City of God: Christian Citizenship in Postwar Guatemala. By Kevin Lewis O'Neill

Abstract

Kevin Lewis O'Neill's brilliant and provocative work, City of God: Christian Citizenship in Postwar Guatemala, on what he terms “Christian citizenship,” among neo-Pentecostals in Guatemala in the early twenty-first century, is an ambitious study that upends our standard readings of Pentecostal political engagement (or lack thereof) and in doing so demands that we expand our definitions of the sorts of activities that constitute community activism and civic engagement. This work is an expansive ethnography: first, of place—a Guatemala City so ravaged by violence and corruption that it seems almost post-Apocalyptic—but also of people—a collection of urban dwellers, men and women, some poor, some wealthy, some Maya; some recent migrants from the countryside, others not—who are united only by a common vision as members of the Guatemalan mega-church, El Shaddai. Although O'Neill's work speaks more broadly to the neo-Pentecostal experience in Guatemala, almost all his research and the focus of his analysis centers on El Shaddai, and particularly on the discourse generated by the church's charismatic founder and pastor, Dr. Harold Caballeros. Because El Shaddai is a very particular and idiosyncratic entity, one might question whether O'Neill is on solid ground in projecting it as a template for a new Pentecostal paradigm for civic engagement. Nevertheless, the church's size and influence (Pastor Caballeros ran unsuccessfully ran for president in the last elections and plans to run again in 2011) means that El Shaddai's model and, indeed, its perceived mandate for transforming Guatemala certainly merits close analysis.