalism addresses these gaps, effectively
embedding neo-liberal economic policies. It does so by facilitating norms and practices on
the part of individual adherents to provide for the care work required for human
reproduction; to adopt norms required of a neo-liberal labor force; and, to embrace the kind
of transnational social identity that is compatible with labor migration and global markets.

"The Pentecostals do not have a social policy, they are social policy."

While radical forms of politicized Islam have received much attention in the wake of
contemporary geopolitics, there exists another front in the global convergence of religion and
politics: the rapid expansion of Pentecostalism, particularly in Latin America, parts of Asia, and
sub-Saharan Africa.

A form of Protestant theology and charismatic worship that emerged at the

beginning of the 20

century in the United States, a century later, Pentecostalism has hundreds of

millions of adherents worldwide and is the fastest growing religion in the world. Pentecostalism
has been studied from a number of perspectives; in this paper, I will focus on the relationship
between the Pentecostal Movement and the global political economy, focusing on the
Movement's remarkable expansion as mutually constitutive with neo-liberal economic
restructuring. In my discussion, I identify Pentecostalism as a salient locus of power within what
Hedley Bull (1977) described as a "neo-medieval political order" of overlapping sites of power
sharing authority with the national state. Within this fragmented organization of political
institutions, in many parts of the world, Pentecostal churches have come to function as non-state
sites addressing social needs that have gone unmet by the state due to austerity policies or to
ideological shifts surrounding welfare state policies. Secondly, the individualist theology and
charismatic practices along with the organization of community within churches, harmonize well
with shifting modes of production and globalizing markets, purveying values that support the
informalization of the labor market, the influx of foreign commodities crossing national borders,
increased labor migration, and the rapid transformation of local communities.

In the discussion that follows, I will briefly sketch the contours of neo-liberal globalization by
exploring the effects of neo-liberal economic policies on governance and social policy. Neo-
liberal globalization is also marked by shifts in production and in exchange, both of which have
been transformed by neo-liberal economic policy-making coinciding with technological
innovations. Having clarified the various aspects of neo-liberal globalization, I will offer an
overview of Pentecostalism—including its history, theology and worship practices, and its
evolution. I'll then place Pentecostalism and neo-liberal globalization alongside one another,
underscoring the points of overlap between the two to explore the ways that Pentecostalism and

This paper is dedicated to the memory of Carey McWilliams who sparked my interest in Pentecostalism and in

Karl Polanyi several years ago.

Jeffrey Gros (1987) 12.

Pentecostalism is expanding the most quickly across sub-Saharan Africa, Indonesia, the Philippines, South Korea

and Latin America (Anderson 2004: 281).