Paper short abstract:

The paper focuses on the space acquired in the public sphere by Pentecostal congregations in Kampala. Based on theories on space and culture, it analyzes the practices through which the movement is engaging in, and transforming the political sphere in Uganda

Paper long abstract:

Based on fieldwork data collected since 2005, this paper focuses on the significant space acquired by the Pentecostal movement in the public sphere in Uganda, a fact that becomes visible with the growing physical presence in the urban space of Kampala.

Following the approaches proposed by authors such as Bourdieu and Setha Low, it suggests that the urban space is an arena for the intersection of multiple and often antagonist economic, social and cultural forces. Far from being just a "given" environment, town is the site where culture is "spatialized" and where global and local processes take shape or are constituted by practice in the experience and daily life of public-space users.

This space thus becomes a set where to act the manichean struggle between God and the Devil, the "Christian circle" and the satanic forces embodied in places like night-clubs: a "political space".

Politics has long been thought as a dangerous sphere by Pentecostals, which maintained an "other worldly" perspective in which there was no room for engagement in "this worldly" activities. Nevertheless, during the last ten years some of the main Churches has become more and more engaged in the public sphere, through social programs, AIDS campaigns, creation of FBOs' and even with direct engagement with politics. The second section of the paper explores the moralizing attitude brought by Pentecostals in Ugandan politics.

I'll finally discuss how the engagement in social programs and in politics is re-configuring the collective identity of the young people involved in the movement.