Consuming Is Believing: Pentecostal Material Culture in Argentina

Abstract

Like other Latin American countries, Argentinean society is crossed by intense processes of decategorization and recategorization that develop throughout different areas of culture, politics, sexuality, music, art, and religion. This chapter focuses on the system of objects that make up the Pentecostal material culture, exploring how books and movies operates both in church life and in the broader cultural world of leisure, entertainment, and enjoyment. It analyzes the relationship between religion and consumption through the Pentecostal material culture produced in Argentina. The chapter provides a description of the preferences related to written, audiovisual, and iconographic culture within Evangelicalism/Pentecostalism, based on quantitative data. It then explores two examples of cultural goods manufactured by the organization Argentina Oramos por Vos, which express a local refraction of global Pentecostal themes related to the problem of unity and growth.