Pfingsten im Kontext: Zur Adaption des Pfingstglaubens in Griechenland

The present article addresses two issues that have preoccupied anthropological research on Pentecostal churches: context -sensitivity and radical globalism/antinationalism. The article seeks to qualify this dominant image of Pentecostals in anthropology by focusing on Greece, where nationalism has strong roots and is closely linked to Orthodox Christianity, and by analysing the development of the leading Pentecostal church of the country over the last fifty years. It can be established that the church's sensitive adaptation to dominant religious expectations in Greece did ensure its hegemonic position among Greek Pentecostals, but it also involved its disconnection from global Pentecostalism. Furthermore, the very success of the church over the first three decades after its establishment stimulated a structural rigidity, which in turn proved to be fatal for its capacity to adapt to an ever-changing social context in Greece. Meanwhile, being neither globalist nor adaptive, the largest Greek Pentecostal church is stagnating.