{"title":"The Universal Church of the Kingdom of God in Australia: Local Congregants and a Global Spiritual Network","authors":"K. Openshaw","doi":"10.1558/jasr.37074","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"The Brazilian megachurch, the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God (UCKG), has a global network of branches. Its Australian headquarters is a dynamic spiritual space where ideas, people, material culture and spirits are exchanged from across the globe. This article follows the journey of a single vial of oil to illustrate the global flows that take place through the UCKG Australia. With each stop the vial accrues spiritual capital before its final destination. Drawing on two years of ethnographic research, I argue that the UCKG’s global networks allow congregants access to, and enables them to pass on, spiritual capital thus providing personal agency to overcome life difficulties via supernatural means. Through this vial’s journey, I will show how global religious practices are locally lived and highlight the local spiritual significance of globally mobile religious material culture.","PeriodicalId":41609,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Academic Study of Religion","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5000,"publicationDate":"2019-08-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"2","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal for the Academic Study of Religion","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1558/jasr.37074","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"RELIGION","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 2
Abstract
The Brazilian megachurch, the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God (UCKG), has a global network of branches. Its Australian headquarters is a dynamic spiritual space where ideas, people, material culture and spirits are exchanged from across the globe. This article follows the journey of a single vial of oil to illustrate the global flows that take place through the UCKG Australia. With each stop the vial accrues spiritual capital before its final destination. Drawing on two years of ethnographic research, I argue that the UCKG’s global networks allow congregants access to, and enables them to pass on, spiritual capital thus providing personal agency to overcome life difficulties via supernatural means. Through this vial’s journey, I will show how global religious practices are locally lived and highlight the local spiritual significance of globally mobile religious material culture.
期刊介绍:
The Journal for the Academic Study of Religion is a fully refereed interdisciplinary academic journal. The journal reflects the wide variety of research dealing with all aspects of the academic study of religion. The journal is committed to presenting cutting edge research from both established and new scholars. As well as articles, it publishes book and film reviews, conference reports, and the annual lectures delivered to members of its partner organisation, the Australian Association for the Study of Religion. The Journal for the Academic Study of Religion is published three times a year and issues alternate between thematic and regular issues. Regular issues include articles on any topic that bears upon the academic study of religion.