Inuit Pentecostal Transformation and Social Restoration
The theme of a recent symposium in honor of Bernard Saladin d’Anglure focused on issues of family, childhood, and gender. This inspired me to specifically look at the Pentecostal notion of being ‘reborn’ as my focus to work on the relevance of Christianity and specifically Pentecostalism for the constitution of the contemporary Inuit community of Qikiqtarjuaq. Examining the process of a Pentecostal transformation of an “old self” into a “new self,” or “reborn Christian,” shows that among Inuit religious transformation and social restoration are closely interconnected. This ethnographic case study shows that the integration of the new Pentecostal elements into Inuit society can be understood as a process of a dynamic continuity that is marked by the integration of new elements into Inuit lifeways – as a process of indigenization.