Pentecostal currents and individual mobility: visiting church services in Stockholm County
Moberg, Jessica (2015)
Moberg, Jessica
The Donner Institute, Åbo Akademi
2015
Kuvaus
Jessica Moberg, Gothenburg University
Jessica Moberg, PhD, is a postdoctoral research fellow at Gothenburg University. Moberg’s main research interest is popular religion such as Pentecostalism, spiritualism and UFO religions. Theoretically, she has taken an interest in embodied and ritualized practices and the role they play in shaping religious identities in late modernity. Besides the dissertation Piety, Intimacy and Mobility: A Case Study of Charismatic Christianity in Present-day Stockholm (2013) Moberg has published on Pentecostalism (see for instance ‘Heliga kramar och gudomlig intimitet: Rituell omvandling i Stockholms pentekostala miljö’ in Svensk Teologisk Kvartalskrift, 2013) and Swedish UFO narratives (see for example ‘Are the space brothers socialists? Swedish indigenization of the UFO mythical complex’ in Nordic New Religions, forthcoming 2015). Moberg has also co-edited the anthology Helig hälsa. Helandemetoder i det mångreligiösa Sverige (2014) which is aimed at a non-academic readership.
Jessica Moberg, PhD, is a postdoctoral research fellow at Gothenburg University. Moberg’s main research interest is popular religion such as Pentecostalism, spiritualism and UFO religions. Theoretically, she has taken an interest in embodied and ritualized practices and the role they play in shaping religious identities in late modernity. Besides the dissertation Piety, Intimacy and Mobility: A Case Study of Charismatic Christianity in Present-day Stockholm (2013) Moberg has published on Pentecostalism (see for instance ‘Heliga kramar och gudomlig intimitet: Rituell omvandling i Stockholms pentekostala miljö’ in Svensk Teologisk Kvartalskrift, 2013) and Swedish UFO narratives (see for example ‘Are the space brothers socialists? Swedish indigenization of the UFO mythical complex’ in Nordic New Religions, forthcoming 2015). Moberg has also co-edited the anthology Helig hälsa. Helandemetoder i det mångreligiösa Sverige (2014) which is aimed at a non-academic readership.
Tiivistelmä
The classification of Pentecostal currents and organizations has been widely debated within Pentecostal studies. In contemporary Sweden, the disintegration of historically important boundaries (denominational, practical and theological), as well as increased mobility between Pentecostal organizations, illustrates that the issue deserves further attention. If many of the old boundaries are being suspended, how may we distinguish between different Pentecostal varietie-s, and what role do such differences play for today’s mobile practitioners? The present article, which consists of a case study of Stockholm County, approaches the matter from a Bourdieu-influenced perspective, where differences are understood in terms of habitus. The study draws upon fieldwork in 16 congregations, carried out between 2009 and 2013, and concludes that three variations of the habitus can in fact be distinguished in the Pentecostal movement of Stockholm County; low key, grand and informal. The differences between these forms in fact impacts upon patterns of mobility among individual Pentecostalists; most prefer congregations of the same variety, even though there are examples of practitioners who visit other forms of organizations as well.