Kirche - Konfession - Religion – serie

After the end of the civil war in 1990, the Charismatic/Pentecostal (C/P) movement in Beirut spread across various Christian denominations. C/P believers narrated how Jesus became real to them via the experience of the Holy Spirit. The author explains this impression of realness through embodiment. Ritual practices like testimony and experience of divine agency are experienced as fullness within a post war society and are extended into the every day sphere. This ethnographic account represents the beginning research of C/P Christianity’s emergence in the Middle East and its contribution to social change.

Mid-nineteenth-century America was a vibrant period marked by charismatic leaders who produced new sacred writing. This book explores the lives and works of Mormon founder Joseph Smith Jr., Methodist revivalist Phoebe Palmer, and Transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson, focusing on how their textual productions contributed to a diverse discourse community grappling with a perceived loss of religious authority. It identifies shared motifs and practices these modern prophets employed to establish new carriers of religious authority. Claudia Jetter examines the concept of ‘religious authority,’ highlighting the dynamic ascription processes between charismatic leaders and interactive social communities within the historical context of nineteenth-century America.