Growing up Charismatic: Morality and Spirituality among Children in a Religious Community Thomas J. Csordas Abstract The intersection of two questions about human experience is the starting point for this article. The first question has to do with the problem of how charisma can be successfully transferred to the second generation of a prophetic community. The second question has to do with how children come to be, and to act as, moral and spiritual beings. These questions converge in a particular way in the ethnographic setting of The Word of God Community: it is founded on a charismatic spirituality closely intertwined with a moral imperative, such that its viability depends on reproduction of that morality and spirituality among children of the founding generation. Data come from interviews with 38 children across three age groups (5–7, 10–12, and 15–17 years), conducted over a four-week period subsequent to a community schism, which left members in a state of reflection, self-examina- tion, and openness. We focus on children’s responses to a series of culturally specific vignettes designed to present various dilemmas of moral reasoning. In this highly charged context moral and spiritual life are based on an active engagement characterized by dynamic and contested processes, and it is through these processes that individuals make meaning out of and reconstruct the moral code of their culture. [childhood and adolescence, religion, Catholic Charismatic Renewal, Pentecostalism, morality, spirituality, intentional communities] The intersection of two questions about human experience is the starting point for this article. The first question has to do with the problem identified by Max Weber (1947, 1963) of how charisma can be maintained among followers after a prophet or charismatic leader is gone, and particularly how charisma can be transferred to the second generation of a charismatic community. When a group of people has a strong moral and religious vision and establishes a new movement or a communal form of life, howFand how successfullyFdo they pass it on to their children? The second question has to do with how people come to be, and to act as, moral and spiritual beings, where spirituality refers to people’s relation to and experience of what they take to be the divine and morality refers to a sense of obligation to do right and avoid wrong that may be conditioned by the perception of divinely imposed standards. What is the connection between the development of moral life and spiritual life, and how do children negotiate moral and spiritual considerations as they learn to make decisions about what is right and wrong? In this article I examine the intersection of these questions in the case of a North American Catholic Charismatic intentional community called The Word of God Community. Journal of the Society for Psychological Anthropology 414 ETHOS ETHOS, Vol. 37, Issue 4, pp. 414–440, ISSN 0091-2131 online ISSN 1548-1352. & 2009 by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved. DOI: 10.1111/j.1548-1352.2009.01067.x.