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Paper short abstract

Reflecting on doing fieldwork in a controversial, high demand global Pentecostal megachurch, this paper grapples with the methodological and ethical dimensions of navigating power, vulnerability and harms in spiritual and faith communities.

Paper long abstract

In this paper, from the emotional safety of temporal distance, I reflect on doctoral fieldwork I completed 7 years ago. It took place in the Australian headquarters of a controversial Pentecostal megachurch – one with immense power and global reach. Known to actively recruit the marginalised and vulnerable, it is a place of violent spiritual warfare and makes high demands of its congregants. Scholars and journalists alike have condemned the church’s “repugnant” mechanisms of manipulation and exploitation. During two years of fieldwork, I experienced deep personal discomfort and paranoia. As a, then, international student, under the funding umbrella of a large grant, I did not choose my field site. Moreover, I could not afford (financially nor visa wise) to rethink my project. And so, I got on with it. I suppressed the everyday dread and disquiet of fieldwork and withheld moral judgements, as a coping mechanism as much as an ethnographic approach. Here I grapple with the ethical implications of navigating (spiritual) harms in ambiguous circumstances as a precarious doctoral candidate, my contemporary responsibilities to former interlocutors and now survivors of the church, and telling a fuller ethnographic story. I argue for more nuanced scholarly considerations of the dynamic and complex ways power and vulnerability can manifest in ethnographic encounters, especially in spaces of faith. This paper highlights the methodological and ethical dimensions of doing unsettling fieldwork, and it contributes a novel perspective on the growing body of scholarly literature concerning harm in spiritual and faith communities.