Abstract
Based on ethnographic research carried out in Maputo, the capital of Mozambique, this contribution argues that transnational Pentecostalism and especially its South-South or Brazil-Mozambique links are crucial to understanding upwardly mobile women's Pentecostal involvement. In line with a history of religion and healing in Southeast Africa that have shaped conditions to become more mobile culturally, spiritually and socio-economically, transnational Pentecostalism stimulates upwardly mobile women to develop their critical position towards local cultures. Mozambican women who participate in the Brazilian Pentecostal churches become transnational because they cross national boundaries subjectively by criticizing and distancing themselves from local forms of cultural and spiritual knowledge. Brazilian Pentecostalism in Mozambique contributes to a critical cultural awareness and a destabilization of cultural traditions by making people an 'outsider' in their society. In this sense, Pentecostal women do not necessarily respond to situations of mobility, such as processes of globalization, but instead create mobility. Their participation in transnational Pentecostalism generates the power of the Holy Spirit to conquer new modes of being and doing, particularly in the fields of gender, kinship and marriage.
Keywords:
Brazilian pentecostalism; South-South transnationalism; cultural and spiritual mobility; Mozambique