“La Farina del Diavolo”: Transnational Migration and the Politics of Religious Liberty in Post-War Italy

Abstract

The very welcome rise in interest in transnational Pentecostalism in Italy tends to focus upon refugee and migrant communities, with relatively little contextualization in terms of the longer history of Protestantism in the country. Italy, of course, had its own very significant transnational community from as early as the seventeenth century. That this had a significant impact upon domestic politics in Italy can be seen through the lens of a particular event in 1952, when Italian Pentecostals became the subject of legal and political wrangles between the Council of State and the Democristiano government (at question were issues of defascistization and the legacy of the Italian liberal–democratic tradition). The vignette explored here traces the appropriation by Pentecostal communities, suppressed under the Fascist regime, of the language of human rights, the mechanisms of political power, and the broader Protestant/liberal tradition in Italy in ways which enable this functionally transnational community to re-embed itself in local community life.

The original version of this chapter was read at the “Religion, Nation(alism) and Transnationalism Symposium,” July 9, 2014, University of Western Sydney. The title comes from a reference by Giorgio Spini in an article in the azionista journal, Non Mollare, on December 7, 1945. It is a traditional saying, which, in full, reads, “La farina del diavolo va tutta in crusca” (The flour of the devil ends only in chaff [bran]), indicating that mixed motivations produce unpredictable ends.