Personalizing the Romani Evangelical faith

Slavkova, Magdalena (2017) Personalizing the Romani Evangelical faith. In: Languages of Resistance: Ian Hancock’s contribution to Romani Studies. Lincom, München, pp. 318-325. ISBN 978-3862888511

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Abstract

Evangelical Christianity has impacted many Roma communities across the globe and can be analyzed on many different levels. Speaking about Protestantism globally, it does not represent a united doctrine and ideology and every denomination requires from their adherents a certain way of understanding the believing and non-believing worlds around them, which is manifests as Baptist, Adventist or Pentecostal cultures, etc. There is also a difference between traditional Protestant and new Evangelical societies that seem more socially organized and influential on the way of thinking and action of believers. The most intimate issue of the conversion is the individual experience of the religious change, which often is gender specific, on which I shall focus in this article taking my examples from the Bulgarian Roma. Therefore, the aim of the paper is to analyze the ways in which the understanding of the person experience transforms in the process of being believer in water, in the Holy Spirit or both, and the ways in which Evangelical faith constitutes a path of developing new self-image. Although I have a rather large collection of life stories, I will take four cases of conversion narratives from written documents and from my ethnographic data set. I employ these materials ethnographically as cultural products from different times constitutive of broader views. Firstly, I draw attention to the personal sensation of the conversion itself connected to the act of baptism, and secondly, I emphasize on telling a testimony as practice that is more common among the Pentecostal, than among non-Pentecostal Evangelical Roma.

Item Type:	Book Section
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Europe, Bulgaria, Roma, Gypsy, Baptist missionary, Seventh-Day Adventism, Pentecostalism, personal experience, baptism, testimony
Subjects:	B Mission Theology/Theory > Contextualization/Inculturation B Mission Theology/Theory > Identity Issues G Christian Traditions/ Denominations > Adventists G Christian Traditions/ Denominations > Pentecostal G Christian Traditions/ Denominations > Baptists
Divisions:	Bulgaria
Depositing User:	Jelena Bakic
Date Deposited:	02 Mar 2020 18:49
Last Modified:	28 Jul 2023 10:13
URI:	https://rocprints.rockcentre.org/id/eprint/362

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