Sicilian Pentecostalism: an Interpretive Study in Cultural Discontinuity. (Volumes I and II) (Folk-Religion, Protestant, Modernism, Traditional, Italy).

Abstract

Non-Catholic Pentecostal communities were established in Sicily by the second decade of this century by returning migrant workers converted in the Americas. Although small in numbers, the Pentecostal movement has had a stable presence in virtually every Sicilian town of any size. The study focuses on the confrontation between Pentecostalism and Sicilian traditional culture, comparing the divergent world views of Pentecostalism and traditional religion and the ways they respond to universal existential concerns and more particular cultural problems in the domains of authority, gender, family and community. The comparison is carried out in the three major sections of the work. In the first section, Sicilian Pentecostalism is viewed against the backdrop of its total religious environment which includes Roman Catholicism, popular saint cults, magic and sorcery. It is argued that while Catholicism is ritually hegemonic, the structure of popular religious practices and beliefs are neither Catholic nor Christian but retain a religious distinctiveness of their own. While Catholicism insists on ritual hegemony it does not threaten the underlying integrity of this "Popular Religion." Pentecostalism, however, adopts many elements of Popular Religion, but militantly attacks its religious understructure. This challenge to the underlying "grammar" of Popular Religion is effective because Pentecostalism speaks in the same "idiom" as Popular Religion and responds to similar problems. The second section shifts to the social sphere by examining Pentecostal community life. The results here are more ambiguous than in the first section, as Pentecostal culture is much closer to traditional culture with respect to the questions of authority and gender relations. Although the results are not unmixed, Sicilian Pentecostalism appears to be religiously iconoclastic but socially conservative. In order, to better underst and Pentecostalism's dual personality, section three delves into the internal contradictions of Pentecostal belief and ritual which are at once the embodiment of alienation and its celebration. The conclusion discusses Sicilian Pentecostalism's significance within the context of the long term trends in Western culture of secularism and rationalization.