Everyday Migrant Pentecostalism: Changing Contexts for Life and Faith for Migrants and Migrant Churches in Norway

Abstract

This article looks at migrant Pentecostalism in Norway and how a lived religion approach can help study how Pentecostal migrants’ personal and communal everyday lives intersect with religion. Based on a study of a cross-section of Pentecostal migrant congregations in Norway, the article focuses on how Pentecostal transnational networks and local migrant congregations provide key theological frameworks for interpreting migratory trajectories, life challenges, and faith experiences. More concretely, I ask what differences the migratory context plays for the understanding and practice of religion for Pentecostal migrants in Norway. As a part of this, attention is given to everyday contexts of migrant and their faith communities as well as how lived forms of religion can challenge and broaden our understanding of how and where (migrant) religion is practised today. I also ask how we need theological perspectives to understand these migrant contexts from a lived religion perspective. By mending perspectives from lived religion and lived theology, I ask how migrant theologies can relate and contribute to religious and societal challenges relative to migration. More generally, these perspectives can help nuance our understanding of what constitutes migrant Norwegian and European Pentecostalism today and shed contextual light on religion’s role in understanding migration.