(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
18 years ago, a new religious community emerged in Denmark: a local branch of the Philippine mega-church Jesus is Lord. It was founded in the late 1970s by former Communist anti-Marcos activist Eddie Villanueva, now known as "Brother Eddie". From a small Bible study circle at a university in Manila, Jesus is Lord now has millions of followers in at least 55 countries, including both Denmark, Norway and Sweden. Now the church community calls itself Jesus is Lord Church Worldwide (JILCW) – and has gradually set up its own TV channels and record label (Musikatha).
Belief and relevance
While many such Pentecostal movements with "progress theology" (certainly not to be confused with liberation theology) attract the lower middle class and upwards, JILCW is explicitly addressing poor workers, not least migrant workers. In Denmark, the congregation consists mainly of au pairs and is, for the same reason, female-dominated, also in the priesthood.
By taking very specific ground in the material, social and emotional situation of temporary migrants, JIL-Denmark also succeeds in converting young people who were Catholics when they left the Philippines. Thus, the church – like the Mother Church in Manila – has grown from a small Bible study circle (created by a Filipino sibling couple in the early 2000s) to a multi-hundred-person movement with weekly "worships" in two locations in the Copenhagen area and Bible study circles over it. most of the affluent North Zealand, where the concentration of au pairs is highest.
When the migrant's residence permit expires, they often travel further and take Christ the Lord with them. Thus, Norway has also received a branch of Jesus is Lord, slightly smaller than the Danish one, and the Norwegian Bible Schools have trained several priests to the faith community, which – like several other Christian charismatic movements – is known for a decentralized, flexible, self-taught and adapted to the circumstances. theological educational tradition.
The ethnography of faith
I have described the emergence and dynamics of JIL-Denmark in the book Profession: Philippines – Women at work in Denmark for four decades (Times Shift, 2013). In a new anthology, Jesus is Lord, one of the "full gospel" movements that is being investigated as a religious, social and political phenomenon. Pentecostal Megachurches in Southeast Asia maps the creation and growth history of such "mega churches" as they are called: revival Christian movements capable of gathering huge numbers of people to everything from worship (in this tradition called "worship") to concerts to political rallies.
Several of the mega churches have North American origins, but not all. For example, JILCW is "Filipino-Pinch nationalist" in its basic idea, and no matter what, the Pentecostal tradition is known for its capacity for local contextualization – both in theological message and social practice. This is one of the reasons why it is the fastest growing form of religion in many of the countries that have been colonized in the past. People can take ownership of the word of the Lord themselves and of the practice that serves as a link between the divine and the individual as well as the collective.
The economy of the unsaved souls
As editor Terence Chong writes in the preface to Pentecostal Megachurches in Southeast Asia, the global Pentecostal movement has spread through Western missionaries, sometimes through colonialism, but it has become stuck "by virtue of its at once local contextualizing (" indigenizing "and transnational nature"), and now the mission rarely goes the other vej.
However transnational the Catholic Church is, in its basic form, anchored institutionally with highly centralized dogmas, as are many of the older Protestant congregations. The charismatic Pentecostal churches, on the other hand, can be arranged in exactly the ways that make sense in the given material reality. This is partly because the relationship with Christ is primarily understood as personal. That each believer enters into a love fellowship with Christ, and that the Bible's narratives must be interpreted into everyday challenges, is taken very literally in the charismatic Christian congregations.
This relationship is also reflected in, for example, the texts of the religious pop songs, which play a central role in the mega churches. As Terence Chong writes of two of Singapore's charismatic mega churches, Faith Community Baptist Church and City Harvest Church, pop culture is used "cunningly" to spread the message of the Lord: The leaders of these faiths "perceive pop culture – precisely by virtue of its secular nature – as a crucial tool to penetrate the economy of non-saved souls ».
The complexity of religion
Editor and initiator of the anthology Terence Chong is a sociologist at the Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore and specializes in Christianity in Southeast Asia. The contributors he has invited to illuminate Southeast Asia's mega-churches span disciplines such as politics, development studies, media science, theology and marketing. No disciplines are superfluous when exploring a socially, culturally, religiously and politically complex phenomenon like this type of mega-church.
Unfortunately, these religious communities are becoming migrants – including the mission strikes back- the aspect – a bit of an old-fashioned way in several chapters. Nevertheless, the anthology offers new horizons for both saved and non-saved souls who want to become clearer in their fellow human beings' search for the meaning of it all – and of how the forms of this quest are conditioned by the various material realities in which we move.
