Strategies of salvation: Evangelical Christian praxis and sites of degradation in Sri Lanka

Abstract

This paper demonstrates how disasters create sites of degradation – potent spaces of upheaval and engagement – that are readily filled and exploited by evangelical Christian groups. In doing so, it explores how disasters provide opportunities for evangelical groups to gain a foothold in localities where Christian presence, and evangelical praxis, may otherwise be restricted. Drawing on qualitative data collected in Sri Lanka throughout 2010–2011, two comparative case studies are presented that reveal the strategies of evangelical Christian praxis in and through sites of environmental and political degradation. Specifically, the case studies reveal how evangelical groups pursue ‘outside‐in’ and ‘inside‐out’ strategies of salvation, which, by blurring the boundaries of religion and relief, can lead to the formation of new hierarchies of power.

Spaces of the Religious Economy: Negotiating the Regulation of Religious Space in Singapore

“…Throughout the world, the regulation of space is a key way in which religious freedoms are denied; it is an important mechanism through which religious marketplaces are ordered and subverted. Space can also enable more contextually nuanced understandings of religious economy that are sensitive to religious power structures, both latent and manifest (after Edgell ; Woods , , ). In doing so, it provides recourse to many of the critiques linked to economic theorizing; specifically, its asocial treatment of religious choice (Edgell ; Iyer et al.…”