Pentecostalism in translation: Religion and the production of community in the Haitian diaspora

Abstract

I examine the growth of Pentecostalism in the Haitian diaspora through both a neo‐Weberian framework and the argument, derived from Walter Benjamin, that the cultural translation of religious doctrine should resonate with the original and not merely substitute scholarly categories for sacred meanings. Haitian migrants to Guadeloupe, French West Indies, appropriate Pentecostalism to produce a transnational enclave in the face of marginality and displacement. Using Christian idioms, they defend themselves against denigrating stereotypes and articulate sentiments of loss and remembrance of the Haitian homeland. Their theology of sin, salvation, and the spirit therefore overlaps with anthropological frameworks about the production of community. These two languages complement each other, and each provides a partial theory to explain the need for moral separationism as well as its likely effects. Examining this complementary relationship suggests both the specificity of Haitian Pentecostalism and the limits of Benjamin's literary model for ethnographic interpretation. [Pentecostalism, Haiti, transnationalism, religion, morality, translation, Benjamin]