A Diagram for Fire: Miracles and Variation in an American Charismatic Movement

by Jon Bialecki

Overview

What is the work that miracles do in American Charismatic Evangelicalism? How can miracles be unanticipated and yet worked for? And finally, what do miracles tell us about other kinds of Christianity and even the category of religion? A Diagram for Fire engages with these questions in a detailed sociocultural ethnographic study of the Vineyard, an American Evangelical movement that originated in Southern California. The Vineyard is known worldwide for its intense musical forms of worship and for advocating the belief that all Christians can perform biblical-style miracles. Examining the miracle as both a strength and a challenge to institutional cohesion and human planning, this book situates the miracle as a fundamentally social means of producing change—surprise and the unexpected used to reimagine and reconfigure the will. Jon Bialecki shows how this configuration of the miraculous shapes typical Pentecostal and Charismatic religious practices as well as music, reading, economic choices, and conservative and progressive political imaginaries.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520294219
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	03/07/2017
Series:	The Anthropology of Christianity , #21
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Jon Bialecki is a fellow in the School of Social and Political Science at the University of Edinburgh. His work has been published in several edited volumes as well as in academic journals such as the South Atlantic Quarterly, American Ethnologist, Anthropological Theory, Current Anthropology, and the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. 

Table of Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
PROLOGUE

INTRODUCTION: CLEARLY WRITTEN ON HIS FACE
1. VINEYARD TIME
2. INSTITUTIONS AND GOD’S AGENTS
3. A DIAGRAM FOR FIRE
4. TOLLE, LEGE: TALKING, READING, AND HEARING
5. THE LIVING ROOM SEMINARS: PEDAGOGIES OF THE SPIRIT, TYPIFICATION, AND ELABORATION
6. THE BODY, TONGUES, HEALING, AND DELIVERANCE
7. COLLAPSES, TRAVERSALS, AND INTENSIFICATIONS OF THE PART-CULTURE
CONCLUSION: ON THE PROBLEM OF RELIGION AND ON RELIGION AS A PROBLEM

NOTES
WORKS CITED
INDEX
COMPLETE SERIES LIST

Editorial Reviews

"A Diagram of Fire succeeds both as general theory and as finely drawn ethnography."

Times Literary Supplement