Narrating Religious Realities:

Abstract

In this paper I explore the complex and constitutive role of narrative practice in Chilean Pentecostalism. I argue that it is in large part through different kinds of storytelling that Pentecostal self identities are produced, nourished and modified. Particular attention is focused on testimonies of salvation, and life stories as narrative practices through which converts engage in ongoing construction of biographic identities and provide themselves with symbolic schemes for present and future action. I further argue that Pentecostal story telling should be seen as a specific kind of social interaction, creating and unfolding eligious realities to be inhabited by narrator and listener alike. I pursue this argument by examining different linguistic as well as non-linguistic strategies through which the listener is invited to project him or herself into the world of the story.
 Keywords: Pentecostalism, Chile, conversion, narratives, identity