Faith healing in an immigrant church: illness and health in the perspective of Brazilian Pentecostals living in the USA

Faith healing has been central to Pentecostalism expansion in Latin America. However, most sociological studies that investigate this practice in the region start from theoretical assumptions that do not reflect the region’s religious reality. Using a lived religion approach, I explore how members of a Brazilian Pentecostal church in greater Boston make sense of this religious institution's healing system to construct their own definitions of illness and health. The research draws from 114 hours of ethnographic observation of the church’s practices and 11 interviews. The results show that the church’s healing system is based on a dualistic and hierarchical perspective on health that promotes the total spiritualization of medicine. However, members exercise their agency by resisting both the spiritualization of medicine and the medicalization of society through the construction of a dualistic and horizontal interpretation of health and illness that is simultaneously based on religious and medical definitions