Pelkmans, Mathijs (2015) Mediating Miracle Truth: Permanent Struggle and Fragile Conviction in Kyrgyzstan. In: The Anthropology of Global Pentecostalism and Evangelicalism. New York University Press, pp. 177-194. ISBN 978-0814772607
Full text not available from this repository.Abstract
Given this chapter’s title, the reader may wonder about my position regarding miracle truth. Will I proceed by affirming the miracle’s divine nature, and potentially be accused of having lost the critical distance deemed indispensable for analysis? Or will I instead deny the possibility of divine intervention, and possibly be blamed for positivistic reductionism and atheist bias? If the former were the case, I might marvel at God’s inscrutable ways and suggest that the miracle demonstrated the power of prayer. That view is what Bakyt, one of the congregants, expressed to me after the service had ended and we were having lunch in a nearby chaikhana (tea house). If by contrast I adopted a secular perspective then I might analyze how the building up of momentum produced merely the illusion of a miracle. To prove this point I could have stressed that those who had suggested that Venera called out “Jesus” later mentioned that they were not sure and that perhaps it had only been a grunt. In fact, this is what Bakyt, the same Bakyt, told me a couple of weeks after the events, when it turned out that Venera had not made further progress in her learning to speak. Despite their centrality in Pentecostal churches, miracles have rarely featured as an analytical theme in studies of Pentecostalism... That is, the socio-political context in which the miracle occurred was itself unstable. As I will go on to discuss, the unstable Pentecostal mission on the ‘post-atheist’ Muslim-Christian frontier offers a stark illustration of the effervescent as well as fragile qualities of Pentecostal conviction.
| Item Type: | Book Section |
|---|---|
| Subjects: | B Mission theology/theory > Conversion C Types of Christian Ministry > Medical mission G Christian traditions/Denominations > Pentecostal |
| Divisions: | Central Asia > Kyrgyzstan |
| Depositing User: | Katharina Penner |
| Date Deposited: | 29 Oct 2024 07:45 |
| Last Modified: | 29 Oct 2024 07:45 |
| URI: | https://ceeamsprints.osims.org/id/eprint/3096 |
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