"Letting God govern": supernatural agency in the Venezuelan Pentecostal approach to social change

Sociology of Religion, Fall, 1998 by David A. Smilde

SUPERNATURAL AGENCY AND RELIGIOUS ACTION

This article aims to reveal the "logic and realism" of Venezuelan Pentecostalism, "without wishing to make it appear more sensible and less extraordinary than it often is" (Hobsbawm 1959:60). To do so I will use the concept of frame, originally introduced by Goffman (Goffman 1974) and increasingly popular among social movement theorists (see Snow et al. 1986 for the seminal statement). I will use frame to mean a bundle of interpretive schemata used to organize experience and orient problem-solving, and will concentrate on the components of the "frame structure" (Johnston 1995) that define the sense of agency, the sense that undesirable conditions are not inevitable and can be altered (Gamson 1992). This analysis will take place at two levels. First, at a general level, I will provide an etic analysis of the agency components of theistic religious frames. The principle concepts are summarized in Table 1. Then, at a more concrete, empirical level, I will provide an emic analysis of one particular religious frame: that of Venezuelan Pentecostalism.

TABLE 1

Components of Theistic Religious Frames

Supernatural Agency:            The capacity of supernatural beings
                                to exert power in the observable
                                universe.

Supernaturally-Relevant         Behavior that is seen to permit or
Behavior:                       provoke supernatural agents to
                                interfere in human life.

Religious Action:               Behavior that seeks to bring about
                                desired ends through the agency of
                                supernatural beings.

Religion-Oriented Action:       Ordinary secular action that has
                                the purpose of facilitating a given
                                form of religious practice.

Religiously-Motivated Action:   Ordinary secular action that is
                                inspired by religious beliefs.

A frame can be termed religious when it has as a central organizing feature belief in the supernatural: an order of existence that transcends the visible, observable universe, but which is related to the latter in any number of ways, depending on the particular religious belief system. In theistic religious frames, the supernatural is believed to contain supernatural agents, beings who can exercise power in the present, observable universe, and whom may have the power to determine an individual's fate after death. The sense of agency in theistic religious frames comes from the conviction that both the source of undesirable conditions and the possibility of their alteration lie in the relationship between human behavior and supernatural agents. Certain behaviors are seen to permit or provoke supernatural agents to interfere in human life in a harmful way. They are seen, in other words, to be supernaturally relevant. Other behaviors, in contrast, intend to order relations with supernatural agents in such a way that they will bring about certain desired outcomes. We can call such behavior religious action (Weber 1968:403).(4) Religious action is other-worldly if it has as its end salvation or other rewards to be obtained in another, usually future, order of existence. It is this-wordly, on the other hand, if it aims to better or maintain human life in the present world.(5)