Chesnut ctd

Claims cultural factors link pneumacentrism with women (i) traditionally women are seen to be more open to spiritual matters (ii) "For women used to being possessed by their husband and partners, the concept of being taken by the Holy Spirit is natural and logical."¹ (25)

impoverished women "enthusiastically embrace the opportunity to be carried away by a supernatural power from a mundane place of poverty and crime to a heavenly state of bliss...spiritual compensation for hegemonic sexual norms that focus on male gratification to the detriment of female pleasure...outside the walls of temple and terreiro, believers draw on this divine power to confront the tenacious demons of deprivation, such as sub-standard housing, crime, domestic abuse, illness, etc."² (26)

Authority, especially through the gift of prophecy "can challenge the authority and conduct of brothers in the faith."³ (26)

o

healing particularly attractive to women as they are mainly responsible for looking to the welfare of their children⁴ (26-27)

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attraction of conversion for women: "In demonizing the street, Pentecostalism condemns the very type of behaviour and activity that brought many women to the temple doors in the first place."⁵ (28-29)

provides hope for the conversion of parter ;network of sisters in the faith who share similar problems; possibility of transferring love and desire to Jesus (29)⁶

1RA Chesnut, 'Pragmatic Consumers and Practical Products: The Success of Pneumacentric Religion among Women in Latin America's New Religious Economy' Review of Religious Research 45:1 (2003), 20–31, 25.

2RA Chesnut, 'Pragmatic Consumers and Practical Products: The Success of Pneumacentric Religion among Women in Latin America's New Religious Economy' Review of Religious Research 45:1 (2003), 20–31, 26.

3RA Chesnut, 'Pragmatic Consumers and Practical Products: The Success of Pneumacentric Religion among Women in Latin America's New Religious Economy' Review of Religious Research 45:1 (2003), 20–31, 26.

4RA Chesnut, 'Pragmatic Consumers and Practical Products: The Success of Pneumacentric Religion among Women in Latin America's New Religious Economy' Review of Religious Research 45:1 (2003), 20–31, 26–27.

5RA Chesnut, 'Pragmatic Consumers and Practical Products: The Success of Pneumacentric Religion among Women in Latin America's New Religious Economy' Review of Religious Research 45:1 (2003), 20–31, 28-29.

6RA Chesnut, 'Pragmatic Consumers and Practical Products: The Success of Pneumacentric Religion among Women in Latin America's New Religious Economy' Review of Religious Research 45:1 (2003), 20–31, 29.