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List of contents
1. Designs for Vitality
2. Being in the World but Not of It in Buffalo
3. Openings and Enclosures
4. Depending on God
5. Seeking Confirmation
Conclusion: Ethics and Politics of Pious Vitality
Appendix: Commentaries and Conversations
Bibliography
Index
About the author
Frederick Klaits is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the State University of New York at Buffalo, USA.Michael Richbart is a postgraduate student at the University of Buffalo, USALaShekia Chatman is a postgraduate student at the University of Buffalo, USA
Summary
In Pentecostal Insight in a Segregated U.S. City, Frederick Klaits compares how members of one majority white and two African American churches in Buffalo, New York receive knowledge from God about their own and others’ life circumstances.
In the Pentecostal Christian faith, believers say that they acquire divinely inspired insights by developing a “relationship with God.” But what makes these insights appear necessary? This book offers a novel approach to this question, arguing that the inspirations believers receive from God lead them to take critical stances on what they regard as ordinary understandings of space, time, care, and personal value. Using a shared Pentecostal language, believers occupying different positions within racial, class, and gender formations reflect in divergent ways on God’s designs. In the process, they engage critically with late liberal imaginaries of eventfulness and vitality to envision possibilities of life in a highly unequal society.
This text incorporates commentaries on Klaits’ ethnography by LaShekia Chatman and Michael Richbart, junior scholars who have also studied and been part of Pentecostal communities in Buffalo.
Foreword
This ethnography compares how members of majority white and African American Pentecostal churches in Buffalo, New York receive and understand divinely inspired insights.
