Lived Religion, Pentecostalism, and Social Activism in Authoritarian Chile: Giving Life to the Faith

Abstract

evangelicalism in the US. Bjork-James’s conversations with a range of evangelicals— leaders and followers, promoters, critics, loyalists, and dissenters—are set within their broader contexts in a way that means intersectional dimensions are illuminated in all their complexity. The emerging, careful disentangling of human relationships, their development and complex orientation to faith, morality, and social life makes for compelling reading and at numerous points its subtlety warns against the kneejerk, stereotypical claims often made about this controversial movement. At the same time, we do not lose sight of the power dynamics of White evangelicalism either. Here, Bjork-James’s study is especially revealing, covering familiar ground (e.g. the tendency to present God and government as mutually exclusive) while also pressing the analysis to expose more novel patterns revealed through thick descriptions of her fieldwork. A striking example is the chapter on same-sex attraction, which explores how evangelicals privilege certain forms of ‘sexual citizenship’ over others. While acknowledging a range of sins (and insisting they are not ranked in order of severity), in practice, same-sex relationships are subject to much more vitriol than any others, “as though sex is the fastest way out of God’s benign kingdom, and cultivating the correct—heterosexual and gendered—sexual identities and desires is a requirement for remaining in this ethical world” (92). Bjork-James exposes the power of this embedded configuration of sexual-social order, deployed as a basis for condemnation, social exclusion, and family breakdown. By contrast, a later chapter attends to cases of evangelicals who have developed a more critical perspective on the ‘familism’ that has become predominant in their movement, including younger generations whose experience has led to them embracing a “broadened ethical paradigm” (128). The examples here are especially inspiring. Some of the individuals Bjork-James encountered remained conservative in their beliefs and values about family and the Christian life, but their experiences meeting others who were different had fostered a different tone in their rhetoric, one based on mutual respect, courtesy, and an openness to new knowledge. It is in throwing light on these complex liminal spaces between hard categories of difference that Bjork-James’s book is especially impressive.