The crisis of presence in Italian Pentecostal conversion

Abstract

Italian anthropologist Ernest De Martino (1908–1965) devoted much of his writing to the analysis of “the crisis of presence,” an existential dilemma evidenced in a disturbed sense of self and often expressed as illness, emotional distress, or “alienation.” This article describes De Martino's conceptualization of the crisis of presence as a problem of consciousness with moral and emotional dimensions and applies it in interpreting the conversion narratives of three Italian Pentecostal Christians. The resolution of the crisis, for these Christians, entails the construction of a new sense of self, and particularly a new relationship to time and history. [De Martino, Pentecostalism, religion, existential crisis, Italy]