Current Research Projects

Conversion to Evangelicalism

My recently published book Reason to Believe: Cultural Agency in Latin American Evangelicalism (California 2007) has two main questions: whether people can decide to hold beliefs that are in their self interest, and if so, why not everybody does. Dominant trends in the sociology of religion in the past twenty years tend to explain religious practices by seeing them as elements in strategies of action that facilitate agency and empowerment. For example, leading explanations of Evangelical growth in Latin America argue that it provides self-discipline as well as a network of support which together can help people overcome substance abuse, avoid involvement in crime and violence, and resolve relationship problems.

However, recent theoretical statements by Christian Smith, Jeffrey Alexander and others argue against portrayals of culture and religion as the handmaiden of instrumental rationality, returning to a thicker view of culture that emphasizes its autonomy. In these views cultural practices are not used as strategies of actions but rather are determinative of action. I understand the motivation behind these statements but do not want to sacrifice the agentive characterization of religious practice that contributed to the decline of secularization theory. Rather than returning to structuralist accounts of religion and culture, I use concepts from feminist, postcolonial and pragmatist theory to understand how people can consciously decide to believe as part of a project of change. The conceptualization I develop is also non-reductive but provides a larger role for agency than Smith’s and Alexander’s positions. I show that the Evangelical meaning system not only helps the men I studied address the problems they face. It also provides a repertoire of meanings with which they can conceptualize their own conversion process and their decision to believe. I call this process "imaginative rationality."

I address the second question by arguing that such a dramatic cultural change as religious conversion depends on the relational context men find themselves in. Building upon years of network research on religious conversion, I find that conversion is only a viable response to the conditions of poverty in very specific micro-structural conditions. I call this portrait of cultural change "relational imagination" and it complicates some of the voluntarist portraits characteristic of the research on Latin American Evangelicalism. In the conclusion I bring these two strands together to develop a "relational, pragmatic theory of cultural agency" that I hope will provoke debate in the sociology of religion regarding the nature of religious practice.

Religion and Political Conflict

My current project focuses on Christianity and political conflict in Venezuela. Somewhat unexpectedly, Christianity has become one of the primary media of conflict in Venezuela during the tumultuous nine years of Hugo Chávez’s presidency. On the one hand, Chávez has reached out to the Evangelical movement as part of his attempt to establish new coalitions of social and political actors with which to confront and replace long established institutions (such as the Catholic Church). Evangelical leaders have reacted cautiously to this outreach but some are actively collaborating with the government. On the other hand, in a context in which existing political parties have imploded, the Catholic Hierarchy has emerged as Chávez´s most vocal, and perhaps most effective opponent. I examine this as a transition from class to culture in political cleavage using theories from Michael Hechter and Manuel Castells. However, rather than seeing the move to cultural identities as being carried out by reactive, displaced elites, I find those moving into the public sphere with their cultural identities are new actors looking for political opportunity. This project began with my article "Contradiction without Paradox: Evangelical Political Culture in the 1998 Venezuelan Elections," Latin American Politics and Society Vol.46, No.1 (Spring 2004) which used data that came out of my data collection on conversion. Now focusing on this project, I have created a data base from a national newspaper articles from several sources, had questions attached to a nationwide survey, and am currently carrying out qualitative interviewing with religious professionals (I did twenty interviews in 2007 and will do twenty more in 2009). In 2009 I will also be carrying out four case studies of communities in which pastors and priests have clear political commitments (pro-Chávez or anti-Chavez). I am currently putting the finishing touches on an edited volume that has grown out of this project Participation and Public Sphere in Venezuela’s Bolivarian Democracy (under contract with Duke University Press). In the introduction to this book I try to rethink our concepts of civil society. In my chapter on Christianity during the Chavez years, I give a first take on the complex involvement of Catholics and Evangelicals. I am also currently working on an article on politics and public ritual among Evangelical groups. This project has also led to some publications on the broader political process in Venezuela. "The Social Structure of Hugo Chávez," Contexts, Vol. 7, No. 1, pp. 38-43, provides an overview of Venezuela’s political process for non-specialists. Another article focusing on participation is currently in press: "Engaging Participation in Venezuela: Four Stages in the Chávez Government's Approach," Understanding Populism and Political Participation: A New Look at the "New Left" in Latin America. Cynthia Arnson (ed.). Washington D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars (in press).

Ethnographic Study of Popular Protest

During 1999-2000 I worked with these colleagues to collect qualitative data at fifty protests in Caracas. We used this data to write a Spanish language book that focuses on how average citizens directly affected by political and economic restructuring confront it through street protest. We focused on the culture work they do in attempting to modify the way they and their causes are perceived by the general public (López Maya, Margarita, David Smilde, and Keta Stephany. Protesta y Cultura en Venezuela: Los Marcos de Acción Colectiva en 1999. Caracas 2002). In the summer of 2003, I collected data from eight more protests. I plan to collect more in coming years so that I will have data from a variety of different political conjunctures. I recently used this data to write an article that compares popular protest to Evangelical plaza preaching, as different forms of “publics” used by marginalized groups to gain exposure for their discourses (Smilde, David. 2004. “Popular Publics: Street Protest and Plaza Preachers in Caracas.” International Review of Social History vol.49, Supplement pp.179-195.). My eventual book project will further elaborate the theory developed in this article.