Suffering : Religious Injunction versus Political Expression
As a rule, violence – whether legitimate or illegitimate – has been regarded as belonging to the domain of the law while suffering to that of religious imaginaries. It is by means of this relationship between violence and suffering that another indirect relationship is established between law and religion. Yet, when one considers violence from the angle of the « suspension of meaning », suffering appears transformed, including within religious imaginaries. New Pentecostalism’s « stop suffering » is a kind of upheaval which is closely akin to the political posture which consists in the refutation of the feeling of victimhood. This paper has as its main concern a comparison of this religious injunction with the political expression of suffering.