Giving and Receiving Testimony: Self-discipline and the Supernatural in the Case of the Hombres de Negocios

• In Event: 052 - Section on Sociology of Religion Paper Session. Beyond Anglo Christianity

Abstract

In this paper I examine the case of a charismatic Christian businessmen's organization called La Fraternidad Internacional de los Hombres de Negocios del Evangelio Completo (the Mexican branch of The Full Gospel Businessmen's Fellowship International) in order to show how an ethic of self-discipline can be cultivated in a decidedly enchanted Christian worldview, through an orientation to the supernatural. The paper complicates recent claims that Pentecostalism and other variations of charismatic Christianity are the contemporary equivalents of the “Protestant ethics” of Weber's thesis, arguing instead that the pentecostal orientation to the supernatural makes its disciplining effects not a confirmation of Weber's thesis but rather an anomaly to be explained. In offering an explanation I build upon existing scholarship on the role of language and narrative in conversion experiences in order to suggest that it is in soliciting from its members a particular narrative disposition toward their lives that the FIHNEC invitation to attend to the supernatural has disciplining consequences.

Author

• Graham Wilson Hill, University of California-Berkeley