11th GloPent Conference: Pentecostal Strategies of Public Engagement

Conference Theme

The growing evidence of Pentecostal public engagement has attracted academic attention, especially, but not exclusively in arenas of the Global South. Recent explorations of the global “Charismatic city”, the notion of an African “Pentecostal republic”, or assertions about “property Christianity” in China point to peculiar Pentecostal taxonomies in the public realm. Pentecostal politics of public prayer, ‘spiritual warfare` or ‘crusades’ seek to transform religious landscapes, while ‘Dominionist` theologies claim to transcend narrow Pentecostal interests in order to advocate the common good. Megachurches establish networks to access political, economic and cultural elites. Prosperity theologies also target social transformations and partly enable structural innovations in economic life. The Pentecostal media revolution with its constitutive elements of religious broadcasting and publishing interferes in local public discourses; professionalized e-church performances disseminate transcultural strategies to impact a given political culture. Whether Pentecostal migrant communities in the Global North are pursuing a strategic ‘reverse mission’ to ‘conquer secular nations for Christ` remains open to debate.

Thus, Pentecostalism entails a variety of modes, forms and patterns of public mobilization or a religious mobilisation of public realms, which are the theme of this conference. Our keynote speakers will address a diversity of public strategies in the Global South: Heinrich Schäfer (University of Bielefeld) will discuss Pentecostal political agendas in Latin America (respondent: Claudia Jahnel, Ruhr-Univerity Bochum); Ilana van Wyk (University of Stellenbosch) focuses on Pentecostal public strategies in Southern Africa (respondent: Sibusiso Masondo, University of KwaZulu-Natal); and Nanlai Cao (Renmin University, Beijing) (respondent: Mika Vähäkangas, Lund University) will address Pentecostal patterns of public engagement in China and within the Chinese diaspora.

Download programme...

Panels - a preliminary overview:

The call for papers attracted numerous contributions to our parallel panels. Particularly strong resonance can be seen in the fields of Pentecostal media strategies of public engagement, either in classic visual and print media or in new social media. Other panels will be on Pentecostal vision of political power, be it on analyses of the recent presidential elections from Brazil to Australia to Ethiopia, be it on the shaping of civic subjectivities in Latin America or the USA. Panels thus stretch over various countries, milieus, and contexts. Some regional contexts are given with Southern Africa, Brazil, or Ethiopia, as well as European migrant Christianity, just to highlight a few. Panels on the socio-political relevance of Prosperity Theology and the formatting of some kind of Pentecostal Public Theology are interested in the Pentecostal transformative agency. Included here is a panel on Southern African Pentecostalism and AICs in view of Agenda 2030. Panels on lived Pentecostalism and on Pentecostal features in migration contexts are longing for comparative research. However, contributions on social and gender stratification and on Pentecostal features in inter-religious exchange direct to some limitations of Pentecostal neo-political imaginations. Most papers will present case studies or comparative analyses of peculiar issues, themes, and areas of Pentecostal public engagement.

Download the book of abstracts for a full overview over panel presentations...

Registration, Fee, Travel, and Accommodation

Conference Venue:

University of Basel/Switzerland, centrally located main lecture hall building:

Kollegienhaus, Petersplatz 1, 4051 Basel

Conference fee

(Fees include lunch, refreshments and conference kit) (please check instructions provided by Anna Kuehleis, following your online registration):

• Standard: CHF 80
• Students: CHF 50
• GloPent member rate: CHF 50
  (available for subscribers to PentecoStudies. Make sure you subscribe/renew your subscription at least two weeks before the conference.)
• A Conference Dinner will be offered on Friday evening - we welcome everybody to participate. Costs for conference dinner: CHF 35

Registration:

registration deadline has eclipsed; please contact Anna Kuehleis for further details: anna.kuehleis@unibas.ch

Note: As in previous years we aim to form a small 'hardship fund' for partial support for PhD students (esp. from the global south), whose paper has been accepted but who without some funding support may not be able to attend.

Accommodation

Participants are requested to book their own accommodations. We advise conference participants to book as early as possible.

The following options are available for special university rates:

• Hotel Bildungszentrum 21: https://bz21.ch/ (145 CHF/single) (this is the place of the old Basel Mission headquarter!)
• Hotel Rochat: https://www.hotelrochat.ch/ (125 CHF/single)

Under the keyword GloPent 2020 you are able to get the reduced prices until they are booked out.

Much cheaper, but still high standard options are also (youth) hostels in the City of Basel:

• https://www.hyve.ch/en/stay
• https://www.youthhostel.ch/en/hostels/basel/ 
• http://baselbackpack.com/index.php/rooms-and-rates/?lang=en