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Highlighting common threads in the pieces by Beekers, Kasmani and Mattes, and Dilger, this concluding essay reflects on the potential of comparison as conceptual innovation in the anthropological study of religious plurality. Asking how to develop innovative practices of comparison for the sake of grasping the dynamics of plural societies in the light of the articles in this collection, I argue that it is necessary to transcend the bifurcation of the study of religions, which was accentuated with the rise of the anthropologies of Islam and Christianity, in favor of a focus on the secular configuration as a whole, paying attention to power dynamics that assign different spaces for action to different religions (notwithstanding their equality in legal terms). The point of comparison, understood as a critical project geared toward conceptual innovation, is not only to discern so far overlooked, unexpected differences and similarities, but also to understand how these differences and similarities, as well as the possibility to compare as such, are outcomes of long-standing entanglements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This introduction argues that the study of light and lighting devices, and the light mediations yielded by them, is important for scholars of material religion. Discussing the four articles on aesthetics of light in Christianity, we argue that synthesizing metaphorical and physical uses of light allows for a deep understanding of the processes through which a professedly immaterial transcendent becomes real for religious practitioners in the material world. Inspired by these contributions and the two essays in the In Conversation section, we plead for a methodology of following the light in scholarly research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented which discusses sermons, Christianity, and preaching.

One of the key features of Pentecostal/charismatic churches is their sensational appeal. Taking as a point of departure the experience of the Holy Spirit as a "portable," embodied power source, this essay seeks to contribute to developing alternative concepts that expand our view of Pentecostalism as it emerges through a "Protestant lens." First, I critically discuss the severance of aesthetics and Protestantism, and the concomitant dismissal of "form" in the work of Max Weber. I argue for the need to recapture an understanding of religion as aesthetics, albeit taken in the broad sense of aisthesis, advocated by Aristotle. Calling for the reappreciation of form as absolutely essential to religious experience, I then introduce the notion of the sensational form, which allows us to grasp how the Holy Spirit operates according to Pentecostal understanding and experience. Presenting the term aesthetics of persuasion, I address the question of how aesthetics is relevant to broader modalities of binding and politics of belonging—paying attention to Jacques Rancière's "distribution of the sensible." Taking Pentecostalism as a prominent representative of global Christianity, I seek not only to enhance our understanding of its particular sensational religiosity but also to outline new directions in the broader study of Protestantism and Christianity in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This article seeks to contribute to a more adequate understanding of the adoption of modern audiovisual mass media by contemporary religious groups. It does so by examining Pentecostal-charismatic churches as well as the Christian mass culture instigated by its popularity and so-called traditional religion in Ghana, which develop markedly different attitudes towards audiovisual mass media and assume different positions in the public sphere. Taking into account the complicated entanglement of traditional religion and Pentecostalism, approaching both religions from a perspective of mediation which regards media as intrinsic to religion, and seeking to avoid the pitfall of overestimating the power of modern mass media to determine the world, this article seeks to move beyond an unproductive recurrence to oppositions such as tradition and modernity, or religion and technology. It is argued that instead of taking as a point of departure more or less set ideas about the nexus of vision and modernity, the adoption of new mass media by religious groups needs to be analyzed by a detailed ethnographic investigation of how these new media transform existing practices of religious mediation. Special emphasis is placed on the tension between the possibilities of gaining public presence through new media, and the difficulty in authorizing these media, and the experiences they induce, as authentic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a response to the article "Locating the Textual Gaze: Then and Now" by Terje Stordalen published in this issue of the journal. The author, a scholar of Protestantism and Pentecostalism among African Christians, agrees with Stordalen's contention that textual sources have traditionally been privileged over archaeological sources in the historiography of pre-modern religions. The author argues for the need to develop methodologies and concepts that better integrate both textual and non-textual sources.