UC San Diego

This dissertation on the broader political implications of Pentecostal growth in Latin America, and El Salvador specifically, is based on fifteen months of ethnographic research in San Salvador. The main ethnographic research site is Misión Cristiana Elim, a cellular Pentecostal mega-church in San Salvador in the midst of a process of shifting to integral mission, transforming from a traditional Pentecostal church to one that embraces social justice concerns. Starting analysis from religious categories, and adopting the broad definition of politics as “social world-making,” I pose the question of what forms of social world-making are implied in a Pentecostal model for collective change that hinges on individual transformation through conversion. My argument pivots on two observations: (1) individual transformation, central in Pentecostal cosmology cross-culturally, is typically conceived of as “moral self-work,” and (2) the Pentecostal subject (as enacted in El Salvador) is intrinsically relational. Building on this, I posit that moral self-work following conversion is also intrinsically relational, expressing what I call “a Pentecostal ethics of care.” By analyzing the latter, I argue, insight is gained in Pentecostal forms of social world-making. This analysis reveals two overlapping, yet quite distinct Pentecostal forms of world-making, which I refer to respectively as “Church-Building” and “Kingdom-Building.” On both models, social change is envisioned primarily as the incremental sum of numerous small individual changes. In “Kingdom-Building,” however, individual Christians are called to denounce structural forms of injustice. Neither of these Pentecostal models of social world-making map fully onto neoliberalism, the hegemonic secular form of world-making in post-war El Salvador. This study contributes to the anthropological understanding of Christian subjectivity, and to the debate on the political implications of Pentecostal/Charismatic Christian growth. Mapping the relationship between beliefs, subjectivities and forms of social action in El Salvador, this study also contributes to the growing scholarship on El Salvador.