Christianity, stigma, and mass conversion among Spanish Gitanos

Abstract

My doctoral thesis examines the emergence of religiously based worldviews, values, and collective imaginaries among Roma/Gitanos in Spain. Juxtaposing long-term ethnographical observation, interviews with religious leaders, and critical text-analysis, I analyse the large-scale religious conversion of Gitanos from Catholicism to Evangelical Pentecostal Christianity in the city of Madrid. My thesis contributes to several fields of social scientific inquiry, including the Sociology of Religion, Anthropology of Christianity, and Romani Studies. By examining how Gitanos engage with Evangelicalism, I also provide a lens through which to comprehend how religion and ethnicity intertwine in contemporary southern Europe and enhance our understanding of the influence of non-Catholic forms of Christianity among social minorities in Mediterranean contexts. Focusing on the role of pastors from the leading Gitano Evangelical Church in Spain, known as the Iglesia Evangélica de Filadelfia (IEF), I argue that through conversion Spanish Gitano believers negotiate vital gendered aspects of their cultural identity and reframe their sense of otherness vis-à-vis non-Gitanos. Challenging social and academic assumptions about the victimhood and lack of agency among Roma people, I show how Gitanos engage with Christianity to re-construct their subjectivity and consciousness, face the consequences of discrimination, and refashion their sense of worth in the Spanish society. In so doing, I place agency at the core of sociological and anthropological thinking. Moreover, I engage with social, media, and political debates about the persistence of Roma/Gitano exclusion and marginality in contemporary capitalist societies and discuss Christianity's role in shaping Gitano notions of identity, gender, belonging, and citizenship. Additionally, my thesis opens new questions and further academic knowledge regarding the ethnographic study of Gitano groups by revealing the intricacies of ethnographic encounters shaped by unequal power relations, negotiations, and conflicting interests. By offering ethnographically grounded insights about the religious conversion of Gitanos, my work contributes to comparative studies of other Evangelical stigmatised minorities in various societies in the world.