Introduction: The Missionary ChimeraMuch contemporary discourse on Christian missions in Turkey shares the image of their relations with the West as an imperialist threat and with indigenous minorities as separatist in tendency. Academic and para-academic historical narratives have addressed "cultural imperialism" or the "culture of imperialism" during the late Ottoman period,1 while some identify Western missionaries as promoters of Armenian nationalism.2 Anti-missionary critics discussed below look somewhat anachronistically at "missionary actions" (misyoner faaliyetleri)3 and inscribe the present Western Evangelical presence as a continuity in the expansion of late nineteenth-century US influence. Simultaneously, Western Evangelicals hold as a teleological teaching the understanding of their predecessors' "mistakes" with Ottoman Christians as a condition for their better achievements with contemporary Muslims,4 and non-Muslim Evangelicals emphasise the agency of the Armenian Protestant reformists in
This article focuses on the division of religious labour according to both gender and marital situation, based on an ethnographic survey in a Pentecostal church with a mixed membership in Istanbul (Turkey). Following the description of religious labour throughout its six areas, this research shows that celibacy is made relatively invisible inside the church, where the emphasis is on conjugality and family, while the latter bonds are de-emphasised in the outside world, where singles are at the forefront. “Love” appears as a multifaceted reality, encompassing not only justifications but the very output of religious labour, inside and outside the faith community.
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