Submitting to Sanctification: An Ethnographic Discourse Analysis of Evangelical Drug Rehabilitation

• In Event: 383 - Regular Session. Narrative, Biography, and Culture 1

Abstract

Evangelical drug treatment has grown more prevalent since “Charitable Choice” opened the door to government funding of “faith-based” social services, and these programs are now receiving unprecedented support and legitimacy within government, the media, and increasingly among addiction scientists. Our paper is a discourse analysis of one prominent institution we call “Victory Ministries,” based on ethnography and in-depth interviewing. Among the attractions of reworking a broken life via such a narrative is the possibility of a new life “recovered in Christ,” instead of the tainted life-long identity of a vulnerable “recovering” addict offered by conventional treatment. Further, Victory’s moral discourse on addiction draws strongly on the classic American cultural trope of “fetching good out of evil,” framing the degradation and shame of addicted existence as a necessary stage on the person’s journey to God’s loving redemption. Our ethnographic analysis of Victory shows how typically a charismatic religious conversion or renewal is reinforced through a long disciplinary process of “sanctification.” Over 13 to 18 months the institution schools the residents with an ascetic daily routine of work, bible study, prayer, and singing in choir. The most successful graduates can not only rhetorically distance themselves from their old selves with a powerful and coherent narrative of renewal, but have incorporated some radical changes at the level of embodied practice.

Authors

• Zachary Psick, University of California-Davis

• Teresa Gowan, University of Minnesota