Shared Experience: An Ethnographic Study of Evangelicalism and Charismatic Leadership in Santiago, Chile

Abstract

Systematically aiming toward a high number of converts, Evangelicalism and Pentecostalism has for a long time been considered to be the world’s largest growing religious movement next to Islam. In 2002 it was registered a total of 1.699.725 Evangelicals in Chile alone, which makes it the second largest religious group after Catholicism. Drawing on a five month long ethnographic fieldwork in Santiago, Chile this thesis explores the relationship between religion and social life at the Evangelical church Centro Cristiano Internacional (Centro Cristiano). This thesis seeks to illustrate some of the dynamic social structures that exist within the Evangelical community, and further how the Evangelical ideology shapes the lives of those involved. Drawing on Émile Durkheim, the thesis moreover aims to show how the individual and the collective meets during church meetings in a shared experience of embodied enjoyment, spirituality and community. Furthermore, people at Centro Cristiano have a tendency to describe their community as rather egalitarian. Interestingly, this stands in opposition to my own findings. I show throughout the thesis how there are tendencies of a hierarchical structure that put people into a system of charismatic inequality, and further how this structure is arranged according to a person’s spiritual symbolic capital. As my argument goes, church leaders hold a strong central position within the Centro Cristiano, and they influence how the lay members interpret their own positions within the community.