WASE · West African Pentecostal Christianity in Southern Europe. Engendered Spaces, Spiritual Power and Aesthetic Practices

West African Pentecostal Christianity in Southern Europe. Engendered Spaces, Spiritual Power and Aesthetic Practices

Christianity is redefining historical configurations of power in contemporary global societies. Roman Catholicism and Pentecostalism, in their various expressions, are at the forefront of these historical changes. Interestingly, there are considerable reciprocal suspicions between Catholics and Pentecostals and despite various attempts to establish a fruitful dialogue through ecumenical initiatives, tensions and ambiguities still remain. Rather than focusing on the apparently irreconcilable disagreements and improbable dialogue between African Pentecostalism and Roman Catholicism, the research sheds light on the great contradiction of Pentecostal anti-Catholicism and Catholic anti-Pentecostalism that characterizes some of the most interesting features of Christianity of the twenty-first century The research project focuses on the encounter between Roman Catholicism and African Pentecostalism in an intriguing “contact zone”: Italy. Home of Catholicism and seat of the papacy, Italy has over the last thirty years become the destination of a significant migratory flow from Western Africa, specifically from Nigeria and Ghana. Along with their suitcases and dreams of a brighter future, these migrants have also brought with them their own form of Pentecostalism, shaped by their different cultures and religious formations. On the basis of a detailed multi-sited ethnographic research, interviews, and participant observation the research puts the Pentecostal aesthetics of presence in relationship with the social condition of Africans in Italy. examines The study focuses on the politics of African Pentecostals’ aesthetics, practices, and material culture –sacramental objects, images, dresses, and adornments- meant to communicate religious messages and spiritual power and redefine the embodied nature of urban religious experiences in European cities and societies. The term ‘aesthetic’ is used here in the sense of the Greek aisthesis, or perception of the world with the five senses and its interpretation through these perceptions. The concept of aisthesis underscores the sensory dimension of aesthetic experiences as opposed to the traditional focus on intellect and metaphysics. Religious aesthetics refers to the sensory engagement of humans with the divine and with one another, generating particular sensibilities, and forming religious subjects. Religious aesthetics shape shared ideas, emotions, moods, values and practices, and sustain collective identities within a particular religious space, city, or nation. Religious aesthetics are historically generated and emerge over time and are a productive point of entry into processes of religious transformation and negotiation of power. In fact, such aesthetics are not outside of power structures but enmeshed with them. In this sense, religious aesthetics may also be a site of potentiality and creation and thus a political resource for a critique of dominant orders. In Italy, African Pentecostals’ aesthetics not only mediate divine and supernatural power but also respond to the politico-aesthetic power structures of the Catholic Church and to the ethno-religious politics of the nation-state. The Pentecostal’s politics of aesthetics do not appear in conventional arenas of government, political parties, public politics and social activism. They appear in the Pentecostal churches that populate the suburbs of the Italian cities. However, what African Pentecostals do in their churches is not separated from politics. This study rejected any a priori notion of what is religious or political, and instead stressed how, on is also a mode of creation political subjects. Intriguingly, among these African Pentecostals pastors, there are also women who irrupt into Catholic society, making visible their presence and insinuating within the Catholic patriarchal order the possibility to visualize the unthinkable, such as to see African women migrants as priests in Italy. Navigating the ambivalent relations of power that they experience within and outside their religious communities, these women make their statement of emancipation and equality and tell their counter-narrative about the contemporary history of African female migration in Italy. The study creatively combines the new material and aesthetic approach to the study of religion and recent theoretical turn to the field of aesthetics and politics. It draws from various disciplines and field such as anthropology of Christianity, anthropology of media, cultural studies, political theory and political theology. The methodological approach of the research combines ethnography with photography and multimedia recordings. This approach aims at promoting creative ways of producing and disseminating knowledge that are suitable both for the academia (students, researchers, and lecturers) and the general audience. While this study will contribute to on-going debates in anthropology of Christianity and sociology of religion, theology, and migration study, it will also be of interest of religious and community leaders and civil society organizations working in the field of migration and integration policy, interreligious dialogue, and urban peace. The need for research and initiatives that contribute to the knowledge and understanding the role of new socio-religious actors in promoting (or limiting) European urban peace and intercultural dialogue is extremely important. Inter-religious and inter-faith dialogues are becoming an increasingly strategic issue on the European political agenda. However, the efforts to promote fruitful dialogues, closer ties and collaboration between religious communities within European societies are constantly imperiled by lack of understanding and knowledge of diverse religious traditions and cultural formations. Along with the work of other European research institutes and agencies, the specific insights coming from the research will support Europe’s capacity to respond to the societal challenge of accommodating new religious expressions. Research on new languages, categories and prisms to look at the relationship between religion and social change, as well as to understand the entangled relationship between religion and politics strongly contribute to the explorations of themes of central importance to Europe, particularly in relation to inclusion and social cohesion. Given the strong emphasis on inclusive growth and social cohesion expressed in the Europe 2020 Strategy, the results of this project can play a seminal role in bringing new knowledge and insights to bear on intercultural and interreligious dialogue and police making process. The results of this study were achieved through ethnographic fieldwork, intellectual and academic exchanges, research and experimentations of theories and methodologies for the study of religion. The project culminated in the publication of a monograph entitled “African Pentecostals in Europe. The Politics of Presence”, Harvard University Press (2016), a film documentary entitled “Enlarging the Kingdom. African Pentecostals in Italy”, a multimedia catalogue, a website, and several articles and book chapters. The documentary is accessible through the research website, along with the visual archive. This visual material and the multimedia catalogue are already part of teaching materials of several European, American and African Universities. They are indeed useful teaching and research tools for scholars and researchers studying religious pluralism in Europe, migrations and religion, African Pentecostalism, as well as visual anthropology and multimedia methods in Humanities. Project website: www.pentecostalaesthetics.net

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз