Spirit in Motion: The Remapping of Religious Belonging, Displacement, and Transnational Pentecostalism

Abstract (English)

This paper critically address the mobile and fluid aspects of religion in a global society, recent ethnographic, theoretical, and methodological contributions in anthropology are progressively rethinking the field's epistemic underpinnings. The research of African Pentecostal communities especially Nigerian Pentecostals who have founded thriving diasporic churches throughout Europe, including Germany, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands, provides a compelling example. These transnational networks demonstrate how theology and religious practice are altered by movement and dislocation. Through live streamed services, YouTube sermons, Whats App prayer chains, and rented church halls, Pentecostal worship known for its charismatic rituals, healing ceremonies, and prophetic declarations is reimagined in migrant contexts, creating a hybrid spiritual ecology that combines Western digital infrastructures with African religiosity. By fusing popular therapeutic discourses, Christian charity networks, local perspectives on suffering, and Pentecostal deliverance theology, migrants practice spiritual bricolage. By providing spiritual healing, a sense of community, and moral narratives that view migration as divine destiny, migrant churches confront the alienation of relocation and turn into places of resiliency and re-enchantment. New imaginaries are also produced by these religious mobilizations: believers preach against materialism, racism, and secularism while interpreting European landscapes through biblical prophecy. Pentecostalism promotes enclave formation and integration as it spreads internationally, linking African migrants to international religious groups and strengthening their unique spiritual identities at the same time. A methodological reorientation in anthropology that addresses affect, mobility, and the digital-material interface in religious life is necessary in light of this situation. By doing so, it reveals how religion continues to serve as a vital force for meaning-making, hope, and transnational solidarity amid displacement, cultural friction, and existential uncertainty in a globalized world.