Brill The Embattled but Empowered Community: Comparing Understandings of Spiritual Power in Argentine Popular and Pentecostal Cosmologies (Global Pentecostal and Charismatic Studies)

Based on extensive empirical research, and utilizing predominately Latin American scholarly literature, this book examines connections between Argentine popular and pentecostal worldviews. It proposes that there is a major connection between the two rooted in cosmological assumptions of spiritual power. Review "Pentecostal healing rituals appear similar to those of popular religion, an essential difference the role of the Pentecostal pastor as a preacher of the Bible (242). This finding alone marks this book as "required reading" for the study of Argentine religious culture and cosmology as well as for Pentecostal studies. [...] [T]he book is essential for religious and Pentecostal studies." Roger E. Hedlund, Ph.D., Dharma Deepika January-July 2011, 77. "Davies has provided the reader with a very welcome contribution to the general study of Pentecostalism, but more importantly she presents a vivid picture of the vibrant and somewhat complex Pentecostal scene in Argentina in a fascinating way. She makes it plausible that (neo-)Pentecostalism is growing in Argentina because it 'corresponds' with popular religion at the same time as it represents something new." Hans Geir Aasmundsen, Södertön University Stockholm, Sweden, in PentecoStudies About the Author Wilma Wells Davies, PhD (2007) in Theology and Religious Studies, University of Birmingham. She spent nine years teaching Socio-Cultural Anthropology in Argentina and currently is lecturer and tutor at All Nations Christian College, England.