Emotion and the Poor: Pentecostalism (II)

Abstract

The success of Pentecostalism is tied not only to the free emotional experience of ‘speaking in tongues’, but also to this emotional event which is the liberation of the utterance of praise or song. New Churches have appeared, particularly in Brazil, that emphasize apparently more spectacular events, stronger emotions. Somewhat in the same manner that the ‘grotesque gesticulations’ of the first wave were suspect, ‘divine healing’ and ‘exorcism’, as practised within the Churches of the second and third waves (to use Freston’s distinction) - which moreover are using modern media - are referred to today as sensationalism and charlatanism. The phenomenon is certainly popular, it is said, but in the sense that it exploits the credulity of the poverty-stricken and illiterate masses.