Flowing and framing
Language ideology, circulation,
and authority in a Pentecostal Bible school
Bruno Reinhardt
1
Utrecht University
Experiential and mediatized, Pentecostal Christianity is one of the most suc-
cessful cases of contemporary religious globalization. However, it has oten
grown and expanded transnationally without clear authoritative contours.
hat is the case in contemporary Ghana, where Pentecostal claims about char-
ismatic empowerment have fed public anxieties concerning the fake and the
occult. his article examines how Pentecostalism’s dysfunctional circulation is
countered within seminaries, or Bible schools, by speciic strategies of pastoral
training. First, I revisit recent debates on Protestant language ideology in the
anthropology of Christianity, and stress Pentecostalism’s ainity with notions
of low and saturation of speech by divine presence. Second, I move to data
collected in the Anagkazo Bible and Ministry Training Center, and investigate
this institution’s pedagogical framing of Pentecostalism’s otherwise erratic low
of speech and power according to two normative operations: Biblical iguration
and the emic notion of transmission as ‘impartation’. I conclude by stressing
how the metapragmatics of iguration and impartation in Anagkazo requires
an understanding of religious circulation that exceeds the dominant scholarly
focus on religion-as-mediation.
Keywords: Pentecostalism, Ghana, circulation, language ideology,
meta-pragmatics, authority, pedagogy
1. I would like to thank Charles Hirschkind and the anonymous reviewers of Pragmatics and
Society for their critical input. Funding for this research was provided by a CAPES-Fulbright
multi-year fellowship, an A. Richard Diebold Jr. Fellowship Endowment in Anthropology, and
a Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship.
Pragmatics and Society 6:2 (2015), 261–287. doi 10.1075/ps.6.2.06rei
issn 1878-9714 / e-issn 1878-9722 © John Benjamins Publishing Company