Everyday Migrant Pentecostalism
Changing Contexts for Life and Faith for Migrants and Migrant Churches in Norway
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/pent.43387Keywords:
Lived religion, Global Pentecostalism, Migrant religion, Migrant churches, World Christianity, Transformation, Pentecostal spiritualityAbstract
This article looks at migrant Pentecostalism in Norway and how a lived religion approach can help study how Pentecostal migrants’ personal and communal everyday lives intersect with religion. Based on a study of a cross-section of Pentecostal migrant congregations in Norway, the article focuses on how Pentecostal transnational networks and local migrant congregations provide key theological frameworks for interpreting migratory trajectories, life challenges, and faith experiences. More concretely, I ask what differences the migratory context plays for the understanding and practice of religion for Pentecostal migrants in Norway. As a part of this, attention is given to everyday contexts of migrant and their faith communities as well as how lived forms of religion can challenge and broaden our understanding of how and where (migrant) religion is practised today. I also ask how we need theological perspectives to understand these migrant contexts from a lived religion perspective. By mending perspectives from lived religion and lived theology, I ask how migrant theologies can relate and contribute to religious and societal challenges relative to migration. More generally, these perspectives can help nuance our understanding of what constitutes migrant Norwegian and European Pentecostalism today and shed contextual light on religion’s role in understanding migration.
References
Adedibu, B. 2013. “Reverse Mission or Migrant Sanctuaries? Migration, Symbolic Mapping, and Missionary Challenges of Britain’s Black Majority Churches”. Pneuma 35(3): 405–23. https://doi.org/10.1163/15700747-12341347
Adogame, A. 2013. The African Christian Diaspora: New Currents and Emerging Trends in World Christianity. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
Ammerman, N. 2013. Sacred Stories, Spiritual Tribes: Finding Religion in Everyday Life. New York: Oxford University Press.
Ammerman, N. 2014. “Paul Hanly Furfey Lecture Finding Religion in Everyday Life”. Sociology of Religion 75(2): 189–207. https://doi.org/10.1093/socrel/sru013
Ammerman, N. 2016. “Lived Religion as an Emerging Field: An Assessment of its Contours and Frontiers”. Nordic Journal of Religion and Society 29(2): 83–99. https://doi.org/10.18261/issn.1890-7008-2016-02-01
Anderson, A. 2004. An Introduction to Pentecostalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Aschim, A. et al. 2016. Kristne migranter i Norden. Kykjefaglig profil 28. Kristiansand: Portal.
Benyah, F. 2019. “Pentecostalism, Media, Lived Religion and Participatory Democracy in Ghana”. PentecoStudies 18(2): 155–77. https://doi.org/10.1558/pent.38945
Carling, J. 2018. “The Complexity of Global Migrations”. Aula Mediterrània 62(18): 4.
Carling, J., Erdal, M. and Ezzati, R. 2014. “Beyond the Insider–Outsider Divide in Migration Research”. Migration Studies 2(1): 36–54. https://doi.org/10.1093/migration/mnt022
Cartledge, M. 2010. Testimony in the Spirit: Rescripting Ordinary Pentecostal Theology. Farnham: Ashgate.
Cezula, N. 2015. “Reading the Bible in the African Context: Assessing Africa’s Love Affair with Prosperity Gospel”. Stellenbosch Theological Journal 1(2): 131–53. https://doi.org/10.17570/stj.2015.v1n2.a06
Connor, P. 2014. Immigrant Faith: Patterns of Immigrant Religion in the United States, Canada, and Western Europe. New York: NYU Press.
Csordas, T. 2011. “Ritualization of Life”. In M. Lindhardt (ed.), Practicing the Faith: The Ritual Life of Pentecostal-Charismatic Christians, 129–51. New York: Berghahn Books.
DAWN. 2010. Kartlegging av migrantmenigheter i Oslo [Mapping of Migrant Churches in Oslo]. Oslo: DAWN Norge.
DAWN. 2013. Nasjonal kartlegging av migrantmenigheter [National Mapping of Migrant Churches]. Oslo: DAWN Norge.
Desta, L. 2018. “Migrasjon og norsk kirkeliv: Afrikanske og asiatiske menigheter i Norge”. In O. Tjørholm (ed.), Kirkesamfunnene i Norge: Innføring i kirkekunnskap, 295–312. Oslo: Cappelen Damm Akademisk.
Desta, L. 2019. Faglig rapport om migrantmenigheter. Oslo: Flerkulturelt kirkelig nettverk i Norges kristne råd.
Drønen, T. and Eriksen, S. 2015. “‘Av alle folkeslag, stammer, folk og tungemål’: Mangfold i den globale kirke i Rogaland”. In A. R. Solevåg and A. Kalvig (eds), Levende religion: Globalt perspektiv – lokal prasis, 106–31. Stavanger: Hertervig akademisk.
Erdal, M. B. 2016. “Innenfra, utenfra og tredjeposisjoner? Refleksiv posisjonalitet i forskning blant katolikker i Norge” [“Insider, outsider or third positions? Reflexive positionality in research among Catholics in Norway”]. In A. Aschim, O. Hovdelien and H. K. Sødal (eds), Kristne migranter i Norden [Christian migrants in the Nordic countries]. Kristiansand: Portal.
Eriksen, S. 2015. “The Epistemology of Imagination and Religious Experience: A Global and Pentecostal Approach to the Study of Religion?” Studia Theologica – Nordic Journal of Theology 69 (1): 1–29. https://doi.org/10.1080/0039338X.2015.1028104
Eriksen, S. 2016. “Church of Pentecost International: Fortellingen om en migrantmenighet i Oslo”. In A. Aschim et al. (eds), Kristne migranter i Norden, 190–207. Kristiansand: Portal forlag.
Eriksen, S. 2020. “Flyktige rom og tynne steder: En transnasjonal og spatial analyse av pentekostale migrantmenigheter i Norge”. In K.-W. Sather and A. Aschim (eds), Rom og sted: Religionsfaglige og interdisiplinære bidrag, 67–92. Oslo: Cappelen Damm Akademisk.
Eriksen, S., Drønen, T. and Løland, I. 2020. “African Migrant Christianities: Delocalization or Relocalization of Identities?”. In K. Lauterbach and M. Vähäkangas (eds), Faith in African Lived Christianity: Bridging Anthropological and Theological Perspectives, 227–48. Leiden: Brill.
Frederiks, M. 2019. “‘Microcosm’ of the Global South: The Discursive Functionality of Migrant Christianity in World Christianity Discourses”. Exchange 48(4): 313–33.
Henriksen, J. 2016. “Everyday Religion as Orientation and Transformation: A Challenge for Theology”. Nordic Journal of Society and Religion 29(1): 36–51. https://doi.org/10.18261/issn.1890-7008-2016-01-03
Jenkins, P. 2011. The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity. 3rd edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Johnson, T. et al. 2017. “Five Hundred Years of Protestant Christianity”. International Bulletin of Mission Research 41(1): 41–52.
https://doi.org/10.1177/2396939316669492
Keener, C. 2016. Spirit Hermeneutics: Reading Scripture in Light of Pentecost. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.
Kivisto, P. 2014. Religion and Immigration. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Marti, G. 2016. “Found Theologies versus Imposed Theologies: Remarks on Theology and Ethnography from a Sociological Perspective”. Ecclesial Practices 3(2): 157–72. https://doi.org/10.1163/22144471-00302002
McGuire, M. 2008. Lived Religion: Faith and Practice in Everyday Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Omenyo, C. 2005. “From the Fringes to the Centre: Pentecostalization of the Mainline Churches in Ghana”. Exchange 34(1): 39–60.
https://doi.org/10.1163/1572543053506338
Orsi, R. 2002. “Is the Study of Lived Religion Irrelevant to the World We Live in? Special Presidential Plenary Address, Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, Salt Lake City, November 2, 2002”. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 42(2): 169–74. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-5906.t01-1-00170
Pries, L. 2001. “The Disruption of Social and Geographic Space: Mexican–US Migration and the Emergence of Transnational Social Spaces”. International Sociology 16(1): 55–74. https://doi.org/10.1177/0268580901016001005
Robbins, J. 2010. “Anthropology of Religion”. In A. Anderson et al. (eds), Studying Global Pentecostalism: Theories and Methods, 156–78. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Robbins, J. 2011. “The Obvious Aspects of Pentecostalism: Ritual and Pentecostal Globalization”. In M. Lindhardt (ed.), Practicing the Faith: The Ritual Life of Pentecostal-Charismatic Christians, 49–67. New York: Berghahn Books.
Robbins, J. 2020. “World Christianity and the Reorganization of Disciplines: On the Emerging Dialogue between Anthropology and Theology”. In K. Lauterbach and M. Vähäkangas (eds), Faith in African Lived Christianity: Bridging Anthropological and Theological Perspectives, 15–37. Leiden: Brill.
Sanneh, L. 2003. Whose Religion is Christianity? The Gospel Beyond the West. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.
Saunders, J., Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, E. and Snyder, S. (eds). 2016. Intersections of Religion and Migration: Issues at the Global Crossroads. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Streib, H., Dinter, A. and Söderblom, K. (eds). 2008. Lived Religion: Conceptual, Empirical and Practical-Theological Approaches: Essays in Honor of Hans-Günter Heimbrock. Leiden: Brill.
Vähäkangas, M. and Lauterbach, K. 2020. “Faith in African Lived Christianity – Bridging Anthropological and Theological Perspectives: Introduction”. In K. Lauterbach and M. Vähäkangas (eds), Faith in African Lived Christianity: Bridging Anthropological and Theological Perspectives, 1–11. Leiden: Brill.
Wariboko, N. 2018. The Split God: Pentecostalism and Critical Theory. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Wilkinson, M. and Althouse, P. 2012. “Pentecostalism as Lived Religion”. Canadian Journal of Pentecostal-Charismatic Christianity 3: i–iv.
Williams, R. 2010. “Space for God: Lived Religion at Work, Home, and Play”. Sociology of Religion 71(3): 257–79. https://doi.org/10.1093/socrel/srq048
