STRUGGLING WITH THE SPIRIT: INSTITUTION BUILDING, CHARISMA, AND POLITICS OF REGULATION IN THE PENTECOSTAL - CHARISMATIC MOVEMENT IN SINGAPORE

Abstract

This thesis is an analysis of how Pentecostal-Charismatic Christianity (p/c) doctrine and practice is organized and reproduced in the myriad of organizational forms that make up the p/c ecosystem in Singapore. I examine p/c leadership as the medium in which practice is organized within and across congregations. Using a neo-institutional approach, it is argued that these leaders are embedded in different institutional environments which influence their autonomy to organize. These environments provide not only normative but also cognitive models of organizing and relating to one another. Different politics of regulation shape how religious difference in the form of concrete organizational practice is interpreted among two main strands of p/c, those in historical denominations and those who are independent. The result is that there are simultaneous narratives of tension and innovation in the p/c world as leaders relate to each other, the congregations they lead, and the generalized ?public?.