CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2008
| Author | Pazitna, Zofia |
|---|---|
| Title | Experiencing the Closeness of God: Mediated Religious Experience and the Role of Authority in the Faith Church in Budapest |
| Summary | This thesis is an account of the Faith Church in Budapest, an ethnographic study of a manifestation of the global Pentecostal/Charismatic movement. The focus lies on a new type of religious experience that the Pentecostal/Charismatic religions offers with a vivid understanding of the transcendental in the believer’s life and the experience of closeness of God, regarded as religious sensations. Considering religious sensation is an innovative approach in understanding religious experience, as it encompasses not only the feelings experienced during sensations but also their induction by the help of mediating forms, regarded as sensational forms. Religious experience and its narrative (accounts on religious experience and conversion) within the Faith Church are analyzed with attention to different forms of knowledge through which they are transmitted, focusing on linguistic and metakinetic processes which constitute a shared understanding of religious experience, contributing to creating religious sensations. Particular attention is given to the forms through which religious sensations are mediated and triggered, such as sensory and auditory stimuli, as well as the charismatic authority of the church’s leader Sandor Nemeth as a powerful motivating element within the community. There are many explanations for the booming success of the Faith Church in Hungary, however I argue that attention has to be given to religious sensation, the narratives that accompany it and to the forms through which the religious experience is provoked, enhanced and mediated. |
| Supervisor | Naumescu, Vlad |
| Department | Sociology MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2008/pazitna_zofia.pdf |
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