Faith in Flux. Devaka Premawardhana
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subjects and objects as intertwined, of the self as inseparable from surroundings—sought to correct for founding phenomenologists’ emphasis on the ahistorical, transcendental ego (Zigon 2009). As with Kierkegaard, so too with Heidegger: commitment and passion, involvement and care, are constitutive of what it means to be human.
Mobility, by definition, also seems antithetical to contextual analysis. Social theorist Charles Taylor considers migration one of two quintessential expressions of what he calls modernity’s “great disembedding”—the ability “to imagine the self outside of a particular context” (2004: 55). The other, suitably enough for this study, is conversion. But there is no good reason to counterpose migration and milieu, conversion and context. Mobility always transpires within a field. Moreover, some contexts and some cultures promote mobility from within. A central argument of this book is that the Makhuwa culture, in the paradoxical way I use this term, is one; the Pentecostal culture is another. The more committed to either (in a Kierkegaardian sense) or involved with either (in a Heideggerian sense) that one finds oneself, the more prone one is to making moves: sometimes within it, sometimes beyond it. Hence, the title of this book, Faith in Flux, which conveys the idea of an inconstant faith, but also of faith in the virtue of inconstancy, and thus in any tradition that helps foster it.
By exploring existential mobility ethnographically, through fieldwork among a particular people in a particular place, I endeavor to show that contextual and cultural analysis is entirely compatible with the aims and assumptions of existential anthropology.32 Existential mobility is not only about going beyond what has been prescribed by custom or internalized as habit. It is, at least potentially, about going beyond because of what has been prescribed by custom or internalized as habit. Of Virginia Woolf’s famous line “I am rooted, but I flow” (1998: 83), one could posit a paraphrase befitting this point: I am rooted, so I flow.
The Peripheries of Pentecostalism
In the rural district of Maúa, no less than in the provincial capital of Lichinga, the few Pentecostal churches present have been tepidly embraced. The first to arrive was the African Assembly of God (Assembléia de Deus Africana, or ADA), which originated in Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) in 1968 but crossed national borders almost immediately.33 After establishing itself in Mozambique’s central provinces, nearest to Zimbabwe, the ADA gradually spread north. In 1992, it arrived in Maúa, brought by a local schoolteacher who discovered it in Cuamba. When I began my fieldwork in 2011, Maúa was home to one central ADA congregation in Maúa town and two congregations in outlying villages. At the central congregation I regularly observed twenty-five to thirty worshippers at Sunday services. Approximately half of these were vientes, those residing in Maúa town for employment purposes but who considered home to be elsewhere.
When I first met Pastor Simões, the locally born but externally trained head of the central congregation, he seemed proud to tell me that wherever he ministers he gathers congregants every morning for prayer. His enthusiasm waned, however, when I expressed interest in attending the next day. He may not have wanted me to see what I later learned to be the case—that the only regular attendees (except on Sunday) were Pastor Simões, his wife, and their children. The satellite congregations fared similarly. In Kaveya, the seven-hundred-person village where this book’s opening narrative—and most of its ethnographic material—is set, approximately a dozen adults regularly attended the local ADA’s Sunday services. (Here there were no weekday gatherings, nor any pretense of them.) The third ADA congregation, in another distant village, counted only four regular attendees who held their weekly meetings in one of their homes.
The other Pentecostal presence in the district was the Evangelical Assembly of God (Evangélica Assembléia de Deus, or EAD). Unlike the ADA, the EAD operated only in Maúa town. When it was brought by itinerant Brazilian missionaries in 2001, a few dozen individuals took part. But those numbers steadily declined. In 2004, the structure of the building disintegrated. It is common enough that mud walls incur damage during the rainy season. What varies is the level of commitment to replastering them. This time, when the church walls collapsed, so did the church. Yet six years later, slightly before I began fieldwork, the national EAD organization sent a young Mozambican pastor named Manuel to revive its Maúa ministry. He succeeded. On Sunday morning visits during my fieldwork year, I could always count on worshipping alongside twenty-five or so others. Yet most, even more so than at the central ADA congregation, were vientes.
Altogether, these numbers may seem paltry; relative to the district’s total population, they are. Either for simple distance from one or (an argument I elaborate in the Conclusion) for the reputation these churches have developed, most locals never set foot in the ADA or the EAD. At the heart of this study, though, are those who did. Whether identifying as members of a congregation or by chance living close to one, these men and women involved themselves situationally and selectively. While the relationship of vientes to the churches may have been more stable (though this is an open question), this book takes as its study population the vast majority of Maúa’s inhabitants who, by contrast to vientes, are locally born, Makhuwa-speaking, and economically disadvantaged. Insofar as they relate to Pentecostalism, I argue, they do so powerfully, but they do not do so permanently.
Pentecostalism is only the most recent religious body to arrive in Maúa. Already on the scene were Islam and Catholicism. Still today these are the two most prevalent religious traditions, each claiming almost half the district population.34 Islam came first, spreading from the Swahili coast in the late nineteenth century. This was, and continues to be, an Islam integrated with ancestor-based practices. In 1938, Catholicism arrived via Italian missionaries. Initially, these missionaries proscribed ancestor veneration and denied baptism to healers and diviners. The Church’s stance opened radically in the 1960s, such that today Maúa’s Catholic leaders go so far as to sponsor annual initiation rites.
The openness of Islam and Catholicism to “tradition” fosters considerable resentment among Pentecostal leaders. It makes Maúa, as they see it, singularly sinful and thus unusually unreceptive to God’s truth. As Pastor Manuel once told his congregation (clearly one of vientes): “This is a battle we brought from Maputo, from Nampula, from Beira. When we arrive here, sometimes people come with energy, with great energy, but just crossing the border into Maúa, it seems like angels of the devil stop us. Yes, the word of the Lord here is difficult. If not for us, I would say that here there is no Holy Spirit, only evil spirits.” So framing his struggle as a cosmic battle serves, in part, to rationalize his failure to attract locals to his church. It also goes far toward assuring him of the valor in waging this struggle where he does—on the uncharted peripheries of Pentecostalism, at the farthest fringes of the faith.
Conversion as a Spatial Practice
Besides pastoral claims of demonic impediments are scholarly explanations for why Pentecostalism does not or would not thrive in a place like Maúa. Conventional assumptions that the tradition grows most rapidly in previously Christianized areas imply that growth would be weak in places where Christianity has not established itself. It may well be that “the more Muslim north” of Mozambique is itself a barrier to Pentecostal growth (van de Kamp 2016: 11n20). However, it should be noted that although the region is indeed heavily Islamic, Catholicism also has long been prevalent.35 Another demographic sector frequently associated with Pentecostalism is that of the urban and upwardly mobile. An implication could be drawn from this as well, that a rural district of subsistence farmers lacks the socioeconomic conditions for Pentecostalism to flourish. There may be more explanatory value here, although, as already noted, the provincial capital of Lichinga seemed scarcely receptive to Pentecostalism despite being an urban setting. Meanwhile, researchers in other rural parts of Africa have reported significant Pentecostal impact (e.g., Jones 2011).
In attempting to understand the ambivalence displayed toward Pentecostalism, what struck me most was that whenever I asked people why they joined, why they left, or why they circulated in and out, most struggled to articulate an answer. This absence of ideological formulations and reasoned justifications should be taken seriously (Ahmad 2017). It suggests a need to think beyond the explanatory impulse typically guiding outsiders, whether religious leaders or academic scholars. Rather than trying to find ways to reduce complex